Raging Moderates with Scott Galloway and Jessica Tarlov - Democrats in Fox News Territory, the Paramount Merger Crisis, and Data Center Outrage

Episode Date: August 25, 2026

Get your tickets now for our live show at 92NY: https://www.92ny.org/event/scott-galloway-and-jessica-tarlov Jessica Tarlov is joined by Michael Grynbaum, media correspondent at The New York Times and author of Empire of the Elite: Inside Condé Nast, for a conversation on media strategy, corporate power, and the political landscape with just over two months until the midterms. They open with a question Jessica is uniquely positioned to ask: should Democrats be doing more appearances on conservative media? Yesterday, progressive Michigan Senate hopeful Abdul El-Sayed joined Fox News primetime host Jesse Watters. Jessica and Michael break down whether El-Sayed came out on top, and whether the broader strategy of reaching voters outside the Democratic media ecosystem is paying off. Can Democrats appeal to working-class men by embracing “bro-iness”? The Paramount/Warner Bros. merger is on ice; the $111 billion deal has cleared all required regulatory approvals but remains frozen by an antitrust suit from a coalition of states led by California. Michael, who covers the Ellison family and the media industry closely, breaks down whether the merger might actually be stopped, where media concentration goes next, and if this is a signal of upheaval for Hollywood. They also talk about some recent high-profile personnel moves at CBS, CNN, and The New York Times. Data centers have become one of the hottest campaign issues in the 2026 midterms. Ads running in Texas, Ohio, Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania are all hammering candidates over their support of data center development. Michael and Jessica discuss why voters are latching onto this issue — and whether it's really about data centers, or a much broader anxiety about AI, inequality, and the economy. Plus: Michael's book Empire of the Elite: Inside Condé Nast is newly out in paperback — and it comes at a moment when major media companies are settling lawsuits with the president. He talks about what’s changed in the landscape of media and power in just a year since its first publication. For ad-free episodes, exclusive livestreams, and to connect with Scott, Jessica, and the Raging Moderates community, join us at ProfG+ on Substack: https://ragingmoderates.profgmedia.com/ Get The Monday Rage newsletter: https://profgmedia.com/s/monday-rage/ Follow Raging Moderates on IG, Tiktok, and Facebook: https://www.instagram.com/ragingmoderatespod/ https://www.tiktok.com/@ragingmoderates https://www.facebook.com/ragingmoderates Follow Jessica Tarlov on Instagram, Substack, and Bluesky: https://instagram.com/jessicatarlov https://substack.com/@jessietarlov https://bsky.app/profile/jessicatarlov.bsky.social Follow Scott on Instagram, Substack, and Bluesky: https://instagram.com/profgalloway https://substack.com/@profgalloway https://bsky.app/profile/profgalloway.com Subscribe to our YouTube Channel: https://www.youtube.com/@RagingModerates Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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See terms. One of the things that it felt like Jesse and Abdul were bonding over in that interview was this kind of bro-y, kind of very masculine presentation, right? And it kind of had this like fratty, like barstool sports kind of element to it. it's actually interesting to me how like broiness in some ways, that increasingly feels like a bit of a lingua franca for politicians, media hosts. And there's a huge audience for this, you know, in the manosphere, right?

I do think it's a bit problematic because, you know, broiness is not always the best model of sort of how men might behave. And I'm seeing it more and more among these politicians who are rising, especially on the left. Welcome to Raging Moderates. I'm Jessica Tarlove. We are still scottless because it is August, but we are Michael Moore, or full of more Michael. I don't know how to say Michael Moore is a real person, who I do not have on my podcast, but I have Michael Grinbaum, media correspondent at the New York Times, an author of Empire of the Elite inside Condé Nast. The new paperback is out this week with a brand spank and new afterward, and we're going to talk about that later. But do some politics stuff first. Michael, thank you for joining me. Yeah, thanks so much for having me. Glad I can take advantage of Scott vanishing for the month. It is. Now that we don't really have a lot of guests, I become very popular in July where everyone can smell that Scott is about to disappear on jets and yachts or whatever happens. And I will be here for verbally slaving away. This is the new working with your hands, just podcasting from your very nice rental in Long Island.

I would rather be here with you, Jess, than on the yacht with Scott. So I'll just put that out there. You want to start off by lying to me? I mean, go on. But we have some fun stuff to talk about. And up front, I want to dig into the big interview of last night, which was Michigan's Democratic candidate, Abdul Al-Sayed, walking into the lion's den or beaming into the lion's den. He went on Fox. He sat down with Jesse Waters.

I work there occupational hazard that I'm obsessed with Democrats who are willing to come on and like what they do when they're there because there are two different molds. There's that I'm showing up and I want to get as many clips that will feed my hyperpartisan audience. And then there's the other mold, which is, yes, I would like the clips, but also I'm trying to tease out some common ground or shared values, right, that I can go home, especially if you're from a swing state and say, I'm the guy or I'm the gal that can have these conversations. I want to play a little bit of a montage from last night and then we'll talk about it. If you disagree that health care decisions need to be made by a doctor and their parents and a patient, then I just think we agree to disagree. But, you know, you want to put government inside a clinic or a hospital, selectively.

I am. So you think it's okay for a parent to slash his kids stiggling off? You think that's okay? I mean, do you? So do you really want to have this conversation? conversation, are you circumcised? Yeah, yeah, but I mean, that's a personal question, doctor. You probably should want to move on.

You probably should want to move on. So you're saying, Beyonce, who just became a billionaire, she has to break you off something every year, she has to pay the politicians. It's not me, it's the American public. You're the one that wants the money. To be able to contribute back to the public schools that she went to. At the end of that, I thought you were for the everyday man. Like if you're for billionaires more than you're for everybody.

The person, you and I are just going to disagree. No, I just think I have the right to the fruits of my own labor. Billionaires don't make their money off of their labor. That I think is where you head off. Billionaires that make their money off their money. Okay, so if there were a drinking game for dingling on primetime cable news, there would be some shots taken last night. I did think that Abdul's most salient point was about how billionaires actually make their money,

that they're making their money off of their money, and it's not a question of fruits of your labor. Like the average person that's working, their take-home pay is actually a direct result of the fruits of their labor versus money that's put into a market and maybe they're getting special deals and they're getting to invest early in like a SpaceX, and then they're becoming trillionaires.

But top line, what did you think about the interview? So super entertaining television and yourself as a student of, as an expert at, jousting with Jesse Waters on Fox News Air. I know that you're... What a sad resume item that I could add now. I thought the line actually in that exchange where he said, oh, Jesse, I thought you were for the common man,

not for the billionaires, was actually a sort of an effective, you know, way to turn the conversation around, reframe it on Jesse. The two of them were terrific together. I mean, speaking on a pure entertainment level. But let's talk about the politics of it because, so I've been covering Fox News for about a decade. These fish otter water moments are both, I think, some of the highest rated interviews that Fox News gets when you get a real Democrat liberal, in this case a socialist kind of coming into the lion's den, as you said. But I also think that this is an incredibly effective tactic for Democratic politicians and candidates.

Liz Smith, who's a great Democratic strategist, has been beating this Trump for many, many years. She was the architect behind Pete Buttigieg's presidential campaign where she would send him out to podcasts and right-wing media outlets and essentially said that, you know, Democrats have to show the courage of their convictions and they have to be able to defend their policies, even with an opinion host who, you know, their advisors might say, oh, you know, Jesse Waters is never going to. let you get one over on him and, oh, that audience is going to see you as a pinata that they can beat up on. I would say two things. First of all, the Fox News audience is so rarely exposed on the airwaves of Fox News to the perspectives that El-Sayed is expressing here during the commentary hours. And so often just to appear and be an actual individual and a person, I mean, Jesse, it was He was, you know, a great interviewer. I mean, he was firm.

He really pushed back against his points. But it felt like two smart individuals who disagree. Also, it was a bit flirtatious. No, in the best possible way. I mean, they were smiling at each other a lot. They were, I don't want to say, googly eyes and Jesse, you know, hypermasculine, all the things. But you could tell that they were having a very good time with this. if they had been set up and said you have eight and a half minutes,

they'd be like, I'd swipe right again. And it got quite intimate with the dingalong, a dingling discussion, right? So there was quite a, you know, they really like jumped to that, you know, more intimate part of the date very quickly. No, I totally agree. They were both smiling and like even Jesse, you know, it all felt like happy warriors, right? And that's actually a model of political discourse that's often lacking on cable news and in the media today. we so rarely see people who are on such extreme opposite sides of the spectrum, being able to debate one another, not descending into name-calling, not descending into rancor, but kind of, you know, making their points and, you know, being, being ferocious about it, but firm and respectful. Maybe Jesse was a little unrespectful at times.

But, I mean, this actually brought me back to when Mayor Pete did that town hall on Fox News with Chris Wallace, which again was a moment where he really went in and kind of took a lot of really. tough questions from them. Bill de Blasio going on with Sean Hannity. I mean, there are moments like this that frankly, I think Democrats would be, you know, it would really behoove them to take this example and see some of the positive benefits. Maybe they convert four or five different people watching. Maybe they don't get votes, but maybe it just kind of shows a certain audience that the other side, those are actual people who come to their beliefs, you know, rationally and defensively and not because they've got, they're not cartoonish villains that they're otherwise depicted as in a lot of the partisan media that we have today.

Yeah, I mean, I would say if the narrative the right was going with that is that Abdul al-Sayed is a terrorist or like terrorist adjacent, he just seemed like a bro who went to the University of Michigan, right? And that's exactly how they want to present the campaign does. You know, they want to speak about his ties to Michigan, the big son of Michigan, his most successful ad thus far as the one with his grandparents talking about who he is and growing up and what Michigan means to him. So I think it was all very effective along those lines.

I wanted to ask you about the ecosystem more broadly. And the Times had a graphic, which was so stark and really, you know, everyone in our world was looking at it or it's depicting the falloff in viewership and subscribers for conservative media, influencer media, I should say. So like the Benny Johnsons of the world, Megan Kelly, Candace Owens, Ben Shapiro on the Daily Wire, I think being the most extreme example. This makes the environment even more ripe for these kinds of conversations. right, for a high-profile liberal to sit down with a high-profile conservative host to try to hash it out and to, you know, land their punches, but to have some sort of productive conversation in the end. What do you attribute the fall off in conservative media subscriptions or whatever term you want to use? Because I was pretty surprised. I know that Trump is unpopular and that there has been fracturing and friction within the, chorus of supporters for him. But, I mean, we're talking about millions and millions of views

just evaporated, seemingly overnight. I do wonder if it parallels what we're seeing more broadly in the media, and I include the entertainment space with that, which is that the traditional platforms, cable news, broadcast television, you know, your cable subscription with spectrum or what have you, is all getting replaced. now by YouTube, by streamers, by podcasts, by social media. You know, YouTube is now by far the most watched video content platform in the country, you know, far above ABC, CBS, NBC. So what's interesting, I think, about some of these conservative, kind of more mainstream conservative outlets, losing their viewership, you know, because for years and years, it was growing and growing,

there was such an audience out there, clearly, who were interested in political content that they felt that they weren't getting from the mass media. Well, now, I mean, in some ways, I think that same audience is going more niche and niche and niche. They are actually finding influencers and Twitch streamers and, you know, different outlets of political content

that are outside of what had sort of become the establishment on the right wing. Now, I mean, is there something to do there about Trump's declining popularity within his own party. I don't think we can rule that out. But I do think there's like now a proliferation of other conservative, almost influencers, right, who are kind of sapping away some of the audience that was otherwise going to a place like the Daily Wire, which, you know, Ben Shapiro kind of modeled that place after traditional media outlets. He had a whole staff, you know, it was professionalized. I mean, now there's a good.

who has a TikTok who's, I don't know, I'm talking about Richard Nixon nostalgia, and they're probably getting more viewers than, you know, some of the shows on the Daily Wire. So it's a pretty striking change just, you know, we're all experiencing this, right, on the right or on the left, about the ways that we get information, the ways that we participate in the political debate in this country. It's changing day to day. Well, one family that is having a big effect on how we consume information or the Ellison's. I don't know how good of a transition that is, but here we are. I want to talk about the Ellicons, who you cover.

Yeah. Well, no, actually, can we just go back for a second to the broiness of El Sayad? Because I actually wanted to explore that a little bit with you. So that's a great point that there was actually one of the things that it felt like Jesse and Abdul were bonding over in that interview was this kind of browy, kind of very masculine presentation, right? You know, he calls Mike Rogers, you know, a beta and gets a chat. A beta male. And Jesse says, well, I didn't agree to that. And he says, oh, man, you laughed about it. So I know you agree. And it kind of had this, like, fratty, like barstool sports kind of element to it. It's actually interesting to me how, like, broiness in some ways. And actually, you really see this on the left. I mean, the Times just did a big story about Zora and Mamdani, the very New York. York City and the broiness of his inner circle, how they're all, like, talking about sports and

kind of like, you know, needling each other. Zin, that they're all used Zin. They're all using Zin. By the way, I tried Zin a couple weeks ago. It did not go well. It did not go well. It seems awful. Also, it's really bad for you.

I'm not into celebrating, like, the new bad habits. Like, smoking was bad and all the things are bad. Did you do it as a work experiment that you felt like you had to know? Yeah, I would love to say that it was like a wire cutter, you know, New York Times, perfect experiment. But actually, somebody just offered it to me. And I was like, oh, what the heck? It's, you know, I'm having a nice night. And I immediately became like woozy and sort of nauseous.

And it was like, it was a totally crazy reaction. But, okay, I went a little far afield there. But let's just bring it back to broiness. That increasingly feels like a bit of a lingua franca for. politicians, media hosts. And there's a huge audience for this, you know, in the manosphere, right? I mean, there are so many people who seem to, you know, be really drawn to that kind of presentation. I do think it's a bit problematic. I mean, I do wonder how would a candidate who maybe doesn't sort of present themselves that way sort of fare in an interview with, you know, a major

conservative host, many, many of which are men. And, you know, you know, You know, I mean, I, that just really, I mean, maybe it's a way to bring in like a wider audience. I think there's this sort of caricature, which by the way is totally false, but like Democrats are sort of a more, you know, namby-pamby sort of group of effete elites. But, you know, it is, I do think there's some danger to it because, you know, brolliness is not always the best model of sort of how men might behave. and I'm seeing it more and more among these politicians who are rising, especially on the left. I like the point a lot. I think that people shouldn't be so afraid of doing it because the world is just so saturated with content that if you do a hit with a certain host that might not speak to another demographic that you're trying to convert,

you can just go do that, right? Like you could, you know, then go have a conversation. You want to sit down with Theo Vaughn, then go talk to a women's group or something like that, and they can kind of cancel each other out and just show a depth and a range. And to your point about the personality types that do well in those environments, and like I thought Pete Buttigieg, who's openly gay on flagrant, was a master class, right? sat down with three or four really bro-y guys. I mean, they're clued in and sensitive to the issues. I don't mean bros in, you know, a terribly toxic sense because that exists. It's not like going to sit down with the Tate brothers.

But like they like to sit around and pal around and, you know, talk about sports and talk about dating and also talk about policy and those things. So I think that there's enough media to do that you can get away with this. But I think that it was very very, smart because Abdul can be much more successful as the guy who can make Jesse Waters laugh than as the guy who you see in some of these attack ads that are out from the Rogers camp. And he said something that is resonating, which is Mike Rogers because he's a beta. He won't even come on with you. So the beta thing is funny, made Jesse laugh. But there are Republican politicians that are afraid of interviews right now. I mean, there's a whole, like, where is Ken Paxton thing going on?

And Jesse was the one who said that. You know, at first he said, like, dude, I can't do this for you. I've seen Mitch McConnell more than I've seen you on TV. So then Ken Paxton goes on Newsmax, which I don't think was exactly what Jesse was talking about. But to be able to call out Republicans for dodging interviews in the hot seat yourself, I think is very powerful. It's not like he's sitting around with, on. Pod Save America saying, like, Mike Rogers do more interviews. He's like, I'm sitting here on Fox News. I totally agree. And I think that goes back to a bit of the toxicity that's amassing around the Trump brand right now, even on the right. Because these politicians, even on a place like Fox News, are concerned that they're going to get asked about the war in Iran, you know, what's happening with the economy. I mean, these issues with the president that are polling just, you know, terribly right now. And I think there's a lot of fear about sort of having that posed to them directly.

having the defendant on live television and they're going to friendly and friendlier outlets, I think it's absolutely the right thing to call them out and say they need to be a little stronger and show a little more courage and speak to their constituents. Be a little more alpha if we want to keep up with the jargon of the interview. Support for the show comes from Skylight. Family schedules have a way of getting complicated fast. Between work, school, sports, appointments, and social plans. Keeping everyone coordinated isn't easy.

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Delta is proud to host these competitors, providing charter flights for every WNBA team, to elevate their travel experience and champion equity on every leg of their trip. Keep climbing with Delta Airlines, the official airline of the WNBA. Ellison's now? Yeah. So you cover the Ellison's. You have a new book, a forthcoming book. When is it coming out on the Ellison's? Oh, boy, Jess, don't rush me on this thing.

Oh, no. Okay. I mean, there's so much. At some point in the 2020s, Michael Grinbaum will have a book out on the Ellison's. But this Paramount merger has been huge news for months now. It's a $11 billion merger with Warner Brothers Discovery. It has cleared all the required regulatory approvals, remains frozen by an antitrust suit from a coalition of states led by California. This week, the California Attorney General canceled talks with Paramount.

What is the status of this? because it kind of feels to me like much of a muchness, like this thing is going to go through, and now we're doing a lot of legal dancing before that happens. But what is the latest officially? Well, let me just say that I actually think this is the biggest media story of our time right now, and it really captures these enormous changes that are happening

to the news and information outlets that, you know, you and I have depended on for decades. So the Ellison family, Larry Ellison's the founder of Oracle, he's a tech titan. You know, they've basically come out of nowhere in the last few years and started gobbling up movie studios, broadcast networks. They own CBS. If this merger goes through, they're going to own CNN. And what's fascinating about it is the way that their ties to Trump and the ways that they courted this president in his administration to get the deal done has become such an element of this, what is essentially, you know, a corporate mega-mer.

has now felt shot through with politics. There's such a perception out there that David Ellison, who's Larry's son, who's kind of leading the charge on this, is trying to put together this media empire essentially to placate this president to kind of provide a new megaphone for his policies. Now, I don't believe that that's,

that was not the intention coming in here. I mean, I think David Ellison is an ambitious, you know, young media mogul, and he wanted, he saw, a potential in Hollywood that's really struggling to adapt to the digital age to bring together all of these media companies. But the state attorneys general who are suing to stop it, many of them are from big blue states, and it's kind of become, you know, a political issue for them to raise their profile.

I mean, I actually do think there are some legitimate antitrust issues that need to get ironed out. But this is all now getting seen like everything in our day and age, as a reddish, state, blue state, MAGA versus Democrats kind of battle. And by the way, it's also about the way that billionaires are increasingly consolidating their control over these really, you know, crucial information platforms that, you know, interpret and inform us every single day about what's going on in the world. You never used to have, you know, these billionaires, you know, controlling so many companies all at once. And I think what's going on with the Ellison's really illustrates some of the potential pitfalls of this new era of media ownership that we're entering. This deal has scrambled things a bit differently than I would necessarily think, you know, the divisions of who's for and against it within Hollywood.

Because they have huge implications, right, for, you know, what happens to regular movie studios. We talk about constantly the death of the movie theater. though it seems like it has had a bit of a bounceback, very high-profile agents being on opposite sides of the deal than I expected, you know, really fearful for what happens if Paramount just pulls out, which the Ellison's have threatened and said, we'll go elsewhere. And then, you know, Ari Emanuel and Brian Lord are sitting there saying, well, what happens if Georgia becomes the new Hollywood, right? And they're certainly saying, come here. you know, we make already most of the television between Toronto and Atlanta, you know, a ton of it.

I think a majority is done there. But if you add this to the pie, that's going to be a huge economic boon for Georgia or any other state that gets attention after this. And I know that Paramount has relaxed on that threat. But people are lining up in different order than I expected, naturally. And I am as, you know, someone in the cable news business or in the news business, generally, you know, looking at what it must be like within CNN, knowing about the turmoil within CBS with the control that they have there and, you know, Barry Weiss's influence and changes that are just so blatantly obvious to people with 60 Minutes kind of being the cherry on top of the transformation. There's a lot of anxiety.

here. Yeah, I mean, so to gain some more leverage, Paramount essentially floated that they would move the studios out of Los Angeles. And we're talking about Warner Brothers and Paramount. I mean, two of the last remaining kind of golden age of Hollywood studios, I mean, that would cripple the L.A. economy

would really kind of shatter the notion that that is still the center of the film and TV industry. And it's still little and clear, and I've been sort of reporting this out in real time. You know, how serious is that threat? I mean, is this more about gaining some leverage with these state AGs now that they're locked in what could be a months and months-long negotiation? I have been told by sources that, you know, David Ellison has been interested in moving to a place like Austin, Texas, which, as you know, many tech companies have, you know,

uprooted themselves from California and reconstituted themselves down in the south. You know, whether or not that happens, I think this, this negotiation could go on for months. And meanwhile, a place like CNN, it's what's on in the airport. There is something to that brand, though, right, to the CNN breaking news brand, I think no matter your politics, it's just long held, right, that you see that banner and it has an air of safety about it. I agree. And if there's a natural disaster or, God forbid, a terrorist attack or something like that. It just feels like people, like, you know, kind of turn to it for information they can trust. So I think that's what's freaked out a lot of the people at CNN because they've actually

gone and looked at what happened at CBS News after Barry Weiss was brought in as the president, as the editor-in-chief, I should say, of the news division. You know, it's interesting. I mean, what Barry's done over there, I mean, there's been a lot of coverage of kind of the chaos and sort of the instability of the place. A lot of that, I think, is attributed to sort of Barry's inexperience as a manager. She's a print journalist. I mean, she's a writer. She's an opinion journalist. She's very successful. She's very personally charismatic. She had no experience in broadcast news, and she was kind of taking over an institution

that is very resistant to change. You know, has the actual content of the place changed that much? I think 60 Minutes is going to be a real litmus test of that. I think in the most dramatic move she's made, she fired all the current leadership team, Scott Pelly, the famous correspondent, put up a fight. He got kicked out of there. So they're bringing in a whole new team of correspondence, whole new team of producers.

That first episode is going to premiere in the middle of September. 16 Minutes is also one of those rituals in American life. You know, it's like the thing that's always on. your parents place Sunday at 7 p.m., whether that suddenly starts to feel a lot more pro-Trump or, you know, a lot more sort of MAGA curious, so to speak, that is going to be a real test, I think, about, you know, what the sort of ellison oversight of the news world will be. And I know that many, many journalists at CNN who are facing down the prospect of having the same company come in and start changing up their newsroom are going to be watching that

first episode next month to see how it turns out. Little gossip question, which you may not be able to answer. What were the Times vibes when it was announced that Ross Duthot was going over to 60 minutes? Because, I mean, he's conservative, but not MAGA, right? He can pick out, you know, things that he might like about the Trump agenda or things that he thinks needed to change in American society. But, you know, the guy is a good Christian. And so he sees Donald Trump for who he is. But I, that certainly stuck. out to me. And she was, at least by reporting from, you know, people like you and others covering the media be interested in a lot of conservatives to potentially make the jump over. Yeah, there was a rumor this morning that she's been talking to Chris Cuomo, actually, to come over and do some hosting gig at CBS. So I don't know how that's going to pan out. Good alpha male, beta male conversation to be had. If he does do that, let's get after it, Michael. Yeah, I mean, you know, I'm not. I'm not.

at that pay scale where I'm doing those personnel decisions. But I think it was seen as a very smart poach by Barry and probably a loss to the New York Times that have rost out that move to a rival outlet. I mean, particularly because the Times, as I'm sure your listeners know, is really moving more and more into the video space. You know, we're experimenting a lot more with having reporters on camera. I think I think a big motivation for that is that we do, you know, Not to toot our horn, but, you know, we do very high-quality journalism. We want to make sure that it's reaching our readers and listeners and viewers where they are. And often, you know, a lot of younger people are now getting their news,

licking through an Instagram or a TikTok streaming feed. So Ross was, you know, doing a lot of on-camera interviews. He was kind of becoming a bit of a video star of the opinion section because he was doing these really poignant and search. interviews with people like Ben Sasse, you know, he, I cried that whole interview. It was so touching and difficult. And I think it was a great example of the sort of opinion journalism that the Times wants to do where you, you know, I mean, that was a very human conversation, right? And I think it touched a lot of people. I'm sure it left an impression on Barry Weiss who thought, listen, why not have something like this on 60 minutes? I mean, it would be great to put this on television in front of 10, 12 million viewers a week on CBS.

So there was one of the media newsletters. I can't verify this myself, but that the Times had just set up a home studio for Ross up in New Haven where he lives. So that gives you a sign of the fact that, you know, we were very up on the guy. So I think, you know, it's tough to see him walk out the door. That said, I think, you know, we've got a lot of on-air talent here. and I think a lot of very gifted interviewers and commentators. I'm sort of curious, I think Ross is a super talented journalist. I mean, 16 Minutes has not really been an opinion-based show, right?

I mean, setting aside Andy Rooney and his gripes that they used to do at the end of it. But, you know, it's kind of known for this kind of investigative straight ahead, you know, no-nonsense reporting. So the fact that Ross Stout that's going over there, who, you know, I think is a lot more outspoken about his opinions, I think that's an interesting choice. I think it speaks to Barry's idea of what journalism is today. I think she's less of a believer in this, you know, there are objective journalists who can kind of set aside their biases. And I don't know.

You know, that's going to be a different sort of programming than the traditional viewers of the show expect. Yeah. I wonder how big she's going to build it out, you know, who will be, obviously, the replacement for Anderson Cooper, who will go do these like months to months long reporting pieces. And that won't be Ross, I think, in the same way. But definitely compelling video TV.

One of his final interviews was Scott Galloway of yachting fame, in fact, talking about young men, which was a great conversation. If raging moderates folks haven't watched Scott on there, you should. Because he was great. Do you love the luxuriant flavors of fine dining? Then make a reservation at the most hands-off restaurant in town. U-de-Chef. Five-star chefs at U-D-Sheft provide expert suggestions on how to prepare your meal.

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That's A-T-I-O-com slash Vox. Let's pivot a little bit or a lot bit from Scott being on for a great interview about young men, to data centers, which is becoming this pivotal election issue. You know, Democrats are big in the, we're demonizing this. Josh Shapiro has kind of found this middle ground where he's saying if there is a data center, they have to pay for themselves, essentially, because they know what kind of anxiety it puts on people, like the cost of this, also the effects on the environment,

people talking about noise issues. But to me, and with everything in politics right now, it's all centered in anxiety and chaos and that people feel like life is moving just too fast. We're all kind of holding on to our things saying like, this is, I can't keep up with what's going on. And the unknown is in our backyard sometimes quite literally. And we don't know what to do. So curious how you're thinking about the data center issue. Yeah, well, you hit the nail on the head. I mean, I think that's why this issue feels so contemporary and like cuts right to the core of our politics right now.

You know, you have this technology that leaders are saying, well, this is the future and we have to compete with places like China. But I think a lot of Americans are looking at this, particularly ones in the states where these data centers might be and saying, well, wait a second, like, where. Where's my rising tide? Like, how am I going to be sort of benefiting from this technology? I mean, this data center is going to get built in my backyard, and eventually my job is going to get gobbled up, and I'm not going to be employable because whatever sort of, you know, function that I, whether I'm a, I mean, drivers getting replaced by robots. I mean, even accountants, you know, mid-level lawyers, I mean, these white-collar professions that potentially could be done better by or done sufficiently by. a chat bot, I think that politicians are having a hard time really showing the cost-benefit analysis of it, right? And then we also are hearing all about like the anthropic IPO and, you know,

the fact that, oh, there's going to be this whole new group of billionaires minted by these, by these AI companies going public. I mean, all of that does is accelerate a narrative that says, hey, there's a few hundred people who are going to get crazy rich off of this technology. while the rest of society is going to be scrambled and upturned in this, like, really dramatic way. And so, I mean, what could be more symbolic? What could loom larger than a physical brick-and-mortar factory in your backyard, you know, containing these servers that are sort of the harbingers of your financial doom? I mean, you could see they're going to have to hire security for these data centers

because increasingly they're going to feel symbolic of changes in our country. country that are happening at such a pace. And really, I think people just feel under threat by it, right? So I absolutely see it becoming a bigger and bigger issue. And I wouldn't have expected that at the start of the year. But thinking ahead to the midterms, you know, I mean, it's, it's a, people have a really emotional response to it. And ultimately, I think in the ballot box, people are responding to their emotional reactions to situations. So I do really want to keep an eye on it. Yeah, my dad, when he was alive, he used to say that the job of the government is to alleviate as much anxiety as possible for the broader public. And that's why, and you see this very much in DSA ideology and on the left in general, though I think that they are hitting the nail on the head a lot more effectively than kind of the quote-unquote Normie Democrats.

But they're saying, like, you shouldn't be considering whether you go to the doctor. or not, you should go to the doctor if you feel like you need to go to the doctor. You should have a decent public school. You should have a roof over your head that isn't bankrupting you and generations to come, et cetera. And this is all about the anxiety. And they are totally going to put that on data centers. And you see this in these town hall meetings, the people who are showing up, absolutely losing their mind about it. And the reversals even from Republican politicians, Mike Rogers is backtracking. Abdul is fighting really hard. to keep his old position on data centers in people's minds versus this new one.

Greg Abbott, then Ken Paxton is following his lead. Same thing. James Tallerico is having to hammer the old position versus the new one because they're trying to do a 180 on this fast. And like everything, you know, nuance doesn't do that well. It doesn't sell that well. It doesn't make you popular. And you listen to someone like Abigail Spanberger because Virginia has the most data centers of

anywhere in the country. And she's like, we cannot turn our backs on this technology that also brings a huge economic boon to our state. I think this also brings us back to the, as I like to call it, the octogenarian problem in our politics, right, which is that people perceive our government as so creaky and slow moving. And, I mean, has, you know, has it even had a chance to catch up with the internet age and the ways that our lives are transformed by social media? I mean, you sort of always see issues over, our laws can adapt quickly enough to protect Americans from all the new ills that are wrought by, you know, changing technologies. So now we have probably the most, you know, consequential evolution of our tech since the dawn of the internet, one that threatens to really

upend our economy in so many different ways. And people are looking at a government that's filled with 60-something, 70-something, 80-something politicians who I don't think that they have faith that these leaders really comprehend what the changes are that AI is going to the brain. Maybe they're not using AI themselves. Are they even using email? I mean, all these questions, I think, get kind of tied into this. And I do like seeing kind of a younger generation of politicians talk about these issues because I feel a little more comfortable that they actually understand the ways that technology is changing our lives. But I don't blame the electorate for not having a lot of faith in our federal government to find the safest,

most responsible way to bring this technology to bear, even if it is important for us to be competing on the global stage. Yeah. Number one rule of politics, you can't blame the So you've got to figure out how to do better yourself. And I do love, like, Alex Boris, who lost the New York 12 primary to Michael Asher. He made AI his big issue. And he was right to do that. Because to your point, when people watch any of these hearings, they're horrified. Even if smart Senate staffers or congressional staffers have written the talking points, you're seeing these people stumble over words and concepts that are quite natural for us of the digital age. I mean, I even feel old as an elder millennial when it comes to it.

Like 25-year-olds are lapping me constantly. Occupational hazard even to have a substack show with Aaron Parnas who like stares at me every week. Like I'm 100, even though I feel like I've never looked better. I want to talk about your book. And it does loop in nicely, actually, with everything that we've been discussing. So you look at Condy Nast at the height of its power, published at a time when some of the biggest media companies in the country are settling lawsuits now with the president paying into his presidential library. Like it's a very different time for media. Obviously, Anna Wintour is a central piece of the puzzle and you have this new afterward, which is out this week.

Why does your book matter for the conversations that we're having about media? So, I mean, Condé Nast, which publishes Vogue, Vanity Fair, The New Yorker, GQ, all these, like, world famous magazines. I mean, it for decades and decades was one of the most influential cultural institutions in this country. It really defined aspiration for many generations of Americans. What it meant to succeed, what it meant to be elite was basically played out in these pages telling you what to wear. you know, what, how to decorate your house, you know, the New Yorker is a place of, you know, what ideas are sort of should be discussed if you're in the upper middle class. So there had never really been a full cultural history of this company that really kind of

brought back the whole history of it going back 100 years. So there was always a nostalgia element to it, and I've got a lot of really fun stories in there about magazine editors having 24-hour black car service in Manhattan. and, you know, getting yelled at when they stayed at a three-star hotel, their boss would call and say, you need to move to the Ritz and spend more money because the whole idea of this company was to... Can you imagine that today where they're like,

did you take an Uber comfort? Because I told you to take an Uber X. Like, it's so different. I mean, so back in the 1980s, writers for Vanity Fair could FedEx their luggage ahead of them to whatever destination they were going to. so they didn't have to suffer the indignity of carrying a suitcase through the airport. I suggested this idea to my bosses at the Times and did not get the reaction that I was hoping for.

I'm shocked. So there's a lot of fun nostalgia in this book. And by the way, a lot of kids in their 20s came up to me and said they loved reading it because it just kind of evoked this really amazing time. But they love magazines again because we owned nylon. We purchased nylon while I was working at BDG, and it is now the central brand of the company, and people love to have the handheld. They want it on our coffee table.

I think there's a reaction against our all-digital all-the-time media and the fact that people are getting bombarded, you know, throughout the day with, you know, dozens or hundreds of different inputs from TikTok or Instagram, from the web. there's kind of a clutter, I think. And the reason why I think my book really matters today is that it's in many ways an analysis of the role of cultural gatekeepers in our media and what it meant to have sort of particular figures of refinement and discernment who are essentially picking and choosing sort of what should be valued in the culture. Now, I think there were a lot of problems with that old model. It wasn't very democratic. It was a very democratic. It was a, was quite exclusive. I think there were a lot of voices that today, thanks to the internet, have found a platform and found an audience. I think the problem is everything now is unfiltered. There's kind of a lack of curation any longer. And I think that the role that these editors

in chief used to play was to look out at this chaotic culture to sort of see all the ideas, all the artists, all the art that was getting put into the zeitgeist and saying, hey, this is worth your time. Like, these are ideas that are worth thinking about. You know, these are clothes, these are styles, these are fashions that, you know, are based on their sort of connoisseurship, worthy of your attention. And I think that right now, you know, we've swung too far in one direction. I think that people on the Internet are looking for a little bit more curation. It's also about the monoculture, right, and the fact that we don't have it anymore. So increasingly, we talk a lot about how in politics people aren't talking about the same facts that I think in the culture,

there isn't really like a single conversation that people can bond over from different parts of life. I remember when I was a kid, I mean, I'm dating myself as an elder millennial, but I did it first. We're in the same cohort. After Oscar night, you know, I'd be so excited to talk about it the next day at school because, you know, everyone was up watching the Oscars the night before. I mean, that just doesn't happen today because we have a million sources of entertainment we can choose from. Even the same with TV shows. I mean, the White Lotus is like the last show that I can think about where I was like dying to watch it right at the hour that it went up on HBO and then everybody would be dissecting and talking about the episode the next day.

Most shows, people watch at their own pace. They binge them. You know, there are a million shows to choose from. It's rare that one actually gets everybody talking. And I think we lose a little something there because there used to be this kind of community. in our cultural conversation. And so I think what I read about in the book really gets at, you know, a little bit of what we've lost and hopefully provide some ideas of how we can, you know, bring that back in a more modern version today.

I love that. I'm trying to think of my appointment TV. Bill Maher is appointment for me. I think for politics people, they still stick with that if you're not out partying or whatever goes on for people who don't have children. I don't know a lot about that. And even like these drops at midnight, I think, hurt the show.

Like I'm watching Furious, but it drops at midnight. And I'm sure this has to do with Hulu's scheduling and whatever. But like, why don't make that like a Monday night 9 p.m. drop and make it like sex in the city was for people or sopranos or succession, which was obviously a massive, like, I've got to watch this on time with the companion podcast and all of that. people would be more into it if, like, as your book talks about and you've just been discussing, like, if people are into a nostalgia play, give it to them. And, you know, having, crowding around the couch together and having watch parties like we did for even The Bachelor when it was, you know, first a thing. That's real community that's going to be with you in the long term. I completely agree. And by the way, the pit, which is one of the most successful news shows of the last

couple years. The pit really resembles those sort of TV shows. You and I probably grew up watching once a week on network primetime. I think the ER people would say that it too closely resembles the TV that we ended up, that we were watching. Very fair. That's, no, that's absolutely right. But the pit is, there's something so, like, satisfying about watching it where the stakes are high, and not too high, and it just keeps rolling, and there's like a lot of episodes, and you can kind of sit after a long day and just absorb it. And, you know, it's an ensemble cast. It's, it's simple. It's straightforward. And, you know, I mean, you're going to see more and more networks, I think commissioning shows like that. Maybe we'll get another round of law and order. Laws in order.

No, just law and order. I was like, is this a Times thing that I've been saying it wrong? No, it's just law and order. And I think, you know, magazines, I mean, it was funny to bring myself back into this pre-internet age mindset when I was writing about it because before the internet where you didn't get to dissect everything instantly the moment it happened or even, you know,

like having to wait a week, having to wait a month just to find out what people were talking about or what was out there in the culture. I mean, you would wait for this ink and pulp object to come through your mail slot. I mean, I as a kid used to love when the mail came because I was so excited to get

the latest issue of a magazine because there wasn't a Reddit thread where I could go on instantly and talk about what was going on. I kind of had to, you know, the scarcity of it actually made it more satisfying. There was something about the anticipation. And I think that's the same idea about something like Succession, where everyone's waiting, you know, for that Sunday night drop to happen. And again, it is a form of community. You know, magazines, I know you can dismiss them as like a little shallow,

but I actually think it was a way that people across space and time were sort of convening and finding community for many, many years. Yeah, and a big statement of class and the caste system. Like, I remember when the Monocle store opened in the West Village. And it was like, if you know, you know, right? And that you were willing to put money into it. And then when they branched out into brands that they approve on, you know, it's like, Anna went toward in a little magazine. Totally.

Or how many people, you go over somebody's house and there's an architectural digest on the coffee table? I mean, you don't know if they read it or not. All the cool kids. Probably not, but I do love AD. It was sort of like a symbol of sophistication, right? And sort of like a symbol of belonging to a certain kind of class level. And I think that, you know, it mattered a lot to many, many people for many years. Absolutely.

Matters to us still as elder millennials. Michael Grimbaum, this was great. Your book, Empire of the Elite, inside Condi Nast, is available where all books are sold, I presume. And it was cool to see you. Thanks for coming on. Yeah, thanks for having me. See you on the yacht. We all have to drink water. And staying hydrated is one of the simplest ways to feel your best. But come on. How is your relationship with water really? Are you getting enough from it? Is it satisfying you or is drinking it becoming a chore?

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