Red Scare - T Chat w/ Thomas Chatterton Williams

Episode Date: March 30, 2023

Author and critic Thomas Chatterton Williams stops by the pod to discuss the protests in France, race in America and the new Lana.

That's what I was also trying to figure, does Dasha start sending around a Word document with ideas on Wednesday, and then you add ideas through the weekend. That's a good idea, but no, we just text throughout the week, and usually we can tell if a topic is suitable for needs. Sometimes it's obvious, sometimes things happen, and we're like, oh, great. You have to talk about Kanye West certain weeks. Oh, we should talk about Kanye. Well, we're back, first of all.

I started recording International Man of Letters. Yeah, I'll take that. The Thinking Man's Andrew Tate. The Thinking Man's Andrew Tate. I like the pushkin of Instagram. I'm going with that. No one's taken that from me. No.

They'll have to rip it from your cold. They will rip that from my cold fingers. Thomas Chatterton-Williams is here. Great friend of the pod. Thanks for coming. I'm honored to be here. I'm excited to be in the lab. I've started doing my own kind of conversational podcast, testing the waters, and I have to

say it's humbling, and I have a lot of respect for y'all's craft. Wow. It's not easy. Do you hate the sound of your own voice? I hate the sound of my own voice. I love the sound of your voices. And then you start comparing yourself, and that's miserable. No, but it takes quite a lot of skill just to be able to bounce off topic to topic.

Usually, I go on a podcast, and I'm talking about my book or something like that, but just to make conversation and to do it well, that's a skill, like y'all are pros. Well, thank you. It's about calibrating your energy levels for me. Being high and drunk at all times. Exactly. It's about to confront your fragile ego. You're going to want to wake up.

You're going to want to take Adderall, and you're going to want to smoke some weed to take the edge off. Then you're going to want to blow some lines. Then you're going to want to blow some lines just to get your mind right. Then you're going to go on a long lindy walk to collect your thoughts on your way to it. We got to start. Yeah. Thomas, you've recorded a podcast, like your own podcast already or no.

We did four. Yeah. Okay. So did you go back and listen? Did you have that thing where you listen and think like, shit, I should have said this word and said, yeah. That's the worst. The spirit of the staircase, when you're like, oh, it would have been, it would have really

snapped if I said this too late. It would have really banged. Sometimes I have this like delusional thought that I should just go back and like splice sound bites and like kind of like audio face tune, but that would be so evil and cynical. I can't, you know, bring myself to do it. Yours is great because it has an authenticity that would be ruined if you did that. It's like y'all just sat down and really just had a conversation. So okay, my first question to you is what the fuck is going on in France?

The streets are ablaze. Same is wrong. We've all seen that like viral image of that middle-aged couple smoking and drinking in the outdoor cafe while the city burns. The fire is just raging behind them. Which is so quintessentially French. And that you have to respect. The French really are unflappable in that type of way, you know, they can handle something.

I guess I'm in my early forties now and I'm gonna have to admit that, you know, I want some bourgeois stability in my life and the French are comfortable with an amount of mayhem in their streets that frankly as an American drives me crazy. You know, there's striking that's been going on because Macron forced through in a really imperial way, retirement reforms, pension reforms. They lowered. The retirement age is 64 now instead of 62 for most people and that unleashed, what happens all the time?

It's not 42 anymore. It unleashed nationwide protests and strikes of everything from the metro system to the garbage collection and my neighborhood became, I mean, there was garbage stacked to like the second story windows in the street. It was just, it was insane. And that French trash. Yeah. French trash.

France never gets that cold, Paris never gets that cold. So it's kind of, it's humid in the streets. It was nasty. And then, you know, then in these protests, there's always a kind of cassure, which is like breaker. There's like people that just joined protests because they love the moment where you can just like cause destruction and they start lighting these piles of trash on fire, throwing it in the middle of the street.

And it's just, it's my, there was just like lit fires of trash piles all around my neighborhood. So that we saw must have smelled really bad too. It could have because it's probably like motor scooter or burning trash. Yeah. There's always a car or a motorcycle that's burned and melted into the curb. Yeah. Horrible. French are really unique because they're probably the only nation in the history of

the earth that's both nationalistic and nihilistic at the same time. And those values are mutually exclusive, you know, with each other. It's part of their, yeah, they're proud of their, their, their mystique. But when we, when we did the summer of Floyd, there was a lot of flames. Americans can do destruction and mayhem too, but it's much more, it's actually deadlier and more violent in America. Yeah. When in France, it feels like a controlled burn.

Well, yeah. It's just, it's just disrespectful in France, you know, but they don't actually kill anybody. But it's Charlie Hedbeau. Well, yeah. Terrorism gets real in France. So is this just like another French Revolution lark? That's what I was trying to figure out and talking about this with other friends. It's like, how much of this is just, there's a kind of revolutionary performance that's

ingrained in their idea of how to be French. And so they reenact revolution, many revolutions all the time. Well, you would think in America, we've had that, we would have that sort of spark as well. Well, we, I mean, we do, we have a kind of, we have a violent spark in America. Yeah. But America, I think, is also so much more diverse and so much bigger. And also there's just like successive waves of immigration that have nothing to do with

like the original colonists. I mean, there's some American mayhem going on right now in the streets. When the yellow jacket protests were happening years ago, I remember those were like on the weekends. Yeah. They would schedule them for Saturdays. Like I really like that kind of organized resistance. And honestly, that was going to get pretty tough for Macron at the time, but he got kind

of saved by COVID because everybody had to stop doing that when COVID hit and he kind of, he squeaked through, you know, because it was getting really bad. Like, oops, lockdown. Yeah, exactly. Can't take to the streets anymore. Exactly. Do you think anything will come of this? Or is the new like pension law going to stay in effect?

Well, he put it, he got it through. But the, I've been back here for a week, but from what I understand, the protests are still going on and I don't know, yeah, I don't know what's going to happen with that. I mean, I think that there's a high probability that he's already destroyed the center left and center right political parties by kind of taking over their voters for his own party. But his own party is simply just a vehicle for himself and he no longer can run again. And so he's really opened up the doorway or just he's taking by the hand the extreme left or right in the future, I think there's maybe this backlash leads to a kind of no

longer centrist politics in France. I'm not sure. I think Marine Le Pen is benefiting probably from the kind of antipathy that Macron has unleashed. And you know, she's coming from the right with the kind of protect our workers rhetoric that probably is sounding better to people now because I, but I've struggled with my limited American mind to understand. I just can't really understand how 64 is so different from 62 that you would go to this

extreme. I think people understand that it's like a slippery slope, probably. And maybe like a straw camelback situation where it's like, it's not really about the age, which is seems a little arbitrary, but really just about having anything like you can't you can't give people and then take away. Yeah. That's I mean, we said that about the overturn of Roe v. Wade, where like whatever our personal opinions on abortion, the fact remains that there was a precedent in place and you can't

just wrench it from people's hands and expect them to take it like lying down. And the French really don't take anything lying down. And also they love their leisure time and their vacation time. They're two years. That's a lot. That's a lot of trips. You can take. There's a lot of life's too short.

Yeah. No, but I work for two more years. You get in the typical French pension situation, you get like 75% of your income for the rest of your life. And people are, I know people in this situation. They're retiring. They were retiring at 60 and living to 90. You know, they may be worked 40 years, 35 years, and then they're getting 30, 35 years

of 75% of their salary. You're getting almost as much as you made working for another term that long. I mean, it does seem to me that it's kind of unsustainable. Yeah. I mean, especially like in a country with an aging population and a low birth rate and like anti-immigrant rhetoric, it is really like an unsustainable problem. But I don't think this really matters to like individuals for like losing those two years. I was planning to go to Greece and now you're telling me I have to postpone that.

Yeah. My Moroccan vacation is canceled. It took me like three, I've been living there for 12 years. It took me like three years to actually accept that around this time of the year, like March, your friends will start saying like, we need to find a house for August. I'm working. I can't think about August right now. No, no, no.

All the house will be gone. We have to plan our August. It's like plan to be gone for all of August. But once I embraced it, yeah, that's really a European thing that Americans don't have. They plan all of their vacations far in advance and everything shuts down. Your cleaner goes on vacation for a month. The dry cleaner will be on a month long vacation. I mean, the Sundays in Europe, you can't get anything done.

You've been in Paris recently. It's been longer for you, Dasha. I was there in October. I'm kind of bummed that I went when I went and not when the protests popped off because I would have preferred to see like burning garbage fires in the streets instead of like burning garbage fires on the runway. Lots of self-pure opportunities regardless. I think we got in trouble for taking garbage fire selfies during the George Floyd protests.

It was in Soho and it was very like controlled and managed protests where people were basically like marching down the street hand in hand and smashing like the journeys and urban outfitters. There was some looting. There was some looting. It got messy in Chinatown, but there was a spirit of revelry that really made it seem like everyone who's like didn't get to go to Burning Man was all of a sudden like ready to go.

Like they had their like kooky bicycles out. They were like, I was like, wow, you guys like really snapped into action so quickly. I wasn't there at the time, but was it in fact a mostly white protest in Soho? No, it was very racially mixed, but like a lot of white people were left during COVID. So Soho was like none of the people who you live in Soho were really around. By the time I got there, like everything was just boarded up, like the Nike store was boarded up. And this is what happens when you take fashion tonight out away from inner city teens.

They riot. It did feel that way. I was kind of like, this isn't people are protesting like how we haven't had fun in a while. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, that was always my hot take that the George Floyd protests were less about like social justice or racial justice.

And they were about the fact that people were just like mourning the loss of their own lives during COVID. It was really, it's two years of like. It was the first opportunity that you had to come out and you were like, you had the moral high ground because the people coming out protesting before that were like MAGA people who didn't want to be locked down, but like that was bad. But then the next week it was like, no, this is good. You need to be in the streets.

And people were calling out the hypocrisy of liberals because suddenly all the COVID laws were like ignore like it's your duty and you actually can't catch COVID. If you're out marching for Floyd, but I understand the hypocrisy. I'm sympathetic to it because people wanted to get out. Yeah. It's, it was a really interesting moment. I wanted to ask you where were you staying in Paris when you were there in October? I was by that mall, like the Samaritan, but I was there for work.

So you didn't get it. You didn't get to, you didn't have fun. No. Oh, really? I mean, I had fun working, but I, um, I was in Paris for a few days and then I went to like the south of France outside of Paris. So I had a good, I don't, it was a nice time to be there, but I've never had that much fun in, in Paris to be honest.

It's not as fun as Yale. Not as fun as Yale. Yeah. At the Sarbonne, I don't get to read it guys. I don't care about the Sarbonne. She's not a VIP. No, it's through no fault of, of Paris is it's all my, my own doing. I think I, I suffer from Paris syndrome a bit when I, every time I get there.

That's true. I remember Anna saying that if she had to live in another place, maybe Paris and I really bloke. You want to move to Paris. Yeah. And you said no way. I said no way. I might change my tune, but I've just never, I think I just have such high and romantic

expectations of Paris that it's really good. Japanese. Paris syndrome. That's literally Paris. I'm like, when's it going to happen? When's Paris going to really happen to me? When is everybody going to walk down the street in Chanel and everything smells good? Why is this man being rude?

Why is this cab driver Moroccan rude? Dasha told me like, oh my God, I had, I ate McDonald's like every day cause I was too like shy and intimidated to go to the restaurant. That's what my dad did when he went to Paris the first time. I ate McDonald's three days in a row cause I just couldn't figure it out. My dad would really feel you. That's what he, he spent his first trip in Paris like that. What was he doing there, like visiting you guys?

A friend, he'd always wanted to go to Paris when I was a child and a friend gave him a trip for his birthday or something and he went and he had terrible Paris syndrome. And he kind of just walked around and ate at McDonald's. And I was like, oh, by the time I got there and I started to, you know, find my way around town, I felt bad. I wanted my dad to have had a different first experience there. McDonald's. The Mac is good there.

Yeah, I bet it is. There's fewer GMOs and stuff. Is it? Yeah, it's more like quality. It's high quality. Yeah. Shit. I should have tried McDonald's in Paris.

Oh, you were living like a fancy, you were on a fancy trip. Well, I deserve it this time around. Cause last time we went, um, we didn't know what the fuck we were doing and we went to all these like new hip eateries when like the thing you should do is go to like the traditional restaurant, the bistro, the raspberry. Did you go to clown bar? That's a spot near me. I like that spot.

I really like, I've been, that's like where I go when I go to France. Yeah. And you can have, um, brains in like scallions and ginger sauce. Not my texture, but I had pigeon there and not last time, but the time before, which was good. But yeah, they have like weird meats and like nice. French cuisine agrees with the Russian palette. I mean, because Russian stole all their cuisine from the French, they stole their bulldogs

in there. What is your experience as like an American expat in Paris? It's nice to be an American outside of America. Um, people treat you really well when you're from America, especially from New York. Uh, and so, and also, you know, the French are very different than Americans in that they still treat writers as though that, um, is something with dignity. It's an honorable profession. And they don't say like, but you went to a good school.

Why don't you work at a bank? They don't say that. They think like, Oh, this person's a writer. Like that's, that's a, that's a good profession. Uh, and so they actually, it's really nice. Um, do you like Midnight in Paris, the Woody Allen movie? I do like that movie. I love that movie.

That's such a good movie. Me too. We're talking about writers in Paris. Yeah. Gertrude Stein. But you, you didn't encounter like any rudeness, for example, because that's everyone's sphere that they're going, I haven't, and I don't think it's like through my own credit. It's just like, I think that Paris has also globalized and everybody secretly like low

key speaks English and they're not as snotty anymore or snooty or whatever. When I first started living in France, I lived there a year after graduating undergrad in like 2003 and, um, people spoke less English and were more resistant to it. And I remember the first time my mom came to visit me and we went to the cafe, the floor and, you know, I was happy to take my mom dreamed of coming to Paris. She was finally there for the first time and she used her high school French to order her like Cafe Allongé and the waiter disrespected my mom to the point where I was like, you can't talk to my mom like that.

Like I don't know what to do. You're like, you're, you're ruining her like the first meal. Like saying you can't understand a word she's saying. Like they do this thing where they, they strain. Oh my God. Yeah. They're like, oh, what are you? Yeah.

What? No one does it. No American would ever do that to someone with the thickest accent coming from somewhere like, what are you saying? It's so disrespectful, but that has changed. They don't do that anymore. And that's kind of tragic in a way, even though it benefits us. That's your dark side.

You like that dark side of humanity. Well, I just, I, I just like when people like hold on to their traditions cause that's what makes them special. Makes them different. Yeah. Yeah. And now you can just waltz into the corral store and you're like, I want the Mary Janes and a 39 and an eight.

Yeah. Yeah. You don't even, yeah. Yes. The monoculture there. You do lose something. Yeah. Even if it smooths everything out.

It's one of those things that's like neither good nor bad, but you know, is both in a way like the Lord Giveth and the Lord take it away, but it's not, it's not all good is what I'm saying. Wait, but is corral popping now? That's like something I hear about in New York, but not in Paris. Yeah. Honestly, we, we put Corral on the map. You put Corral on the map, but now I see girls around New York talking about their Corral.

Well, I'm still wearing my dusty ass Corral. It's a great versatile shoe, but people do drag, drag me for it. Yeah. That's true. There she is again in those fucking marriage. Get a new shoe. Dodge. I'm just going to like the Corral flagship in Paris and being like, I put the shoe on

the map. Yeah, they should send you some. They closed the reputo store here. Oh yeah. They did. So now you have to go all the way to Thomas is like the ballet. I know about the ballet flat game. I know about that.

I've got a daughter. Yeah, you have a daughter. You're kind of a ladies man. You know, you know about footwear area. You have two daughters or no, I have a daughter and I have a little boy. He's four. He said, yeah. Yeah.

How, how are they? They're good. They, my daughter, um, who's nine, um, she's like, you know, she's a Parisian through and through and she comes to stay with my parents in New Jersey and she's like, I think New Jersey is my favorite place at the architecture in New Jersey. And I'm like, really? Cause people think Paris has good architecture. She's like, no, everybody has a garden in the backyard and the driveway.

Oh. It's beautiful. New Jersey gets a bad rap. I was just talking about this, this weekend with a friend, it's like, I didn't know New Jersey had a bad rap until I got to college and someone can come from anywhere else in the country, fly over country, terrible parts of the country with nothing. And I'm 45 minutes in New Jersey away from, you know, Manhattan and they can, they can pull rank on being from New Jersey and disrespect anybody can get away with disrespecting New

Jersey. They can say like, all right, New Jersey sucks. And it's like, you're from like Mississippi, how they feel that they have some character to where they come from. And we don't have that. I didn't know that until I got out in the world that no one likes, everybody disrespects New Jersey. I know, which is so wrong because I think New Jersey is the best state in the nation.

We're both from New Jersey. Thomas and I go way back, we actually don't. It feels like we do because we have like a very similar childhoods, frequenting Menlo Park Mall. We may have been in the mall at the same time, like the same area, we would use the same, we would utilize the same mall infrastructure. But I know where Anna's from very well, you know, like had friends from around that area. My area actually doesn't have any character.

It's like, it really is like, you describe it as like Queens, though it's like a graveyard of civilizations because it's a thoroughfare for like commuters who settle down and want like a home in the burbs. I like New Jersey and New Jersey has people don't realize it has really beautiful areas. It does. Yeah. They don't call it the garden state for no reason. It is like a lot of farmland.

Well, people have such a hard on for like Connecticut or like Massachusetts. No one hates on Connecticut. No one hates on Connecticut. Why? New Haven looks like Detroit. It looks like you know this because you spend a lot of time at Yale because my mother matriculated. Yeah. Yeah.

I told Thomas that I want to audit his class at Bard. I teach two classes. I would like that. The students would like that. Yeah. Let's go. They would. They would.

They would. You have no idea. Some of them might get triggered if you were really participating the way I need to do is to participate. In American literature class and really got outspoken is that we with the Steve Saylor references. Thomas. When we got dinner full disclosure, Thomas did call me out for being race as Steve Saylor

stand races and he called me out for my friendship with Steve Saylor, which is let's be real a one sided parasocial relationship. Yeah. Steve Saylor is like a boomer dad and so I tried to smooth it over by talking about what a vivid storyteller and electrifying pro stylist he was electrified. Not no. Not no. But I actually I had this thought.

I don't read Steve Saylor for the race stuff. I read him for it for the culture stuff. He's funny. What? I don't. That's the new like I don't look at Playboy for the pictures. Yeah. It's not about the crime stats for me.

It's about the jokes. It's about the literary style electrifying the humor surprisingly for a guy who doesn't seem like is that acquainted with the arts has like a general fluency in like film and opera. It's weird and random. Oh, I don't doubt it. Stopper. I don't doubt it.

But anyway, on that note, can I can I ask you some questions about race? Absolutely. Because you got so you caught some heat recently for a pair of tweets. Which one? I mean, it's it's it's it's all the time. Yeah, you can. Of course. It's an interesting question because we talked about we were talking about this the other

day about how the new algorithmic. But it's true. Come on. You know. Yes. Yes. No. We actually this is before we saw your tweets and we were actually talking about

how these videos produce like they spike your cortisol. They produce a physiological response and they make you double down on your extremist position no matter what side you're on, you know, right? And they really so disturbing and jarring. Well, they play to literally the ugliest, most divisive elements of internet culture. But so your tweets were the word blacks is trending on Twitter right now. It's nothing but random videos of assaults conditioning viewers to draw negative conclusions about an entire racial group based on the worst representations.

This is reprehensible on Twitter is devolving into something dark, which I agree with minus the part about devolving. I think Twitter was always kind of dark. But the algorithm didn't always just force that into your timeline. I didn't have a timeline like that. But I think it's because of Elon because no, because he kind of cracked down on the banning of right wing accounts. He did.

But see, I was talking to some engineers who used to work at Twitter and they were saying they don't even think it's like strategic like that. They think it's like he just cut costs to the point where there is no there are no guard real. No one's working there. Yeah. It's just like you know what I'm saying? Like that's coming over time like not because he plans to like actually when our essential

workers and then the second one was the algorithmic race baiting online is extremely unhealthy and boosts edge cases to appear more representative than they are in real life. I almost never see black crime or white supremacy. Both exist, but most people are decent. And I agree with that too. I mean, I live in an area where I see a lot of black crime and it's increased since the pandemic since the racial reckoning. But even so, your point stands like most people are like basically friendly law abiding decent.

And we are talking about like edge cases. And the recent the latest video that was trending was this, you know, black teen robber who followed this Asian single mother of three home and like bodied her on the sidewalk left her paralyzed from the waist down and people are like having a field day with this one. And it feels like a really kind of like dark and shitty moment. But the on the other hand, the far right would argue that the reason that these videos exist in the first place is because young black males are committing the vast majority of violent crime.

So how do you reckon reconcile those two viewpoints? Well, this is where I feel like the horseshoe theory is always correct. Like that's the same thing that the the far left says about the unrepresentativeness of police brutality videos. And both have a point. It's like these things really exist. But when you get them in your timeline, promoted and and reshared and retweeted and and and they're so visible, it looks as though that's the only thing yes, yes, this happens.

But there are 330 million people in this country, 44 million of them are black. People almost never get killed by police. People almost never get body slammed by people like that. But you have this feeling that is more representative than it is. And so I think it's actually a rhetoric that the left uses about police shootings, which I've argued for years are horrific. My brother's been a police brutality victim, had his teeth smashed out of his mouth in my dad's driveway by a flashlight that a cop was wielding.

I don't doubt that police violence exists. But the numbers that they use to say that that's an epidemic of violence are statistically almost zero in in a nation of this size, even though it's worse than in similarly wealthy countries. And I think it's the same thing about black crime, you know, and then you never get the real conversations about class and about, you know, what does it mean to say that a group of people based on racial characteristics behave a certain way and you're not talking about socioeconomic factors that mean something and why certain people are poor.

And, you know, I'm the farthest thing you can be from woke, but some of the far right talking points are driving me crazy right now. This guy, this fool, this one of the ugliest, one of the physically most repulsive faces I've ever seen in my life, Richard Hananiah, an incel face that a mother can't love, looking like Frankenstein, he tries to say that groups behave a certain way. This is the height of racism. Groups don't behave in groups are composed of individuals. And you can talk about what type of statistics are more common in certain demographics, but

it really breaks down on the level of having an intelligent conversation about individuals. And so I just think that there's no good that comes out of like Marjorie Taylor Greene, sharing a snuff film of a black criminal getting killed trying to rob a bodega. It's a snuff film. Well, you called it racism porn. Is racism porn? Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's literally like titillating you like porn.

Especially with the emphasis on like children and bullying, I think, especially really triggers people. They always share these videos of like two black girls gang up on the white girl. To what end? I don't understand. Most people actually do want to make this society, this multi-ethnic society work better. Most people, if you ever spend time around black people, black middle-class people and black poor people, let's be honest, they don't want that violence around them at all.

Okay, well, don't you think? No, they're very actually conservative. They are. You know that. Isn't there a case to be made that race relations in this country were, or at least the consensus around them were better prior to like 2012, when they turned to the racism machine. Yeah, like ratcheted.

But like before, after OJ, right, it was like, you're bringing it back to OJ, you're a West Coast shorty. You're a West Coast shorty. I am. I am. And I have, you know, I am. You are. I went to school.

I've been victimized. Can I take one? Oh, do you? Yeah, I'll grab it. We can blast him sick. This is a sensitive topic, so I need an American spirit to light up. I went to college in Oakland, California. Oh, that's right.

Yeah. Yeah. And I've been a victim of black. Really? Yeah. No way. Oh, yeah. No, I've been mugged twice.

I got mugged twice in one year. Really? In a way that scared you? No. Okay. But I got ghosted by a black eye once. So that's why I'm racist. What?

Ghosted. But even when I was, like, living in a really bad neighborhood, it's getting, like, mugged constantly. Constantly. The level of, like, racialized violence that I'm exposed to on my feed feels weird. It feels extreme. I'm like, this isn't, this isn't how it is. You're from Las Vegas, right?

I'm from Las Vegas. I mean, that's also, like, a tough town, actually, isn't it? That has a tough side, doesn't it? Yeah, for sure. With gangs and stuff. Yeah. I mean, it's diverse. No, but I don't want to minimize what it means to be mugged or how that scars you, but to

draw conclusions about 44 million people, that's the size of Spain. Yeah, no, I, yeah. The black American population is like the population of Spain. It's, to say that all Spaniards behave a certain way is really, is crazy. But it was more of, like, a fact of my life of being, like, of being having a proximity to crimes, and it didn't feel even that, like, racialized to me, and now it feels like... Well, I grew up around, like, ethnic white crime. Yeah.

Like, Italian Americans were committing crimes where I grew up. Yeah, I mean, and I think it comes down to the fact also, like, speaking of group generalizations that we're talking about, yeah, like, young black males who probably commit violent crime at a rate higher than virtually any other demographic, including other groups of black people like women in the elderly, right? So... Right, or even the middle-aged. Yeah.

Totally. So, but that's a problem that doesn't seem, like, can be addressed through, like, either side of the two-sided kind of very polarizing argument. No. The videos are really just polarizing, um, the, you know, far-right wants to chalk it up to, like, IQ differentials, and the far-right wants to make it into, like, a purely economic argument. Right.

So... Which ignores culture. I mean, my first book is about how culture impacts the way you perform racial authenticity. I'm no denier that culture matters, and it's not all structures and socioeconomics, but... Yeah. Your position has always been, like, a very classically liberal one. Trying to be.

It's hard out here. Which is... It reminded me of something like John McWhorter said. Are you a fan of him? Oh, we're friends. Okay, yeah. He said that he was not a fan of, like, the, um, IQ and crime stuff, not because he wants to, like, deny or erase reality, but because it prevents people like him from being judged

on their individual merits, and, I mean, he dreams of, like, a post-racial society where people can be judged according to their individual merits and not as, like, quote, representatives of a group. Right. And that's what Dasha was getting at when she said, like, yeah, prior to 2012, there was a sweet spot moment, like, 2007 to 2012 is, like, the era I want to stay in. Both white and black people prior to that were, like, I think it was, like, 70% would characterize race relations as, like, basically good.

And really wanted to believe, and this is part of the disappointment, I'm trying to write a book about 2020 and what led up to it and why that was a moment. And one of the things is the real disappointment that happened after, like, the promise of Obama didn't actually, like, live up, and it couldn't have, obviously, one person's presidential campaign can't heal a country, but there was a moment when people really believed or wanted to believe or were willing to try to believe that it was going to get better in a way and a lot of people who ended up voting for Mitt Romney or even Donald Trump did vote for Obama because they were really trying to buy into that.

But I don't even think it's a question of, like, believing or wanting something to get better. I think, like, you are in my particular pain is that we're from New Jersey. And so, like, we grew up in the era of, like, positive race relations where everybody got along and it was very diverse and there was none of this, like, simmering, seething tension. It feels so, and I don't know if that's just because in youth, you're just happy and things are less complicated. And you kind of, like, editorialize things in hindsight, but I don't really think that's

it. I mean, I've thought about this many times, but it seems like a lot of things were better. I mean, the quality of goods and services, that's my big B, but it's true. I think things were definitely better and people just, like, got along better. And I see, this is the thing, I see the argument of the far right because basically they're claiming that it's not so much that they're racist. It's that they're, I mean, they'll admit to being racist, but they're noticing, they're observing out of, like, a frustration.

And the thing is that the left allows them to have a point, which is that there really is gaslighting all over the place. There really are lies in all types of media outlets about how things really are. Well, I guess that that's my next question. And not just about crime, I mean, about how dangerous it is in America to not be white. There's a denial of how diverse a society already is. And we still talk as though there's a white black binary and ignore all of the complexity. And there's an erasure of how hard it's gotten for, like, white people, specifically poor

white men, like all of this. So like, how do you even begin to achieve the sort of society that, like, you or McWhorter wants when everything is so racialized? And it's not just coming from the far right. It's also coming from the left and the center, who are as equally obsessed with race, frankly. As the far right, though, they'll never cop to it. Well, they do, like, Anibra McCandy does cop to putting race at the center of everything. I think you can't defeat a debilitating doubling down and clinging to racial categories by

tripling down and clinging to racial categories. You actually, at some point, someone has to move first and has to try to let go of the old categories that we've inherited and move into something new. And the left isn't actually many on the left, on the identity left. I would separate that from, like, the economic left, the Adolf Reid kind of economic left. The identity left is not letting go of racial categories. And so that actually provides the opponent that the right needs and keeps the thing going. And I kind of feel like you get, if you're in the center trying to move forward, you

get devoured on both sides by people who won't let this stuff go. Yeah. There was, like, speaking of porn, there was, like, this recent discourse that was kicked off by Breanna Joy Gray interviewing Bethany Mandel where she said, define woke. And I was thinking, like, well, how about racism? Define racism, right? We can't agree on a definition of that. Because racism is also, like, porn.

You know it when you see it, but it evades, like, a clear-cut, concise definition. And it's gotten into a very theoretical realm where most people, even if there is a point to the structural arguments, most people don't live their lives on a structural level and can't really be convinced like that, especially if you're talking about people whose lives don't feel to them very privileged. Right, yeah. But even, like, on the level of culture, when you get into, well, that's what people really talk about when they talk about wokeness, is they talk about, like, the...

Can you define woke, Nastasha? We tried last time. I did this last time. Yeah, I'm sorry. I'm sorry. I'm the one behind because I was traveling. No, no, no. I'm a fan.

This is my favorite podcast. I'm a fan. I try to be encyclopedic with my knowledge of what y'all have discussed. I liked the Ross Doothats, like, little op-ed he wrote about it. I thought that was... Very good. ...very well done. You should have that guy back.

Just kidding. Good. But, yeah, he described, like, the trickle down of structural understandings of oppression through the academy and to, like, these other, like, posts of culture, basically, which is where wokeness is really playing out. Really rearing its ugly head is in school's media. To the point where they're, like, attacking the tried and true beloved medium of racist humor, which in my mind actually goes a long way to diffuse racial tensions, because, like,

roasting is the highest form of flattery. It means that somebody has gone through the trouble of, like, observing and understanding you, and, more importantly, trusting that you will not take it personally. And who said comedy is the highest form of intelligence? Was that Harold Bloom? But it's true. It's, like, roasting and resorting to comedy is actually a healthy kind of thing. And being able to take a joke means that you're comfortable enough in your skin in this society

to not be always, like, an exposed nerve ending, ready to take offense. Yeah, but people can't even perceive a joke, let alone take one with any grace. My hot take is we should bring Jerry Springer back, because I think that when we had, like, racialized talk show brawling. That was a real part of my childhood in the 90s. That was really, that people were blowing off a lot of steam. I feel like Jerry Springer used to take the place of these, like, snuff porn, race porn videos.

And it was a lot more congenial. That was a release valve. You could just get it all out on Jerry Springer. We had a security guard. We had Jerry there. I forgot about that. Oh, the bouncer. And he went on to have his own show.

And I remember, I was sounding off on Twitter about this the other night, because I distinctly remember being, like, a teen and watching a segment on one of the main, like, daytime talk shows, like Sally Jesse or Maury or something, about internecine gang warfare in the LA public school system between Armenians and Mexicans. Armenians and Mexicans. Yeah, they really, because it's a narcissism of small differences. They're actually very similar culture. Yeah, they're, Armenians really are.

Yeah. Really? I didn't, I'd never put that together before. No, they're really, they were really feuding. Steve Saylor actually has this distinction between IAN and YAN Armenians. Like the old diaspora that came during the genocide and the new diaspora that mainly came from the collapse of the Soviet Union. I'm like a YAN Armenian.

And it's a very... You're an upper Armenian. I'm a lower Armenian. Oh, you're a lower Armenian. Yeah, because I came after the fall of the Soviet Union. And in, even in, like, the Armenian community, the IANs frown upon the YANs because they are, like, the new poorer ones who have, like, a much higher rate of criminality. I think the YAN mafia perpetuated the largest Medicare fraud in the United States.

Oh, yeah. Yeah, I'm aware of that. Yeah, yeah. Under COVID, right? Yeah, I remember the ringleader, because his name was Hrog Tarjanian, which is, like, the ugliest name ever. Hrog. And by the way, somebody recently said, imagine if they invented a less charismatic, less

likeable sailor. And I was like, they did. It's Richard Hinani. Seeing that literary explosiveness, that electricity on his sub-stack. But Hinani did have one good take that sort of redeems his sub-stack, where he talks about the consequences, the fallout of the Civil Rights Act, which makes everything presumptively legal, but when the cards are stacked in the favor of, like, one ideology over another, like, liberalism versus conservatism, they really get to call the shots.

Yeah, there's something to that, probably. This is, I think it was basically an argument, like, appropriated from Christopher Caldwell. It's Caldwell. Yeah, because Caldwell is actually, like, that's the guy who has a nice literary style. And that's an actually well-educated, conservative writer. Yeah, I mean, he wrote a book against, or from what I'm recalling, really critiquing the Civil Rights Act. Yeah.

Caldwell did. That's a tough position to defend, I think. It is. In the 21st century. Well, it's a similar question to abortion, right? Like, if you have this precedent that's, like, basically very, like, liberating emancipatory to a lot of people, how do you, like, wrench it from their hands when it's already in place? Like, you can imagine that a lot of people will be up in arms and, like, rightly so.

Do you have a take on reparations? It's interesting. So my dad grew up under segregation. He's old enough to be my grandfather. He grew up in Texas. How old is your dad? He was born in 37, so he's 85. Can you do the math?

Wow. Yeah. And, you know, so, 40s and 50s. He's older than my grandparents. Yeah, you've got young parents, right? I have young parents, and my grandparents are born in the summer. Your parents are like my brother's age. My parents are quite young, and my grandparents were born in the 40s.

So my dad grew up in the 30s, 40s, and 50s in Texas under segregation, and he certainly experienced the kind of, you don't have to go back to slavery for some of this stuff. Like, my dad experienced, like, not being able to buy a home in certain neighborhoods or get, like, you know, the kind of help after being, you know, a veteran, not being able to access some of the upward mobility stuff. And so Tanahashi Coates really did lay this out in the case for reparations that, like, you don't have to go back to slavery. Like, there are people still walking among us who, like, you can just prove, like, the

government under which their citizens didn't fulfill its end of the bargain to them, and you can kind of make them whole. And so I found that kind of convincing, and then I was talking about this with my friend Glenn Lowry on his podcast a few years ago, and Glenn's against reparations because he thinks it's counterproductive and that you could never put a price on what happened and people have to move on. And I found that kind of compelling, but I also found, I'm of two minds about it. And then I was talking about this with my dad, and my dad was like, Glenn's right, I'm

against reparations too. And I was like, wow, because I don't have a, I don't feel I have a claim for reparations. Well, that, that, my, I guess my case against reparations is just a practical one. How do you determine who deserves reparations? Right, pragmatically. I mean, because there's, like, the one, the one drop, well, Josh is kind of a reparations accelerationist. I'm not.

I, I think it's an interesting, it brings up some interesting questions about, well, it does because there are certain standards by which, like, my kids would be eligible for reparations, but they're blond hair, blue eyes, you know, I don't think they, but then, you know, their mother was saying to me that, well, you know, they didn't inherit certain intergenerational, um, transmissions of, of wealth that they would have through home ownership. And so it's not about physical appearance, it's about like, they didn't inherit on one side of their family what they might have if that, if the government, and I said, well, damn.

So, so my dad is against reparations. And your wife is seeing the logic of it. Well, pragmatically, also, it's like, because America is such a melting pot, right? It's like, the government is one thing, but then who, well, this is the problem for the reparations. Who like, should an immigrant being reparated? Yeah, that's the problem that, that like, like far right people make in their arguments that you don't, white people don't pay reparations to black people.

It's like, we all live under a government and the government pay would pay for all types of stuff. You know, like, but it's not like people say, I wasn't here, I'm not paying. But if your family came here and you live in a society, then you've bought into that society, right, and not just like, you didn't just buy into like the great like paved roads and everything, you also buy into like, but, but this goes to the bigger problem of, of taxpayer grievance in general, because it seems like our tax dollars are like not really going to what we want them to go, they never are, they never are like, we live in neighborhoods,

people live in neighborhoods where they pay huge property taxes for good schools and they don't have kids and they don't get to say like, you know, you don't get to say, well, I don't use the school or right. Dasha's not convinced. I see, I see it on Dasha, she's an accelerationist. Where is it stopped? I don't have no, I don't, I don't have a, no, we don't, we don't really have like a, I don't either.

I have two minds about it because I could see how John McWhorter and Glenn Lowry do have a point where it's like, so you put a figure on it and they say, we're going to do this and it's a massive figure and then, and then, you know, We've already given it to Ukraine. You've given probably more, but you know, you know, as, as true as like the, the morning will follow the night, you know, that as soon as you put that figure on and pay it, people will be like, you think you can, you think that is what my slave ancestors are worth? Are you crazy?

That's not, that doesn't come close. And you know, it's never going to stop. And I think they are right about that. It would not stop. Right. You would really open, yeah, it's not, no, it would not stop. It would. So I don't think you can put a price on certain things.

Yeah. And Glenn makes the argument from dignity, like you think it was worth a million dollars and that's a lot. A million. You think it's worth a million dollars? Like, not New York. It's not. Yeah.

I, so I have a question about like your, your personal experience because you, you've written a lot about this and you've talked about like your kind of like alienation and critical distance from black culture, which is a very interesting avenue for like a black intellectual to take because I think especially nowadays, the, the road that most people take is one of like distancing themselves from white culture. I'm going to read some passages. I read a, I have a confession to make, which is I've not read any of your books yet, but I will.

But I did read a really good New York Times. But shout out to your mom, your mom. My mom loves you. Your mom told you that. My mom is like, teach that number one fan. Wow. Yeah. I think it's because she thinks you're cute.

Well, I'll take, I'll take what I can get, I'll take what I can get. But you wrote, I had not yet spent significant times with other black boys. I would come to know and acculturate myself to the boys from the red line peripheries of my small town who were a lot like the boys from the larger all black neighborhoods beyond it, boys who seemed older than me, even when they might be younger, who threw their hands at each other habitually and skillfully, both in earnest and in jest. This was, um, you were talking about like a experience you had with your father when he, um, kind of got angry at you because you seemed indifferent to learning boxing.

And then later on, you say throughout my adolescence, largely spent on asphalt ball courts and planted in front of BT with what in retrospect appears a lot like the fervency of the convert, the zealously born again. I consciously learned and performed my race like a teacher's pet in an advanced placement course on the, on cartoonish black manhood. I like your, um, reference to being a teacher's pet because that was a very New Jersey experience. Yeah.

Um, but I think what weirdly unites a lot of like black intellectuals, like you, McWard or Lurie is, and also Ta-Nehisi coats, by the way, is that you guys have this critical distance from your own like quote identity group. And can you talk about that? I mean, even applies to like rappers. Like you look at like, um, all the best rappers, like, um, nausea, like prodigy from ob deep, like Lil Wayne, like they are, we're all kind of nerdy, bookish boys. Loving words.

Like they were not like street thugs or drug kingpins or whatever they, you know, portrayed themselves as in their music. Yeah. There's a lot of performance, but I'm glad you brought that type of passage up because, you know, I love black culture and I was in love with it and still am. I mean, I still, like people think if you write a book criticizing like what the music glorifies and sells to you as your own racial authenticity, that means you don't like the music, but the, I love the music and I still listen to.

We love the music. This is my big disagreement with the far right. Why can everyone say that the music's good and the culture is rich and inventive and really impressive. And you know, it's what I think of as something I would never distance myself from when I say that I want to step outside of the all American skin game of race. But I do think you have to be honest about the fact that like, um, there were incentives you had for acting certain ways for certain manners, for certain

behaviors, and a lot of them were self sabotaging. And I started to have that distance. I think probably all certainly a certain type of rapper, um, maybe not every mumble rapper, but guys like Jay-Z, like the, the poets, the lyricists, people that are thinking and standing apart. That's like the, that's the writer's personality where you have more distance from your identity, whatever you are than the typical person that doesn't have that disposition to, to kind of abstract themselves outside of the, you know,

I felt like I was always like standing back because it's also, you know, in America, we have, this is when I started to change my views on how we do race in America. When I moved to Paris and I would hear, even before I had my children, I would hear myself explaining to Europeans that don't start from the same premises and presuppositions as we do in America. Why a drop of black blood makes a person black and they would be, why aren't they mixed or why aren't they also, and you have, you, you, well, you said, well,

you can't be mixed because, because, you know, race is binary, obviously, because whiteness is pure. And like, and then you're like, wait a minute, I'm just, I sound like a plantation master, you know, and like, and then they're just looking at you and they're like, is that true actually? And you're like, is that true? Because it's crazy. And so, you know, I grew up in this household with a white mom, with a, with

a black American father who, once I did my 23 and me, I realized he's already not like directly from Africa. You said that he was, you, you're 23 and me was like 40% black, 60% white. 39% West African and like, you know, and like mostly like, not just like white, but like white Anglo-Saxon Protestant. But that's typical of like African Americans who are like ostensibly pure, not like, not like the, the child of a white parent, a black parent. What do you mean?

Typically African Americans who descend from slaves are 80% West African, 20% Anglo-Saxon Protestant. Yeah. They're like very heavily, not heavily, but they have a significant percentage. That's not like Elizabeth Warren. Yeah, yeah. That's not like 0.001% native. That's like 20%.

Well, and then you have all these like classifications, like red bone and yellow bone that basically like implicitly. I love it when you bring it to the southern, like the southern wraps. They implicitly acknowledge this fact, right? Duh. Yeah. And so, but you grew up like I did saying like, well, yeah, I have a white mom, but it's a black family, obviously.

And everyone's like, kind of like, yeah, that's true. And that's absurd if you think about it for a moment. Yeah. And you said, what's a red bone? Sorry. We're going to defer to Anna. It's just like the undertones, you know, like a high yelling would be. Okay.

Red bone would be like Tyra Banks or something. Yeah, and Kamala is like a, well, she's mixed, but she's a yellow, she's a yellow. She's not, but Kamala also, she's performing race in a way that's kind of. It feels frustrating to me because she's drunk. She's medicated. It's not her fault. She's having problems with her medication. I really loved Kamala because she's such a spurg, you know, she's such a what?

She's such a spurg. A spurg. And I like that she had like an affair. She's always like Montell Williams. He has another one of my favorite talk shows. I think she was like his girlfriend in the nineties. No way. I'm not kidding.

I mean, she was. Y'all are bringing me back to my after school Jerry Springer, Montell Williams, Ricky Lake. And more of the Maury. Maury generation, but I had some Jerry. I had some Jerry moments for sure. She, you like the Jews, so it was Maury and Jerry for you. Oh yeah, you avoided Montell.

I'm noticing this. People think Anna is the race realist. Well, do you think me or Anna are more racist? Well, Anna had a black boyfriend. I think her first boyfriend was black. It wasn't my boyfriend. I met him in Menlo Park. He ran out on you.

But you have you have confessed on the podcast already that you've never even been with a black man. So maybe it's you who's the real racist. Maybe. Yeah. Um, that's like, although I was educated on Twitter last week that, in fact, the real racists are the ones who, who go into racial. That was, that was my reeducation process on Twitter was to learn that.

That's right. I don't, I don't like when like the left gate keeps and polices and fetishizes preferences, creepy and annoying. I'm like, so you don't date any black women. Um, you, you talked about how, um, you didn't have the language for it then, but compared to all of your like Polish and Italian and Puerto Rican and black and Irish neighbors and classmates, what was so odd about your parents was how uninterested in their ancestry they seemed.

Why is that? I mean, I understand your dad's perspective, but what about your mom's perspective? Do you feel like they were my mom is like a blonde from San Diego who's like, he's like, where are you from? She's like, I'm from California. You know, it's like, I'm not from Germany. I'm from, we don't like fly a German flag. Like when my parents, my parents are West coast people.

Um, my dad grew up in Texas and then as soon as he could get out, he went to California and my mom is from California and they've always regretted moving east. And one of the things that they just couldn't understand was like, why are you flying a European flag, a flag of a European nation on your front lawn? And then like, like my mom, it just would never occur to her that she would fly. Like the ancestral flag of people that she's just American from California. And that's kind of the invisibility of like, white whiteness is like, you're just neutral, right?

And race is something other people have in so far as they deviate from the white invisible norm. Yeah. And so she never really thought of herself. And that can also be like a kind of a problem because it's a new frontier. It's a, we, everyone there is like starting over exactly. Yeah. Like when you go to Hollywood and you kill the game and you start getting all

that you land, you start landing all these roles out west. It's like, I don't remember. Yeah. I don't remember you. What's Bella? Never, never heard of it. Well, I'm from California. California.

Look at Shinko. I don't remember this stuff. But that was like as an immigrant, that was always like weird and perplexing to me that Americans seemed very like disinterested in their ancestry, but in retrospect, it's probably a good thing because it led to more like, um, tolerance of actual diversity. Absolutely. I think there's something, I mean, you don't see this in France outside of, and

maybe this is where their race relation problems come from. You do see like people from Algeria still kind of evincing an Algerian identity in France, even if they're born in France. And you can have very kind of sad conversations, um, that are not meant to be offensive, but like people have gone into the banlieue, which is like the, you know, the suburbs are where it's actually like the ghettos. Yeah, but it's not inner city. It's outside of the city.

And people will say, like, um, they'll ask like, uh, children of immigrants, but native French people, they're born in France. They'll say, you know, they'll say, I don't have any French friends and they'll be like, what do you mean? You're, you're a French citizen, no, but you know what I mean. I mean, wait, friends and, and, and, and the interview was, well, that's crazy because you're, you're seeing yourself as of another and I think, you know, but most of the time outside of that kind of example, people don't go around in

France talking about where they used to be from. It's like, now we're French citizens. Yeah, everyone's very assimilated and that's healthy. Yeah. Well, that's kind of another reason that I secretly want to move to Paris because everyone in Paris is like secretly Jewish and or that's true. Actually, that is true. There are a lot of secret.

There's a lot of secret Armenians. Yeah. I'll start a whole new life. Michelle LeGrand, the father of the girl from beach house, or Armenian, he's Armenian, um, Charles, I learned that when he died. Uh, what's her name? Sylvie Vartan, Sophie Vartan, the Shantous. Oh yeah.

There's so many like low key Armenians, but that's not why you want to go. You want to go to Paris because you're like the toast of the fashion town. And you, you want to like, you want to take what's your do. I know, cause I just blend in there and they're not mean to me. And I like the, I like the architecture more than more than New Jersey. Hot day. I do too, actually. And I like that you can basically like eat as many pastries and steak

tartars as you want. And you actually lose weight somehow. Like every time you get back from, yeah, every time you get back from Paris, you like stuff your face and you're like somehow like five pounds skinnier. Yes. I think actually there's something to the, the European union rules about what can be added into food.

GMO and like all types of other stuff that that's another thing like racism that we're never going to get to the bottom of because like nobody knows why people are so obese, not, not just in America, but globally. I mean, did you see that statistic that actually China has a huge obesity problem, which you wouldn't, yeah, you wouldn't think. I know cutter is the most obese society. No, yeah. They, they're all rich and they drive around in air conditioned vehicles.

Well, that makes sense. Yeah. And Brazil is the second most in America, right? I guess I mean, I'll take your word for it. I had no idea about cutter. Cutter is where the obesity is out of this world. Yeah. And people like to bash on America and make fun of us for being like a

a nation of fatties, but we're not really like the third. We're not even we're just like bronze, yeah. So we're not the best at anything. We can't do anything right now. You can't even be the fattest. No, no, we're not leading the world in those categories anymore. Should we talk about Lana? Yeah, we should say before we dig ourselves deeper.

And there's a tunnel under Ocean Boulevard. Did you see that tweet that somebody like at replied me and was like, there's a long house. That's good. I so, yeah, people have our fans have been chomping at the bit for us to review the new Lana album. They're getting kind of like aggressive and belligerent and I spend time reading your feedback on y'all.

I mean, if we if we look at the Patreon, the sub, like Twitter, they're all aware of what they want. Yeah. Yeah, we want to appease them. So we don't get like beheaded in the town square. But I figured like us talking about yet another Lana album would be like basically uninteresting because we have nothing to add and we're going to give it five stars anyway. So I thought it would be funny and nice to get the perspective of a straight guy

who's probably like not a huge Lana stan. But what do you listen to? Like what's your what's your go to? I really listen to, you know, the 90s hip hop I was raised on. But I, you know, I love Thomas. You're just like me first. I love trap music like everybody. I love Ghana.

I think I a few of the years in a row, I was in the top point. Oh, five percent of Drake listeners on Spotify, which I think which my students tell me means I'm really old. I like house music. I like the OVO radio on Sirius XM. No, but I like Lana. I like her old stuff. Like Sad Girl was was my was my track.

Do you know Sad Girl from like 2012? Like back in the back when she was still Lizzie Grant. No, no, she was she was it was her second album. Everybody has like a vivid impression of where they were and how they felt when Barack Obama got elected of our generation. And everybody has an equally vivid impression of where they were and how they felt when like video games came out. Yeah. And I will I will just say that I was the Lana Truth or from day one

and I had her back and Dasha did too. You were a truth because people really hated her when she came out. I remember that there was a lot and she had that disastrous performance. So they say that she was stiff and weird on you know, I found her to be magnetic. And then Kanye and Kim, she was the singer for their wedding in Italy. Oh, I actually didn't know that Kanye validated her. Oh, yeah. What do you think of Kanye renouncing his anti-Semitism

because he saw the new 21 Jump Street with Jonah Hill? It's not the new. Don't know. I don't know the whole movie. I feel like that was not the way to to come back and he lost a lot of money and cloud like Jonah Hill was funny to you. So now I don't know that you try a little bit harder. But I like Jonah Hill.

But but I don't want to I don't want to attract you on your Lana. You need to give the fans what they need. Do you do you like Kanye? I love Kanye West music. And I kind of like I like people that are. Yeah, I like people that are big personalities. I like people that like really want to have nice things and to, you know, I like that kind of like he's like this fucking like architect from Antwerp.

Like I want my whole fucking living room. You like him because you're a Margella man. Yeah, I'm a Margella man. Every time Thomas pulls up, he's like head to toe Margella. The only other guy I know like that is Mattie's boyfriend, KJ. He has like a drawer stuffed like not even stuffed like perfectly like Patrick Bateman folded Margella. Mine's not always perfectly folded.

But yeah, I just like that. Kanye, like, you know, he's like, I want this to be as nice as possible. Like when he used to live in Soho, I remember reading something when he used to live on like Houston Street above the old lost store. He lived above was it the Hollister store? It was crazy like that in Houston. I want to say, like remember Moss, were you in the city of the time? Moss was this design Emporium was amazing in this out of business now.

But kind of lived in this building and he just had like a person who was responsible for keeping fresh flowers. And I love, you know, I love that he just like he's an artist. He wants to have a full life. You know, he wants to make his life into a work of art much like Lana Del Rey. And he got obsessed with Lana Del Rey. And he was like, you have to sing at my wedding. That's like my wedding wouldn't be right if your vocals aren't there.

And I love that. And I think Lana is an artist. You know, she's really, I like that she's meticulous with how she's an artist. She's meticulous, but also prolific. Like she she is turning out the albums. I for me this and I'm, you know, I'm always I'm usually the one up here that's like Dawn does amazing. Then I know y'all don't like certified lover where you like, yeah, definitely.

Um, but I like I like Drake too. Um, but that's also a way in which I'm more racist than it is that I really don't listen to it. You don't listen to black music. Oh, I was like coming in here thinking one thing is the other way. No, but Thomas, this is this is this is under. This is such a typical, um, generational and geographic divide. I don't actually listen to black music. I knew a lot of I knew a lot of black kids from the West Coast who didn't listen to black music

because they were into Nirvana. Oh, but that's like you're a super cool black kid. If you're like, yeah, but that was the vibe. And like when I first moved to New York, there was a lot of like black hipsters, blipsters who were like not into rap as much as they were into grunge. That was a distinct thing. I mean, it's like a very fringe thing, but it existed. One of the coolest black kids I've ever met in my life is the

he was like 11 at the time. The son of Saul Williams. You know who Saul Williams is. My son is actually named Saul Williams, too. Saul Williams is like this slam poet genius. He's also a rapper. He's also an actor and his wife. I'm really sorry I'm blanking on her name.

Fatima, Fatima Robinson, I think she was the choreographer for everybody in hip hop ever. Mary J. Blyzen, everybody. But then she became the like choreographer for the Black Eyed Peas. She blew up a huge career. Her best friend was like Dita Von Teese. I met them in Paris and the son came to dinner and the son was so cool. It's West LA kid.

And like with his parents, he was like in a room with Jay-Z and all these people. And he was and his dad was like, isn't that cool? Like Jay-Z's there. And he was like, no, Slash is over there. Imagine being a black kid, like 11 years old and you're like, I don't care about Jay-Z. Slash. Well, Slash is half black.

He is. But that's a deeper, that's a deeper level. He's high. But I would have the same reaction because like Guns N' Roses is like my favorite rock band. Of course they do. I get where he's coming from. You get where he's going. For me, I was astonished that you could be like that at 11.

There was like an insurance commercial making the rounds. Now with like Slash, I think I'm always like, who is this for? Like what young people even know who that is. You know who I see on the playground a lot is Flea. Do you really? Yeah. I think he lives around here. Whoa.

I'm just like, oh no. Flea's cool. The chili peppers, that's, I didn't. I didn't grow up listening to a lot of white music. Her boyfriend and her listening to the chili peppers. Anyway, you didn't. Yeah, go on. Oh, so I don't want to be.

No, no, no, go ahead. I'm hogging the conversation. No, no, you should. I'm just so happy to be in the lab with y'all finally. This is where the magic happens. This is our gain of fame. I didn't grow up listening to a lot of white music, but when Under the Bridge came on,

like even the hardest cats in high school, that goes in. You know, the chili peppers, even Californication. I like the chili peppers. I like Sublime. We love Sublime here. This is a pro Sublime podcast. You're an Oasis person.

I like we love Oasis. I like this. When I've discovered the strokes 10 years after their album came out, I'm telling every white person I knew, like, is this it? Have you ever heard of this band? They're called The Strokes? Crazy.

They're amazing. I discovered them like 2012. How do you feel about the killers? I like the killers. I heard this conversation, but I like the strokes. Yeah, the strokes are like the last great band. Julian Casablanca is cool. I think my birthday twin and doppelganger.

Yeah, very cool. Love that guy. Very cool. His dad, like, founded Elite Models. His mom is a model. Yeah. He grew up in a very crazy way. He can't have any more drinks anymore, I think.

He lives upstate, I think. Yeah, cool, dude. The strokes are cool. I like Phoenix even. I like Phoenix. I'm going to go there even. Wow. Yeah.

You can't do that. You can't do that. No, she loves Sophia Coppola, but you won't go on the record as being a fan of her. I'm not sure it is being a Phoenix fan. I've never really listened to Phoenix. When their daughter was trending the other day. Yeah.

You saw that? Yeah, yeah, yeah. That was really funny. We talked about it. People were trying to say that Phoenix didn't have hits, but they did. They do have hits. They have a Grammy and a Sophia Coppola daughter

tech video. This lot of it's not my, not my fave. Why not? I just think speak on it, Queen. It isn't as, I mean, the taco truck, Venice. I don't need a remix of Venice bitch. What about A&W? A&W I loved when that single came out.

I think it has, I'm going to listen to it some more, but my initial impression, I think Blue Bannisters is really slept on and is stronger. But you're appropriating black slang, but you won't date black men or listen to black music. Why did I ever stop on? Slept on? Slept on.

It's just, this is just, this is just the mainstream culture. Slept on. I mean, yeah, I have been known to use AAVE, but that comes, that's, came to me naturally through my compulsive internet use. Oh, okay. I wanted to ask about Tumblr. I feel like you have theories on Tumblr, no?

Like what kind, what's the, like how we live in the world because of, the world we live in now is because of Tumblr, no? Like image sharing. And the woke crazy discourse. Gender problems, yeah. Kill all normies. That's sort of her thesis is that there's like

the 4chan and Tumblr. My, I was barely active on Tumblr. You were? You had a Tumblr? Me too, I just made mine private because I didn't want anybody searching. Going through the archives, what was it called? It was called Games for Slaves.

What? Oh, we're, we're getting some, Dasha, this is, I'm moving closer to Anna now. No, whoo. No, I have, no harm, no foul. I've always, my Tumblr as a testament to this have had a fondness for fascist aesthetics. And so I was very active on Tumblr,

but I was very much in kind of like the edge lordy. It's epigenetic. Fetish, death in June, yeah. I was in a very different corner of Tumblr. You were not in the social justice Tumblr? No, I was very much into like posting pictures of like Nazis and Sasha Cray and stuff like I was into. Sasha Cray.

Yeah, but Tumblr was a major gateway drug for like the normalization of porn. Oh, absolutely. That's why they had to, they had to basically kill it. But Twitter is too, people don't realize that like 13% of all tweets are porn. Well, yeah, but there was this period of time, I remember where people would just fully post

whole on Twitter, which was really funny, because at the same time Instagram was coming up and Instagram was like ostensibly the image sharing app and Twitter was like the word sell app. But like all the nudity took place on Twitter because Instagram had these like very strict rules about freeing the nip and there was all these activists who were trying to like disrupt that.

So, but then there was the period where the porn stuff really went dark on Twitter. I'm not a Twitter historian, so I don't know why that was. But for a minute there, you couldn't see any, not that I would know, but. My feed isn't like that. It's mostly the snuff of the snuff. Mostly the race porn.

The race porn. I remember, I didn't know that there was porn on Twitter until it became this scandal that like Ted Cruz accidentally liked like a hardcore porn. Everybody can see your life. That was crazy. And Alex Jones too, I think he was like doing something. Transport, transport, it was.

Interesting. What I don't understand is how like people like stuff when they must know that it's publicly accessible. I think they do it by accident sometimes or. Or they realize that it is publicly visible. They're so, they just like it so much they can't. I don't even bookmark stuff. I DM myself on Twitter, like all the objectionable tweets.

And I sent it. What's the purpose of this new bookmark? I don't know. I don't know where they are. Now it shows you how many, why are people bookmarking like. Yeah, it's like. Unimportant.

I don't want to see the views. I don't want to see. Views are humbling though. You'll see like, you've talked about this before. I was like 1.5 billion people have viewed this. Well, I think that. Well, I think also the views are probably cooked because. I remember having those numbers are too high.

They're they're weird, but I remember having a tweet where I had more likes than views. And I was like, how is this possible? It's like automatically. There's no one working there. No one's working. All those numbers are fake. Yeah, that's that might actually be true.

But I'm not just coping. I'm not just coping. I don't see anybody more. I only see five people. It's crazy. Like I don't see anybody I follow anymore. The four U is evil. He is evil.

Yeah. No, nothing I want to see. It's not for me. It's not for me. And speaking of racism porn, it's not just the black crime stuff. It's the Chinese dietary habits stuff. Where they're like cutting.

They're like cutting open like. Excel sized salamanders. And doing weird like wet market stuff. I think I couldn't handle Anna's time. If I saw what Anna sees, I think it would fuck me up. I mean, I wonder if there's people who aren't seeing that.

Like they have a totally different feed that we would like blow our minds. Like a nice feed where it's like exchanging information and. Having some nice. Supporting each other like this course. Yeah, that's that's how it's happening for me. Were either of you Facebook people? Sort of.

But I never really never really. Were you a Facebook? Yeah, I really resisted Twitter until like 2017. Why I never got my check mark. When everybody was getting it real easy and cheap. I was on Facebook. And I used to like Facebook until it was the election of Trump that killed Facebook for me.

It's like my uncle. By marriage. Mag a guy. I'm not speaking terms with anymore. Arguing with like a coworker from five jobs ago. On my timeline. Like to the point of like violence. You know, Facebook became like two people who are.

Who have no connection in life except for you. Just screaming at each other on your wall. But it was people you know. Yeah. So it's like your brother getting an argument with like a girl you dated. When you were 15. It's horrible. Facebook became so weird.

I was not ever heavy into Facebook. But now you're bringing it back. No, no, no. It's sort of an it gives me some peace of mind. It feels like this oasis sort of. I'm like, oh, I'm like things are happening online that don't matter at all. And so it gives me some perspective on like my echo chamber that I am trapped in. How often would you say you look at Twitter?

Every day. But not much. You're not really on it. I am. I am. I post maybe more than I scroll the feed. But I definitely there I have a compulsive. But you don't neither of you do like the Joe Rogan.

Like I just post but I don't look at comments and I just. I started doing that because it got too hectic. Well, for me, it's been broken even prior to the Elon takeover where I've had it set to only view you notifications from people I follow because I have such high engagement. But I can't even like switch it over to see it's I have to like manually go through and look at. It's just too hard to see every everything. So I just don't. Yeah.

Basically, but it's not out of some. I probably scroll more than I post, but that's unhealthy behavior. But sometimes you go on posting sprees. I like it when you when you get into. I'm like drunk. That is a warning. Yeah. After we record the pot.

Yeah. Yeah. And I know I can get away with it because it's like two in the morning. And you know, as I was saying to you before, you all have a good way of doing it. Like you you you don't get caught up in the petty bullshit that I find myself getting derailed by. And I need to know Thomas. I told I used to like all the time, but it just becomes like after a certain point. Yeah.

You've got dignity. Yeah. You're not going to be screaming with an anonymous. Yeah. Who are you fighting with? Richard Hananya. Have you fought with them ever? Because it's just like he I don't care what he thinks, but he exposed me to like a racist.

Like there's a lot of people out there that follow him who are actually really nasty. And I that wasn't like on my radar until like I got touched by he touched me. Like, you know, in the Lord of the Rings, like if you put the ring on, you're suddenly visible. And like they can they can see you now. And like, I didn't know that that world was out there. Yeah, we were so delusional because we walk around. We feel like these are like fairly enclosed apps. I knew I know something is deeply wrong when people start posting like hateful political

comments on my Instagram because Instagram is the place where you go to like get about like Instagram is like, yes, queen, you go girl, fabulous. And then Twitter is like, you bought and paid for Zio and then Reddit is like on a whole another level, but don't go on Reddit. Some people tell me Reddit is actually healthier. No, Reddit is worse. Well, no, it actually Reddit is really useful and good for certain things. Like when I was pregnant and had a newborn, yeah, you could go and look at like parenting

subreddits where they are super smart and they like detailed posts with real knowledge. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Because also like good information, right? Like if you go on on kind of like specialty subreddits, like if you want to learn how to play guitar or like need a new skincare routine or a new workout routine like really knows about that, but then there's like fan communities, which are like seething and hateful and you should never go on. I find it hard to nap.

I don't even understand how it's hard. Yeah, yeah. Well, Dasha, because she's a little bit younger than us is more of a digital native. You're like 31, 32, 32. She's better at forums. I grew up on forums. I was post, I've been posting for most of my life, sadly. Well, what's even sadder is that people have been posting all their lives,

like who are much younger than us. That you, you made plans on a pay phone to meet someone at the Menlo Park Mall. Like you use the pay phone. Yeah, I have. Yeah, yeah. And like the dial-up modem and this kind of stuff. Yeah. Dasha hasn't had that experience.

I've never used a pay phone, I don't think. Wow. Yeah. No. But with posting, I think forums are really, like Reddit isn't a true message board. Yeah. It's very, it's been captured by the liberals. What were the American message boards that you honed your craft on?

Record collector message boards, like music message boards. When I was 11. White music message boards. Yeah. One of the first forums I was on was for the White Stripe. White, which was a band I really liked when I was like 11. It's for white supremacy. Seven Nation Army did, did go in.

I was like 11. I saw them on Saturday Night Live, an American institution. And I, yeah, that's how I ended up online. That's where it all went wrong. If I had to, I had to really pinpoint it. And then through that, I got into more like niche kind of like music, subculture boards full of total pedophiles. And then I was on 4chan and stuff in like.

Oh, you really did it? Like you went on that. I'm a poster dude. Yeah. It's in my blood. Like, yeah. Y'all are so nice. Like I don't know if everybody knows it.

Like y'all are just like sweet girls. This is the best endorsement. For real? Thank you. I'm late on thick. But you're just up on 4chan as a 15 year old. No, like older, older, like 18, 19. Okay.

But yeah, I was, you know, I've been online. I've been online. Because I've been on, I grew up in the suburbs and then. I think that's why Twitter, it's always been a rough place for me because I don't think I'm, I haven't been online. Well, how do you use Twitter? What are your Twitter habits? Yeah, how often do you?

And do you let your children go on the computer? No. Just YouTube and Spotify. And their mom doesn't either. You guys have like a strict. No. And the French, the good thing about the French is they're like 20 years behind Americans.

It's accelerating a little bit, but they're basically 20 years behind Americans on a lot of stuff. So like, you know, when I first moved to Paris, it's a little bit different now, but you know, pregnant women, you would see them smoking or drinking middle class, upper middle class white women. Or you could, I remember being shocked. I was sitting in the hotel and more having like a cheeseburger

and like a real bourgeois, like Bobo white woman spanked her kid in public, like hard. I haven't seen a white woman strike a child in America. And I'm very, maybe ever, you know, and. You haven't met my mom. When I was five years old, my mom like wailed on me at like, whatever, like children's depot. I'm 18 and some, and some like American lady came up to her

and was like, if you touch her again, I'm calling CPS. And my mom was like, oh, I'm sorry. And then like took me out in the parking lot and wailed. It really gave it to you. And really gave it to you because you got her in trouble. But yeah, the French are not as online and they're more strict with like my friends in New York, their kids can have an iPhone at an age where it is not really normal.

It's not healthy. Yeah. Yeah. And it's like, it's, it's impossible as a parent because if you don't give them the iPhone, then they're ostracized by their like playmates and classmates. Yeah. So you have to cave.

Yeah. They're marginalized. They're underprivileged. But the only, the only people that you see beating their kids in public in America are black people, Chinese people, and Russian people. I would like to talk to you some point about, you know, blacks and Russians because I've got a Russian sister-in-law.

White African, white African. Yeah. Yeah. My best friend, Josh Yaffa, has lived in Russia for a long time, writing for The New Yorker. But he's an American. He's an American. But I have a lot of affinities with Russians.

I've met through him and my sister-in-law and my nieces, half Russian. And I think that blacks and Russians have a lot in common. I think we've talked about. Of course, Raqqa has talked about this too. You know, the average Russian man dies at like 55, the average black man dies at 50 foe. Uh-huh. Lots of paternal absenteeism.

BAP actually had a line on one of his podcasts about how African Americans and Russian Jews have very similar cultures. And I would contest him on that because I imagine that most of the people, most of the Russian immigrants that he encountered in America were simply Jewish. But I don't think it's a Russian Jewish thing. I think it's a Russian thing. Yeah.

Oh, yeah. Russian. But it's also like, you know, like liking to floss, you know, wear some gold, you know. Oh, yeah. Nice ride. Liking cognac. Liking cognac.

I saw another one. Then we have to bring the Chinese population into this too because the biggest market for Hennessy is, I was told this in France by someone working at LVM. She's like, Hennessy is sold in Harlem and in Shanghai. You know what I'm saying? That's where Hennessy is consumed. And I remember my mom, like when we were growing up,

was a big fan of Kravassiya and she was really into Buster Rhymes and she. Passed the Kravassiya. She was really, really into that whole thing. You've heard that song. But I saw some racism porn on Twitter recently that was like a liquor store where only like the drinks that like black folks like were locked up behind Plexiglas,

like the Nouveau and Kravassiya or whatever. And I couldn't. Hypnotic. Hypnotic. Oh, yeah. I remember like Fabulous was like a poster boy. For Hypno. But.

It is hypnotic. It's like a ball. I know what it is. Azure colored drink. But what is it? It's like a malt liquor. I want to say it's like it's either a malt liquor or it's like a fortified wine like liquor.

Just a atrocious beverage that was like big when I was in college. But Thomas, the thing is that Russians and African Americans specifically have a lot of commonality because they have almost parallel histories because Russians had the institution of serfdom. Slav. And I think I'm not going to get the dates correct,

but I think the slaves and the serfs were literally emancipated within like a year of each other. Like I want to say like 1863 and 64. Somebody check this. Am I right? I don't know the Russian one, but yeah, 1863 would be the emancipation process. Yeah.

Yeah. And so like we literally just have a similar history. I mean, I've talked to my mom's grandmother is the granddaughter of emancipated serfs. Your, your mom's. Your mom's. My great-grandmother. Yeah.

Baba Maya. So my father's grandmother was married to a man born in slavery. Yeah. Yeah. You I remember reading that. So it's a very like similar. I mean, I've told the story a million times on the podcast. People really hate when I get into like the ethno-narcissistic stuff.

But my great-grandmother who I met when I was a child, I don't remember her was like a rough peasant woman who was illiterate. She taught herself how to read when she was 60 and the first book she read was Uncle Tom's Cabin. And she really, she really sympathized with the play of the black slaves because it was like similar to, yeah. I mean, the word slave comes from Slav.

So they say. Yeah. So they say. I mean, I we've heard. Yeah. I've heard people dispute. I've heard. I've heard dispute disputed.

I have. But I, that's what I assumed. Yeah. Robot comes from. But I bought the work. Oh, really? Apparently. I don't know.

Yeah. That makes sense. It does. But you know, there's many similarities. Also like a kind of honor culture, you know? Like Russians like are not, they will, you know, obviously we've spent some time. Or not very honorable people.

People, groups don't have behaviors. Dishonorable culture. No, but groups don't have behaviors. Individuals do. But in Russia, it's not atypical that a man would not allow himself to be disrespected. He would rather, you know. Kill another guy in a bar fight. Or die.

Then accept disrespected. You know, this is not our culture. Also both cultures are basically. Dueling Lermontov is my guy. Lermontov. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. You know, like you're going to go out there and duel because. Well, Pushkin died in a duel.

He did. Very cool. Black, black Russian. Original black Russian. We need to bring back duels to settle Twitter beef. Yeah. Let's raise the stakes. I don't want to bring back duels.

End up getting shot by Richard Kalanija accidentally. He doesn't have the. No, he has clammy. He has something to shoot me in the neck. Something I shouldn't have been involved in. But I think both of these cultures are basically like. Matriarchies through no choice of their own. That's the problem.

It's like you have like the male half of the population has been like generationally emasculated. These are these are facts. These things have repercussions. Are you a Dostoevsky person or a Tolstoy person? Dostoevsky. Me too. Yeah.

I'm not. I've never really been a fan of Tolstoy, though he did. Anna Karenina is a very warm piece too. I I like his book about I think it was Dagestani separatists called Haji Marat. Yeah, of course. It's like a novella. That one is my fave about an honorable man straddling a liberalism and traditionalism. Basically having to say what's like, what was I going to say?

Something about matriarchy, but it's a very it's a very similar experience. It's no accident. Like Eli, for example, grew up in Boston. There was a lot of like Russian Jewish immigrants. And of course, without fail, they all gravitated toward like black culture, because that's like what happens. And I think actually the one thing that people people have acknowledged, just like mostly pejoratively, but like mainstream culture in America is black culture.

It is even white music now is a step down. Well, it's Protestantism. And don't sleep on it. I won't sleep on it. And because well, because mainstream culture is basically low class culture. Oh, you think so? Well, she brought up a good point, which is that, you know, this is Albert Murray's point. It's a mixture of Protestantism of African American blues culture and Jewish liberalism,

certain pioneer and native cultures. And in more recent times, I mean, American culture is Jewish culture. And it's also Latino culture at this point. So if you're from New York or something, you're a Puerto Rican Jewish black wasp. Like Aaron Bond or you know, I think the black culture is heavily Protestant. And it has something to do with the fact that even on the genetic level, African Americans are heavily white, English, accent, Protestants that hustle work ethic. That's interesting.

Yeah, truly. Yeah, I'd never African Americans are not like a Catholic no identity. You know, like they're not like French, like take the month of August. You know, yeah, the passion get out and grind. Yeah, Jay-Z is like is like a Calvinist, you know? Yes, yeah. What is I mean, what is like the main religious denomination of like black Christians in America? Baptist or Methodist?

One of those two? Is this like, I don't know anything about this is like something that I really want to learn about is like the religious landscape in America, because there's so many like different like factions and sects. Well, there was the South had a Catholic moment fleetingly scarlet. Yeah, we got to give the Catholic's props. I'm with Dasha. But then the prods really went out just by sheer number of like people being un-churched

and then finding their way into it. I recently learned that mainline Protestantism refers maybe people is to an actual train. Yeah, and like in Philadelphia, in like Pennsylvania, right? Yeah. Yeah, what? The mainline suburbs. Yeah, the mainline suburbs through Pennsylvania of Protestants. Oh, I thought it was not like Maine Street.

That's the wealthy. That's what I thought too. I was like, oh, the main one. Yeah, all the all the other like weird like Pentecostal groups are like fringe. But no, it actually was like a class distinction. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly.

But I thought it just meant yeah, main Protestantism. It's been a long time since I've read it, but Richard Hofstadter's anti-intellectualism in America is about this, about how it's like the low-class Protestantism that really influences American anti-intellectualism. But so, okay, we're blacks in America like directly, like they were subsumed into like the Protestant. Oh, yeah, very much so. And it was the non-mainline Protestantism that proliferated in the South.

Unfortunately, they didn't get up in like, in Bucks County or whatever. They weren't getting their Protestantism there, unfortunately. Cherry Hill or whatever. But I went to Catholic school my whole life from kindergarten through. You did. Why? Because where I grew up in New Jersey, my dad thought that, you know, the discipline would be better to go to like the inter-Perochial schools around us.

That's smart, yeah. Where I uniformed, actually, I think the public schools were slightly better probably. Basketball team was a little bit better. I was into basketball, but it turned out that through Georgetown, I was always in Catholic school. So I have this like Catholic upbringing that like my Baptist Protestant mother and my atheist father don't have at all. And I just...

Well, that's why you're so drawn to France. Praying the rosary and stuff. Yeah, I went to Catholic school in Atlantic City. Really? Yeah, I lived in Atlantic City briefly as a child. Before moving to Las Vegas? We went Vegas, Reno, Atlantic City back to Vegas, but in Atlantic City, my parents put me in Catholic school because they were too scared.

Oh, so you have a jersey. You were sitting on this jersey heritage the whole time. I have a jersey pass, yeah. But also like Vegas is a lot like Jersey. It's like low-ling, strip malls, and then like highways. I've only been to Vegas once, I think. I couldn't even... I was too young to gamble.

I was like 20, standing outside the Bellagio, just not knowing what to do. What to do? Can't drink, can't gamble. What am I doing? Yeah, welcome to my life, yeah. Yeah, Vegas sucks. Great architecture. Great architecture.

Literally all of the world's architecture in one place. One of America's finest architectural science, yeah. You feel that is. But you feel like being in the Catholic school system was beneficial. Very much. It was formative too. I think like so then I moved to France.

I married a French woman and I realized like, you know, the French have been atheists for so long, like in her family, like for two generations they had left the church, at least. I knew way more about Catholicism than like most French people I was meeting because I, you know, because I was a mass growing up. Really? Yeah, they don't even know like the Old Testament stories or the New Testament. But that it's also, it's in culturally from France is very.

Yeah, they're culturally Catholic, but they've lost touch with this thing that I, you know. Yeah, yeah, because I guess they're like the ultimate liberals, so. Liberté. Yeah. We're not hating on Catholics. No, no, no. What's the hate? No, I think it's important.

Like I always think of like what I'm going to do with the baby and I think I'm going to put them in some form of religious school, even though I'm not at all religious, because it's important to give people an anchor to rebel against versus like putting them in. I mean, I would do public school too. That's like my second option and like the last would be like a private, like a secular private school, which I've never really been into. And especially I feel like now that the quality of education has like declined across the board, there's really no added benefit outside of like networking to put your kid in a

private school and they get the if the kid is like a New York kid, he's going to network anyway. He's going to hustle. Yeah, he's going to grind. But it's true, like there's something not healthy, even if you don't believe in God, there's something not healthy, healthy with completely losing touch with tradition. There's a lot of like Catholic tradition that's quite beautiful. And, you know, like a guy I've been friendly with, you know, for years, way before he had his conversion was Sir Abumari.

And, you know, he fell in love with like the beauty of Catholicism. He got deep into he got deeper than you did. Even if you you've been reading first things and compact magazines, he got deep into Catholicism. Like he might, he might even, you know, you might be a liberal in his eyes. But but he fell in love with the beauty of the aesthetics. There's something there, obviously. And it's there.

But he's he's what he's Persian. He's Iranian. Yeah, by birth. He's gone through phases of different ideologies. But he found himself in the Catholic Church. And I, you know, I can understand that there have been moments where I wished I could have that kind of Me too. A feeling.

Yeah. What do you think about trad cats like this? Like Rostu has a good example. He's a guy. He seems to be a little bit less adrift and in chaos than a lot of myself or a lot of people. He seems to be grounded in a way that I wish I could access. I had a lot of what I went to Paris in 2019.

I had some nice religious experiences that like Sacré-Court and stuff. And the Catholics really do have the monopoly on on aesthetics and beauty. You've been to Florence. No. Oh, some of these like the Duomo in Florence, where you go to the Vatican in Rome and just stare at the Sistine ceiling. And you see, I wish I could fully access this, you know, the last supper. You see that?

Yeah, it's really majestic. It's like a pinnacle of human achievement. What did you say once it was like the intersection of autism and homosexual pageantry? It makes great things. It's true. And we're also like cynical and hardboiled. Like we're like, I don't need to go there. And then you pay like the fee and go in and you're just like floored by the sublime.

I almost like tears coming to my looking at the Sistine ceiling. It's like nothing. It's unreal. I could imagine. Yeah, so much you expect is going to be nice and you've seen art before. And then you're just floored. Yeah. Yes.

And Sacré-Court, that's like my neighborhood church. I sometimes used to go there just to sit and be quiet. I love Sacré-Court. It's amazing. I love the French. That's the one on the hill. Yeah. It's incredible.

You just sit there and there's like five people in there, like some old women because Catholicism is dying. Well, that's what I did during the daytime in Paris. I went to churches. Did you? Yeah. Did you get a chance to just stroll a little bit? Yeah, I stroll.

I literally went to churches because there was nothing else to do when you were in France. Well, next time. We'll all get together in Gapri. You'll go to France another try. Definitely. I mean, I love, I'll go to France one after another, but. What would you, did you get to get around Italy when you were there? I was, spent some time in Rome.

I was mostly in Tuscany and then Siena. I went to the 12 months. Siena is one of my favorite places. Which is awesome. Yeah, but I really, Rome is like a top five city for me. I think it's, it really delivers. It's nice to be around older people who are not internet poisoned and who are not self-aware or self-conscious in their religious devotion.

It doesn't occur to them that there's anything else. I think the problem now is that things were better in the past to the degree that you didn't realize that you had a choice in the matter. And now that we all think that we have a choice, certain bad things happen. Like people dissolve their families much easier. People lose touch with God much easier because we're all kind of like suffering. Now you're putting your finger on modernity. The problem with modernity that we've been struggling with.

No, it's true though. I really think you're right. You know, it's not just Catholicism. There are times when, you know, I've seen, you know, certain Muslims standing with a kind of peace. I mean, like really like in the, like the white crisp, I don't know what the garment is called, the crisp robe, you know, and just pristine and with a kind of peace. And you say, if I could, if I could actually attain that level of serenity, go to A. Devotion is inspiring.

But I remember when I was in Paris, I met somebody who had listened to our interview with Michelle Wellbeck and they mentioned your question about how like, well, since you're like a secular atheistic person, how do you justify your aversion to abortion? And he said to Dasha, like, well, I think your argument is probably better than mine because you have like religion on your side. And they were like, this was like a remarkable moment of the podcast where like a guy like Wellbeck basically cops to the fact that the loss of faith has been like all around bad for everyone. And yeah, yeah, that was amazing, by the way, that you that you sat down with Wellbeck.

That was awesome. Who I remember a few years ago in Paris, he was going around for over a year without teeth. Well, the steak tartars. His dentures had come out and he just didn't get, he just decided he wouldn't replace him for quite a long time. But he was out and about crazy. Yeah, to like provoke people. Yeah, I like that he's kind of like a covert social butterfly, like he pretends to be like

a misanthrope and a recluse, but he's really not. And he probably likes to see people like when he's feeling so inclined. How do you feel about Wellbeck? The map and the territory that the one that won the pregon court, that's like a like a slightly less dark like entry. That's the one with the Russian love interest, right? Yes. Yeah, Olga art, you know, it's like Steve Jobs and

someone else like stare at something as this painting becomes a big painting. And that's the, you know, the art, the torture to artist. And he's got the beautiful Russian girlfriend and he can't bring himself to make love to her. It's so good. But like when I was and then she just goes back to Russia. And he's miserable. There are no happy endings. But the elementary particles really depressed me when I read that.

I was I was like 19 sunny American disposition. I'd read the excuse, but I wasn't prepared for like dismal, like sex, dark woman's back breaks accidentally in an orgy and she becomes like disabled and dies. And it's just depressing. But really, I was, I didn't, that was my exposure to him. I was like, he's dark, but the map and the territory is really beautiful. Yeah. Yeah.

And I think like he, he's really like, like squeamish about his associations with the far right. He doesn't like. Is he? Yeah. He doesn't like being billed as a right winger because like all artists, he doesn't see himself as like an ideological partisan. But in some weird way, he's making the same argument that the far right would claim to make, which is that they're just like observing and noticing the reality.

And they're not the ones being like bleak and dark and nihilistic. It's the reality around us that is that way. And they're just like diagnosing it. Well, there's truth in that. But it's also what you choose to focus on and what you amplify. But you're an Aries. So you have to be positive. You're a Pisces.

My birthday was yesterday. Shout out to Aries. Oh yeah. Happy belated. Do you know you're rising? That's what I'm trying to figure out because everyone keeps telling me this matters. That I don't know. It does.

It does. You're rising. I think you're rising is how you present socially, right? Yeah. So I got to figure this out because I don't know what it is. But you have an American birth certificate, so it shouldn't be so hard to find out. It's, it's been a real. I'm going to get to the bottom of this.

Yeah. It's we'll get the full chart. Yeah. We'll get it done. But you're a Pisces cuss. Am I? March 26th? Right.

When is, well, when is the cut off like the 21st or something? Yeah, I'm not sure. Okay. I'm not sure. But you're, you're close to the I'm a Pisces. That's a good, that's a good sign. Not for men. It's okay.

It's definitely a, it's, it's like the most. Kurt Cobain is like the. Classic male Pisces. Male Pisces often struggle with addiction. Okay. So I just escaped that demon. Okay. But submission, he was looking around at what's going on.

And submission was a smart book because he saw, it wasn't about Islam, which he was getting vilified for. It was about French, exhausted French liberals. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And he doesn't have the font law on him.

Does he? No, no, I remember that. He did go into hiding though. He did go into hiding because he was terrified that Islamists would come and murder him in the street or whatever. But yeah, he got unfairly maligned for that because he paid it and it was like begrudging respect to Islam. Right.

It was not like a straightforward Islamophobic book. No, it was clever too, because there is an exhaustion that he was correct about, which Dasha has rediscovered like how to solve through Catholicism. It's easy. Just devote your life to being in communion with the mystical body of the Catholic Church. It's not so hard. Are you en masse every Sunday? Yeah.

Really? I, well, I'm a Greek Catholic, so I actually, we call it divine liturgy. It's the same thing that Orthodox people do. Okay. But they, certain sects of Orthodoxy re-entered into communion with Rome in, for the Ruthenians, it was like the 1450s or something. But yeah, there's been like instances post-schism where like Orthodoxy and Catholicism have like intercrossed in Greek Catholicism basically.

So that's, yeah. But yeah, I go to church. You're churched. I'm a practicing church Catholic, yeah. I respect it. And some. Me too. Holy weeks coming up.

So I'll be in church a lot. So Lent is coming. It's like, we're midway? Palm Sundays, next Sunday. Okay. Wednesdays there. That's like the last, okay. Yeah.

So two more weeks. And you do the Ash Wednesday, you rock the Ash. Greek Catholics don't do Ash Wednesday, I know. But I, yeah, I'm forage. I'd love, you know, I'd love a selfie opportunity that I can get one. But no, we don't do, I don't do Ash Wednesday. We've done an hour 52. Yeah, that's good.

How much did we do? Hour 52. That flew by. I enjoyed talking with y'all. It's easy. Is this a real job or a fake job? One of the realist jobs. Yeah, it's one of the, it's one of the realist fake jobs.

It's as real as it gets here on Red Scare Pod. Because, well, thanks so much for. Thank you. Thanks for having me. That was cool. I had a good time. We'll see you later.