The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - Arthur Brooks and Wayne Federman

Episode Date: August 16, 2019

Arthur Brooks and Wayne Federman

You're listening to The Comedy Cellar, live from the table, on the Riotcast Network, Noam. So good evening, everybody. Welcome to the Comedy Cellar Show here on Sirius XM Channel 99. My name is Noam Dorman. I'm here as always with Mr. Dan Natterman. Hello, Daniel. How do you do, sir? We're not at our regular location.

We're upstairs from the Comedy Cellar because downstairs they're filming this week at the Comedy Cellar for Comedy Central today. So we're actually in the official podcast studio. I'll be taping later tonight for that show. You have some topical material?

I have some. Well, a lot of it is, like this week they said one of the topics was it's marriage season in New York. And that was one of the topics they listed.

So I'll do my marriage joke. Well, I guess our guest is going to tell us how to predict when a marriage is going to end. I mean, Wayne Fetterman is an actor and comic. His multiple TV credits include Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Larry Sanders Show,

40 year old virgin, Legally Blind, and Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon. He's also the host of History of Standup Podcast. Yep. History of Standup Podcast and a professor at USC. Yep. I do a lot.

Natterman does. All right. You don't know. You don't know me, though. He also wrote a book, a biography of Pistol Pete Maravich. Really? True.

A definitive biography according to a company called ESPN. There's been a lot of... Anyway, let's go. Yes, there has been a lot of those books. So you talk about range.

Okay. And our big get, and I'm very excited to have him. Well, I thought Wayne was at least as big. He's it. No. Wayne wrote the definitive biography. You didn't hear me, apparently. Pete Maravich?

Pistol Pete, yes. What's the guy who wrote the Lyndon Johnson, the big- Caro? Caro. You're like the caro of sports sports myself in that league but I'm on thank you for saying that who's our big get our to the

big Brooks is a social scientist professor at Harvard University now you're a little embarrassed about that USC thing you know people pay good money to get into USC what are you teaching a good bribe to get into USC to be fair you teaching? People pay good bribes to get into USC. To be fair, to be honest, to be honest, I'm an adjunct professor, which means not a professor.

That's what adjunct is. Okay, let me finish this. What, you're teaching comedy? Dan, let me finish. Washington Post columnist. I'll start over. Social science. Professor at Harvard University.

Washington Post columnist and author of the national bestseller, Love Your Enemies. How decent people can save America from the culture of contempt. He is the former president of the American Enterprise Institute. Welcome, Arthur Brooks. Thank you. I have to say this is very intimidating of the four. I'm the only non-comedian. I'm not a comedian.

No, I'm not. You're not a comedian. And you forgot to introduce back. I'm actually, I'm the only non-comedian. I'm not a comedian. No, I'm not. No, I'm not a comedian. And you forgot to introduce back. I'm actually, I'm the only non-professor. Huh? And our producer is back from Tel Aviv, Periel Ashamrund. From occupied Palestine.

From occupied Palestine. Did you have a good time? Actually, not. Oh, good. Her mic's off. Perfect. All right. So, is my mic on? Test it. I don't know. Is my mic on? Oh, good. Her mic's off. Perfect. All right. So is my mic on?

Test it. I don't know. Is my mic on? Yeah, there it is. Welcome back, Pariel. We missed you. Thank you. I missed you guys, too.

I just learned that Dan and Wayne and our beloved Gary Gullman did a tour of Israel together. Okay. First, can we get to Arthur Brooks? Yeah. Noam, God forbid. He's the big get. together. First, can we get to Arthur Brooks? Noam, God forbid, we had discussed anything related either remotely

or closely to stand-up comedy. He bristles. I'm not saying the whole podcast has to be that, but even a sentence is too much

for Noam Dorman. So, what we will get into because contempt, I think, is tangentially related to stand-up comedy. As a matter of fact,

I think most of what you guys do is contemptuous of people. It's probably why I'm not a big fan all the time. Anyway, so I read, you know, can I be very honest? Because, first of all, I read Sam Harris' book about lying. Did you read that? Yeah.

Sam's great. And he says you're never supposed to tell a lie. Never. And I find that. Which is a lie. Which I find that hard to swallow. It's tough. It's tough. It depends on... I mean, there are types of lies. People lie to protect themselves.

So we're not going to talk about the Epstein suicide? One second. So I try to not lie. But I'll tell you this. I notice it myself that when I get a non-fiction book, I don't think I've actually finished a non-fiction book cover to cover in 15 years. I get 60-70% of the way through.

What percentage of my book did you read? Around 75%. That's pretty good. That's like more than I did. Yeah, more than usual because- Probably more than my wife. Well, because I find that as opposed to a novel, which builds to an ending,

I think people who write nonfiction books, they probably struggle with this, how to keep, there's no arc, like you struggle with this, how to keep, there's no arc. You've kind of, you've discussed, there's a law of diminishing returns with all non-fiction books. Generally speaking, you can summarize, yes, I find non-fiction books, you can summarize in a paragraph,

like for example, a black swan. You know the book Black Swan? It was Nassim Taleb. About 400 pages 300 pages i could summarize it very easily sometimes shit happens you didn't expect yeah and that's i i if there's any more in that book i didn't see yeah so books are usually 5 000 word articles stuffed into a 75 000 word cover because they got a contract to do it and so basically you you you you ventilate it you get a bunch of examples, you say the same

things over and over and over again, and if you've got limited time, and you've had good focus in the first couple of chapters, you got it. Mostly you don't have to read more than 50% of the book. So you're not insulted? I'm not insulted at all, are you kidding me? Our dear friend Jonathan Haidt wrote a book that can be summarized as people have

opinions and they stick to them. So he's a friend, John. Hi. John and I have been working together for years, actually, since before I went. I ran a think tank in D.C. called the American Enterprise Institute. Before that, I was a professor at Syracuse, and that's where I met John Haidt.

We wrote books on happiness with the same publisher. So you feel. So give us the nutshell version of your book your book don't i don't want to do it i want you to do it so people ask how come we can't get along the united states anymore what's wrong with our political system why are we so polarized why does everybody hate each other and the answer is this thing called motive attribution asymmetry which is you know it's a fancy way of having a pretty simple idea because that's how people get tenure and motive attribution asymmetry is basically i think i'm motivated by

love but gnome is motivated by hatred and gnome same thinks the same thing about arthur and if we're thinking that about each other we can't come to terms on anything and we will be enemies and and by the way we're wrong because we can't both be right it's impossible that we're both motivated by love and the other one is motivated by hatred. Now, what happens is that when groups have this implacable hostility, it's always because of this. And a lot of political science has gone into it. The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is a classic case where both sides think that they're motivated by love, but the other side is motivated by hatred. and for the first time we find that the level of motivation motive attribution asymmetry among democrats and republicans in america is the same level as it is between palestinians and israelis that's what's going on in america today and the result of that is that we have this culture not

of anger not of intolerance i mean tolerance is such a stupid standard right like my wife and i tolerate each other it's like like, dude, you need counseling. Or, you know, these are not the right standards. The standard is not to treat each other with contempt, because where there is contempt, there can't be love. You can't work together.

You can't cooperate. Contempt is the conviction of the utter worthlessness of another person. That's a definition from Arthur Schopenhauer, the 19th century philosopher. And when you see it, by the way, the most likely, you talked about this before, what leads couples to divorce? Eye rolling. That's the first thing that marriage therapists will look at is derisive humor, sarcasm jokes, sarcastic jokes, and eye rolling. Because they say, you're worthless.

I'm not just mad at you. I have a cold emotion. I don't have a hot emotion where I want to change you because I care. I don't care anymore. And so I roll my eyes. I make a joke that dismisses you. I basically treat you as worthless.

That's contempt. And that's what we're doing to each other in the United States. And that's the reason that we're in the trouble we're in right now. So, okay, my first question, I know I don't want to get dragged into this, but... Drag it in, man. Let's do it. Because I don't want to talk about the Arab-Israeli conflict, but I can't help it. It came into my head. Are you saying that actually the Palestinians want to live side by side with the Israelis as much as the Israelis are willing to live side by side with the Palestinians?

No, I'm saying that neither one really wants to live side by side. But a big part of the reason that they actually can't come to terms is because of a cognitive error where they think that their motives are one thing and the other side's motive is exactly the opposite. And so one of the ways that when this happens, for example, after the Rwandan genocide or after the African National Congress

took over after Mandela got out of prison after 20-something years, the way that those conflicts actually cooled down is when you got human beings together that were able to assess each other's motives at the human level. Motive attribution asymmetry is wrong. It's impossible.

I'm motivated by love and you're motivated by hatred, and mutually we think the same thing. And so the way to make progress, maybe one side is more wrong than the other side, but if you want to make progress because you want to live together in some sort of nonviolent equilibrium, you have to get past that.

And we see it all the time. It's crazy. I had read this article about motive attribution and somebody had blown my mind. This is in 2014 or 2015 in the run-up. This was before the election. I was doing this speech up in New Hampshire because I do like 175 speeches a year.

It's what I do for a living. And it was this big conservative event. It's what I do for a living. My speeches have jokes. I know. They're funnier than mine. I mean, mine are like occasional jokes. By the way, I was at the Aspen Ideas Festival in June, and I was giving this big one-hour speech about the science of love, and I was super into it.

I was telling some jokes, and I look in the audience, and who's sitting there? Jerry Seinfeld is sitting there. And I was not funny the rest of the time. I was so intimidated. Tightened up. Yeah, totally tightened up. Anyway, he's a very good guy.

Was he rolling his eyes? He didn't roll his eyes, thank God. He didn't dismiss me. And so I was at this thing in New Hampshire. And I said, in the middle of it, I said, look, I know you're all super conservative. I got it. I agree with you on most things, on taxes, national security, I agree with you. But let's remember the people who aren't here, political progressives, which by the way is a large part of the audience listening to our podcast right now. I said, they're not stupid and they're not evil.

Thank you. They're just Americans who disagree with us. Right. And this lady puts up her hand and says, I think they're stupid and evil. And it was a joke, right? I mean, it wasn't very funny, but people laugh. In that moment, and he actually was kind of a joke, right? I mean, it wasn't very funny, but people laughed. In that moment,

and he actually was kind of an epiphany for me morally, because at that moment I thought of Seattle. Why? Because that's my hometown. I come from a family of artists and academics in the most left-wing city in America. So what do you think my family's politics are? I'm the black sheep.

You're the Alex P. Keaton of... I'm the outlier, man. I mean, I came... when I was 28 or something, I came home from wherever. I was playing in the Barcelona Symphony at the time. And I was coming- What do you play? French horn.

I was a French horn player for the first 12 years of my career. And I was coming back from- Like John Entwistle. Yeah. And I come back and I'm with my mom in the kitchen and we were cooking dinner or something. And she's real quiet. And I said, what's on your mind?

She said, your father and I are very worried about you. I said, yeah. She said, have you been voting for Republicans? It's like that, right? So this lady says, I think they're stupid and evil. And she's talking about my mom. And I tell you, my mom wasn't stupid and evil. I had great parents. I think they were

wrong on a lot of stuff about public policy, but who cares? They taught me to have good values and think for myself, which I did at great inconvenience to them. And so this is an example of motive attribution and symmetry and it's incorrect and it's ruining our country. So I

intuitively feel and have felt a long time the same way as you, and that's why you recount something in your book where you got some nasty emails, some nasty, like really, really long email. And rather than not answer or answer back in kind, you answered back

reasonably and were able to strike up a relationship. I think the person asked you to dinner or something like that. And I had the same experience when we went through this whole thing with Louis C.K. here. I was getting tons of very, very nasty... Because you were the first guy, the first club he played, right?

Yeah. And I was vocal about defending his right to perform, and I got a lot of really, really nasty emails. And I sat down, and I answered each and every one, ignoring whatever insults there were and just said, listen, this is how I feel about it and a link to, and I don't know the exact percent.

More often than not, the next email I got was a totally different tone. Like, oh, okay, well, maybe you're right about a few. I was shocked at how people would turn around as soon as they realized that I didn't answer them with the same... There's a human on the other side of the email. Well, they were actually a little embarrassed at some point.

Because all of a sudden they realized, oh, I was such an asshole and he answered like a gentleman. I'm not going to do that again. That hasn't been my experience on Facebook when arguing with people and trying to be polite and always avoiding ad hominem on principle and just receiving such hostility. For Perry L's sake, what does ad hominem on principle and just receiving such hostility.

For Perry Ell's sake, what does ad hominem mean? Fuck you. It does mean fuck you. Yes, it does mean fuck you. The ancient Latin version, more or less. I don't find that I calm anybody's spirits by trying to be reasonable. But in any case... Social media is very different than email for this reason.

Social media anonymizes. And so if you're dealing with an anonymous person, that person will not become more reasonable when you humanize. But on Facebook, it's not anonymous, is it? Well, often it's people he doesn't know that he's getting. Oh, okay. Or it'll be people who are blinded.

It's not anonymous, but it's not one-on-one either. Yeah, and so... I don't know if that... But email is basically like the telephone. I mean, there's a person on the other side who's self-identifying and they're sending through an email

across the transom. Gnome. Who's that guy Gnome? He's not going to read this. So I'm going to insult them. Wait, there's another difference between

Facebook and emails. I don't know if it's significant, but it occurs to me, is that Facebook, you're doing it in front of an audience. And email is a one-on-one

thing. And that changes the dynamic. Facebook brings out bullies. You know, bullying behavior requires an audience. You're playing to the crowd.

Something like 80% of the cases in playground bullying, the research suggests, that the bully actually requires an audience to actually want to be a bully. That's how you exert dominance. How fun is it to be dominant if nobody notices? It's not fun to be dominant if nobody sees you. I have a few things I want to talk about. But how does, now, given all the thought that- None of them will be on my list, by the way. You're going to do your list, too.

I want your list. Given everything that you've put into this thought, when you see what happened with- And do try to include Wayne as best you can. Trump's, well, you can jump in. When you see the way the- What would Pistol Pete think about to include Wayne as best you can. Trump's... Well, you can jump in. When you see the way the... What would Pistol Pete think about this? Let's hear the question. When you see the...

Trump gives a speech, the media covers it, a shooting in El Paso, then people accuse Trump of being responsible for the shoot. What do you see? And you see this kind of just thing feeding on itself, heading in a bad direction, obviously. What goes through your head seeing that? Who's making the mistakes? What should they be doing differently?

So basically, I look at the data that show that 93% of Americans hate how divided we become as a country. That's incredibly encouraging to me, right? But that means... Ironically, the only thing we agree on. Except that means 7% don't hate how divided we become as a country. And that's the outrage industrial complex.

That's basically the super partisan media outlets, the politicians that are just at the fringe on the left and the right. And they're basically setting us against each other because it's good business. 7% is a lot. The other 93% of us, we have a bad habit. There's a part of the brain, a very ancient part of the brain that was developed before the prefrontal cortex. The part of the brain that

you think of, the big lobes behind your forehead, that's the prefrontal cortex. Some bigger than others. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And some are huge like mine, but that's just you can see a lot. Those who can't see me, I'm bald. I'm good for podcasts. Anyway, the point is that this thing called the nucleus accumbens deep in the brain governs your habitual behavior. And so when you do something that gives you a little reward, you start doing it unconsciously. That's the reason we get into good and bad habitual behavior. Smoking, I wake up in the morning and light a cigarette. I smoked for years. And I never thought about it. I would just smoke.

And that was because it was my nucleus accumbens working. The same thing is true with your communications. So when you get into a habit of treating people with contempt without thinking about it, it gives you a minor reward in the neural pathways involved with dopamine. Dopamine is something, it's a hormone, it's a neurotransmitter that makes you feel kind of good when you do something. You get a little shot of dopamine when you say, you're an idiot. You're an idiot. And it gives you a little shot of dopamine and it reinforces the behavior in your nucleus accumbens. The way to reprogram that. So 93% of us are treating each other with contempt, but we hate how divided our country has become, but we're part of the problem. You see the conundrum here. The way that we break out of that is by changing our behavior on purpose

and reprogramming our nucleus accumbens. And the way that you do that is by changing our behavior on purpose and reprogramming our nucleus accumbens. And the way that you do that is by stopping when you feel the stimulus to the behavior and putting as much space, like the Buddhist masters always talk about putting tons of space between stimulus and response. You know, like your mom was a Buddhist master because she said, count to 10 before you get angry. Same idea. So put lots of time in there and then choose your response. When you feel contempt, stop and do something else instead. So what you're saying is that the modern technology is like perfectly designed to be poisonous to everything evolution is prepared for. It's the hypodermic needle. It's the hypodermic needle of contempt. Exactly. It shoots it where

you're mainlining it, man. And so the best thing that we could possibly do is putting like a 40-minute delay on your Twitter messages. Or just get off Twitter. I call that a social media cleanse. It's like a juice cleanse. It's a high colonic of social media. Absolutely. I'm not on Twitter.

You're not allowed to be on Twitter. I recognized very early in Twitter that this would be a bad idea. I saw how easy it was to get sucked in, and I didn't want to be that guy. But if you make a commitment, here's the interesting thing. You can take these tools that can be profoundly negative and lead to the culture of contempt. You can turn them into something really, really good if you make this commitment. So it's weird. So I was talking to this guy named John Gottman.

He teaches at the University of Washington in Seattle, the world's leading expert in marital reconciliation. He's the guy who talks about eye-rolling and contempt, as a matter of fact. When he's got a couple that's about to get divorced, he says the good news is they almost always still love each other. The problem is they act as if they hated each other. So he has to retrain them to their communication patterns when they were first in love. And the way that he does this, one of the ways, he makes them carry around notebooks. And you have to write down five beautiful, nice things to say to each other before any criticism comes out of your mouth.

So you have to write it all down, right? And so it's like, man, she picked me up late again. I'm going to lay into her. I can't believe it. It's so irritating. But first, dinner last night was delicious. And I got to tell you, you look beautiful. And I love your mother.

Forget that one. Anyway, you get the idea. You got to go through it. And by the time you get through the five beautiful things, you don't get to the criticism anymore. Okay, so here's the commitment for everybody who's listening to us on social media, wants to be happier, more persuasive, make other people happier, and be a force for good instead of a force for bad in our society.

Make a five-to-one commitment rule. Commit yourself. Say, I'm going to do the five-to-one rule on social media from now. This guy was on my podcast. John Gottman came on. He said, do the five-to-one rule on social media. I am not going to say anything snarky,

anything nasty, anything sarcastic, anything negative at all until I've said five beautiful, positive things. I'll suggest that to the comedians. I'll do you one better. I have a five to zero ratio. I don't say snarky things. I say concise, thought out, profound things.

Heavy on the profound. That are inevitably taken as racist, aggressive, anything that you will. There's almost nothing you can say that won't be interpreted by someone in a hostile fashion. Yeah, for sure. Somebody will look for them. I don't snark on my Facebook page. Well, even if you do a five to one rule, not a five to zero rule, I mean, go easy on yourself. You won't get to the one.

That's my point. Because you'll change. See, this is the point about being positive. When you express love, you feel love. But this sounds like hippy dippy stuff. I'm not saying you're wrong. I'm saying, remember, he's a French horn player. I'm a social

scientist. Reformed French horn player. Dan, which character in Peter and the Wolf were the French horns? I don't know. The grandfather. But I will try next time I get mad at Noam. No, not the wolf. Sorry. Oh, good. I don't know. The grandfather. But I will try next time I get mad at Noam and if you listen to the thought. No, no, no. The wolf.

Sorry. No, no. The grandfather was the bassoon. Yeah. Oh, I don't know anything about Peter the Wolf. The wolf was the French horn? The wolf.

Da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da, da. I bet you remember something from fourth grade. Next time I'm about to. Oh, no, I have kids so we play this. Next time I'm about to lay into Noah... So who's the composer?

Who's the composer? Kofiev. Okay, go ahead. Next time I'm about to lay into Noah, and if you've listened to this podcast, you know that that happens, I will try to think of four or five positive things. But I suspect I'll still get to the negative,

but we'll see. As long as it's funny. Well, we'll see. As long as it's funny. Well, we'll see about that. It's usually funny. By the way, Wayne's an excellent musician as well. What do you play, Wayne? Well, right now it's piano. Right now it's piano,

but I started out on other instruments. But the last 20 years, I've been very deep, deep dive. What do you play? What do you play on piano? All 88 keys. The black ones, the white ones, the whole thing. Sometimes I press that pedal. I do a lot of things. That's crazy. What kind of music do you play? What do you play on piano? All 88 keys. The black ones, the white ones,

the whole thing. Sometimes I press that pedal. I do a lot of things. That's crazy. What kind of music do you play? No, it's mainly pop, you know, just like pop stuff. And jazz.

Your own stuff? It's a little of my own, but mainly jazz standards is kind of like my thing. Do you read music? Do you read music? Just chords. Just chords.

Just chords. I took piano lessons for a year, classical piano, you know, with Beethoven and Mozart. And I mean, I probably would have quit anyway, but I don't know that that was the best way to turn a young person on to a musical instrument is with the classics. What if they started with Lady Madonna? Like something like that, like a song.

That might have, yeah, that might have. You know what I mean? It does matter. It does. Because I'm teaching my kindergartner to read, and he had no interest until I got him some superhero stories. And then, yeah, now he reads really, really well. Yeah, I mean, for years in school, they made you read the classics.

I mean, how relevant is Edwardian England to a high school student? I never got through any of the homework. Yeah, I read my six-year-old dirty joke books. Oh, well. You write your six-year-old like dirty joke books. Oh, well. You buy your six-year-old dirty joke books? I mean, they're for kids. I have to call

Child Protective Services. I'm literally legally responsible now. No, they're like dirty for kids. I'm sorry, I have to... Do you have a Title IX or something?

I know I'm anxious to get back into politics, but just, you know, I once tried to read David Copperfield because I felt like, oh, you're supposed to read David Copperfield.

I threw it in my garbage chute did you? out of outrage after a hundred pages I said this was a joke right?

it's a gag it's really it's interesting page 101 everyone's in on it everyone's in on it I've been reading Crime and Punishment

actually and it's pretty good it's really good it's pretty good the difference is that Dickens doesn't I mean it takes

you gotta get a couple hundred pages they it takes, you gotta get a couple hundred pages. They're super long. You gotta get a few hundred pages into it. They paid him by the word, right? Yeah. I don't get paid by the word. Dostoevsky is interesting from the first page. Yeah, it's amazing. Yeah. So, alright.

So, Swami, what do you call the guy? Like the hippy dippy guy? The Dalai Lama. What do we call the guy, like the hippy-dippy guy? The Dalai Lama. What do we call you, like our guru? The guru. I'm your happiness guru. Then explain to me this, because obviously this is some bias.

No one's in the lotus position right now. This is some bias on the right. You see it on the fringes of the right, but you see it in the mainstream of the left. And you see it in a million different places, as ridiculous as a Harvard firing a defense attorney for taking Harvey Weinstein as a client. So are they both sides of the same coin in your estimation? Yeah, I think they both,

they manifest in different ways at different times. I think that what really are different sides of the same coin in your estimation? Yeah, I think they both – they manifest in different ways at different times. I think that what really are different sides of the same coin is identity politics. Identity for the longest time was associated with who you are deeply, and it was a real noble idea. Today, it's kind of what you are. That's what identity is. It's what's your category? You know, everything from political views to race and gender. And the problem with that is these are boring, factual questions in a very big way.

The story of who we are, the why and the who questions are really what make us human. And when you're dealing with identitarian politics, which you find deeply on both the left and the right, they're going to manifest themselves in the cancel culture that we see sometimes on college campuses or in mainstream media. And identitarian politics that we actually see in mainstream conservatism today or what we would have thought of as fringy stuff but isn't anymore.

As the owner of the Comedy Cellar, I can't remember ever maybe getting a complaint from a customer about a joke that came from a right-wing customer about any joke. And they get hammered. Right-wing get hammered on stage. We're used to being made fun of all the time. But that's, yeah. There's tons of material. God, the irate complaints I'll get

from someone on the left. Why do you look at me when you say that? So it doesn't... Are you the only liberal in the room, Perrielle? Well, I'm a centrist. I don't know. And Wayne, I don't. I'm pretty centrist.

I'm pretty centrist. I consider myself centrist, but apparently the world considers me far right. I know. I've been independent before it was cool, but you know. No, I'm not. I'm not far right. But on some things, I think, I guess I am.

So yeah, so this concept of contempt. Yeah, but people, the cancel culture is really interesting. And part of the reason is because you live in a progressive ferment. You know, we're in Greenwich Village in New York City. You can't find three conservatives to rub together. That's not true. There are so many conservatives running rampant through this city. Be that as it may.

Deeply, deeply undercover. When you look at the, not just the voter rolls, but the public opinion polling in places like the Silicon Valley or Seattle, Washington, my hometown, or any of the big eastern cities, you find that these

are places that have siloed. The result is they haven't heard different points of view for a really, really long time. I mean, if you go to, I don't know, Waco,

Texas, likely as not, you could say something. It's just a little bit progressive and be perceived as somebody who's utterly pathological. But do you think a comedy club in Waco, Texas, if somebody made a joke that was making fun of the,

of the right, that you would get the same response that Noam gets when a comedian makes fun of the left. You know, what I do think is that if you went into an evangelical church and you said some stuff that was really deeply sacrilegious, you'd get a lot of complaints. And we are in a progressive church in Greenwich Village, New York City.

And they're practicing the left-wing sacraments. Nevertheless, it was famously reported that when Bernie Sanders went to speak at some evangelical church, whatever... Liberty University. That was Jerry Falwell's university. They listened respectfully. They were respectful hearing it.

Yep, they did. It's absolutely true that they did. On the other hand, you can... I can give you another example. The Atlantic magazine can't tolerate Kevin Williamson because they find out that he's pro-life.

But the National Review has no problem tolerating someone who's pro-choice. Now think about that. The people who are inclined to think that this is murder are ready to tolerate somebody who's in favor of the murder. But the people who think that this is just a are ready to tolerate somebody who's in favor of the murder.

But the people who think that this is just a woman's right to choose can't tolerate someone who doesn't agree with that. That doesn't seem to me to be... No, and I don't mean to practice both sides-ism about it either. I just think that everybody's prone to the same problem

and it manifests itself in different ways. And I'm open to being disabused. I'm trying to look at it objectively. But if you look at it like a Trump rally, there's not going to be a whole bunch of, you know, ideological diversity or a whole lot of embracing of ideological diversity in those circumstances.

You got people wearing shirts. It's not diversity. Whatever comes out of his mouth. It doesn't matter for consciousness. The last thing he said. I love immigrants. I hate immigrants. It's like cheering,

whatever. Right. I mean, it's just, it's because it's. Terrorists. No terrorists. It doesn't matter.

They're with them. No terrorists till after Christmas. It's like policy. whatever, right? I mean, it's just, it's because it's- Tariffs, no tariffs. It doesn't matter. They're with them. No tariffs till after Christmas. It's like policy. I know, I know. You can imagine my crying game as an economist. He's out of his mind. Yeah, but anyway, my point is that this is a problem with identitarianism.

This is a problem with identity politics. This is how polarization works. And it manifests itself differently in different communities. And I don't like what goes on in cancel culture. I don't like it particularly because I'm a, I'm a center rate guy on a college campus. I don't want to get canceled,

but at the same time, what can I do except be consistent with my own values? Make sure that I'm not practicing anything that's like that. Also, there's so much self censorship. We know about it. I read about it in some articles today. I've talked to journalists. There's a

tremendous amount of self-censorship that goes on by people who might want to express even centrist views in some cases, like Biden is backtracking about whatever he said about people should wait in line to get into the country as immigrants.

I don't sense that there's any self-censorship going on on the left. They say whatever they want. They're not worried about anybody. You know, the funniest thing is when you talk to people on the left and you get a couple of beers into them, they're more worried about self-censorship about these progressive red lines than conservatives are. To the extent that they might agree. Yeah, or that they... Most liberals that I know, they really believe in free speech.

They believe in free speech. And when something is, when there's a culture, a cancel culture, they can fall prey to it too. This is an interesting thing. So you notice that people who are sort of the super woke all the time, they're more worried about making sure that Biden toes the line more than they are about Ben Sasse because they hold him to different standards.

And so I think that people all over the political – all across the spectrum are a little freaked out right now can i get back to your point about uh the both sides in a debate in this particular case when we're talking about america the left and the right think the other side is evil and stupid yeah um okay so actually most both sides don't think that but they act that as if they do and the progressive and the the outrage industrial complex is whipping that up isn't it possible in any dispute one side is probably right and one side is probably wrong? And so the one side is, if not stupid, at least misguided. Well, it's a good point. John Gottman, the marriage guy,

points out that in most dysfunctional marriages, both sides are wrong. That both sides think, I'm motivated by love, but you're motivated by hatred. Both sides actually love each other. And they just don't express each other. They just express, express themselves.

Right. When we talk about in the American public, when you look at this public opinion polling, most liberals are really reasonable and most conservatives are really reasonable. And neither side actually hates the other side is motivated by hatred. Both are motivated by love, which means that it's pretty even, as a matter of fact.

It's a very interesting group called More in Common. But they might not necessarily both be equally right. Yeah, that's the 50-50 paradox. People used to say during the Cold War, the United States is not completely right, the Soviet Union is not completely right, so they're both 50-50 wrong. Well, that's stupid.

The United States was a good player, was good for the world, was a gift to the world, and the Soviet Union was a scourge, a cancer on the world. That's just a fact. And that doesn't mean the United States was 100% right all the time. So you don't want to fall prey to the 50-50 paradox. But at the same time, I think that the data don't lie on this. People are more reasonable than we give them credit for,

and we have bad, bad habits in this country, and we should assume the best motives from everybody if we're going to make progress. So let me tell you who you're letting off the hook. Yeah. The journalists. No, the Outrage Industrial Complex. I'm not letting them off.

They really deserve contempt. They truly do because, for instance, without going into the specifics we did last week, every single one of these, you know, the bill of particulars against Trump, the dumb things that he said, whether it's at the rally, the shoot-em person or the Charlottesville, in almost every single one of those cases, there was a certain amount of language that was basically dropped from the story because it diluted the concentrated evil of the story. His badness. Yeah. And that is not to say that I think on balance, he still didn't say things that were terrible or that really annoyed me.

But whenever I would go into reading it and actually go to YouTube, download this piece. Oh, well they left this out. They left that out. As a matter of fact, there was one story in the Washington post that I actually went and I, and I wrote, they actually had it all wrong.

And the, and the post changed the story without mentioning in the, the mistake in the story. They just did it like under the radar. Yeah. I mean, that's actually unusual changing something without saying something about it, but I take your point.

I'll send it to the shocking. I believe you. And, I mean, that's actually unusual, changing something without saying something about it, but I take your point. I'll send it to you afterwards. It was shocking. I believe you, and I take your point that basically what happens is you have this Manichean universe, where you think somebody's bad and you want to make the point that he's bad. You might want to define Manichean. Sorry. This is not the Harvard campus. This is serious

raw dogs. Manicheanism is a black and white world. It's all good or all bad. So the Manicheesanism is a black and white world. It's all good or all bad. So the Manichaeans, this is this kind of heretical proto-Christian movement back in the 3rd and 4th century. And they thought that the world was equally weighted between good and evil. And that good and evil were fighting against each other. And they were these two dualistic ideas.

And so somebody who's Manichaean today says there's right and there's wrong, and if you're on the wrong side of it, you're all wrong. And if I'm right, I'm all right. So it's very black and white, very black and white thinking. And you know, the- That's all I gotta say, black and white. If you, exactly, you're right. See, this is my 75,000 word book, you know? It's like, you ruined my new book, man. Anyway, so what happens is that when somebody's writing about Trump, for example, and they want to make the point that he's being unreasonable, that he's being a demagogue, that he's

inconsistent with this, that, or the other thing, they want to take the parts that are extra bad to make the point with special emphasis. And that actually can be, that actually can manipulate the point and not even be completely honest.

And if you're a journalist, I think you have a right to, a journalist who does that has a right to be looked at with contempt because you're violating your oath. By the way, I'll give you an example also, a subtle one. With criticism, if not contempt. Contempt is never productive. All right, fair enough. So you know the expression, we're shocked.

It's seldom as being horny productive either, but you can't stop it. What is the usual meaning of that when somebody says, I'm shocked, shocked, to find out? It means you're not shocked. It means that you're not shocked. It's the Casablanca. Does it mean that

you're kind of in on it? Yeah. Sure. I mean, it's basically, it's kind of fake on it? Yeah. Yeah, I think it's true. I mean, it's basically, it's kind of fake. It's a fake surprise and complicity. So in Casablanca, I think the guy who said it

was actually, he says it's shock to find gambling and then they bring him his gambling proceeds. Right. Claude Rains, if I'm not mistaken. Maybe Claude Rains. So Glenn Kessler.

Pulled it out of the hat. Very good. Plays the piano. He's at USC. He writes about Pistol Pete. I have a lot of skills. So Glenn Kessler, you know who Glenn Kessler is? He's like the fact checker of, right?

So, you know, there's reporters, in my mind, there's reporters, and then there, who are supposed to be, there's like, supposed to play it straight. Right. And then there's fact checkers who who are supposed to be godly, like the sterile operating room of journalism, right? So he tweets, Glenn Kessler tweets, after Epstein's suicide. He says, bar, colon.

He says, I'm shocked, shocked. I'm running a completely incompetent operation about the prison. Right. Right. Now, what would you, what meaning do you take from that tweet? That means that there was I mean, he's he thinks it wasn't an accident.

He thinks it was, yeah. Or incompetence. Yeah, he thinks it's basically he's suggesting conspiracy. Or that Barr is pretending to that he... This is the fucking fact checker of the Washington Post.

What the hell is going on here? There's a different problem here besides just the expressions that you're talking about, which is that people believe that Twitter has a different set of rules for journalists. You know how many journalists have ruined their credibility forever? You know, they do it all day long. I don't know if I agree with that.

I don't know if I agree. I feel like I see journalists all the time. Once upon a time, the guy in the Washington Post just got demoted for the tweets, right? That was the New York Times. The New York Times. He just got demoted.

I don't think anything wrong with his tweets, by the way, but go ahead. But all the time, I see journalists say crazy, outrageous things, and it affects their career in no way whatsoever. In fact, solidifies them with – am I wrong about that? Yeah, I think – well, I understand what you're saying because they don't appear to lose professional standing.

They don't get canceled. I haven't seen very few get canceled. Yeah, but you know the truth of the matter is long-term, you've got nothing but your credibility. That's all you've got. I feel – can I just counter this real quick? I really feel like we're in a new stage with journalism anyway. I feel like

you're writing to your readership and you're not writing, then that's your main thing. And if your readership is this, you will be rewarded if you give them that information. I may be wrong about this. It's a pay-per-click culture. On the other hand, you might be right about that.

What do you think, Dan? But I don't know. Dan? Well, I think Wayne has the stronger point on this argument. Uh-oh. That Dr. Brooks, or was it, are you a doctor? I am. You can call me Nurse Brooks if you like.

Professor Brooks. Professor Brooks. Professor Brooks. Professor Tenured, I believe. No, I don't. I'm a professor of practice. What's the dispute? I'm not sure I understood the dispute. Whether journalists say things on Twitter that are ridiculous.

Everybody's agreeing to that. Professor Brooks says that it's ruined their credibility. Wayne is saying it's actually enhanced their credibility at least among their readership. Well, they're not contradictory points, actually. They're actually compatible with each other. I think that what I'm suggesting... What journalist has been canceled because they said...

Yeah, no, no. I feel like I haven't seen any. It's short-term gain. This is what everybody's doing. Everybody's playing the short-term game. You're pretending that they're... I'll give you an example of both. Joy Reid.

She had that ridiculous stuff. She comes out and says that she was hacked and then you call in the FBI, whatever it is. And to, I think, to regular normal people, she's lost all credibility. To the MSNBC audience, she's been elevated. So you're making my point.

Well, but also his point. She lost and she also gained. But on balance, in her career, she's gained. That's my point. I don't know. I don't know. And that's what Wayne's pointing. I think you're talking about something in the future that I feel like the evidence isn't in.

It's a non-testable hypothesis. It's a non-testable hypothesis. But I think that 10 years from now, do you think Joy Reid is going to be after the era of Trump? I don't know. It might be worse after Trump.

All we have is a short term. All we have is now. All we have is now. Are you saying that in the long run, we're all dead? That's what I was saying. So just to be clear, so am I, like, this is, and it's amazing that this didn't even get any attention. Like, I'm the only person who even has commented on this tweet.

There's so much. I mean, the volume is like this. But this is no ordinary guy. No, I know. You're saying it because he's the fact checker. This is Glenn Kessler. It's like Joe Scarborough, but he got a lot of attention. He tweeted about how Russian.

What? He just, with no factual basis whatsoever. Well, maybe there is some factual basis. No, there isn't. There's no fact. And even the idea to think that the attorney general is involved in the day-to-day operations of a prison and prison guard shifts in overtime is so absurd. Why do you think that's so absurd, though?

Because I can't even get the floor mopped in my restaurant of 40 people. You know, how many people work for the Justice Department? No, no, there's no conspiracies. This is the thing. Wait a second. There's no conspiracies. No, no, no, no, no.

This guy had dirt on... Do you... Oh, so, Perrielle, you think that he was murdered? I think that it's very think that he was murdered I think that it's very possible that he was murdered I think it's it's so possible

that murdered you know she's not stupid she's not stupid no no she's not stupid look lots actually this is really important

what Perrielle is saying let me just say five nice I want to say five nice things first yeah yeah she only had one of her five fingers in the air just now.

I think it's absolutely insane that you are suggesting that it's so outlandish that that could have happened. Okay. That somebody. I don't think. I'm not suggesting that actually. But I do think it's outlandish. But that's not what I was suggesting. What I was suggesting is that the fact checker of the Washington Post should not be writing things like that

unless he has some piece of factual evidence. Suggesting that there's something. I wanted to hear what... Considering that's what he does for a living, is check facts. But I want to hear what Arthur had to say. I'll call you Arthur, I guess. You can, you know, Dr. Arthur.

What you were about to say to Perrielle when she... You said a lot of people believe that it was murder. A lot of people believe this, and so you have to take it seriously. Look, it's super fishy. Did you hear that? You have to take me seriously. You have to take Perrielle when she, you said a lot of people believe that it was murder. A lot of people believe this, and so you have to take it seriously. Look, it's super fishy. Did you hear that? You have to take me seriously. You have to take me seriously. As a sociological phenomenon. I don't want to get flipped off here.

I want to be friends. I love everybody. I think there's an outside chance, and a very outside chance, that it was murder, but I think if it was murder, it would be quickly discovered, and it won't be Clinton, and it won't be Trump. It might be somebody that doesn't like child molesters in the prison. But even then, I don't think that's what it is.

It's not like a ninja. It's murder. Well, a lot of people are saying that. The Occam's razor. The most obvious, usually the simplest explanation is correct. And that standard suggests incompetence in the public sector. Anybody who thinks that the prison system, I mean, God love them. It's a hard job.

But nobody's looking at making sure that everything is going right in the prison system. And so the result of it, look, I flew into LaGuardia Airport in New York City, which that should work right. You can put a billion dollars into the gaping maw of the poor authority, and it wouldn't get better, right? And the mayor of New York City right now is running for president or trying to unionize the squeegee guys or whatever he's doing, and nothing gets better, right? The Aunt Danny's pretzels should be more ubiquitous. Why would we think that the prison system would somehow be intentional enough and efficient enough that something like this couldn't happen? That's the most obvious case. However, it's fishy enough, and your skepticism is warranted. And there is motive.

That at very least, we shouldn't foment conspiracies, which is Noam's point. If somebody told me that Epstein... I'm going to have you here on all of our shows to stick up for me. If somebody said, do you think maybe Epstein told the guard, listen, look the other way, and I made arrangements, you'll find a million dollars in your mailbox,

whatever, yeah, totally possible. That's not the implication. That's plausible. Somebody bribed a prison guard so he could kill himself. Yeah. But the idea that some influential I mean, if they if you were going to murder Epstein, you had all kinds of time to do it before he actually went behind bars with guards.

If you're one of these powerful people, you know, it's coming. Get him when he's still in his apartment. I mean, fine, maybe fair enough. But also, is it that outrageous that somebody bribed a prison guard to go kill him i don't want to call you the fredo of our podcast here but let's discuss let's discuss well first if if very quick very quickly very quickly if somebody bribed the prison guard to murder him another prisoner for example i I suspect it would be very, very quickly found out. I don't think that happened, but if it did,

I think it would be very quickly found out, and I don't think it's the Clintons that are pulling the strings. There was a really funny tweet that Hillary Clinton said, oh, Epstein's suicide was... Would you stop interrupting? Epstein's suicide was so horrible,

and then she tweeted again and said, oh shit, that was supposed to happen tomorrow. I'm sorry, Dan. I hung an innocent man. That was really funny. Wayne, why do you keep saying murder? Do you think it's insane? Do you think there's no way? Well, look, who knows?

Who knows? I'm open to it. But to go to murder just seems, to me... From a guy who had every reason to kill himself. Yeah, yeah. But yes, people wanted him dead, I assume, to keep those secrets. So there is motive, but... I feel like he's such a narcissist, though.

I don't know that he really fits the profile. I think Dershowitz had him done in. Anyway, we can't... If Clinton had to... If Clinton murdered... Had this guy murdered, how many people would have had to have been in on this conspiracy?

Clinton didn't have... I know we... I know that. I'm saying how many... Theoretically, if he did, how many people would have to be in on it? But that wouldn't be true with anyone. Sid Blumenthal would take care of it

without him being asked. He knows how to take it. He's the bad guy. You'd have to have the guards. It's not that hard to kill somebody in a New York City prison. It is. It's hard to keep it a secret. That's what's more difficult, especially when you're the president, the former president, doing it.

And then the ironies just are so, like, Trump is such a dick, right? And he's tweeting these conspiracy theories. He said that Ted Cruz's father killed Kennedy, all this stuff. Now, nobody hates Trump more than Joe Scarborough, right? What's the first thing out of Joe Scarborough's fat mouth is a conspiracy theory about how very Russian of this. They're all out of their minds. They're seething.

Did you used to watch Morning Joe? Yeah, I'm on it sometimes. Oh, I don't watch it anymore. I stopped watching it. I started to call it Morning Grudge. Like at some point, I realized this is not the kind of fair-minded conversation. Every political show is the same show every day. It's the same show every day.

It's basically they should all be called Beating the Dead Horse. Right, but Joe's show used to be interesting because they really did have as close to any show ever did have a mixture of smart people on, on various sides of an issue with good vibes between them having a conversation. And I really, I really enjoyed that during the period of, of polarization that we have in populism. We have every, nothing's fun. Nothing's funny. Have you noticed that nothing's

funny anymore? Because everybody's offended all the time. Nothing is funny. And so everybody's taking offense. You haven't heard my joke about my cousin Sheila. What's that, Kelly? Come on, man. But it's not political in there. So let's hear about

Chris Cuomo. Who wants to go first? What's your reaction on the Cuomo thing? It's the best story ever. It is the best story ever. Again, I'm visiting New York for three days, and the cover of the Daily News and the New York Post today was phenomenal. What was it?

Well, the New York Post had them dressed as the godfathers, you know, the three of them. Who was the three? With the dad? Yeah, the dad, the three of them. Who was the three? With the dad? Yeah, the dad, the other brother, and it was just great. It was like, I'm back in New York. I love it. First of all, I never knew Fredo was a slur. It's not a slur.

So I don't think it's a slur. It's a slur if you're against the dumb, not against Italians. Right, right, right. What was his point, though, when you said the Fredo Corleone of... Because he was mad that he got called the stupid brother. That's right, right, right. What was his point, though, when you said you're the Fredo Corleone of... Because he was mad that he got called the stupid brother. That's all it was, right? That's all it was.

In my opinion, there's nothing underneath that. Yeah, he got mad. And so in today's culture, one of the third rails is you can't make fun of someone's ethnicity. So he was using that as... Am I wrong? No, you're not wrong. So that's the culture of offense, effectively.

It's about identity politics. He had an identity response to a pretty stupid, innocuous comment. Right, and again, I don't know with this family, I don't know with the whole thing, but so his response was like, oh, I know how to hit back. I'm going to call you racist. Is basically what happened, right?

Yeah, so it went nuclear. Yeah, and then he seems a little roided to me. Am I wrong about that? He's slightly, I hate to say that. That's a conspiracy theory. No, I'm talking about his... Are you shocked? Shocked.

His initial reaction was so violent to being insulted. I'm going to put you down. Am I wrong? I wasn't seeing roids, but now that I think that it's... Am I wrong? Am I overreacting? I wasn't seeing roids, but now that I think of it, it's possible.

My thought was, my thought was, is that this guy hit a nerve. Yes. Everybody has their... I'm smart. Right. Everybody has their,

their, their, their, their, you know, their, what's the word I'm looking for? Achilles heel. Achilles heel. Neuralgic. Noam was called a racist once on this podcast and he flipped tell me what happened i don't remember you don't remember

i forgot what the context was but somebody called or implied that home was a racist he took his headphones and he goes fuck you see what they do you know he so everybody has and i think you feel like that was his i think that's his achilles heel. He has some insecurity with regard to his. No, you, you totally misinterpreted my reaction. I, I,

it was, I had it up to here with what, cause I, I was, we were having a nice argument about something and the guy was, was getting, I think it was a woman. She was getting slaughtered.

And what they do is they throw up this charge. People, people who are getting slaughtered, they throw up this charge of people who are getting slaughtered, they throw up this charge of racism to smear you and expect you to go back on your heels and get defensive and try to explain to them why you're wrong. No, I'm not a racist. My wife's of color, blah, blah, all the things that you want to resort to.

And my reaction now is, no, how dare you call me a racist? You can't. That's the worst thing you can say about somebody in 2019 and you have the nerve to say that about me? Go fuck yourself. And I think that's a very good response. If she had any reason to defend

it, she could have. She had nothing. She doesn't like my opinion. My point stands that people do have Achilles heels. Yeah, I'm getting upset now with you because by saying I'm insecure about it is to imply that there's something about it. Maybe there's a- But you hated the tactic.

No, you hate it. Yes, I hate the tactic. But I don't think you're insecure about it. I do think that that charge for you holds a particular toxic power. And I'm worried about, listen, this whole podcast is a dumb idea on my part because I have a family and a club. What do I need to spout

off my opinions on a stupid podcast? You could talk about Wayne's comedy career, but you don't want to do that. Somebody can take it out of context. Somebody take it out of context and ruin me. So that's why I get and somebody's... Has that ever happened? Has somebody taken something out of context in this podcast? It hasn't happened, but it will.

What do you think of that idea that Chris is... Can I say about Cuomo? Yeah. There's all kinds of ironies here that rush to mind. First of all is... We'll never live this down. No.

The first one is that if, obviously, obviously, if this was some... And I think it happened. Some people are taunting some people in MAGA hats, and the person in the MAGA hat did exactly the same thing. Chris Cuomo would be the last person to say, oh, you know, it's okay. They were taunting him or anything like that. So that really bugs me.

I mean, Chris Cuomo, I don't even believe, covered when Andy Ngo got the shit kicked out of him by those Antifa people. So this is not exactly something he worries about. Number one. But he was being taunted. I don't blame him for the macho flare-up at all. Neither do I. Now, I think that Ben Shapiro,

who talks a good game, but he can be quite nasty sometimes. He talks about Nancy Pelosi's dentures and it bothers me. And I think Ben Shapiro calls it... He's also nasty when he talks about the transgender community. He was... I don't think he's nasty about it. To be fair, I think Ben Shapiro calls it... He's also nasty when he talks about the transgender community. He was... I don't think he's nasty about it. To be fair, I think there he's trying to just

state his opinion and the logic of his opinion, but it's not a personal attack. I've seen him get nasty, though. He talks about Nancy Pelosi. The truth is we could all be more loving and better. We could all be more loving and better.

I see Ben Shapiro as getting better and more loving and more humane every single year. And he was taunting AOC for a while. And then he tried to play it along. I just wanted to debate her. But I heard him. So anyway, but yeah, for the most part, he's right. But I think he calls Chris Cuomo Fredo. So this has become kind of a thing on the right. And Chris Cuomo probably had it up to here.

So he gets mad. And then he says it's like the N-word for Italians. Now the first thing is, you know, who is the one that says you should never compare anybody to Hitler? Like one of these guys is famous for this already.

You should never compare any racial slur to the N-word. It's a singular word, like Hitler is singular. It's the greatest of all of them. It's the greatest of all. You sound ridiculous comparing anything to the N-word, especially Fredo. A character from a Mario Puzo novel. But one thing that's not getting discussed enough

is that he says, any of you guys Italian? And one guy says, yeah. And he says, well, it's like the N-word against our people. So now we have to believe the additional step that the Italian guy was calling him Fredo with the intention of insulting him for the fact that he was Italian. Was it the Italian guy that made that comment?

It was in the group. It was in the group. I don't know if he actually made it. He might've been the one who made the comment. Oh, interesting. And then CNN comes and defends Chris Cuomo for defending himself for a racial slur. And do you know that now probably people will be afraid to call anybody Fredo anymore, even though it's a ubiquitous pop culture insult.

I've had at least three people in my life that I've called Fredo. Have you ever been called Sonny? No, I'm an only child. Can you imagine the... No, that's the other character. No, but I can't beny? No, I'm an only child. Can you imagine the... No, that's the other character. No, but I can't be called any brother because I'm... Oh, I got you. Sorry, sorry, sorry.

When you think about the psychological implications of the word Fredo, you have sibling... To be the dummy of your family has got to be one of the worst charges that can be leveled against you. I've got to say something else. And Cuomo said that's what they call the weak brother. Now, weak is such an odd word to choose to finish that sentence.

The dumb brother. He says the weak brother because he couldn't bear to say dumb or stupid even to acknowledge what the insult he was getting. And then on CBS, they described it as Fredo, who was the ineffectual brother from the godfather. That is interesting.

These things are all, I think it's simpler than all this. Some guy was bugging him when he was with his family. And he's had it up to here. I mean, he's a celebrity. He's going out, he's trying to have dinner with his family, and some yahoo is bothering him. Oh, like the way they bother right- wing people at the restaurants

when Cuomo couldn't care less? That's a different issue. It's the same phenomenon. And if you're out and you're visible and you're tired of people bothering you all the time. And so he took the opportunity to get in the guy's face and just said a bunch of nonsense. You don't think the nature of that insult, I mean that's a powerful...

I think it was a guy who was bothering him and his kids. Is anybody on my side here? Calling somebody the dummy of their family is a profound insult. Well, first of all, you're assuming... First of all, you're assuming Chris Cuomo knows this movie and book. Well, of course everybody knows this movie and book.

No, I said to you, I don't blame him for... If he punched the guy in the nose, I would have said, well, you're not supposed to do that. But I get it. I get it. Somebody in front of your kids, you know, is testing you. Calls you the stupid brother.

Or calls you anything. Bothers you. Just bothers you. The weak link in your family. You come from a powerful family that you've probably spent your whole life trying to distinguish yourself from as equal to and as good as. And somebody is saying. That's why the insult. That's why it's his Achilles heel.

That's why it's a perfect insult. You and I are in a... But that's not what Arthur Brooks says. Arthur Brooks says the insult is of no relevance. He was just being harassed with his family. He could have been called a poopy head and it would have had the same effect. Let's get Chris on the phone

and let's ask him. Look, we've been psychoanalyzing him for 45 minutes. I went to law school with Chris. Did you really? I had very good, Fordham Law. He had, the only thing that's changed is he used to have a Queens accent, but he, I had nothing but good experiences with him.

Despite the Queens accent? What do you say about that, Perry? You're from Queens. I don't know. Do I have a Queens accent? Spent years getting away from it. We got about 10 minutes left. I'm going to let Dan do his list.

I want to say one thing and then I'm finished. I'm going to let you do it list. I want to say one thing and then I'm finished. I'm going to let you do it. Do you know that Mick Jagger, Michael Bloomberg, and Joe Biden are all exactly the same age right now? Isn't there a stunning difference

in the way age has taken its toll on the three of them? Joe Biden, Mick Jagger, and? Mayor Bloomberg. And Mike Bloomberg. Yeah. Isn't that interesting? I mean, Mick Jagger.

All 77. They're all 77. Whatever they are. Mick Jagger is out there. Mick Jagger is like a kid, right? And you hear him interviewed, too. He's like, boom. It's like, you know, I'm just doing my thing.

And Bloomberg is unbelievably sharp. I just heard him. And Joe Biden is like, I want to send my condolences to the people from, what did he say, from Michigan and from Texas and Dayton. Where did he get? Michigan and Oklahoma. I don't know. I mean, couldn't you remember the news the next day? But he's doing seven speeches a day.

He had to eat like a fried stick of butter at the Iowa State Fair. Give the guy a break. But Noam's point is well taken. I mean, obviously, some people are 90 and spry with it, and others are drooling in a cup. There's vast differences in age. I think this age thing is serious. And don't forget, he's going to be president five years from now.

But this is a very good segue, Noam, into— Think about that. He's going to be president five years from now. Are you telling me if he loses and Noam, into... Think about that. He's going to be president five years from now. You're telling me if he loses and runs again? No, no, no, no. No! If he runs again. This is a good segue, because you wanted me to finish things up. Yes, go ahead, go ahead. Into

an article that Arthur wrote that I found exceedingly upsetting. No boy. But nothing that I haven't thought about anyway, but devastating. And I think of particular relevance to artists, your article on professional decline. And you said it's closer than you think. Yes, indeed.

Well, first of all, don't say it's closer than I think, because I think it's imminent for me. How old are you? How old are you? 49. You're 49. You look good. Look at the hair.

Thank you so much. I saw data recently on bald men, and it was a survey. What's the first thing that a bald man thinks when he meets another man? That good hair? That's what he's got hair. It's not right. It's always the same.

If I were sitting in there with my family and the guy came in and he said, hey, baldy, I'd freak out and probably kill him. Hey, Uncle Fester. You look great. Thank you. You look wonderful. You know what I would give for that hair? You can buy it.

How much do you want for it? God gives, you know, he does. I mean, I don't believe in God, and yet he does. This notion that he never gives you more than you can handle has some relevance to me because I couldn't handle being bald. It's, you know, you. Yeah. It takes some getting used to. How do you live with that

I know it's a burden it's such a burden but only because you have many other things that I probably don't have I'm sure you have a wife that loves you

a wife that loves you you're not you're not alone you're not you don't have the mental issues that I have be grateful for it I'm interested in the decline

tell me about it yeah you're saying that I mean how long you, every profession is different, right? That's what you said in your article as to where they hit their peak. Yeah. Like mathematicians, I think you said, is in, what's the peak? It's got to be 20, right? Well, no.

Well, so people who win the Nobel Prize in the sciences, there's no Nobel Prize in mathematics, but in physics, chemistry, medicine, the average age when they do the discovery that gets them the Nobel Prize is 39. And then it dives after that. The likelihood at 70 of doing Nobel Prize winning or major patent winning scientific discovery is the same at 70 as it is at 20, which is zero, basically. And so you get this big peak

at different parts of people's careers. Did Kahneman win a Nobel Prize? Kahneman won a Nobel Prize, interestingly, in economics, but he's not an economist. He's a social psychologist. But it was work that he did with Tversky much earlier in his career.

Much earlier, okay. And so people do the most inflecting, inventive stuff when they're earlier in their careers because they have higher fluid intelligence. Fluid intelligence is your analytic capability. It's your ability to solve problems. It's highest when you're in your early 30s, and it starts coming down precipitously. The average age for a tech startup entrepreneur is 31, and it comes down very quickly after that. However, there's another intelligence curve

called your crystallized intelligence curve, where you're able to synthesize different things that people say. In other words, you use the learning from others and you put it into, you use it with your vast library to combine ideas. You become a better teacher. You become a better synthesizer. That increases through your 40s, 50s, and 60s, and it can stay high through your 70s and 80s. So stop trying to be an inventor when you're 50.

Start becoming an instructor when you're 50, and you will win because you'll be on the right success curve. Wayne Fetterman is at USC teaching. At USC, this is relatively new. Absolutely. And it's super satisfying, right? No, but... I should be presumptuous.

The worst teaching evaluations in the department. Okay, how old was Al Einstein when he came up with that? He was in his early 20s, right? Yeah, yeah, for sure. And the truth is that back in, when we're talking in the 10s and in his early 20s, right? Yeah, yeah, for sure. And the truth is that back in, when we're talking in the 10s and the teens and 20s and 1930s, you needed to know, there was a lot less corpus of knowledge you had to know

to do fundamental frontier busting work in physics. So it's getting a little bit older because you have to take longer to know more stuff just to get your PhD at this point. And you also died much earlier back then, didn't you? Yeah. I don't believe that. You feel like it's infant mortality?

No, I think, look at the founding fathers. They all lived to be like in their 80s. Washington was in his 60s. Yeah, Washington was in his 60s. The problem was that the only reason that people would die And probably would have lived longer because he had an infection. A lot of them lived late.

It was communicable diseases. So basically you get a blister, a sliver, you die or something. People think that the world is getting worse. It's so insane. The world is so much better. I was just talking about this today, of course. It's so much better in virtually every way. Life is better in virtually every way. But that's just one of them.

Whether we're happy or not is another story. But life is objectively better. We may not be any happier. That's actually interesting because one of the things that's making us live longer and with greater literacy and lower childhood mortality, we live in a country in the United States that's getting cleaner with a cleaner environment. That's because we have better grasp of complicated problems. We have these people with high fluid intelligence that

are solving these engineering problems. The problem is that the complex and adaptive human problems, the love and happiness stuff, the faith, the family, the friendship, the service toward each other. We haven't gotten better at that. And that's the new frontier of human flourishing and progress. Just to get back to... You think we will ever get better at that? Yeah, yeah. So I think that actually this is the next thing

that we're going to start seeing. The new frontier of what people, of the great innovators, is not going to be a new app. It's not going to be a piece of software. It's not even going to be biotech. I think that the new frontier... It's not going to be the impossible burger?

No. I think that the new's not even going to be biotech. I think that the new frontier... It's not going to be the impossible burger? I think that the new frontier is actually going to be our knowledge of how people can have lives of greater solidarity, love, brotherhood, and fulfillment. And that means studying and solving complex and adaptive human problems, and not just

building better and better toasters. Just to get quickly back to your article on professional decline, do you have any opinion on the peak age for comedic ability? Yeah, so in virtually every creative field. Uh-oh. Creative field. This is not going to be good.

No, no, no, it's good. It's 20 years after the onset of the career. That's generally speaking where the peak happens, is 20 years after the onset. Now, it's interesting in a lot of performance fields. Yeah, yeah, it is, actually. Music? Now, I peaked super early as a musician. I was doing my best playing as a French horn player

when I was 21 years old. And I started my professional career when I was 19. I got kicked out of college, dropped out, kicked out, splitting hairs. At 19, went on the road. But that's anecdotal. Yeah, that's my own kid. I mean, I think everyone...

No, but he has data. No, no, no. I got data on the 20-year rule. That comes from Dean Keith Simonton who teaches, a social psychologist, teaches at the University of California, Davis.

He's the world's leading expert on the cadence of careers. Now, there are lots of outliers. Does it include composition? Yeah, yeah. It does. Now, again, there are outliers.

There are outliers. Who are the people that are not outliers? Who are some examples of people who are like, you know, exactly the archetype of... So, if you go back a long time,

they would die of syphilis. So they couldn't actually get to their 20-year career point. You look at Schubert, for example. Schubert dies at 31. And that's because he got sick. So he didn't peak yet. Yeah, he probably had not peaked yet because he didn't start his professional career when he was 11. He was probably 9

or 10 years away from his peak. So how old was Beethoven, like the 5th, 6th symphony in there? So Beethoven is 1770 to 1827. He died when he was 57 years old. He was probably, well, he did great, great work. When I'm talking about peak, I'm talking about your ability to push the frontier of innovation. That's why I said around the 5th, 6th, 7th symphony, that's his peak.

Yeah, that's his peak for innovating as the pioneer of the romantic era in classical music. And so by the time he was writing his 8th and 9th symphonies, maybe his greatest works, but they were not pushing the frontier of a new vernacular. You're not hidden to the 8th? No, I'm not a big 8th. Is he your favorite? Beethoven, by far. Beethoven's your favorite? Beethoven by far. Beethoven's your favorite composer?

By far. Same here, dude. Really? The greatest composer who ever lived was Johann Sebastian Bach, however. I like Bach. And Bach is really interesting. Who doesn't like Bach?

Compared to Beethoven? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. For sure. For sure. Now, Beethoven's great because he was the greatest orchestrator who ever lived. But Bach started out his career

as the innovator of the high baroque. I mean, he was the man. He also, by the way, had 20 kids, which is productive. A lot of them were musical. Yeah. And some of them became more famous than he was, overtook him in fame over the course of his career. But what happened was when he was about 50 years old, he lived from 1685 to 1750, so 65 years old. By the time he was about 50, he had peaked. And his stuff, the high Baroque, went out of style. His son, C.P.E. Bach, Carl Philip Emanuel Bach, was at the cutting edge of the new classical period. Everybody was listening

to C.P.E. Bach. People stopped listening to J.S. Bach. His stuff became really antiquated. And so he turned himself into the master teacher. And all the stuff he did for the rest of his life was kind of like textbooks. He was writing a piece called The Art of Fugue at the end of his life to write for posterity, the greatest that had been ever thought and written in the high Baroque. Nobody will ever play it. Maybe it was a textbook. And what happened, of course, is that—

You read it like Copperfield. You read that, right? The Art of Fugue? So this is key. But the key point is, look, you guys, we're all going to peak. What we can do is get on the curve of wisdom, of instruction, of service, of bringing along new people, and we can stay successful on those terms until we're really old, and as such, we can be really happy. Well, you know, I haven't noticed, but maybe others have, a diminution in my capacity as a comedian, either as a writer or a performer. I'm 25 years in.

Noam, I'm sure you're thinking of the Beatles, by the way, when you questioned his... That seems like an obvious example of your 20-year-old not holding water because the Beatles were in their 20s when they did their best work. Well, yeah. I mean, I don't know.

When the Beatles would have done their best work, it's hard to say if they had actually stayed around and stayed... They had not broken up. If it had not been for Yoko Ono, I think they would have done their best work. Let's look at Springsteen. Springsteen's-

Wait, that's your argument? That you think that the Beatles would have been better? I don't know. I mean, the truth is- Did you roll your eyes? You rolled your eyes in pure contempt. Say five things nice about him before you're going for it. First of all, I love that watch.

Second of all. Yeah, no, I mean, it's like, I don't know. I don't know how to assess that. Plus... I just feel like it's intuitive that most bands are good early in their career. I feel like they don't peak 20 years in. They don't get 20 years. They don't get 20 years.

They don't get 20 years. Oh, I see what you're saying because they're not popular anymore. Yeah, I mean, they're the vicissitudes of the demand side on popular music are such that they can't get the cadence of their full creative capacity. They can't get it. I mean, look, how many years do you get? One year, two years, five years? Chaplain peak. Also, with popular music,

youth is an additional... Nobody cares if a comedian is a little older. But a guy on stage has to be cool and good looking. So maybe that's also a factor. Yeah, there's an interesting factor that comes with... I would say the same with Tom Petty.

I liked his whole career, but I do feel like his early stuff... What about Springsteen? Springsteen picked up a guitar at about 15. At 25, he wrote Born to Run. At 35, he wrote Born in the USA, Dancing in the Dark. I don't know which you'd consider better. You feel like his peak is in the 80s? But his peak is certainly not now.

Most of his fans would say it was in the 70s. What do you think? Well, I had my own theory on this. Yeah, you do. Which is as a musician playing, I can see you getting better and better and better as you have more years and more rich life experience and all those things. Charlie Parker died at 35. That's what I meant.

That bad example. or Chaplin or Prince or whoever that seem to burn out, there is something probably genetic about these people which they see things differently than anyone else ever has in some way. And they mine that vein that makes them different. And the world is just taken with this because they've never heard this before. And then at some point, the mind begins to wear out and then they've peaked. And I don't know if that's with age.

Well, there's another influence on this. You know what I mean, right? Yeah, there's another influence. It's just like a personality. No, it's melancholy and addiction. You know, the truth is that the world moves forward creatively because of melancholics and addicts.

The world is made better and more beautiful by depressed people and people who are addicted. That's just a fact and not exclusively. There are a lot of people who are really sanguine, happy people who do really beautiful, creative things. But we all know that artists and intellectuals disproportionately are addicted and they're depressed. And that takes a toll.

I mean, a lot of people die. A lot of people burn out. A lot of people can't handle it anymore. The interesting thing— Oh, can I say one other thing? It just reminds me. There is also another aspect of all this, both with Chaplin and acting, is that youth is also part—you're not going to peak in rock music at 45.

Right, that was the natter. That was the natter. You've got to look at it. Nor as a leading man. This is the demand side that rock music at 45. Right, that was the natter. Nor as a leading man. Right, right, right. So we can't really tell. In classical music, it would be a different thing. Nobody cares if you're... Henry Mancini could write until he was 70. Yeah, on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog.

The old New Yorker cartoon. In classical music, nobody knows if you're bald. But had... Okay, so there's other aspects. Yeah, but I think my point is in the new frontiers

of what we're going to be able to do to extend creative capacity. When we can actually recognize that this year, for example, 73,000 people are going to die from drug overdose deaths or drug overdoses,

45,000 people are going to kill themselves. These are the highest numbers in those two categories in American history. This is the opportunity of our time to actually look at these people as the resources to push the frontier of American creativity, of innovation.

If we can just figure out a way to harness actually what the demons are and help them solve these problems. So that's what I think is going to be the most interesting kind of innovation. Do're going to be able to see. Do you have a book on this? I feel a book plug coming on. I don't have a book plug, but it's just ferment.

It's bubbling. We've got to wrap it up. I bought like 12 copies of your book and I handed them out. I heard that. Thank you, Noah. I appreciate that. Did you find them in dumpsters around the comedy cellar? No, no. As a matter of fact, I have one friend. His name is Don Fabricant. He might listen to this.

And he read the whole book cover to cover. Really? And he was... I knew there was got to be one. No, no. I'm just saying he was really taken by this book. I'm glad. I'm glad to hear it.

Wait, what's the title of the book? Love Thy Neighbor. Love Your Enemies. Love Your Enemies. It's from... No, no. Love Thy Neighbors. Love Thy...

Love Your Enemies. Love Your Enemies, from, you know, love thy neighbors. Love thy neighbors. We only have 12 copies of it. Love your enemies. Love your enemies, which is a radical and subversive idea. And look, your neighbor might be your enemy. But how old are you? I'm 55. Do you have trouble remembering names at all?

I don't. Fuck. Yeah, I actually don't. Grass doesn't grow on a busy street. I know. You know, I... Yeah, no, but I do see changes in my busy street. I know. Yeah, no, but I do see changes in my creative capacity.

I do. And I'm a better teacher than I used to be. I'm better at synthesizing ideas. What are you worse at? I don't care what you're better at. What are you worse at? I'm worse at actually discovering new things. So early in my career, I was doing pretty sophisticated mathematical modeling using early artificial intelligence techniques to model economic phenomena.

When I was first an assistant professor right out of my PhD, I was using genetic algorithms to model tax policy, stuff like that. And it was pretty cutting edge. And now I look at it and I don't understand the math that I was writing. I had that experience. I used to do some computer coding. I don't even remember how to do this at all.

So now what I write books on is I look at the most interesting ideas that are going on all over the place and I say, that's a story. And so I combine the ideas

of synthetic knowledge as opposed to original knowledge. But you don't find your memory decreasing in any noticeable way. I'm sure it is, but it hasn't actually

been in your social ability. You're Michael Bloomberg and I'm Joe Biden. Well, if it feels like everything distributes on a curve, what are you going to do? So I'm just a mayor. but it hasn't actually been so much. You're Michael Bloomberg and I'm Joe Biden. Everything distributes on a curve. I'm just a mayor. You're going to be president. A lot of people heading toward their 50s, I hear complaining about especially with names, they forget

names. Most people I know. Most people you know. Maybe Arthur is the outlier. I don't know. I don't know. Maybe I'm fooling myself. If I ask my wife, she'll be like... No, you would know. I don't know. Maybe I'm fooling myself. If I ask my wife, she'll be like... She's like... You would know. How old are you, Noam? Don't tell me. I'm 57. You're 57? I thought I was the oldest guy in the room. Gary?

No. Wayne. I'm the oldest guy in the room. How old are you? 60. 60. You look good. How's your memory? I've always had trouble grasping. Names have always been the one thing that slips through. That's been since I was in my 20s. Is that right? Yeah. I've always had trouble grasping. Names have always been the one thing that slips through. The one thing that... But that's been since I was in my 20s.

Is that right? Yeah, but I'm pretty good. I think. What was the question? I mean, there aren't many 50-year-old Jeopardy winners. It is something. They do slow down. You look the youngest, Periel.

I'm 43. What? That's incredible. She is the youngest other than... She's putting on sunscreen. It's what you do. It's what happens when you have a good personality. No stress of deep contemplation.

All right, ladies and gentlemen, Professor Brooks, I hope you had a good time. I loved it. Do you live in New York? I live in Boston. He teaches at Harvard. Brookline, Massachusetts. When you come to New York? I live in Boston. He teaches at Harvard. Brookline messages us. When you come to New York, you must come somewhere.

I come a lot. Yeah, you got to come hang out. I'm going to come after we tape this. When is it airing, by the way? When are we airing? Thursday. Tomorrow. Okay, terrific.

So it's Wednesday night that we're taping, and I'm going to go watch a show. A comedy solo show. I want to go see Dan. I've never seen Dan perform. What? Oh, you got to. And I'm going to go see you, too.

Which show is he going to? I can't wait. I'm going to end up going to the 930 show. You usually have comedians. You have a lot of comedians on the show. So the thing that I want to emphasize before we break, I'm not Albert Brooks. I'm not Albert Brooks. Everybody calls me Albert Brooks.

I said, did I call him Albert? Everybody calls me Albert Brooks. No, no, no. But everybody does. You know, hey, Albert. You know, because he's more famous than I am. I met him one time. I met him one time, and I said,

everybody mistakes me for you because you're so famous. And he looks at me, and he says, imagine how Adam Hitler felt. He was so funny. Okay, buy Professor Brooks' book, or do one to others. It's available. Goodbye, everybody.