The Comedy Cellar: Live from the Table - One on One with Nancy Rommelmann

Episode Date: March 22, 2024

Writer, Substacker, and podcaster Nancy Rommelmann joins Noam to discuss being a defiantly un-woke female skeptical of #me-too accusations (even rape). https://substack.com/@UCng-b4AdOBk2UmAyDug3N7A https://substack.com/@smokeempodcast [e-mail]

All right. Good evening, everybody. Welcome to Live from the Table. I'm doing a special one-on-one interview with my friend, Nancy Rommelman. I was going to get an intro from you from the Wikipedia, but it's way outdated here. You got to... Yeah. If someone wants to get in there and do something about that Wikipedia, I invite them. I have no idea who created it, but man, it's old. So yeah, go on and be my guest. What is accurate is that you are an American journalist book reviewer and author and it doesn't it has books that you've written

to the bridge a story of motherhood and murder I don't know what the most recent books something about John Wayne Gacy is that right yeah that's an older one go but it doesn't have on your Wikipedia your podcast if Smoke If You've Got Him, with Sarah Peppola, who I don't know.

But my wife and I listened to it. And in one of these magical ways, it was clear to me that you were speaking to her on a woman-to-woman vibe. That I've experienced this before. And I don't know if that's what your attention is, but you were getting right into her brain, woman-to-woman. Meaning your wife or Sarah Hepla? The two of you together were speaking to my wife, reaching her in a way that a man couldn't.

Well, I think also in a way that a lot of women aren't trying to because when we start to have sort of more complicated or nuanced conversations about me too or feminism there's like a certain line right it's a certain line that you're expected to walk and to hue and frankly I don't very often I don't think I don't really know your wife that well I've met her a few times at the comedy cellar but I think that we're speaking common sense, and I think people sense we're not bullshitting them. So that may be why Juanita responded. Well, okay, so let's start from Israel first, and then let's get to Me Too.

And then, of course, whatever you want to talk about, whatever is on the top of your brain, just interject it. But I met you at first when we were all guests kind of these of the israeli government on a propaganda trip where they all invited us um and uh you know that's probably uh it was it was um an israeli government thing and they were obviously trying to persuade us but they really did allow us to be exposed to whatever we wanted. But you went there earlier and then you did like a tour with B'Tselem, right? Yeah. Jesse Single and Lee Fong and I went over a little earlier. Jesse actually arranged that. Thank you, Jesse. And we did tour around. We went to, you know, different areas in the West Bank and in

East Jerusalem. And we went to Bedouin communities. And it was pretty valuable because we saw this first before we had this sort of like, yay, Israel is a wonderful tour, which was great. I was very generous of them to take us. There was really no strings attached. But you could really sort of see the other side. Having said that, by day three of the B'Tselem tour, I did really kind of feel like I was,

it was a really hard sell. It's like, look how terrible Israel is in all the ways, and this is the only way we can behave and act. And that's really not true. You know, people have to try to learn to live together here, which is incredibly difficult. As you know, I was just over in Israel again. But I was, it was glad. And I thought our tour was fantastic. I mean, very generous of them. We saw some incredible stuff. I mean, how many people get to go in a Hezbollah terror tunnel? Right? None.

Very few. So, so when we, when we first got to Israel, you wrote a blog post. I don't remember what was in it, but it was, it was controversial within our, within our little group there because it, it showed, it's controversial because it showed any slight ability to understand that there might be any slight point on the other side, which was more than some people could handle. But what did you say in that blog post? And do you still stand by whatever it was that you said then?

Yes, I think so. So it was called the olive trees. And we went to an area, a Palestinian area, which was being encroached upon on all sides by settlers. And I hung out with a bunch of boys. They were like 12 and 14 years old. There was a translator with us. And these kids were just like kids. And they were talking about how, you know, they couldn't walk certain places and how settlers would come like over the hill and roll burning tires down into where they lived and set things on fire. And, you know, these were kids and they also like,

they couldn't go and pick their olives at a certain time because IDF wouldn't allow them. And, you know, it's kind of messed up. Would I still stand by that? I, I'm going to say yes. I just was in Israel last fall in January, actually, and I did go to the West Bank, and I did hang out with a Palestinian settler one day, and then the next day with a, not a Palestinian settler, an Israeli settler, he's originally from America, and a Palestinian activist over in Hebron. And I got to tell you, man, the rights that they are sort of denied in this particular area are stark. When I went over there with Jesse and Lee, we were stunned in this area called H2

at what was the IDF allowed to happen and didn't happen. So I do stand by that piece. That being said, we're not talking, I was not writing about Hamas. I was writing about sort of people that are trying to make their way, and I've also been here for hundreds, if not thousands of years. That said, you go, you talk to tons of people in many areas, you start to get a more balanced view, and almost everybody's view is legit from where they're standing. So, you know, that's all I can do is tell individual people's stories and hope to, you know, bring a little light to this stuff. I am very, for the most part, pretty sympathetic to Israel.

They were attacked on October 7th. I know they're supposed to lay down their arms and go, okay, everybody, yeah, go ahead. We're going to really rethink what we do. So, yeah, that's that. Yeah, I mean, I tend to have always assumed that a healthy part of what we hear about mistreatment of Arabs by Jews on the West Bank is true because I understand human nature and people with power over other people, always abuse. This is a given. But what October 7th did bring home to me, when you hear these stories of how they mapped out the homes in order to target the left-wing Israelis who were actually volunteering their time to help Palestinians, that the fear of what

appears to be everyday people, I can't dismiss it as paranoia as I once did. When I was over in Israel in January, we went down to where the Nova Festival had been and then to a kibbutz nearby. And it was a real peacenik kibbutz. And it was right where Hamas breached the fence. I stood right by that fence that had been breached. And the people in there were so peace loving to the point where one guy used to build kites and fly them over, over to Gaza, because it's super close, like you can see it and say, we're all one, we're all people, you know, we all and they had Palestinian workers come in and come over, and of course we know now that a lot of those Palestinian workers

were giving information about where you could go and where you could attack. I did an interview with Jonathan Conricus, who had been the international spokesman for the IDF, and he's like, they really, they, they hate us. And that's something you have to learn. And you have to also learn to respect your enemy. And that is something that Israel probably wasn't doing on October 6, to the level that it needed to, it should have been perhaps more paranoid and more on its guard, and maybe a little less trusting in the iron dome because they really

hamas really strategized and for years and they were patient and they they got the reaction that they wanted now one thing that disappoints me i won't name names although i tell them personally of the people that we were on that trip with is that they they were at the time a few people quite dismissive of what the israeli government was telling us in terms of the threats that they were up against particularly i remember what argument we had on the bus where some people were saying that the whole notion of the iron iron dome was uh like what are they even pretending they're worried about? They have the Iron Dome protecting them. They're not actually threatened.

They're just using this as a pretext to, you know, have their way with the Palestinians. And then after this happened, I would have hoped that some of them would have updated, given a little mea culpa, you know what, I didn't believe it, but how could I not believe it now? But I haven't really detected that from our friends, and that's a source of frustration for me because it says to me in a certain way they're unreachable. Well, I think we have to admit, whether people want to admit it or not, that somehow the IDF fell down on the job or the intelligence fell down on the job. Whether there was complacency, you know, there are much more, Israel is an

incredibly powerful country. And I think that there was a sense that, well, you know, Hamas, it's a real problem. Obviously, there's terrorists and they're going to kill people. But you know what, they don't have it all together to really do this well that proved to not be the case in terms of people backing up and saying hey man i really got that wrong i don't know no i i hope that i do it when i'm wrong um but it is not in human nature as you said people just i mean how many people have we heard turn around on their uh summation of uh jesse smollett actually being um attacked or people who have found out to be absolutely full of shit in their accusations when they turned out to be liars. People don't come

back and say, man, I was really wrong about that. I don't know why they don't. I don't know why they're so resistant to like walking into new territory and learning something new, but they are. So, yeah, I don't know that people are going to change their positions. They're just unfortunate. Also, there's the almost, there's a position that lacks utter self-awareness where people, I'm not saying you, but people say what you're saying about how the idea fell down on the job that's in yahoo uh uh failed here as if they had all along advocated and would have supported the idf being tougher netanyahu being tougher netanyahu not propping up amas netanyahu trying to starve amas out of money there was that they're now holding against netanyahu They're blaming him for not

doing things, which if he had done them, this would have been evidence number one in their case against Israel. Look how he's treating them. It's just, you know, yes, Israel fell down on the job. That's an argument against Israel. The Jews didn't stand up the Nazis. That's an argument against the Jews. Look at what they were capable of. Look at what they were holding back all this time. Did any of us, even the right-wingers among us, imagine that level of brutality was possible right under the surface if the idea fell down for one second. I didn't imagine. And I think had – I'm sure there were people like that, and then we would probably have called them nutbags, right, or extremists or racists or whatever. You know, had I not been over to Israel twice in the past year and a half and have done some writing about it now,

I probably wouldn't even offer any opinion because I don't really know a whole lot about that. But we're in an environment where we're sort of expected to have an opinion. And so people have bad ones. Shocking. The whole thing is upsetting. Let's get to me too in a second. I'll just say one more thing.

I made a point last night to somebody. And I think the more it just came out but the more i think about it the more i think it's a point worth repeating which is um i put it this way my entire life since 1962 my father and now i have been involved in producing and selling hummus in a restaurant and my entire life my brain is filled with memories of my father, veins popping out of his head, yelling at this person or that person or this waitress or this cook or this manager, because for some reason, the process of getting the chickpeas into hummus and to politely into a customer's mouth failed in various different ways. And it continues to fail to this day.

And people will say, well, no, why don't you do this? Why don't you get a manager? The point being that something as simple as hummus to the table with 60 years to figure out how to do it is elusive. All of which is to say that the process of gathering 300,000 18-year-olds, training them, sending them to take over Gaza among a population that has human shields, that wants to see their own people die, that wants to kill you, the notion that there wouldn't be every day tragic mistakes, infuriating mistakes, incompetence.

It's lost on people how much of what goes wrong has to be attributed to incompetence. And to put it another way, America couldn't manage to withdraw from Afghanistan. The simple process of withdrawing from Afghanistan without completely botching the job was beyond our capability. How many times more complex is what Israel is trying to accomplish than the simple withdrawing of the American army from afghanistan and and and when you start to think of things that way the notion that israel the same how that's let's do a full convoy and then we'll shoot the ball

down like this is that can't be your explanation now it's it's also uh... first of all when you when you talk food that you're talking exactly my language including food metaphors and i would like to just mention the food at the comedy cellar is outstanding it really is it's so good you got lucky mashed potatoes the other night so good no but also like hummus is just as hard as anything else right whether person the amount of oil how fresh okay okay. But in

terms of trying to pull off a military, you know, whatever, it's not just incompetence, it's fear, right? You have, these are 18-year-old people, okay? And yes, Israelis, as much or more than any people on the planet, are raised to fight. They all joined the IDF, but these are 18 year old people being asked to make major decisions, all at the same time in coordination. This is just not going to happen. So I don't really blame the IDF for falling down, I think I lean more toward there was a complacency.

There was an understanding that this sort of rascally terror terrorist group could not possibly inflict major harm on us and that was incorrect that was the incorrect conclusion and day to day they're going to bungle things the problem is tragedy that when they make mistakes innocent people people die. And by the way, innocent Israelis have died because these mistakes too, my God, they shot their own hostages. Right. So, um, but, uh, and the suffering that's going on. So, uh, speaking of hostages, one thing that we were talking to, if people want to read a little about this, I do have a sub stack called make more pie.

And, um, you can go read some stories about Israel, including the hostage families, because I hung out with a bunch of the parents of hostages. And it's just brutal. It's incredible. But what was... Advantage it. Well, this is pretty much... I wrote a bunch of stories for a reason, as well as for my site, Make More Pie. Within 48 hours, the Israeli people had formed this group called the Hostages and Missing Families Forum. No government involvement whatsoever, which is, of course, why Reason loved it because it's libertarian. And they just brought, like, the best heads in the country, whether it was filmmakers or PR people or philanthropists, to keep the hostages' names in people's mouths and their stories in front of their eyes.

And it is a place that also brought, it was a light and a solace for the families because they could be together. And even though if your 18-year-old or 20-year-old daughter has now been shot, and the last time you spoke with her, she called you from a car and said, Mommy, I'm shot, and I'm being driven somewhere, and I don't know where. And you realize that this may be the last time you are ever talking to your child, and so you make the decision, as this one mother told me, and I have it on video, that she was just going to comfort her child. Okay, her child's going to die.

That says, what can I do right now? As far as I know, that girl is still gone. Is she dead? We don't know yet. I mean, they're still trying to get them out. But in any case, the Israeli people are trying to save their own lives. And they are trying to save the lives of their loved ones. And I know that they are not going to go down without a fight so you know that i i've talked about how i see the israelis as as tone deaf quite often in the way they speak that shows insufficient indication that they are concerned with the suffering and the death of innocent palestinians i remember when I remember when 22 Israeli soldiers died. They were going on and on about it. Of course, it was terrible.

But Sam, I was like, you know, but these people have thousands of their own people dying at a time, and you need to understand how you're being perceived. You have 22 soldiers, and if that's so terrible, what are they up against? But anyway, in that same vein, perceived if twenty two soldiers and that's so terrible what what are they up against but anyway the leaving you know in that same vein you know most many of us are parents

the thought of losing a child is uh... on unimaginable the thought of knowing that your child is kept being kept hostage by people who cheer on torture day in, day out. And then the world says they need to trade. And the world seems to have, in their own minds,

conflated prisoners who were arrested as murderers, who, by the way, can be visited in prison. We know they're there, as opposed to the group that they are sympathetic to who won't even send a picture to indicate who's alive and who's dead, won't take any step. You're concerned about human life and innocent life? What about the innocent parents?

It's so angering that I would have a lot more respect for the people who are championing the cause of the innocent Palestinian lives if they showed me some indication that it was innocent life. I have to tell you, so I've written a bunch of stories about this now. And of course, they're on social media. So I get people, some people saying, thank you so much for writing this story. And of course, the other people that come at me and they say, hey, how about the Palestinians? And I'm like, okay, I hear what you're saying. This is a really hard situation. And I try to build some of it into my story. But I'm sitting here talking with the mother of a 23-year-old girl, okay? So that's what I'm doing. And they

absolutely, in my experience, cannot get to the point where they also have sympathy for this person. They just can't because they see it as imbalanced with the killing that is going on Gaza. And I'm like, I think it's possible that we can have sympathy for all of these people in this situation. I think that we sort of must. I mean, not for the people that are doing the killing. But then, of course, then you say, OK, well, what about the IDF? It's so complicated. It's so complicated. I sat with a settler, and he was trying to talk about how Israel's been really restrained. And I was like, well, you know, it's been 15,000 people killed in Gaza. He's like, that's restraint, Nancy.

That's restraint. We could have carpent bombed that place in two hours. And some people would have. And some people want us to. And I was like okay i and well the truth is two things um you know i have i have friends who are suffering the death of arabs uh in a visceral way beyond my beyond the ability of my heart to suffer it just because that's human nature it's it's their people and it triggers all the the emotions that you feel when it's your family you're and

there's no explaining it to them you have to respect that kind of you have to respect that kind of – you have to respect that reaction. It's real, and it has to be more respected on both sides. But as far as whether the idea of showing restraint or not, I have no way of judging that. I don't know enough about what the options are in war. I just don't know. And I don't – by the way, I'm not asking them to be restrained. I'm asking them to be no more cruel or produce no more bloodshed than they feel that they actually have to. I do. I do. This angers people.

I do think they have to get rid of Hamas. They do. I agree with you. I mean, they're going to get rid of Hamas. It will never get rid of terrorism. You can't do that. It's like it'll go underground like a virus and pop up someplace else. But you do.

And I would wish that they could be a little more targeted. They've got really good intelligence. But again, when I spoke to Conricus, he said, we're doing the best we can. So there you go. I mean, this is going to really infuriate people, but every time I'm tempted to, you know, just go all in on defending Israel, I stop and recall the fact that I've had my own experiences doing business with Israelis. Like, I know my own people. I don't expect them, I'm not going to say here that they're all honest, not to say about any people, but I mean, these are tough people. Very tough.

And with, like all peoples, will cut corners and will do things out of emotion and rage and God forbid, sadism. So we can't sign off on everything they're doing. As a matter of fact, you have to assume that a certain number of things they're doing are bad and shouldn't have been done. But compared to the other side, compared to any other war, compared to any other army,

I'm sure they score pretty well. I'll give you one very small example, a nano example. I was in, so Hebron is cut into two sections, H1, which is Palestinian, and Jews cannot go in there, and then H2, where the Palestinians can live, but their rights are completely curtailed. I was in H1 trying to get back to H2. Well, you got to go through a guardhouse, and the guardhouse is run by two young IDF soldiers. They let you through if they want to. Maybe it's five minutes, maybe it's an hour, maybe they let you through, but your eight-year-old

child stays on the other side. They didn't want to let me through for no reason. I'm American. I had a passport, I had an Israeli press card. They're just, you know, feeling it. They're just feeling it. They're not in the mood to be generous to anybody. And you do that day in and day out to people that need to cross between the two places, meaning Palestinians, I got pretty enraged and it happened to me once and it took 20 minutes. I imagine if it was a daily situation that then got completely exacerbated after October 7th because they're like, fuck you. We're not going to give you what you want. You're going to wait.

I can understand why tempers run kind of high. And then bad things happen. I think this analogy would prove to be correct but i don't not an expert but i i said very often for many years when a an unarmed black person was killed by the cops we'd see this outpouring of rage and i always felt that what we were seeing was not really the outpouring of rage at the idea that a person was killed under you know questionable circumstances quite often where you know the person killed was not law-abiding or cooperative it was what we were seeing

was the emotional rage of a thousand little humiliation day to day that were dehumanizing. Like you say, spoken too badly, questioned more, pulled over, things that allowed you to perfectly well go on with your life. You don't want to fucking deal with somebody who has that kind of power over you, arbitrarily making decisions about you, depending on how they're fucking feeling in that day. And then, you know, a lot of white people have stories with the cops too,

but then this extra layer of assuming, and quite often I'm sure it's true, that it's because you're black and you are so fucking angry that it all explodes when somebody's killed. This is, I think, probably what goes on in the West Bank as well. We do hear of people being killed and whatever it is. But that's not what's so unacceptable. It's what you're speaking about. Every single day of their lives, they have to hope for the good graces.

Innocent people have to hope for the good graces of this person in power over them, a kid, you know, who doesn't have to account for any reason or anything. Why? Yeah, today you can go. No, you don't have today. You can't go. Fuck you. And they're not working on any particular like, well, the boss told me this. It's just like their decision. Again, they're kids.

And after October 7th, they have no reason in their minds to be nice to Palestinians, no matter if it's a little kid or a mom or whatever. They just they just don't. They're just not going to do it. Sodle on. All right. So that's Israel. Yeah. Now, you've gone out on a limb staking out for some reason, for some death wish reason, staking out the notion that not all women should be believed. That's right. Now, you know, it is tough to swallow that a woman would make up a story about being raped with the intention of ruining somebody's life. Although we do, we have examples of it. We know it's happened from time to time.

What makes you open to that in general? Why are you defective? And I have been since the beginning. And boy, has it gotten me in trouble. I have been since the beginning because I'm not exactly sure the intent is to ruin someone else's life, though that happens. I think the intent is often to get a position as a figurehead and to get some sunshine. It's like this thing happened to me. I am going to be brave.

I am not going to hide in the shadows. I am going to come out for my sisters, my sisters who, you know, for the past millennia and certainly in the past hundred years under the laws in America have seen their rape kits lie by the side and have seen men grab their ass and then they couldn't get a job and on certainly in the past hundred years under the laws in America, I've seen their rape kits lie by the side and have seen men grab their ass and then they couldn't get a job and on and on and on and on and on. And all of a sudden we've got 2017, we've got Me Too, we've got Harvey Weinstein. We do have a bunch of kind of really gross guys. The one I really remember is Les Moonves. Ronan Farrow wrote a story about Les Moonves, who's the head of, what was it, NBC or

CBS? CBS. It was, of all the Me Too stories I read, that one was kind of like, ugh. What was the story? I don't remember. Oh, he was really inappropriate with a lot of gals. It just in a way that didn't only sound overblown. A lot of these stories, you're like, eh, really? It's like, I kind of need more facts to maybe believe what you're telling me because you never went to anybody you didn't go to the cops you didn't do this and that and a lot of times it was just like well you know there's like the power dynamic i'm like yeah really okay i don't really buy that but whatever i'm freelance i don't have to worry about that stuff um in any case we saw some cases starting years ago and the one i've written about quite a lot is someone named Felicia son mess have you heard of Felicia son mess no yeah okay so very

quickly um there was a guy named Jonathan came in he was the Beijing bureau chief for the Los Angeles Times he was also part of like the press club over there in January of 2018 a woman now, now you got to understand, this is January 2018. Harvey Weinstein is already completely in the blender. Me Too is burning. It is so on fire. It's almost like, oh my God, everybody wants to get like that pair of sneakers. They're the hottest pair of sneakers, right? Me Too was the hottest thing going. Woman writes an essay about Jonathan Kamin. She posted on a medium. She's like, I had an encounter with him last year or a year before. It was icky.

I felt icky about it. I didn't really like it. Kamen's like, oh, my God, I'm so sorry. He, like, contacts her and this and that. Oh, same day, he gets an email from a woman, somebody new, another journalist in Beijing. And he thinks she's writing him to say, oh, man, I'm really sorry. What's happening

to you? This thing is kind of blowing up in public that you're kind of a sexual predator. Oh, but no, she wasn't saying that. It was Felicia Sonmez and she was saying, you know, we slept together last year. I don't know. I'm feeling bad about this now. And he's like, wait, what? What's happening here? So she goes ahead and she basically writes a statement and reports him to the LA Times that said six months earlier, something like that. They were at a gathering. They both got drunk. She loaded him onto her scooter. They drove to his apartment where she'd been before, sixth floor apartment. On the way, they're drunk. He starts kind of diddling her under the seat. She's like, stop, stop, stop. They get off at his apartment. They go upstairs.

They have sex. He's feeling a little bad about it because he's got a girlfriend back in the States. She gives him a blow job after they have sex and she leaves. End of story, right? No, not end of story. Because six months later, in the wake of this other woman writing this Medium post, she decides to make a statement that says, I wish I had been sober enough to know whether I had been raped. Well, that was really all that was needed. Jonathan Kamen was fired from his job. He lost his book contract. He became completely unemployable. He had to come back to the States and move in with his parents. He was suicidal. And no one would come to his defense because everybody was terrified of the conflagration that was Me Too. And Felicia

Sonmez became something of a feminist hero. She got a job at the Washington Post. She was known now as a survivor of sexual assault. Well, okay. I, you know, it doesn't sound to me like someone that walks up six flights of stairs and has sex and then gives the guy a blow job and then leaves is a victim of sexual assault. But she thought it was the case. And she is now known, this is sort of her position. she was mad at the Washington Post because they wouldn't let her cover like sexual issues. She thought that was not fair, but okay, she stayed in her lane. Okay, then Kobe Bryant is, he goes down in the helicopter with his daughter. And I'm sorry to say this, but it's actually true. While the helicopter was still on fire, Felicia Sonmez tweets from her Washington Post account that she really wishes people would, you know, really consider people in whole. And she links to a

2016 Daily Beast article about rape allegations against Kobe Bryant. Well, some people thought this was maybe not the moment to do that. She gets piled on and she's like, well, that was enlightening. And then she is asked to take a few days off because it was from her Washington Post account, Marty Barron. Marty Barron, let us remember, the editor in chief, is the one that spearheaded the Catholic Church investigation against raping children. So he's, you know, he's pretty much in the bag for not allowing sexual assault. Kind of castigates her. The Washington Post Guild, the News Guild, gets bananas. And they defend her. And how dare you? How dare you do this to a victim of sexual assault? Which is what I got involved. And I wrote a piece called

The Shiv in the Hand of Kindness that I published, which was basically like, who are we being kind to right now? And who are we sacrificing when we take the word of someone where there's a lot of evidence that this didn't really happen and make her a hero? Meanwhile, we have destroyed a guy. So, OK, so now we've got this whole backstory. Right. So what happened this year on January 2nd? You want to you want to tee this off? What happened? We started talking.

What story happened that you got a little hot under the collar about? The accusations against Yasha? Mm-hmm. Yasha, I'm going to let you do it. But the Jonathan Kamen story, that's the story that Emily Yaffe wrote about? Yes. Sorry, I should have mentioned this. So I met him.

Oh, I've been in touch with him many times. He came into the olive tree. And, of course, I will not be ridiculous enough to say that based on meeting him and having coffee with him, I can decide what did or didn't happen. But I can tell you that he was a broken man. Oh, broken. This was a broken, maybe, you know. So imagine. So I've been in the barrel myself. I mean, this was a broken, maybe, you know, so you think, yeah, so go ahead.

Imagine. So I've been in the barrel myself. I had, I had a podcast that got me in kind of trouble and a lot of people yelling at me and my husband lost his business over it and blah, blah, blah. It's another story. Imagine if you have a hundred thousand, a million, how many, who knows people in the media calling you a rapist. Now, this person has never gone to court. There has never been a civil suit. All it is, is basically someone committing a social murder, someone who wishes your social death and succeeds. I've spoken

to Jonathan many times and he said he felt as though he had been put on a raft and pushed out to sea. And very, very, very few people, because they're terrified, Noam. They're terrified that their shame is going to splash, your shame is going to splash onto them. Some will, I had Heather, Heather Hying, who is Brett Weinstein's wife, and you know the whole Evergreen story that our dear friend Michael Moynihan covered when the students got so mad at them at Evergreen College, I think it was in 2017. She said to me once, she said, Nancy, a few people will support you privately. No, a few people publicly, a few more privately, and everyone else sits on the fence.

In Jonathan Kamen's case, he lost everything. And just no one, because the climate was so hot, would come to his defense. His girlfriend, who's lovely, and I think now his wife, they're married, she did stand by him. And, of course, I did privately when I found out. And a few people have. And I think, you know, times are changing. And we'll talk about that as we talk about Celeste Marcus. But he was a broken man. He was broken. And I would hate to think that anyone

would get satisfaction from seeing him break. But I bet you some people did. And that really hurts. That really hurts that you could see someone broken like this and think, oh, well, good. Well, good. That's tough. Anyway, Emily Yaffe's story called I'm Radioactive for Reason Magazine is just a – it's great. It should be read. Who was an amazingly brave journalist. Amazing writer.

Amazing writer. Yeah. She did not give a shit. She writes what she wants. i mean she's one of she's she's truly brave yeah we love her um uh yeah so i can tee up celeste marcus because i haven't written down because um we i have this smoke him if you bought it got it podcast and we did we did a talk about it when other people wouldn't and then you came in and wrote for my site or published on my site so i'll read a little just intro that we had to this. It said on January 2nd, a writer named Celeste Marcus published an essay entitled After Rape, a Guide

for the Tormented in the free speech literary journal Liberties, where Celeste is managing editor. She wrote about an incident in 2021 with a close male friend as they slept beside each other in bed. She called it rape. He did not. The man remained unnamed until February 4th, when Celeste posted an email exchange to Twitter with Atlantic editor-in-chief Jeffrey Goldberg. In one email, Marcus had written, the rapist was Yasha Munk. You have a rapist on the staff of your illustrious publication.

Within about a week, with nothing, as far as we know, with nothing besides Celeste's essay and the accusation and the fact that this has now been trialed by Twitter, the Atlantic let Yasha go as a contributor in a very like chat GPT for the lawyers sort of way. Like this freelancer that sort of freelanced for us, we're going to separate ourselves from the freelancer, which is kind of nonsensical because he was a pretty big contributor over there. Just so people know, sometimes the reason you're 1099, which is freelance, or W-2, withholding, has nothing to do with the relationship. It's a decision made between the parties of what suits them better. You want to have getting benefits, you want withholding.

It's just, in this day and age, it's quite often easier, if you can get away with it, to just write somebody a check every month, and they handle their own workman's comp and all that. So there's so many rules now, it causes unintended consequences. But he was writing basically every month for the Atlantic for a long period of time. He was not a freelancer, what you might think a freelancer would be like every so often. He was a regular writer every month. It used to be, and obviously publications, what publications are still left have something called contributing editors.

I would have considered her a contributing editor, but maybe they don't have the Atlantic. In any case, he's also the founder of the journal Persuasion, which I have written for, full disclosure, and the host of the Good Fight podcast. And they cut ties with him, and that really, really got me angry, but maybe not as angry as it got you, Noam. I mean, I have my own history with all this stuff. And a lot of it is based on weird coincidences in my life where I have found myself with inside information about things that have gone public. Also, with various aspects of the Trump-Russia scandal, of all things.

I can't really talk about it. Just weird coincidences. And obviously when the whole thing happened with Louis C.K., I found myself embroiled in that. No choice other because he came back to perform at the club. And so I found myself becoming a national spokesman for due process and blah, blah, blah, and defending Louis C.K. We had protesters at the club and all that stuff. And that was, I mean, I've spoken about this so many times,

people are tired of hearing about it, but it was, at the time it was happening, I didn't know what was in store for me. It was not outside the realm of possibility that it was going to harm my business in a serious way. I had very heroic backup from my wife at the time. You ever heard me tell this? When it was really bad, I said to Juanita,

Peter, what if this upends us? We were doing well. We have a house, young children. I said, what if this upends us? What if we have to move back into our apartment? What if this really harms us? And she said, I've had less before. She's like, just I've had less before, which is for anybody who's married, can imagine what a relief that is.

Imagine you're a husband. You're standing up for this, and your wife actually says, what the fuck are you doing? You're going to ruin us. It would be more than anybody could take. But in that process, because I was well-suited to suited to it i got into law school i thought deeply about it i i started really um staking out a lot of arguments which have actually stood the test of time and and i so fast forward to now another friend of mine is accused now louis was accused but um had admitted to some of it but the accusation was not

anywhere near rape. Now, Yash is accused of something, and I said, well, this is, you know, ridiculous for the following reasons, all about process and due process and the fact that we have institutions that only under oath

and with the power of the state can you have forensics and blah, blah, blah. All the things you could read it in the piece that I wrote. But on top of that, and this was not necessary for my defense, on top of that, this was a rare case where there really was a lot of weirdness around the accusation. The weirdest thing being that she had written an essay describing that she had tried to starve herself to death and almost succeeded. She was in the hospital on her last breath with her mother by her side. The psychological motivation for starving herself to death was that she found that men were,

were constantly attracted to her and enticed by her. And this set in motion, a psychological reaction that she was unbearable to her. So she tried to kill herself. Well, this is of course, somebody like that can also be raped, but this is really not the kind of thing the Atlantic ought to be jumping to a conclusion about.

So, and he was my friend. And not that I think my friend can't do anything wrong. But loyalty doesn't mean you stand up for your friends when they've done something wrong. But it does mean that you'll stand up for them to make the arguments that are that should be made that other cowardly people won't make for them because i was saying to say i was saying the things that i believe i never said he didn't do it i wasn't there but i made the arguments for my friend

because somebody had to make them and but then then just to wrap it up but what was drastically different than this case and the louis case even though the accusation was much worse here is when i defended louis i got dragged on the bus i mean horrible emails death threats you name it yeah in this particular essay that i wrote i did not get one one angry reaction. So the climate has changed. Climate has changed. And I am actually noodling around with an idea called The Last Me Too. So let's talk just a little bit about her accusation. And that essay, the essay you refer to where she has an eating disorder when it starts out when she's very young, and she's talking about the rabbi and somebody wanting to talk about her sexuality this essay was almost unreadable it's not the

essay that was in liberties it's a different essay it's just so odd and like it's almost one of these things like she actually wants to be thought of as sexual so she's going to tell you how much she doesn't want to be thought of as sexual but whatever let's put that to the side nancy just let me say right because you should say whatever you want. And I just want to make clear to the listeners, I may agree with you, I may disagree with you, but they can't, but I would speak to her, speak about this essay with my own sensitivity about it.

And you speak about it however you want to. Don't conflate my opinion with Nancy's, but I'm not going to get in there with disclaimers every second to try to say, well, you don't mean this. You don't mean that. Nancy can say whatever the hell she wants. Don't think you know what my position, I'm sure it overlaps with Nancy, but it might not be exactly the same. But as a woman, you're going to speak with a certain freedom and intimacy with the subject that I can't. So go ahead. So I really am looking more at her essay, the second one,

what was it called? Sorry, I forgot the name of it. After Rape a Guide for the Tormented, the one that appeared in Liberties. I actually thought- A Thousand Something Gentle Smotherings. That was the first one. Oh, you're talking about the second one, yeah.

Let's move forward to the one where she didn't accuse, she did not accuse Yasha by name in the one she published in Liberties. It was just this guy. It was a friend. I actually thought the title was pretty clever as a writer, you know, After Rape, A Guide for the Tormented. Like, actually, it's a pretty clever idea.

Like, you could really break it down and you could have it be first person, but also be kind of oblique about it. She did more than, she was more than oblique. She was evasive. Every time you started, you know, the reader is reading this and she's telling you that this has happened to her. And every time you kind of get to like, what happened? What happened? She kind of veers off someplace. She starts talking about like, you know what? I didn't report it. You know why I didn't report it? Because it's known that rape kits just sit in in you know for years very true very very shameful but then that's not why you're going to report it it was very like she deliberately took the narrative

in these directions so you couldn't know what happened that got my bullshit detector. Can I add to that? Yes. The scenario that she described, to my common sense judgment, is not the kind of scenario that a rape kit would lead to very informative information. She would not claim to be assaulted. She's not going to be injured. Neither party, I don't think, claims there was no intercourse. So those are the things I imagine that a rape case determines, whether somebody actually had sex and whether it was rough, whether there's some sort of injury. Right. And she also said that he didn't ejaculate in her because, so let's just say- She wasn't sure. I think she said she wasn't sure, but anyway. So we also learn stuff after the fact. In the essay, you really don't, you learn that they're friends and you

learn that he is sleeping in bed with her when she wakes up and finds him thrusting inside her. Okay. Now I'm just going to say like, I just don't accidentally wake up and have friends of mine in bed thrusting inside me. Like I have people, you've been to my apartment, people are here. Even if I fall asleep and there are people in the living room, except for the one person I want to be thrusting inside me, nobody else is doing that. Okay. So, but like, how does this happen? She doesn't let us know. She doesn't give us any context. We find out later. Okay. What happened later? There was a birthday party for Yasha Monk that she threw at her apartment. Okay, so clearly they're friends. It's his birthday.

She threw a party. Later on, people clean up. He stayed and lay in bed with her. Was she awake when that happened? Was she not? Was she drunk? We don't know. In any case, they had, according to her, had some sort of encounter, whether she was sleeping when it happened, we don't know. She says she was. And then he left. Now, I am going to posit, if she really felt that she was raped, I think she would have gone to the police. Or if she didn't want to do that, she would have maybe later on pressed some civil suit. She didn't do any of that. Nor did she, as far as we know, go to Yasha and say,

you fucking asshole, what the fuck did you do? She didn't do that. She just sort of like insisted herself and started giving little bits of the story to people and then made friends with someone who actually had been raped and on and on. And then two and a half years later, she writes a piece and it gets published. And she contacts Jeffrey Goldberg of the Atlantic

because in this oblique way, and he writes her, he's like, I'm so sorry that this happened. I take this seriously, but he doesn't respond in a timely manner or as quickly as she wanted. And so she goes on twitter for justice it's justice by the mob she decides that this is right now i'm sorry this just none of this smells

right to me what are we supposed to do what are we as the jury here that she's chosen supposed to do you've given us like a weird like like a quarter of the facts in air quotes. And what sort of justice are we supposed to mete out except making sure that Yashamunk experiences social death and loses his job, which sort of happened, but I'll finish in a second. What didn't happen? What didn't happen is why I say that this, in some ways, is the last Me Too as we've known them. Because just like the Washington Guild Press Corps and all the people, the 10,000 people on Twitter

that always rush to your defense when you're a woman especially and something happens, oh, you're so brave, we're so sorry this happened, that didn't happen. Celeste Marcus did not get the response she expected. And she even said that. She said, this was not, what was it? It was not what I expected or wanted to happen. And everything sort of just quieted. Now, I have some theories about why that might be the case. Why do you, why do you think she didn't get the response that she that she clearly says she expected well let me just say just to be sorry i don't lose it and then i answer your question there was one other fact that came out in that article which is very important which was that

she complained she lamented that she had told the story to one of her closest friends and her closest friends that i don't think what you're describing is rape which to me is a tremendous fact because i and i've been in this situation i won't i won't tell the story now but i've been in the situation when you're when you're if you're the boss you're the atlantic and you know that her close closest friend didn't think that she described a rape telling the story in the most favorable way to her own version of it. That ought to tell you, listen, there's just nothing I could know here. Why she didn't get the reaction that she was hoping for was because in some way, by pushing this very righteous issue of women being taken advantage of when they were weak, we've heard one too many stories.

And it's not just me too, Jesse Smollett. We just heard one too many stories that didn't pan out as a society that we are jaundiced now. And then there's just a little bit less feeling that you have to bend to the mob than there used to be. I think the pendulum has swung back just enough that people don't feel they're going to be ruined if they don't hop to it when the marching orders go out that this guy has to be ruined. That's what

i think i think it's a perceptible change in the atmosphere multi-causal i think that's right i also think that we have um our righteous rage it's now seven several steps removed from um from me to being the thing that got us up in the morning. You know, it was, it moved over to George Floyd and then it, and now we're, now that it was abortion and now it's Palestine. So people are not, that's not the thing that they get up in the morning and want to have with their breakfast cereal anymore. So I think. And I don't, I don't want to be, let's just assume it's true.

There is still something or that we believe that's true. There is still something, or we believe it's true, there's still something unacceptable of the notion that somebody can just go to your boss and ask the boss to take this action. Because if you get a lawyer and have a civil suit, the lawyer can subpoena the text messages, the lawyer can bring in people who can say what you said at the time and um you know and and all the weird facts were you drinking this i mean there's just so many things but but there were emails and text message that text messages that flew back and forth in the days after this event which it should be noted she

didn't disclose them you know people generally disclose the the things that will help them and she didn't disclose them and it's just it's an absurd people think that's what they want it would be a terrible country to live in where i could just pick up the phone and say, hey, Nancy's boss. Nancy tried to rape me. Okay. Nancy disappears. Bye, Nancy.

Yeah, bye, Nancy. Years ago, I compared it to the last scene in – you probably don't watch superhero movies in Infinity Wars when Thanos just – and people just started disappearing. Yes, yes. Boop. I said, you're at the Thanksgiving table And grandma, grandma, you too. Everybody who did something wrong is just disappearing off the face of the earth. You know, you just can't live that way. That's it. I think she, I mean, I don't know. Again, let's assume that this did happen. Some version of this did happen. Okay. I don't know if you, there was a show on not too

long ago called American Nightmare. It's a story of horrible, brutal attack. And this couple was attacked. And you see them, it's like real life stuff. And there's real footage of them trying and trying and trying to talk to the cops and remember every single detail down to like, what did it smell like? What did you hear? Like they were whacking their brains for months to get at every fact that they could in order to get this guy caught. And he was eventually caught. Celeste Marcus did not do that. She was elliptical and sort of hazy. I would counter it seemed to me deliberately so.

And maybe she doesn't want to put her story to the test. And that's why she has not given up the emails. But also, she just hasn't gone in that direction at all. I think she expected some go ahead sorry no no and let's stipulate i will stipulate that we understand why somebody would not want to go through the painful ordeal yes of putting the story to the test but then why do you go on Twitter and write this story? You kind of can't have it both ways, Noam.

Also, if she is asking, okay, she is asking us, you, me, anybody else on Twitter, the Untold Billions, to be the jury. That's what she has done. Okay, I will take your offer. I am the jury. I now need you to convince me. And I am in a position right now where I have not been convinced. This does not make her a bad person. This does not mean she shouldn't have a job. But it does mean that she has not made her case

and I think any actions that people took about Yasha Monk. I don't really understand. I got to tell you, I was pretty upset that the Atlantic acted the way they did. I love many of the writers there. Some of them are dear friends. But that's a kind of weird thing. I mean, again, maybe they know something we don't. Maybe this is a straw that broke a camel's back.

No, no, I'm pretty sure they don't. I doubt it too. I'm pretty sure they don't. I would side with that as well, that they did this. Now, let's say you're a contributing editor at The Atlantic, Nom. How do you feel? Do you feel super secure now in your gig? Well, they made up for it because now they've exposed the cowardliness of The New York Times

when it came to the James Bennett and Tom Cotton editorial. I'm only half kidding because they've sort of been criticizing the Times for a version of what they did themselves here. I think they regret what they did. I haven't spoken to Jeffrey Goldberg. I'm reading between the lines on various little things that I get a hold of from people I know or people I know, people who know people who know, you might have some access to. I don't think they think they got this right.

It was hasty. Now, I don't know if he would accept it, but they could always say, Yasha, we're sorry. i have no idea i i've only met yasha once i don't know him like you do i think i wrote for him once uh they could say we're sorry and you know what we're let's try to make this right or and he doesn't have to accept that but it wouldn't be it wouldn't be a terrible place to start he's a very nice person, and I think he would accept it. I was very pessimistic, but now I think he's going to be okay. That's my thinking. And I like to think that the things that you and I did,

writing this stuff and bringing out some of the facts, which seems nobody knew about. These will find themselves on the desk of other decision makers, and they will also take note that the sky did not fall when we said these things. And I think hopefully that will have an influence on how people decide this matter, the other people he works for. That's what I think. I have to commend people to go over to my site called Make More Pie over on Substack

and read Noam's essay. At least 7,500 people have already. It was one of the most popular posts that I've ever had up there in two years. And one of the reasons is because you were willing to talk about it. My podcast partner and I on Smoke Em If You Got Em, we talked about it early, the day after it all happened.

And it got a tremendous amount of traffic because people do want to hear what you're thinking. If you're being calm and methodical about it, we had a great defense attorney on with us to try to give us the legal point of view. He's fantastic. Oh, Scott Greenfield. Oh, he's our house lawyer now.

I love the guy. He's so smart. So smart, so great. So funny. A little intolerant, like in the way that you like it. And I think that people were very afraid to talk about this stuff in a way that was sort of like, let's look at the, let's scan what's going on here and maybe a little nuance and maybe ask some questions. I've never been really afraid to talk about it, though it's gotten me in hot water. And you obviously are not either and I think people are ready now

to listen to it as opposed to being as afraid as they might have been in 2018 or so I mean I've always been afraid to talk about it when the thing with Louis happened people were advising me to speak to professional damage control people

blah blah blah and uh and i did and every one of them told me don't say a word don't speak to anybody let it go this is the thing i i just couldn't live with it i i said and i felt that i could handle it you know this is kind of you know it turned out right it could turn out wrong i i felt that I had, because I had been writing about it six months, just gathering my thoughts about it because I knew it was eventually going to happen. What was I going to tell people?

What was I going to do? Was I going to bring him back, allow him to come back? And I had my thoughts so gathered and I felt the arguments were so unanswerable. I said, fuck it. I'm going to defend the guy. I tried to channel what my father would have wanted me to do. I asked his widow.

She said he would want you to speak up this way. And I did that. And, you know, whatever. And thank God I did because looking back on it, I don't know how I would live with myself. That's right. That's right. When your friends do, I remember, I mean, Yaship doesn't know this, but as soon as this happened, I don't know the guy, I sent him a message just saying, look, you know, there are people out here that are, are not, not gunning against you and, you know, be strong, have courage. You have to do that. And when you do that, not just for your

friends, but even people you don't know. I remember when Felicia Sonmez dragged Dave Weigel through the ringer a couple of years ago because he retweeted a joke. I just, you know, reach out to people and just tell them like, dude, it's okay. Have courage. There are people out here that are not gonna lose it

and go crazy. But yeah, I, you know, Yash, I think, acted very wisely when this happened. He put out one statement and then just didn't say another thing. Because if you feed these things, as you know, they grow and they consume lives and careers. But he just sort of laid back

and did his work and I hope had the support of his friends and we'll go on. I did do one thing I wasn't proud of in retrospect i i actually apologized for it since then i after going through that whole thing about louis an incident happened where mark halpern got fired for for things that he had done i know mark i've met mark and um and this was an interesting case because uh he had done all these things yeah but on his own without anybody without without any pressure of you know of being forced he he went to therapy he got

himself together and on his own he changed his behavior and apologized to the victims as it were of his behavior and he had like put together like 10 years or some some long amount of time where he cleaned up his act and was no longer behaving in a you know to use the word creepy way towards female work people he worked with no rape accusations or anything like that but just you know lecherous stuff and you know i i thought this was a compelling story because he had on his own as most people apologize when they get caught and you know those those apologies are had to be taken you know they're they're like hostage apology yeah but this was a real apology and or a real act of you know changing his ways so at that time with judith regan who was publishing his book um i was gonna have mark on the pie and then i didn't i said listen i just don't want to go through another ordeal with uh to about this mark halperin thing and um i know

again and and that was a small thing. And to this day, I'm like, what the fuck was the matter with me? You know, I'm not proud of that. And it wasn't even to defend him. It was just to have him on the podcast to tell his side of the story. But I was so traumatized with everything I had gone through

that I just don't want to go through another thing now. I get that. But when you also get known for something, like I got known for some of the stuff that got me in the barrel. And then everybody comes to you and it's like, hey, can we do this? Can you do this? Like, you know, I it's like, what color is your parachute? Like, I don't this is not the only thing I want to be doing with my life is talking about like, what happened in your your traumatic me to situation or anti me to situation. So, you know, Yeah. And there was, you're right, there was a subtle difference.

I had that thought. I don't want to be known as the Me Too defender. And also, as opposed to the Louis case and Yasha's case, this wasn't really an issue that brought up principle. There was really principles that mattered to me as an employer, as an American, things to do with due process, how we are all supposed to live in a way which I think is healthy as a country. These things mattered to me. The other story was more of just an incident. It didn't bear on the same things which were the things that I was advocating for. But nevertheless, I can't dress it up.

I chickened out of that one. I've since apologized to him about it. It's something that comes back on me pretty often. That was the only thing. If I hadn't done that, I could really hold my head up high. Yeah, you hold your head up high now. I know, I know. I'm teasing.

You don't mean you don't need to cue the music but i'm just saying i'm just saying that's the one that's the one thing but you know yeah i mean listen as we both know some people are so fucking cowardly i know so many journalists now who are afraid to speak frankly even in a private conversation you know they even just two of you there they won't say what everybody knows is true yeah and all the people that are not afraid to uh all the journalists not afraid to speak up hang out at the olive tree so if you want to and some that are and some that are afraid yeah yeah yeah so all right what any we were at time but what else is the what else you got thanks that's it

thanks for thanks for having me. Yeah, I think so. I am, I am keeping an eye. I mean, Celeste Marcus has kind of just gone to ground. Like it, it, it blipped up and it was a story people talked about it. She's gone. So it is interesting. And I think I might do a little more writing about that, about why we're at that spot in time.

Otherwise, yeah. There's so many layers to it because also she works for Leon Weaseltier, who was accused of Me Too. She wrote how she checked it out and she decided it was okay to work for him. He's motivated to take her side because he's like a beard in some way. Like, you know, like it's in some way exonerates him and shows that he stood up for a real Me Too. So my Me Too, my not. Who the fuck knows?

And let's add one other layer. One of the biggest stories that kind of got him in the barrel weasel tear ran at the atlantic so it's kind of like ah i don't know are people remembering things here we will see there's a rivalry between weasel tear and jeffrey goldberg a legend yeah okay so there's a lot of inside baseball uh layers to this too. All of which is to say, at the end, and this is not just a, I said I wouldn't do any disclaimers, but I will do this one. We don't really know what happened in anybody's life, and to the extent that something happened to her, I don't think so, but to the extent that something happened to her that was awful. Nobody would minimize that, and she should do whatever she should do to pursue that.

But this is America, and you can't short-circuit every procedure. We just can't allow that. One of the things I asked Scott Greenfield, the defense attorney, when he was on Smoke Him If You Got Him, the podcast, I said, what does she do now? What are her options? He's like, well, she can press a civil suit if she wants to. But what options does she have now? Does she want to get him fired from every job he could ever conceivably have?

I don't know. I wonder if we've seen the last of her. She said she wants to see some part of his life ruined. I think she got what she wanted. By the way, I don't like her writing. Oh, no. She's insightful, but it's too ornate. It's too much.

But I will say this. Have you looked at her painting? Yeah. Her paintings? Yes, I did. Oh, you didn't like it? I think she is a gifted artist. Oh, great. Yeah, they weren't to my taste I think she's a gifted artist. Oh, great.

Yeah, they weren't to my taste, but she paints a lot. That's for sure. She's got an Instagram. You can see a ton, a ton of paintings. Yeah. I really think she's very good. Her use of color. And I find her paintings interesting.

And she does them quickly. I mean, this is, you know, she's, so anyway. All right. And I'm sorry. All right, Nancy, this was fantastic. Thank you, Noam. Thanks for having me. You are brave.

Everybody listen to your, you women out there, listen to Nancy's podcast because I can tell you from my wife, this is on your wavelength. It speaks to the heart, the gut of women. Like barstool for women. Barstool women. That's the women we are. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's on your wavelength. It speaks to the heart, the gut of women. Like barstool for women. Barstool women. That's the women we are. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's on Substack.

It's called Smoke Em If You Got Em, and I write over at Make More Pie also on Substack. And I have a feeling the next time I see you, we'll be at the Olive Tree again. Okay. Bye, everybody. Thank you. I'm going to press stop, and you just wait until it says, you know.