The Daily Show: Ears Edition - This Week's Interviews | Gov. Spencer Cox, Jia Tolentino, Andrew Garfield

Episode Date: September 13, 2026

Check out all of this week's great guests. Republican Governor Spencer Cox joins Jon Stewart to discuss his new book, “Off Ramp: How to Be a Peacemaker in an Age of Contempt,” and reveals how the assassination of Charlie Kirk in his home state of Utah pushed him to finish writing it. Gov. Cox believes genuine, good-faith debate is the only way out of America’s polarization crisis and explains how Utah’s handling of religious freedom and LGBTQ+ rights shows that opposing sides can find common ground. Jon debates the governor over whether the solution to America’s polarization starts with individuals talking to each other or with the system itself changing first. Michael Kosta sits down with best-selling author and New Yorker staff writer Jia Tolentino to chat about her latest piece, "Our Plastic-Surgery Nightmare.” The two discuss “Instagram face,” a term Tolentino coined in 2019, and how social media algorithms, AI, and big tech are tainting our perception of beauty. Tony Award-winning and Oscar-nominated actor Andrew Garfield sits down with Michael Kosta to discuss his new film, “The Uprising.” They talk about how the peasant uprising of 1381 serves as a “long-distance mirror” to the political landscape of today, how acting serves as an empathy machine even when playing characters like Sam Altman, and what young men can learn from Carlos Alcaraz’s elegant U.S. Open loss. -- The Daily Show airs weeknights at 11/10c on Comedy Central. Stream full episodes on Paramount+ Follow TDS: YouTube, TikTok, Instagram, Twitter, Facebook Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Learn more at Bloomberg.com. You're listening to Comedy Central. An author of Off-Ramp, How to Be a Peacemaker in an Age of Contempt. Please welcome to the program, Republican Governor Spencer Cops. Sir! It's great to be here. Thanks for having. Off-ramp, how to be a peacemaker in an age of contempt. Talk about what is the purpose.

I'll use a trick from your book on you at the very start. You seem very passionate about this. Can you tell me why you feel so strongly? That's from page 238. It's in there. Yeah, no, thank you. A strategy. It is a strategy. A year ago, something terrible happened in my state.

Now, I've been writing about contempt, studying about contempt, and- I've been practicing it. You're very good at it. Thank you. Polarization in our country and our inability to accomplish anything. Yes. And when Charlie Kirk was assassinated in Utah, I felt compelled to finish the work and to write this book, I care deeply about our

our nation. I think we can solve problems without shooting each other. And I would prefer that. So that's why. But we have, you know, a pretty good history in this country of shooting each other. Fair. Pre-social media, we used to shoot people quite frequently. What is different about this time in your mind that makes the rhetoric, you know, it sort of reminds me, sticks and stones will break my bones, but names, that's the real issue. Like, what do you mean? Well, look, I don't know that this is a new problem.

Yes. And we do have this recency bias where we think everything's the best or everything's the worst. I mean, literally 600,000 Americans killed each other in the 1860s. Don't tell me how it ends. All right. You'll get there.

The 1960s, the 1970s, the 1970s, political assassinations were fairly common. So I'm not here to tell people that it's work, than then, but I am here to tell people that we're headed in that direction again, and I don't think that's good for us or for our country. Now, the tools are different, the divisive tools, social media, the algorithms, our ability to surround ourselves with only people that are just like us, only hear what we want to hear, that confirmation bias, that's fairly new.

The atomization of facts, the, you know, we used to have three stations where you could, you could kind of hear what was happening in the country. So all of that is very different. We are lonelier than we've ever been as a country. I think that's very dangerous. I think young men especially, the gamification of society, the lack of real contact is bad for them. And the results we're starting to see. It's not great. So let me ask. Is the idea that by using different tools, to disagree, we can begin to solve those problems, or are those problems the result of those things?

Like, in other words, would you like to see that done to alleviate the loneliness, or are there measures that need to be taken that we are not taking? So what we're seeing in this country right now is this toxic divisiveness. And we're seeing at the national level, and that's what I know you want to talk about, That's what you just talked about for sure.

What I'm even more concerned about is what's happening at the individual level. Right. So four times as many people have lost a friend or a family member to politics. We've replaced healthy tribes in our country, volunteer organizations, faith-based organizations, with politics. Politics has become a religion for a lot of people, and those are very unhealthy tribes. And so my concern with that is as we continue to lose that, as you drive to Taco Bell and don't talk to a real person now, you're talking to artificial intelligence. Yes. That is, that's going to continue to lead us to this very dark place.

And we can't solve any of our greatest problems if we can't have a debate. If we can't talk to each other, if I, if you're beneath me and I'm not willing to engage with you, then we can't solve that. So my point is that I don't pretend like I'm going to solve all of the nation's problems. Yes. But if I can get you to talk to a cousin or a friend that you don't talk to anymore, that's eventually how we heal our nation. The crowd feels out very strongly. Let me make an argument for contempt. The reverse.

Fair. I have found in my experience that you have to be able to discern things that are contemptible. There are things that are contemptible. How do you reckon that we address that? Is the idea that we just acquiesce to the contemptible? I'll make it specific. Tell me more about why you feel this one. Senator Mike Lee, he's a Utah guy.

I dealt with him trying to get the 9-11s of Droga Bill passed, which was funding for first responders and survivors of 9-11 who lived down at Ground Zero, who were getting sick. I'm very familiar. Yeah. We had a meeting with him with firefighters, police officers, and all that. And he was, I'm going to go with not good, and then was one of only two senators to vote that down.

And then when the tragedy happened in Minnesota and those people were killed, and he tweeted out, A Nightmare on Waltz Street. How do I, first of all, when I spoke to Congress, I treated them with disdain because that's what they'd earned. And that disdain helped the power disparity between them. Isn't that a tool sometimes for the week to be able to deal with those, if you can't call something truly contemptible and treat it as such and have society agree to that, why would we have to acquiesce to that? That's all. I'm curious.

Truly. And I mean that this, I think, is a good conversation to have about it. It's an important conversation to have it. And look, I'm not telling you. that you should not find things contemptible. I find lots of things contemptible, and you've given some examples of that. That tweet was contemptible.

We should all stand up and say, that's not okay. We don't support that. And yet, you met with him, even though you knew he wasn't supportive. I didn't know at the time. No, I knew he wasn't supportive, but I didn't know he was that.

Which is fair. But you had the meeting, and that's the point I'm trying make. Look, there is nothing that I'm, no argument I'm making here. Yeah, yeah. That we, that we should compromise on our principles, that we have to give up on the things, our core beliefs. I'm not talking about just being nice to each other. That's not what this is about. This is about sitting here and having this debate face to face. You're telling me how you feel. I'm going to tell you how I feel. And at the end of the day, we might find some

areas where we can agree. And we might not. And you might think I'm a terrible human being. And I might leave here thinking that that was a waste of time. My mom was right. I shouldn't have come on the show. Did you mom say that? No, no, no. Can I tell you what's so weird? Can I tell you something? Your mom said I shouldn't come on the show?

No, my mom says I shouldn't be on the show. She doesn't like me. For the record, my mom likes you. Understood. No, it was not that. But that's not what this is about. Yeah. It turns out that people that learned how to debate in high school and college are less polarized

than the rest of the country. having actual debate is something we don't do anymore. I think we actually need more disagreement. I think we need more of this instead of the, I'm not going to engage with you because you're beneath me. I think you're evil. I just think there's nothing more un-American than hating our fellow Americans. I just think that that is in some ways a caricature of how Americans relate to each other,

one that is displayed on. I find it more in state houses than I do in actual houses. I find that before we can all learn to be peacemakers with each other, the system is not incentivized for that. On that, we agree. Aren't we placing the onus of this on individuals? When in some respects, this is a natural product of the incentive system. that's in place in our government and in our ecosystem.

Absolutely. So the hardest part about doing this and practicing it is that the incentives are completely misaligned. As a politician, the algorithms reward me saying outlandish things, tearing down my opponents, much more likely to get elected, at least historically, over the past 20 years. That's certainly been the case. We had Stanford study this. their depolarization lab. We did...

Elitist communists. Sometimes. Yes. We actually put a Republican and a Democratic governor together. They filmed ads together. We got 24 of them to do it where they said, hey, we disagree on lots of things but we can disagree without hating each other. We both

care about our country. We want to work together on some things. They studied this in their lab. They did an experiment. Thousands of people watched these videos. We looked at their responses. It turns out that there is another way to get elected in this country. 70% of Americans hate how divided we are right now. They're desperate for something else.

There's a market failure. The incentives are misaligned. Neither party is responding to that market failure right now. And I'm just convinced that the first party who does is going to do very, very well. I hope it's my party, but that remains to be seen. Yeah, I don't think that's going to be. Fair. That doesn't seem to be the lesson they're learning from the last 10 years.

What's worked? Tell me where this has been successful and where you have found its limitations. So it's successful when you can try to take what appears to be a zero-sum game and turn it into a win-win situation. Okay. Which happens on occasion in politics. Talk to me. Okay. Real examples of this happening in the state of Utah. We're working on the Great Salt Lake right now. Environmental disaster, the Great Salt Lake is drying up. No country on Earth has been able to preserve a great sailing lake once they enter terminal decline. The environmental left, of course, was all over this. Like, hey, yeah, we got to save the lake. No surprise there. How do conservatives come along and work on this in a state where we have a super majority of Republicans in the state house? Okay. And so this is an area where we figured out. Is that reflective of your

population as well? Yes. Okay, because in a lot of states, like Massachusetts, super majority of Democrats, but not a lot of states have supermajorities that are not necessarily reflective because of gerrymandering. Again, talking about the incentive structures. Correct. Yeah, yeah. And that's one of the incentive structures. I agree is a problem in our country. So, so, you know, how do we figure how to work on this? And we need some help nationally. So I've got to figure out how to work with Joe Biden on this problem. And then I have to figure out how to work with- Is he anti-saving the lake? So this will, this will challenge your prior to a little bit. So I'm in the beast with President Biden.

is his car. His car. This is the limousine, right? The presidential limousine. He's in Salt Lake. My wife and I are there. We're having a wonderful conversation with him. I bring up the lake. He says, sure, yeah, we'd love to help and we, nothing really happened after that. I mean, so he wasn't opposed to it. What? From the government? Wait, what? You said they would do something and then nothing happened? Shocking, I know. Sir, at long last. A year and a half later, I'm in the Oval Office. I'm talking to President Trump, and I bring up the Great Salt Lake. We have a conversation about it. He says, okay, what do you need?

And I said a billion dollars. And he said, great, let's work on getting you a billion dollars. And the next day I get a call from this. And what are you going to have to name the lake? What do you believe will be? So the Republican governor of Utah was able, through this peacemaking, to get the Republican president to get him, water? Again, it's really, really important for our state. This is a big deal.

Completely understand that. I'm with you. And $30 is not a terrible price to pay to preserve that. And what I will say, one of the, one of the most stringent environmentalists, anti-Trump people I know who's working on this project, had a red hat made that said, make the Great Salt Lake great again and tweeted out how briefly was for the president's help on that issue. And I told the president, we'd name it whatever. he wants if he helps to save the lake. So in your mind you were able to what was it about what did you change to make that happen other than in the course of convincing the president why this was a good idea or not? What did you feel that was a cultural hot button somehow?

Sure. Yeah. I was very worried that Republicans would just see this as kind of a climate change you know, leftist idea. Oh. I don't even think about it. Yeah, and that's where, if, you know, if the environmental community supports it, then we're opposed to it, right? And this was us trying to bring those two together to work on this issue, not just there, but in the

state houses where, well, where we now have bipartisan support. Give me a more hot, button. Give me another Utah. Okay. Several years ago, LGBTQ protection and rights. No, no... Getting warmer. Okay. Okay. No

Red State had taken this on. This was, so think kind of 2014, 2015. You were one of the only Red State governors who made a Pride month. Is that correct? That's correct. So I was lieutenant governor at this time. But the Indiana's blowing up over this issue, religious freedom, RFRA laws. You saw the same thing in Arkansas.

This was people saying, I don't want to bake a cake for like a gay wedding. Correct. Yes, yes. Yes, yes. This was, you have to bake a cake if. regardless of your religious beliefs. We brought in the LGBTQ leadership in the state. We brought in the religious leadership in the state,

the predominant church, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, but others, the Catholic Church, the Jewish faith, the Muslims, all around the table. And for... Muslims? Weeks, yes. Utah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Okay. They're there. So we... I can tell this better. a while since you've been to you. I haven't been there in a while. I went through that and I was like, can a brother get a cup of coffee? I understand. And then I was it. I was done. Yeah. I found a Starbucks. I'm sure it's all different. I'm sure there's one there now.

Yeah. I'm an old man. Yeah. I saw the beard. So, but honestly, I might need a hit from that marker. Understood. I understand. So look, we, so we brought them all together. And I have to, it was, it was rough. I mean, there were times where people walked out of the room. There were, you know, they felt contempt. for each other at times. Right. And yet... What were you attempting to do?

Were you attempting a legislative solution? What is it that you were looking to craft? Well, we did craft it, and this is what came out. Okay. So two things that were really important. So one was protections for LGBTQ people in our state, citizens in our state, in employment and housing. So, you know, you don't get kicked out of your apartment because you're gay. And I mean, these did not exist in our state.

That was not a protected class at the time. We were the first red state in the nation to do that. And we added protections for people of faith. So you don't have to bake the cake if you don't want to. But you also don't get to fire people from their jobs or kick people out of their apartments. That was the apartment. But you can understand how. Look, I mean, we're sitting there on the night this is signed.

And I mean, maybe now it doesn't resonate because it was several years ago. But this was groundbreaking. I mean, at the time, and I have religious leaders and the LGBTQ community like hugging and tears in the rotunda of the Capitol. And it's a great example of bringing people together. I think that's it's certainly an admirable effort. It's hard for me not to look at it as there's a vulnerable, there's a power disparity in that equation. and that the gay community in Utah is not equivalent to the Christian community in Utah. And so the difficulty I have in that, just being honest, is that you're asking a community of people whose humanity has not been recognized as total to accept that they will be, you will still be viewed.

We can't fire you, but we will still view you as aberrant. and we will enshrine that in the law. Because it does, if you flip that and you say to somebody, I will not bake a cake because you believe in Jesus for your wedding, I think you can see that that would, that's a contemptuous position. And so asking a group that is traditionally less righted to accept a bargain for their humanity, still strikes me fundamentally as, I don't want to say contemptible,

but boy, there's some synonyms that are hard for me to, it's a hard one to swallow as a victory. Does that resonate in any way? I mean, it resonates, but I don't think that that was how it was viewed. And again, you can talk to them. I'll let them have that conversation with you. I'm not going to end up. I do one show a week, man.

I spend my whole August reading this thing. What I will say is those protections went both ways. And it's not about contempt. It's about religious freedom, which is really important to people. You wouldn't have to bake a cake for a Christian if you didn't want to. That is also included in the law. We're not going to force you to do that piece. And yet, at the time, again, this was incredibly rare.

It had never happened. Those types of protections in a red state. And it didn't have to happen. That's the point. But even then, so even now, though, and I so appreciate the effort, but you no longer have Pride Month in Utah. You've changed it to Fidelity Month. Why?

Well, do you want to know the real story? No. Lie to me! Yeah, I really do. Yeah, no. Okay, so the Pride Month thing, again, got very contentious, and the decision was made a couple years ago. Look, celebrate Pride Month. That's great. Government will stay out of it. You celebrate whatever months you want. Do you not acknowledge any months there anymore? Well, there are some months we don't acknowledge that. Again, understanding the question of the power disparity, again, it's a, hey, man, people got upset about it. It wasn't, was it mandatory?

Did everyone in Utah have to wear a unitar and wave a flag? No, they did not. They did not. No, they did not. What I will say is the Fidelity Month piece of that, that was not intentional. That was something that came out in April. We said, that's great.

And we didn't know it was coming out in June. And that, so, it was, Fidelity Month is not replacing Pride Month. For Fidelity Month, although that's how it looked, and I understand why it looked very bad. Does Utah have a fidelity issue that they would have to? Seems like every month is Fidelity Month. You would hope so. I would think.

Yeah, yeah. Certainly more than Jersey and New York. I've been here for a couple days. It's fun. It's something. Yeah, man. Yeah, it is different than Utah. You know what?

We are going to change that to our new tourist slogan. New York. It's something. I appreciate you. Thank you. And I appreciate you having these conversations in good faith and good spirit. And that is, I will say this, we need more good faith argumentation. And that includes being able to discern the contemptible and to discern when things are being weaponized in the opposite direction.

And I do appreciate it. And I urge people to read it because it is an interesting read and it's a fascinating look. And I really do appreciate you. Spencer Cox, the governor of Utah. I need it. Where some see heroes and others see egos. Bloomberg sees the era of billion. Air athletes.

A fad to some, the future of money to others. We see crypto's trillion dollar swings, the end of jobs, or the end of human struggle. We see the endless funds fueling the AI hype. While others follow the noise, we follow the money. Learn more at Bloomberg.com. whose latest piece is called our plastic surgery nightmare. Please welcome Gia Tolentino. Thank you for having me.

Thank you for writing a... You can pass me a pen. You'd like a pen? Yeah, there we go. Thank you for writing a New Yorker article that didn't take me six months to read. Oh, you're so welcome. Appreciate that.

Let's start it with your 2019 New Yorker article, which coined the phrase Instagram Face. And then we'll get into your latest piece. What is Instagram Face? So I think it was about a decade ago where probably I was not alone in noticing that kind of all of the most visible women on the internet had started to morph into the same face. This kind of singular thing was emerging. It was a face that it intrigued me because it was a face that seemed to have been kind of contoured by the algorithm. It was dictated.

It was a face that people would click on and like. And people were kind of getting it slowly en masse. And as such, I mean, and so I wrote about it because it, it seemed then like the most visible fulcrum of this larger thing that was happening in which the corporate incentives of trillion-dollar social media companies were kind of beginning to seem to many people like deeply personal desires.

And all of this, you know, it was just written on the face in a way that was interesting. Well, this piece, the latest piece, you call our plastic surgery nightmare, but it really focuses on the face. what is it about the face? I'm looking at your face right now. You're looking at my face.

If you have a face, listen to this answer. Why is that the focal point? So historically, as far back, you know, as ancient times, right? I mean, the face, we love looking at faces. We love looking each other's faces. You know, we're New Yorkers. We like to sit on the train and stare at each other. The face, you can gather an enormous amount of human information about someone,

their temperament, their life, their selfhood, it's their soul. You know, the faces, the portal through which all of this information is given to us and that when we love looking at each other and reading each other's faces. And in the last few years, it has started to feel to me more that the face is being kind of denuded of human information and is serving on social media especially, like through our phones, more as a kind of a disciplinary guide and kind of as consumer manual.

We are, you know, and also, I mean, people's faces, they're beginning to look kind of nuts. Yes. You know? People's faces are looking nuts. Look, you obviously stare at people's faces on the subway. I stare at their calves. For jet tattoos?

You just don't get as much information from someone's calf, but what's strange about what you're saying, the face is this portal to our soul, to our experience. to our adventures, to our loves, yet what everyone's doing to them now is they're eliminating all that stuff. Yeah, and the thing, you know,

the thing that is interesting to me is that these faces are ostensibly becoming more beautiful, right? All of these, the face, the version of Instagram face that's emerging, you know, I mean, people are also, things have escalated, right? People are fully getting kind of head transplants, you could say. People are just ages are being invented

that have never been invented before. Like these wild things are happening. But what's striking to me is that, you know, when I say the face that people have now, like we can all probably picture that face, right? It's not, it's a face that the algorithm, that Instagram, that TikTok, that social media has deemed beautiful, insofar it is extremely profitable. But it is not a face that humans take pleasure in. I mean, it's laughable sometimes when you see the face.

Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, that kind of pleasure. kind of fleck. Yeah. But what has changed in plastic surgery that's made this more? Is it more approachable for everyone to change their face? Or is it just that we are seeing so many more images than we used to? I used to go to the grocery store with my mom when I was a kid, and I would see three magazines, right?

And you would see the women on the magazine. And that was kind of it. But now a kid is seeing thousands of images. Has plastic surgery become more approachable to everybody, too? Well, 10 years ago, when people were starting to Instagram face, it was still kind of a coastal elite and celebrity thing, the sort of injections that would make everyone look like a hybrid of Kim Kardashian, Emily Radikowski, Bella, Hadee, Kendall, Jenner, you know, this singular for me of Michael Costa, yeah. That wasn't a joke. Why is everybody laughing at that? And now, it's, it's, it is, it's democratically available. You can clarn a your injections, you know, like it's, it's quite democratically available. But the, but it's part of this larger thing where we were saying, like, what has happened with phones and the sort of larger regime of surveillance and broadcasting that, again, is this enormous profit center for tech companies that hate us, you know.

Right. They put ordinary people in the position of what only celebrities used to be before, where the face and the body are a potential source of profit and that they could be looked at at any time, recorded at any time, broadcast, and that the better they look, the more money they would make you. This is, we used to kind of formally recognize this is a demented way of living. And now it is kind of the universal one for anyone with a phone and an instinct to self-broadcast, which is most young people and many of us, maybe. Right.

People are being more transparent about saying, this is what I had done. I mean, you'd write you about this in the article, tweeting out, this is what I had injected. I shuddered at that. But is this transparency better for us? us? What's your thought on that? I wrote this in the piece, but I

think of, you know, it's a bit of a recursive, circular whirlpoolish nightmare where it's like, you know, oh, it's good that people are disclosing so that we will know what they do so that it can be more approachable for us to do too. And then on and on and on. I'm sort of like, it reminds me a little bit of kind of a land acknowledgement. It's, when a celebrity

acknowledges plastic surgery, it's like acknowledging the unjust system that you are about to perpetuate just a little bit more. Right. Right. And this isn't just women. Yes. So feminism has won. Men are now obsessed with beauty and looks.

Talk a little bit about looks maxing. Truly, this was something I did not know about, believe it or not. How is this infiltrated male culture? When I was in my 20s and I was working for all the feminist media that no longer exists, it seemed to me. It seemed to me that... Take that, man. Who really won now? But it seemed to me that

there was this broader impulse to designate everyone as beautiful as if it was politically important. And I remember at the time in my 20s having this feeling inside me, it's like, no, no, no, no, no. It should matter less. Like, actually, it's de-escalation

that would be, that would free us. It would be... And so what we have now is not that, you know, the previous... decade of more mainstream feminism freed women from beauty work, you know, de-escalated the situation. It merely escalated for men. So now everyone is living in the nightmare. That has existed for women since, you know, like mass commercial beauty industry.

What you write about is these men, one of them hitting his jaw with a hammer. Let's not say his name. Yes. But what's sad about it to me was you used to care about your looks so you could try to have sex. That was the whole thing. That was the whole thing. Maybe I'll work out so I can get laid. But now it's, maybe I'll deform my face so I'll get more likes. So I can get more Twitch stream followers, whatever you call it on Twitch.

Yes, it's strange to think, it's strange to be looking back. Those men out there, sex feels good. I mean, it is so strange to be having this discussion in 2026 and thinking like, What happens to just want, like, these are not pure, these are not noble impulses, right? There's like me wanting to look at a beautiful person because it's not, because it feels good, because it brings me pleasure. You know, us wanting to become more attractive so that we can have more interesting sex with a more interesting person. Like, it's wild that that now feels kind of, it feels quaint and beautiful. Yeah.

Because, yeah, because that's the thing, this, the regime of the, of the looks maxers, which grew out of a reaction. right-wing, men's rights in-cell kind of conglomeration that rose on the internet last decade. It is, it's kind of, it configures beauty as something you do to display dominance. Sex is something that maybe can be acquired as a commodity, but it's the way they speak about it is not pleasure. It's not human pleasure.

Like the whole concept of human pleasure that our bodies and our faces and each other's bodies and faces bring us just as people existing in the world, It's absent entirely from the new regime of this kind of the only one that is, the only entity that is loving it is the phone. Is the phone. Well, that's where this all either started or leads to. I mean, caring about beauty and looks didn't start with the cell phone.

Certainly not. But it's hard to not read your work and not get more and more angry at the phone or tech. And I wonder how we arm ourselves. to be better or to deal with that in a more optimistic way? I think, you know, there's a way that this is manifesting really specifically with AI, right? If you ask the consequences of all of the most visible women on the Internet having the same face has become really obvious where if you ask an image generator to show me a normal woman, they will show you, oh, white, thin, conventionally beautiful young woman with Instagram face, right?

Right. AI, through that framework, through that, you know, through that structure of seeing, if you are not optimized and beautiful, you are scarcely human and you scarcely exist. Right. And I think that that's f*** up. It's f*** up. And I think what we can do is we can, we can strive at the very least. I mean, we both have children.

And we, and I think about this with them. It's like I, you know, they're going to get lost in the sauce. We all get lost in the sauce. But one of my few real hopes for them is that they retain the ability to look at the world and other people, including themselves in it, and see them the way that a human would see them,

and not the way that a phone would. And something as simple as that, kind of excising the phone vision within ourselves, seems worthwhile and fun. Yeah, I mean, let's try to live. The phone is an amazing. amazing tool. I mean, you can order a car, you can order food, you can transfer money. You can, I mean, how do you even parent without a phone now? Like, my school is sending me updates.

The WhatsApp group is already annoying. I didn't see that. I'm staying off my phone. Yeah, exactly. But it's really scary, and I think it's really helpful. I know I've called your work scary a few times. That's meant to be a compliment because it should be waking us up to potentially what we are dealing with. I want to talk about Mar-a-Lago face for a second. because... It's so beautiful. They're all looking like the same robot. Yeah.

Like, it's strangely, it's strange that our president of the United States lives in this place and all the women are having this robotic face and I can't help but think about... Not just the women, Matt Gett. Not just the women, yes, sorry. Don't leave him out. Don't leave him out. Don't leave him out. But it also has this relationship with tech, like the humans are becoming the robots.

Mm-hmm. I just wanted to say that. Well, I... I enjoy. Mar-Lago Face, because I do take an enormous amount of human pleasure in it because it is quite funny to me. Yes. It's, you know, it's an amazing exemplar of gender-affirming care in an administration that is opposed to it. Love that.

And we love, you know, we love to see them support gender-firming care. And it's also, you know, Mar-Lago-Face, it's almost, it almost feels quaint to me now because these days, you know, people can get six-hour facelifts and come out looking exactly like they did 35 years ago. So Marlaugof face is just so profoundly artificial looking that it's like, oh, this is actually beautiful. You're showing the work, you know? At this point, I appreciate that. And it kind of bears the same relationship

as I wrote to, you know, the Mar-a-Lago face bears the same relationship to reality that the administration does in general. And so it's all very fitting and coherent. Lastly, are we so far in that it's impossible or can we change our beauty standards to appreciate more human flaws, wrinkles, scars, receding hair lines?

You know, you watch a movie from the 1940s, all the men, it is receding hair lines. They almost look more handsome now to me. And I'm just, maybe I'm saying that because it's going. But can we change some things? I think that following the sort of axis of pleasure, just our deep, human physical instincts for pleasure as viewers,

but also as producers, will get us really far. You know, I think we all watch movies from the olden days, such as the early 2000s. And we see beautiful people with beautiful faces that are just actual faces, and we feel that it feels better than watching a lot of faces now. And I think we can follow, like, that's the way Yeah. People don't like what's happening to faces.

You can, like, if you say to anyone, like, isn't, it's kind of nuts what's happening in people's faces. Everyone knows exactly what you're talking about instantly. We want, I think, we have to remind ourselves as the entire AI sort of regime wants to dictate that whatever is human is inferior for being imperfect. I think we just have to remember that for a very, very long time, we believed that actually it's our imperfections that make a. interesting and human and worthwhile. And we know that about our friends. We know that of our partners. We know that of our children.

Yes. And I think we can know that about strangers and people we see through our phones, too, I hope. I hope anyone under the age of 21 is hearing this saying, our imperfections, that is what makes you interesting and special in someone that you want to be and hang around. That's my opinion.

Yeah. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you. You're able to read at the New Yorker.com, Gia Tolentino. An Oscar nominated actor who stars in the new film The Uprising. Please welcome, Angie. This is nice to be here with everybody.

How we doing? Hell, I hate to tell them that that is the whole movie. You almost didn't even get here. You had a plane situation. What happened? We were downed in... That sounds much more dramatic than it was. You're okay.

There was no like shots fired or anything like that. There was like a smell of smoke. on the aircraft, and we were brought down in Albuquerque, New Mexico, which I would highly recommend to have... So you had to spend some time there? A whole day in Albuquerque... Okay. Airport.

Not the whole day. It was... We realized, you know, with these things, you get told one thing, and then they apologize and say it's actually going to be 18 hours later than what was going to happen, as we've all experienced. It's kind of like the king in this movie. Thank you for bringing you back to...

You're welcome. What we're talking about. So you're in Albuquerque. Yeah, and it was, you know, have you ever had, like, a huge delay where you feel so bonded to the people that you're, like, you're all Tom Hanks in the terminal kind of thing? And you're all just, like, getting to know each other in a deeper way than you even know your own family.

Wow. There was something really sweet and kind of bonding, like, instant, strange community of suffering in Albuquerque Airport. But to the point where we, I was traveling with someone I work with and we had enough time to go bowling. We had enough time to leave through security and do like four games of like four rounds of bowling. Where we were like betting, because she actually started beating me

and I was like, you know, she's my assistant, Isabel, really, really sweet, wonderful person. And I was like, if you beat me, I will pay out. But if I beat you and I, she owes me like $120. I was gonna say, I would think an assistant should be losing. Just like, on purpose losing. I don't go bowling with my assistant, but I don't have an assistant.

How's your bowling game? Solid? You know, I was, I ranged between a 90 and a 120. Yeah. It's like very, very in the middle. My high is a 111, which is kind of embarrassing. But anyways, let's talk about this film, which I don't even think bullying had been invented yet. When this film took place in the late 1300s.

Yeah, these guys didn't have much time, leisure time. Yeah. They were being taxed. Yeah, so it's set during the Peasants' Uprising, which was a true historical event. In 1881, in the UK, it was the first major kind of popular uprising. And it was a time where there was a small group of oligarchs

who were hoarding all of the wealth and all of the resources. 1381, 1381 in a country, don't worry, this could never happen here. And a kind of general population whose souls were being squeezed to the point where they were felt like they were being treated like animals, like Vermean, like completely worthless,

like stripped of dignity to the point where, as you saw in that clip, it was, you know, the person I play is representative of thousands upon thousands of people who, it's post the plague, so 50% of Europe have been wiped out by an epidemic. Again, 30, anyone, we're safe, guys. Everything's fine. The peasants can't afford the newest iPhone. How familiar were you with the story ahead of time? We learned about it in school in England. We kind of learn about it through the perspective of the people who,

kind of right history, which are not the common folk, which are the kind of the oligarchs who say, weren't we great and how we raped and pillaged everyone? So it was a really incredible story to be told through, yeah, ordinary people who kind of banned together to kind of fight for very, very basic human rights. And it's a really powerful, it does feel like a very, very powerful film for now. It's excellent. It's very powerful. I couldn't take my eyes off the screen.

It definitely resonates today, you know, which is interesting. Scary, really kind of frightening that it resonates so deep. When I read it, I felt like, I think it's very hard right now. I'm sure you feel the same way. How do we keep up with the uncertainty and the forever-changing nature of our world? And how do we as creative people, artists, kind of speak to the current issues that we're facing? And when I read this, it felt like a bit of a cry of the soul. It felt like, oh, this feels like the closest thing I've read to feeling like it's a very long, long distance mirror of where we are now and how out of joint the world is and how difficult it is to say how out of joint it is.

And then what do we do about it? I wake up every morning and I'm like, has anyone been held accountable for corruption or abuse of power? No, day 1,569 of that not happening. I guess that's just normal now. The little bit of corruption that accrues over time or a lot of corruption is just kind of weirdly accept. I feel like I'm going mad. I feel like we're all going mad.

It's true. It's true. I never know if I should feel comforted that history has done this before. Or if I should just be more angry that we keep doing it. Should we do both? Should we do both of those things? I feel like anger... I feel like anger right now is...

kind of one of the only, like, heartbreak and anger is the only, like, logical response that we can have. And I do feel reassured and hopeful because it's a cycle. Like, the idea that the world, I don't think that, you know, AI robots are going to kill us, maybe some of us, but like, not all of us, you know, if we can get on the submarine with Zuckerberg, we'll be fine. But, like, no, no, but I do feel like there's this kind of, yeah, you look throughout history is it's a cycle. And we do seem like we're living through an interesting part of the cycle where the world has no center. Everything

is falling apart. So it does require individuals, namely us, to find our own centers in the middle of a centerless world and bring that center to the center of the culture and start planting seeds for the new world that will be built when this

shit show is over. And historically, that is how each one of these things changes was people become aware they understand the past and then they plant these new seeds yeah this character the plowman is very empathetic i mean he's yeah try and do the right thing he's he's he's dealing with grief and sadness but you also just finished playing sam altman yep in a new film where the audience were yeah i'm sorry whiz oh was i liked him in the beginning of this interview Most of your characters have this empathetic character

that I love and respond to. It makes me think you must be a good person deep time. I don't really know you. But what was it like playing Sam Allman? He doesn't feel like that type of character. Hey, man. Hey, man.

Listen, man. We're all in need of some soul work. We're all in need of community. We're all in need of healing. We're all wounded. And we're all like all of us in unconscious ways probably enacting that woundedness on other people that we are not aware of,

and I don't think any of us are any exceptions. And that's why I think I love being an actor is because it is an empathy machine. You get to try and close the gap between you and anyone in the human race, and I find that very, very interesting. But yeah, I mean, two, you know, if we're looking at the plowman

and we're looking at Sam Alton, we're looking at kind of one of the most powerful people in our current culture. maybe top 10, like, winning at the game of capitalism versus someone who's arguably losing at that particular game. But then if you see our movie, you might be surprised about who is most free. There's something about where the plowman gets to that he sheds any kind of imprisonment to a world that is not for him. for his soul, is not for any decency in his life.

And I would argue that our culture is kind of not serving anybody right now, but particularly the people on top. I feel like there's a terror. Why do we need to hoard so much? There's a fear in that. You're right. And it seems like,

why are they so miserable? Right. Yeah. They've won. They've got it all. So it's like they should be happy. There's a great scene in Uprising. when your character comes into the castle or the kingdom and just picks up the pen, the feathered pen, and it's almost like he's astonished at the wealth

that is just in the rooms. And it was very powerful. And, you know, your characters, it feels like you take them with you as a person. That can be exhausting, no? I mean, I also think of the social network when you played another tech movie. Yeah.

What have you learned from tech by being in these films, if anything? I realize films aren't real life. No, well, yeah, yes and no, I suppose. I mean, I'm just very healthily afraid. I did the social network and I immediately got off of Facebook when I started shooting that. Oh, interesting. And I did this film artificial about. open AI and I immediately you know deleted my chat GPT and I and I don't really

under I don't really know why I think I think it feels it feels like a kind of it's a race to the bottom and I and I and I think that there could be alignment there could be if if there was actual kind of communication and a kind of integrative kind of process that had integrity that the people who are running these companies valued human life more than the bottom line of their, of their companies, kind of shareholders, stock value, then we would have a chance. But it does seem like we're in the part of history when the leaders care about the bottom line more than they do about any human, any human life, maybe outside of their own immediate circle. Okay, fine, but did you see

Apple's new folding phone? It looks sick. It looks sick. We can consume content. I on a left screen and on a right screen. Let's talk about outside of acting. You're working so much. Work, work, work, work, work, work, work, work. But how do you cleanse the soul? How do you feed your soul? What is it that you do?

Yeah, what do we do? What do we do? No, but for real. Yeah. I'm just, you know. What are you reading these days? I'm going bowling with my sister. Yeah, that's awesome.

No, no, I, yeah. I mean, the usual things. I try to read. I try to go and see movies, go to see plays, see comedy, see music, listen to music, go out. I think live performance is now the kind of the last, I don't know, the most kind of important commodity we have, like, like visceral experience. So I feel like that. That's really, yeah, I know.

For me too, I feel so happy about that. So I try and have as much life in my life as possible, as much vitality in my life as possible. And yeah, and honestly, friends, community, family, that is so simple, but like nature, the kind of eternal thing. I feel like, I don't know. No, this is good, you got to tell us this stuff because it seems like it's, uh, everyone knows it, but not everyone knows, especially young men. Yeah, you know, I'm a little bit afraid right now. I want young men to see other young men, such as yourself and ourself. We're not that different in age. How to stay healthy, how to stay positive and optimistic. There are, I mean, I think there are, there are, there are, there are

pendable things that are eternal. There is the woods. There is the ocean. There is a walk with a buddy. There is, there is art. There's always going to be tremendously talented and heart-filled people making beautiful, like, I don't lose hope and humanity because I, I, I, you can go to any art gallery in any city in the world and you can go, oh, humans are amazing.

It's true. And you can see so much beautiful creativity. and proper community. I think that is something that is making a pretty great comeback is that we're all longing to be able to kind of cry together. Right.

Because in the moments we're in the moment we're in, it's like the heart breaks and breaks and it lives by breaking. I don't know. Someone said that. It wasn't me. It's quite a nice quote. It was me. I said. It was you. But there's something,

I think particularly for young men, I mean, but I think there's something, I know for me, if I can bring my wounds and my pain in a in a kind of self-owned way to a group of people that I know love me for who I am, not for what I can do for them or any kind of status or any kind of power or anything like that, then I feel connected to life, connected to the world in a way that feels eternal and it doesn't feel like it can be taken like that. That feels like a spiritual practice to me. I love that.

Sometimes I have to be reminded that as a man, we have to reach out. And it doesn't always go perfect all the time. No. You got to keep doing it. Sometimes I'll reach out and I'll be like, that's awful. I'm not reaching out ever again to anybody.

Right, right. And now I'm in the basement podcasting. Right. Right. Yeah. Problematic. That's literally the only thing you do. That's the only response.

Are you a tennis fan? You're British. I love tennis, yeah. You go to Wimbledon? Are you going to the U.S. Open? I'm going to the U.S. Open, I hope. Yeah. Okay.

I love Wimbledon. Yeah, I love tennis. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You know what was cool with the Alcares thing the other day? Like, I love Alcaraz. I think he is my favorite young tennis player right now. Spanish player, Carlos Alcaraz lost to an American and a five-hour match. But he lost so elegantly.

It was so cool. It was like he was vomiting, vomiting into his towel. And at the end, he was smite because he just had this huge, terrible injury, and he was just so grateful that he managed to compete at the level that he did, win or lose. There's something so beautiful about that. What a lesson. What a lesson. To him, the definition of success was, like, get to be out here trying my hardest. And it reminds me of, like, Simone Biles when she was like, you know what, I'm going to take care of myself as an ordinary person and step away from my extraordinary abilities for a minute and make sure

that I can keep doing my extraordinary shit. But I need to make sure that my ordinaryness. is intact when she stepped away from gymnastics. I found that very, very inspiring as well. It was very inspiring. Well, thank you so much for coming here. The uprising is an amazing film. Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast universe by searching The Daily Show,

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