The Daily Show: Ears Edition - This Week's Interviews | Kaitlan Collins, Jeff Hiller, Twin Temple, and Theo Baker

Episode Date: August 2, 2026

Catch up on this week in Daily Show guests. Jon Stewart sits down with CNN's award-winning chief White House correspondent and “The Source” anchor Kaitlan Collins to discuss the White House Correspondents’ dinner and how she handles insults from the president. They talk about how the White House press corps has changed in the 10 years since she started covering Trump, reporters’ frustrations with the president’s refusal to answer questions, and the value of asking follow-up questions. Plus, Jon prepares a little roleplay to encourage Collins to give Trump a taste of his own medicine. Bestselling author, comedian and Emmy-winning actor Jeff Hiller talks to fellow tall person Jordan Klepper to discuss his nomination for Outstanding Guest Actor in the Apple TV series "Pluribus,” and how the seven-minute role could make him the Dame Judi Dench of the Emmys. They talk about his roles in two hit Apple TV shows, how he can tell which show people notice him from, his use of improv in “Widow’s Bay,” and how his “Pluribus” character embodied a human ChatGPT. “Satanic doo-wop” band Twin Temple chats with Jordan Klepper about their upcoming new album, “Doomed Lovers.” The duo talks about working with Shooter Jennings, recording analog with a 37-piece orchestra, making national news for getting kicked off a tour for their Satanic imagery, and explains why they call their sound “Satanic doo-wop.” Theo Baker, award-winning journalist and bestselling author of "How to Rule the World: An Education in Power at Stanford University,” chats with Jordan Klepper about his freshman year research misconduct investigation into Stanford University President Marc Tessier-Lavigne, which led to his resignation in 2023. They talk about Stanford’s “Faustian bargain” with Silicon Valley, the incredible money and power thrust into undergraduates’ hands, and how Baker convinced sources to tell a teenager their secrets. -- 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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You're listening to Comedy Central. An anchor up the source with Caitlin Collins. Please welcome to the program, Caitlin Collins. This is so fun to be here. It's fun. Let me ask you a question. How was your weekend? What'd you do?

Anything fun? It was good. It was quiet. It was quiet. No, it wasn't. That was Friday night. Yeah. There are times when I watch him, and I think to myself, this can't be real.

Like, this can't be America. America, you've heard of us. We're great. Been here. You've been here for years. 34 years. Yes. We're the back.

That guy runs us? What? In the room that night, did it feel surreal? Was he bombing as hard as it appeared on the TV? You know, I've covered Trump for 10 years. And so I've listened to pretty much all of his speeches for 10 years with very little exception. And so I actually think it's helpful for other people to be able to listen to them. in their entirety, which people really don't that much these days.

In the room, I think I was not surprised when he insulted me. That happens pretty regularly inside the Oval Office. This is just a bigger venue where it was happening. What was most surprising to me was the room was filled with a lot of his staffers, his cabinet, his allies, Republicans in Congress. It was so quiet in the room during the president's remarks. Because of how much they respect him. Who's to say?

Hard to tell, really. In your mind, having view... First of all, what do you think is going on with his relationship to you? You are... I have to give you a great amount of credit. You are unflappable in those... You ask very straightforward questions. I have... I've written some stuff down about, like, you've asked it about... You pardoned the founder of Binance, all these different things.

You're asking him about that. A very straightforward question about why he pardoned this gentleman who now has an involvement in his family's crypto business or had helped promote it. His answer to you on that was you said to him, this guy admitted to his crimes. Trump said to you, you don't know much about crypto. You know nothing about nothing. Your fake news. But he didn't answer the question.

No. And then he said he didn't really know who the person was. Right. Why, you are very straightforward with him. You don't play Quoy, you don't frame it in got your ways, and he just, you're a terrible person, you're a stupid person. You don't smile. When that's done, does someone, is there an office of like smoothing things out that comes to your office and says, like in a bar when your friend gets in a fight like, hey man, he's drunk, like I'm so sorry.

What do they do? Are they embarrassed? You know, but that's why I ask the questions the way I do is because I want anyone to be able to listen to what I'm asking, whether that's at a briefing or during a moment with the president, and think, you know, I want to know the answer to that too, or that is a good question. I don't want it to only serve one audience or one political leaning. I want anyone, you know, from family in Alabama, to people in the White House, to people in Washington, to be able to hear that answer or hear that question and think, what is the answer to that? The answer is very clearly, you should smile more. It's the answer to all the questions.

We were watching when he was doing that. You were sitting next to Wolf Blitzer. Yes. Wolf Blitzer is a 78-year-old man. Not a lot of density in those bones. I know what I'm talking about. I'm in the same position. He looked like he wanted to go up there and shake him. He was so angry on your behalf, but you don't get angry.

How do you maintain that level of detach? Well, first off, can I say about Wolf? Wolf actually picked me up for the dinner that night, and we rode together to go to the dinner. He was presenting the awards that night after he was supposed to do them back in April. He still has his license? An excellent driver. But we went to the dinner together, and Wolf and I were really good friends. He was one of the first people that I met when I worked at when I started at CNN.

And he's called me every day since Friday. And he's just a dear friend. But actually, one of the best parts of the dinner was Wolf reading the descriptions of the awards. In front of them. And why people, why the reporters got them? You know, my colleagues who also did esteemed reporting, great reporting, and deserved those awards. And so I loved hearing Wolf read the description. of what they were and why people got them.

In terms of my reaction, I've always felt this, regardless of who's the president, whether it's Joe Biden, Donald Trump, those are the two I've covered. It's really not about me. And I don't want it to be about my reaction. And so I think if you let it become about that, then it becomes a back and forth between the two of us.

And instead, I think it's more effective to remind people in those moments when he is insulting me or when he is criticizing me, about the question I asked or the reporting that I did that he was so angry about in this moment and the fact that I got an award for it really bothered him clearly. And so I just think in those moments,

it's important to put the reminder back on the work, on the question, and on the non-answer's that we get. And I appreciate that answer. But what if we could make it about you and the way you behave? What if you took a page out of his book I've come up with a little role play. You can be you in this or you could be Trump.

It's up to you. I think you'd probably be better off being Trump on this one. So let's say you're Trump and I'm you. This is just a chance for you to kind of play his game. He's so concerned about appearance. He's so play in that arena. All right. So you're Donald Trump.

Call on me, Caitlin Collins, CNN. I'm really nervous about this. Caitlin, go ahead. Hey, Tubbs. You look pretty today. The Big Beautiful Beal took a million children off of food assistance. Why are your hands so f***ed up? I didn't say it would work.

I think I'll keep it the way it is. You probably keep it the way it is. It's probably why I don't work there. What are the frustrations within the White House press corps? Do you talk about the difficulty of permeating their fantasy bubble, the treatment that they have, the criticisms that they have of you guys. What is the frustration in that group of White House correspondents? Well, I mean, it's obviously a really diverse group of correspondence.

Everyone, you know, people work for different outlets. They have different questions that they want to ask. I mean, the biggest change in the outlets that cover the president from when he was in office the last time is how the White House has filled the press pool that goes into the Oval with a lot of people who ask friendly questions that aren't really probing or tough. And I think you can ask whatever question you want on whatever subject you want. There's a lot to ask about cost of living, Iran war, whatever the subject is that day. What I don't like is when people use those moments to ask a question that is something that's not producing a response that is really asking something probing of someone who is the highest office in the land, a taxpayer-funded individual, which is how I personally believe that time is best spent.

And so I think one frustration is there's not as much follow-up inside those Oval Office moments as there used to be among reporters who do ask tough questions and do ask fair but challenging questions. And so that is something that I think is a struggle. But there are a lot of really good reporters asking good questions who get attacked by the president. I mean, even just today, he was asking where all the money that is being made from Venezuela is going. Right. He's not telling anybody. There's like billions of dollars. $3 billion reportedly.

And a reporter asked three times, where is that money going? And there was no answer today. And then he attacked another reporter for asking why he wants to cancel the Senate's recess where they should be campaigning. And so there are moments where reporters, not just myself, ask questions that don't get good answers. Right. Is there ever a thought that you got, so they clearly have meetings before these and they come up with all their strategies to try and deflect the good questions, the insightful questions, the ones.

Is there ever any thought for you all to form like an Avengers, like a group of people that combine your powers so that you worked, so that because what's so strange about him is he very clearly needs you in a way that I don't think I've ever seen a president have that before. There's something inside him that he lashes out at the press corps, but needs them to see him. more than anybody I've ever seen in public life. That's why he gives his phone number out to everybody. He even said it at the White House Correspondents Dinner. He said, you know, nobody else does that, but I do that because I like it. And he criticized his staff, actually, during the dinner. Yes.

Because he said he would ask them, you know, have any reporters called for comment? And they would say no, or it's not worth your time. Right. And he was frustrated by that. I mean, his press team was in the room. And he was criticizing them for saying that they're basically blocking him which is why he started picking up the numbers himself. And he said something very interesting,

because he said it's basically because if I talk to them, I might be able to manipulate them to get a better story. I mean, and he says this stuff out loud. So is there a thought in that room that you guys work together? I don't know how that would work or if that's even logical. Yeah, I think reporters should ask what they want to ask. I don't think any reporter should be saying, this is what we're asking today,

or you need to follow up on this, but if a colleague of mine asks a good question and doesn't get an answer, I mean, this actually happened with the Treasury Secretary when they were considering putting Trump's face on a $250 bill for the United States' birthday. Obviously, that's illegal, and so there are so many questions for Scott Besson

at this briefing on it. And he wouldn't, he kept declining to answer and pushing it off on Congress. But obviously, Congress was doing this because the White House wanted them to do it. And I think I was the fourth reporter maybe to ask. And I think sometimes reporters think, well, I'll just move on because he's not answering it. But actually, I think the more you ask, the more revealing it is.

And finally, at the end of his answer to me, he said that he didn't see a problem with putting the president's face on a $250 bill. And so there is value in follow-up questions. Right. And coming through. Is there, in your mind, is what his fascinating. with you to some extent that you don't react and bend the knee is some of what he's doing provocation and trolling and and becoming more and more frustrated that you're just staying professional to what you want to do i'm i'm not sure i can't get into his head and you know i've had the same model the entire time i've covered him and i've treated it the same way

I've never gotten in a back and forth with him. I've always brought it back to the question. I think he does surround himself with people who praise him or laugh at his jokes. And when he's confronted with someone who is asking a challenging question or a critical question of his policy or strategy in the Iran war, I think he doesn't like it and he lashes out over it. I mean, there have been moments where I've gone into the Oval Office when I'm on behalf of the TV pool and I haven't even asked a question yet.

And he starts criticizing me. It's not even always just about the questions. Sometimes it's just my presence in the room. But again, I really think it's, I really do think it's important. Is this real life? Like, this is crazy. But I really do think it's important in that moment. It really isn't about me.

Because I do think my colleagues at CNN, my colleagues in the press corps, do a good job of trying to ask tough questions, doing good reporting. You don't have to smile while you're doing that. And I think that's what's important. I want to ask you, you know, Edward R. Murrow, who first said,

turn that frown upside down. J.D. Vance said something really interesting recently. We was talking about Watergate, and he said about Watergate probably would be, now this is sort of the seminal public corruption, political corruption case of our lifetimes. I was raised on the Watergate hearings. He said it would probably be a 12-hour story now. And first I thought he was sort of saying, like, because it wasn't that big a deal.

But I think the point he was making is they've created such great defenses around public and political corruption that there's no longer, that great reporting no longer leads to accountability through the other institutions that are there to pick that up. Watergate was interesting because, two reporters got this great story. And reporters are still doing great reporting like that today.

They found it. It shocked the conscience of a nation. The political system and the legal system went into action and created accountability, both jail time for the perpetrators and impeachment for Nixon, which is why he resigned so that he wouldn't get impeached. Yeah, and I don't think they subpoenaed Bob Woodward or Carl Bernstein's mother or spouses. Right. They just did with the New York Times reporters.

Shout out to my colleagues for the New York Times who did really good reporting on Air Force One recently, who should not have been subpoenaed for that good reporting. They went to their house. They should have put their house. And they subpoenaed their one reporter's mother and two spouses of them before they eventually withdrew them because a judge intervened. On the Nixon comment from Vice President Vance, he also said the deep state took down Richard Nixon, which I think Richard Nixon took down Richard Nixon. But to your point, it wasn't just, you know, it wasn't just, you know, it wasn't just. the reporting that led to Nixon's resignation. It was Republicans in the Senate who made clear that he had crossed a line with them as that investigation into his actions was proceeding.

And a legal system that held people accountable for break-ins and obstruction and cover-ups. And even Spiro Agnew, people forget, Spiro Agnew, who was the vice president at the time, resigned months before Watergate took down Nixon on a bribery scandal, a bribery scandal that the Supreme Court at this point, I guess the point is, Does the press feel an impotence? It makes me cynical to watch the stories that you guys are uncovering about a Katari jet that's, you know, millions and millions of dollars by a foreign government that's not safe enough for the president to fly on it. And also the guy who is the envoy to that region is getting money from that area while also trying to negotiate peace deals from within those.

the levels of corruption within his family and that administration are exponentially beyond anything that I think we have ever experienced in our lifetime. And I keep waiting for the other institutions to wake up. And they feel like they're gone. Like there is no political. There would never be an impeachment on this. And the legal system seems utterly, not only are they not interested in prosecuting, They're more interested in redefining what corruption means to allow more of it.

How does that affect the reporting aspect of it? Is there a sense of, is anyone going to follow up on this? Epstein stuff is a great example. Well, I think for reporters, I mean, from our perspective, we can just do our jobs, which is fair reporting, tough reporting, and good questions and fair questions. I think in terms of the Epstein example, that is something that there was a wealth of really good reporting on, including from those reporters from the Wall Street Journal who were on stage on Friday night. Right. But also, I mean, there was a long-shot bid in Congress to release the files when the Justice Department did not do so, and it became not a long-shot bid and it actually happened.

And so there have been moments where that does happen. But now they've withheld three million of those documents. The woman that was in prison got an upgrade. nobody else has gone to jail. Todd Blanche won't meet with any of the victims except in a pro forma way to get Tom Tillis' vote. It's one of the frustrations about doing this show, people always ask me, you know,

what would have been some of the frustrations? And I always say that it's cathartic but impotent. And I can accept that from what I do because it's satire still. I feel like what you guys do deserves better than that. And I wonder if that ever, crosses your or

it's just you've just got to focus I think your job as a reporter is to report and to inform the American public to ask tough questions why are you so mature but really that's our job and I think the important thing is that we keep doing it regardless of

criticisms or personal insults when you go back does Carolyn Levitt ever pull you ever go like yeah he says that shit to me all the time, too. Don't worry about it. Like, does you give you like at-a-boy, like anything? Like, little punch, like, hey, man, hang in there. No.

Nothing. I'm not really in favor with the, you know, public side of the White House that speaks for a living. Bring the tea. What's happening? No, I mean, you see it. It all happens on camera. You see it all. And all for the crime of what? Asking direct... Like, seriously,

that's what's so insane about all this. Yeah. So thank you for doing that. And thank you for having me. And also what's so nice about is you're keeping your side of the street clean, meaning like you are just putting in the work. Like that's the nice thing. I've said this to you.

You know I have all my problems with the journalist. Oh, I know. You keep it together. You do a great job. I appreciate you. Thank you. All right. Okay.

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Wayfair, every style, every home. This night is an Emmy-winning actor who's currently nominated for outstanding guest actor in the Apple TV series, Pluribus. Please welcome Jeff Hiller. It is so nice to have a fellow tall person out here. I know. Hollywood is so short.

I know. I know. I always feel like I'm standing next. as someone and I'm about to take him up the Empire State Building. I looked so shockingly tall. Yeah, it feels like John Stewart always looks at me with those eyes like, will you put me on your shoulders?

And I'm like, no, you just have to grow up a little bit more, right? Oh, I always say yes. You do, and that's what makes you so good, you're so kind. You put all those afters right on your shoulders and you just carry it. Wee! You are here. Congratulations on your Emmy nomination. Thank you.

And you. Congratulations. You do it for the now. Right? Oh, that's the only reason I do it. You have to get those nominations. It's been a really dry 25 years. But the last two, yeah, baby.

You're on two hit shows, though. You're not only on Pluribus, hit show, Emmy nominated. You're also on Widows Bay, which everybody can't get enough of. Congratulations. Yeah, it's a good show. It's a good show. Yes. And you won an Emmy last year for somebody somewhere?

I'm amazing. You're incredible. Here's what I wonder. I'm curious now on the street. When people say, they're like, hey, Hey, are you that guy from, what do they say? Well, if they're holding their heart, it's somebody somewhere. And if they're like, are you that guy from?

It's American Horror Story. But a lot lately, even like the lady at Nordstrom Rack, they're like, I like Widows Bay. Oh, yeah. I like when you screamed in Widows Bay. You think the Nordstrom Rack folks are really Widows Bay people. Well, are Bergdorf? Is that more plurbus folk?

I've never been to Bergdorf. I will be honest, I said Bergdorf, I don't know what I'm talking about. It's just, it's a comedic name of department store in there. Yes. It is a department store. Right? Yeah, there's probably Pluribus folk in there. When I shop at Bergdorf, everyone notices me from Pluribus.

We can edit that back. No, that's in there. Okay, good. So Pluribus, it's, you're, you are so funny in Pluribus. And I feel like you click. It was a drama. It's a drama, yeah. I think it's, you show up and I laughed,

and that has a little bit to do with the costume choice. Oh, I know. Can we see a picture of what Jeff was wearing in Pluribus? So they put you in. Look at my face, I'm like, what happened? When do they spring an outfit like that on you? So this is a very secret show. You know, I didn't know the concept or anything

when I auditioned, and then I just show up to the fitting. I still don't know the concept. And they're like, put it on a show on this bicycle outfit, you know? And I was like, what is this show? Had just like the slightest moment where I was like, am I in porn? And then Vince Gilligan was like,

well, the hive mind, they don't have pride of personal appearance. And I was like, but I do. As an actor. I can't. There's vanity here. But they did let me wear my shapewear underneath the... Is that right? So you have an extra layer there. You can kind of see the whale bones.

It keeps it tight. Yeah, yeah. Keep it tight. Keep it tight. Keep it tight. Well, like, this... Thorpe is such a fascinating show. And you play a character who's also part of a larger hive mind. But it almost seems like, as you watch it, you're almost... It's almost as if you're playing chat GPT.

Yeah. Right? You're interacting with people. Have you heard this? Yeah, so a lot of people have said, you're just like chat GPT. Now, is that a reference point you didn't know going into it or even in your performance, or is that talked about with Vince Gilligan beforehand? No, it was never mentioned until it came out.

I think, like, we shot this kind of a long time ago. It was kind of before ChatGPT was ubiquitous, and so I hadn't really, I didn't really think about it. I was trying to convey extreme love for her, and instead, I did Chad GPT. So that's your... Anyway, got an Emmy nomination for it. Wow, yeah, I mean, there you go.

If that's the best you can do, congratulations. Sometimes you aim for one target, you hit another. And you're on screen for basically seven minutes. Yeah. And you pull an Emmy nomination. Yeah. Are you like the Jane, Jane, Jane, Jane, dude, Dame Judy Dentch? No, I'm the Jane Dench.

You're the Jane Dench of the Emmys this season, right? I am the Jane Dench, exactly. Jane Dench, the woman that you say, who? Who? Yeah, she was that woman from that thing, because she won an Oscar for like eight minutes on screen. Yeah, for Shakespeare in love. Yeah, but she was dressed up like Queen Elizabeth. But I wore that bicycle thing, so yeah.

I'm Judy Dech. You are Judy Dech. Oh, damn it. Now, Widows Bay. I love Widows Bay. A part of it is it has such an interesting tone to it. It's scary, it's funny. It's all sorts of things. And I know the creator, Katie Diplold, is a UCB person from the improv community that you did comedy with back in the day. Yeah. I'm curious if improv is on the set or if at this level, everybody just cops to the fact that, no,

it's just a parlor trick people did in their youth. We wasted our lives. So much time. No, there's a little bit. It's usually like a little improvising during the rehearsal, and they say, yeah, you can do that one. But for the most part, it's just an incredibly descriptive thing because, like you said, the tone is so strange that they really have to be like we're working really hard on it.

Yeah. How do you enjoy it? Pluribus and Widows Bay is such a, those are dark shows. One little clown killer, and it's a dark show. It's a little clown killer. Somebody somewhere is such a life-affirming, heartwarming show. Two different worlds to live in. Yes.

What do you prefer? Which everyone has the biggest check, baby. Now, capitalism! I mean, obviously somebody somewhere was, like my heart. But I love being at Windows Bay because it is so tonally odd and strange. Basically, I just like to work. So whatever is good with me. Is there any talk about the season two?

It's going to be. There's going to be one. But no, they don't tell me anything. You don't know shit. No, because I got loose lips. I just see you over at Bergdorf telling everybody, right? Well, if you like Pluripus, let me tell you about this thing. This is my shoplifting.

I want to know, your Emmy speech last year had people in tears. They loved it. What are you going to say this year when you win? Do you know? I'm not going to win. You're going to win, Jeff. Okay. well, I'll say

this one makes more Seth, suck it. I think that's, give the people what they want to hear, right? Jeff, you are a delight the Jane Booty Dench of our generation. Emphasis on the booty. Emphasis on the booty.

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Requires two-gig speeds and gig unlimited mobile. Taxes and fees excluded from price lock. Mobile data speeds reduced after 20 gigs. Yes, tonight are a band who described their sound as Satanic Duwap. Their forthcoming new album is called Doomed Lovers. Please welcome Twin Temple. Welcome to The Daily Show. Thank you for having us.

Thank you for being here. You're so excited to be here. We are very excited to have you as well. Although I got to say, Satanic Duwop. Isn't that style been done to death? What is Satanic Duwap? I mean, you know, we called it Satanic Duwop just because A, it's funny. And B, I think it's just rock and roll, honestly.

You know, we draw a lot of inspiration from everywhere, like jazz, blues, Latin all over the place. And yeah, we're Satanists. You're Satanists. You're Satanists. We are. What does that mean to be a Satanist? Is that just mean someone who doesn't go to church?

Like, am I a Satanist? Maybe. I think you are. I mean, didn't I see you at last night's satanic orgy? Hey, I had a mask on, you know? You're not supposed to call that out. You're going to go straight to heaven for that one. I've got to tell you.

Oh, God. What is it? How do you view Satanism? I think that's something I hear, but I don't know what the tenets of Satanism now is in this day and age. Well, I think a lot of people think that, you know, Satanism is going to orgies and you're nude under the full moon, drinking chalices of blood and hanging out with goats. And, I mean, we're here to say, you know, that's absolutely true. That's what Satan is.

Yeah. Yeah. Where did I sign up for this? I don't need to go to the blood thing. but I could really use that first part, sounds like a lot of fun. Jordan, you don't have to keep pretending. Okay, okay. This is, you could just... Definitely saw you at the orgy last night. I was wearing a mask, for God's sakes.

So you guys made some news recently. You were kicked off of a recent tour for satanic imagery. And that sort of made the headlines across the U.S. I'm curious both how that felt and also how the response has been to that. Yeah, I mean, we were pretty shocked, you know, a few days before the shows began. I feel like it's time for maybe a little more satanic panic. Like, let's get it going again, you know what I mean? What is it?

No, there was that idea of satanic panic back in the day, right? But rock and roll has as a history of being anti-authoritarianism. Yeah. Anti, I mean, just being rebellious in its spirit. Do you see like a kinship to those early eras of rock and roll? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I think for us, you know, the reason why we're drawn to rock and roll is that it was always about pushing back against societal norms. You know, about questioning the status quo.

Like, for example, I mean, rock and roll was born out of Jim Crow America. And rock and roll musicians were some of the first people to tear down, you know, the segregation rules. It's like, you know, you look at Frankie Lyman who sings, like, teenager in love, and you wouldn't think, oh, he's some, you know, crazy shock rocker. But actually, when he performed on, I want to say it was like the Tammy show or something, black and white kids, teenagers were dancing together. And people were like, he was banned from the show. They pulled the segment. Like, to me, yeah, like, it's du op, right?

People imagine it as like soda pop shop music. But this was something that was really shaking the core of America and rattling people's cages and being like, why are we segregated? You know what I mean? This is a concert. And so I think that's kind of what draws us, both to rock and roll, but also Satanism. I think there's a lot of through lines.

Do you see that sort of as a Trojan horse? The idea that you're using, call it Satanism, or call rock and roll a do-op as a way to get other ideas into the mainstream? And I guess I'm curious if you approach the way you make your art with that in mind. Yeah, a little bit. I mean, I think at its core, though,

it's like the music that we truly love. You know, I grew up on the Beatles the first time I saw, like, an Elvis cassette and listened to it, I was like, oh, that's what I want to do. It's just like always been something that I've genuinely just loved. I think as far as like bringing the Satanism to it, that's another element of who we are, right? And so it felt like with this project, it was a way to just combine everything we love. Because it's like really fun to go shopping for human skulls and like Roy Orbison records on the same day, you know? And this gives us an excuse to do all the things that we want to do.

So how, like, are we tongue-in-cheek with our Satanism? Or are we, like, yeah, or we live living it day in and day out? I mean, both. We're both. Oh, we're both. Yeah. Is that possible? Yeah, absolutely.

So what does the day-to-day Satanist manifesto look like? Like, you wake up, like, what does the Satanus have for breakfast? I mean, I think on the daily, it's like living willfully, you know? It's like every day is the day we wake up and we get to live our true will, you know. We get to make art, we get to do what we love, you know. to us that is Satanism. You know, being the individuals we are, you know, like, know thyself,

and being able to carry that out every day. Yeah, no thy, yeah, is that, that's Socrates, right? It's a temple of Delphi, yeah. Yeah, so you're just, you're just old school philosophy. Yeah, I mean, look. Mixed with essentially libertarianism. Is that what is it? Modern Satanism is just like libertarianism,

but like with better outfits kind of. Yeah, yeah. It's humanism with rhinestones and beehives. Oh, yeah. Well, I can get into that. Oh, and to answer your question before, Satanist drink Virgin's blood for breakfast. That's what they drink for breakfast.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, you guys have gotten pushback from places like Alex Jones in the past, right? Because you guys have been around for a while since 2016. Is that right? Like 1666. Gotcha. Yeah. Okay.

Good. Okay. Yeah, I don't know where I got my research from. Yeah, you need to check the notes. But there was a panic. And the far right sort of saw what you guys did as aggressive. anti-religient. Like, what does it like to engage in that kind of conversation,

this kind of music, playfulness, and expression in a time where things get weaponized on the Internet and go viral and go fast? It's fun. Oh, it's fun. We're having a blast. I mean, Alex Jones was a little scary. They got very serious about that.

Like, we did get doxed. I think I was telling you earlier that, like, they went and barricaded our front door with Bibles, like, broke into. to our house. It wasn't pleasant at the time. And we had, like, the proud boys threatening to murder us at a show. And back then, we were starting out was 10 years ago. So we were still playing, like, these little bar bands, like, shows, like, on the floor

with no security. Just if someone wanted to stab us, they definitely could have. So it was a little scary. Would that be a good thing for a Satanist? Is that, like, an active devotion for a Satanist? Like, yeah, is your audience? Is that how you, is that what an encore? I mean, if that's your kink, if you're into stab playing.

I wasn't there last night, okay? Your music, though, is what I love about it, it's very analog. It feels like a throwback. And the way you guys record it as well feels like it is, it's really important that the sound doesn't feel overproduced. I know this latest album, you perform with like a 34-piece orchestra, right? Why is that important to you? Oof.

I mean, I think a lot of the productions we love, like Phil Specter, he was working with this, arranger called Jack Nietzsche. They brought in all this beautiful orchestration, you know what I mean? At the time, he was kind of calling it, like symphonies for teenagers. And so it's always been something we really wanted to play with.

We just didn't, you know, they're a little bit expensive, so we didn't exactly have the means to hire a 36-piece orchestra. But I think it was just, you know, a sonic thing we were wanting, had been a goal for, like, Yeah, a long-term goal for sure. And also, I mean, when Shooter approached us to do this record, you know, he's like country royalty. Shooter Jennings. Yes, he's such a badass musician.

And he very much does come from this like country history, which we love American music, including country. And so we kind of wanted to give it like a little bit of a contrapolitan like Nashville flavor. Because I mean, I love like, you know, Roy Orbison and RCA and Patsy Klein and everything. that like Owen Bradley and like they were doing down there in the south and it really was kind of an answer to what was going on with like Motown and New York and Gold Star Studios and the wrecking crew in Hollywood and so we just kind of wanted to explore like that avenue of classic American music because it's something that we do you know feel really passionate about like it's a specific period as well like 1962 to about 1965 is when all this was happening you know you had Nashville

with the A team at RCA and then you had Gold Star and Phil Specter and Jack Nietzsche and then you got Motown. So it's all these things that we love just exploring the different kind of flavors of them, if you want. It was really exciting. I mean, it felt like Christmas morning, like hearing the songs of the orchestra. I was just like, I was like crying. I was freaking out. It was beautiful. Before I let you go, do you guys still commune with the Dark Lord? Do you talk to him very often? Oh, hell yeah. Every day. Let him know that his plan for America is going like gangbusters. Now streaming on Disney Plus, the Hulu original series Furious follows FBI agent Alice Black,

played by Emmy Rossum, on the hunt for a mysterious and calculating serial killer. Both walk their own paths toward justice, and as their lives start to intertwine, the line between right and wrong begins to blur. New episodes week over week. Watch the Hulu original series Furious, Now streaming only on Oulu on Disney Plus. An education in power at Stanford University.

Please welcome Theo Baker. This book, I can't stop talking about this book. You're 22 years old? 21. You're 21 years old. I can drink, at least. You can drink. Oh, very good.

Is that a proposition? You know, now that I'm out of college, it's not as attractive. I mean, you know. Yeah. Unless you're pushing back against something, what does it mean anymore? Right. You're 21 years old. Yeah.

You wrote this book about your freshman year at Stanford. It's remarkable. You've described this as three books in one. Give us a breakdown of what those books are. Yeah, yeah. So I went to Stanford as a coder, right? I thought I was going to be part of the whole milieu of the kids who are making the startups and changing the world and all that stuff. And so this book is part this sort of insider cultural ethnography, this look at this really bizarre insider world that controls so much influence over our technology. It's part that. Part of it is this investigative drama as I start looking into the research of the president of Stanford, university, eventually leading, not to spoil the outcome, with his resignation. And then the third part of the book is sort of a buildings remand of source, right? I, you know, thought I was going to do, CS, got dragged into journalism.

A lot of weird stuff happened along the way. Yeah, yeah. You take down the president of Stanford in this thing. Weird stuff. Weird stuff. I was doing very similar things when I was 18 as well. You know, we had a real activist improv group at my college. It starts off, you don't go in thinking you're going to jump into journalism.

And then you write this story on the War on Woke that was happening on campus. Talk to me a bit about that. Yeah. So I thought I would join the student newspaper on a lark. And the War on Fun was my first big story. This is the crackdown on all facets of student life. Now to host something at Stanford, right? You have to take a class and pass an exam to be able to apply three weeks in advance to the party review committee,

which is a great acronym for what it is, the PRC, which only meets once a week on Tuesday. to approve all student events. I really love that detail on Tuesdays, right? They only meet on Tuesdays. And the six university departments say, hey, are your, you know, few balloons going to cause too much of a fire risk? Of course, the end result of that

is the sort of death of many of the casual social interactions that many people come to college expecting. Yeah, I mean, when you were going to college, were you hoping for just a fun experience to kind of let your hair down and be a normal college kid? Yeah, yeah. And you're like, oh, now I need to take down bureaucracy

and go after the man? Look, I mean, I was, you know, a nerd, obviously. I think, you know, I was the kind of kid who would like, like, I would, like, work on a machine learning model in high school and call that, like, a fun Friday night. And, you know, I've learned. That was me in college, but not high school. Yeah.

I've learned something of the folly of my ways. But it was really weird because it was my sort of first brush with the corporatization of the modern university, right? That student actually, right, we're teenagers. We're going about the ordinary course of coming age. But at Stanford, your commodity, too. You're something to be monetized and a huge amount of money can be made off of these promising 17 and 18 year olds. It was shocking to read about it. I'm a father in thinking about college from my kid way down the line. And to hear about, like,

you arrive at Stanford and essentially all these venture capitalists are throwing just gobs of money at the students. And there tend to be these small groups within the university that essentially are picking who is going to be the billionaires of tomorrow. And not even tomorrow. This is happening today, right? Were you shocked by just how cutthroat it became and the money that was there? No, the money is outrageous. And it's really just, it's bizarre because it's vested in the hands of teenagers. Like the kid who taught me out of shotgun a beer freshman year, the frat guy, really bad influence.

Not at all. No, he's a great guy, but he drops out and he starts a company. And six months later, it's valued at a billion dollars for this 15-person team of 20-year-olds. And, you know, all power to the guy. I hope he succeeds. But... Oh, he already has. Well, there you go.

But it's amazing, right? For a certain cohort of students, right, those who are tapped on the shoulder and plucked from the crowd, those who are deemed the builders, not the want-opreneurs, right? The people who are just doing it because they think they can. There are yacht parties. There are slush funds. And the newest new thing when I arrived at Stanford was something called pre-idea funding. This I want to know more about because I have no ideas.

And if I can monetize that, that would be perfect. What is pre-idea funding? Pre- Idea funding is really what it sounds like. Even though it sounds absurd, it is exactly what these people are doing. They will say, hey, here's a one-page or two-page agreement. It's called a safe check. And if you make a company with it, call us, you know, and we'll invest more. It doesn't give them a particular amount of equity in the company.

It guarantees them the right to purchase more in the future. And if you don't end up creating the company with it or collapse, it never has to be paid back. This is remarkable. There's so many themes in here. It makes me think a lot about AI and how much money is being spent on the possibility of something else but nothing actually being made. And then this sort of dovetails with what you discovered with Stanford's president at the time. When did you catch a whiff that something was awry? Yeah. So I was a few weeks into freshman year and had written a few stories for the school newspaper. And I got wind of these anonymous posts that had taken place seven years earlier on this forum called Pub Pier. This is where scientists dissect published research papers.

And they said, hey, there are some images in these papers that were co-authored by Stanford's then-president Mark Tesset Levin. Because he was a neuroscientist. He is a famous neuroscientist and an extremely wealthy entrepreneur. This guy's worth hundreds of millions of dollars. And I discovered over the course of about eight months of investigative journalism a pattern of falsified research that had emerged under his purview at different labs and that at various places, as the eventual Stanford investigation concluded, when he was given the opportunity to correct the scientific record, he failed to decisively and forthrightly do so.

And we're talking about Alzheimer's research, that as you're looking closer and closer, it just doesn't add up. Right. So one of the big stories that I reported on was this famous study that had claimed to identify the cause of Alzheimer's disease. So they're pumping this up at a shareholder meeting at the time, and this executive Richard Scheller calls it the greatest discovery made in Alzheimer's research in 20 years, maybe ever, right?

And as I discovered in my research, of course, that was not exactly what the paper ended up being. Now, you're doing research here, but you're a college student. You're calling around checking sources. Like, what is it like being a member, a journalist, but a journalist for a college paper trying to get people to talk to you? Does that make it easier in some ways because people are gracious to a college student? Or are you getting doors shut in your face all the time? I had more than a few doors slammed in my face. Absolutely. You know, it's a really weird thing to say, hey, I'm a 17-year-old, and then an 18-year-old,

and you should trust me with your secrets, right? Like, you should tell me these things that you signed NDAs not to tell people about maybe, you know, that you, you know, I'm someone that wants to listen and hear what is there. You know, it takes time to build credibility, but basically I think what I discovered, the main lesson I took away from freshman years, that, like, journalism, more than anything else, is a disposition, right? And it's, I think you, you know, in your interviews are demonstrated. that better than so many of us journalists do too. Oh, you misunderstand this completely.

I thought you are showing your youth there, Theo. I thought you were sharper than that. Well, that's kind of you to say. It's curious, you come from, your parents are our famous journalists. I'm curious what they thought about you going down this path. My parents are endlessly supportive. There is a reason that I wanted to go 3,000 miles away from home and study computer science.

You know, it was really, So I came back at Thanksgiving, and I said, hey, I've been working on this investigation into the president. And I've been working with these forensic image analysts, and there might be something there. And my dad, you know, is a lovely, lovely guy. And he said, very intelligently. He said, this is a world-renowned scientist, and you're a 17-year-old kid. Like, maybe start with a professor. And I didn't listen then, but, you know, my parents have been super supportive, and I'm lucky.

I know it's not popular right now. I know journalism doesn't always get the great reputation that I might like, but it is a special thing to be a 17-year-old and to feel as if you can ask questions of people in power and hopefully do some good for your community by doing so. It's truly remarkable. I'm curious, though, and I think I very much enjoyed about in reading it

is following you through the journalistic process. You know, so many books drop you in the middle. People have been doing this for so long, and you're remarkably astute in doing it, but we sort of watch you find break and find your break stories and also find your footing as to how to tell these stories. All the while, you are investigating the president of Stanford, writing about the president of Stanford.

You just graduated from Stanford. I did. What is it like going to school at the place that you are investigating? It's weird, right? It's, you know, in some ways, right, I'm lucky. Like, at Stanford, there are students who are, like, actually famous, right? Like, Eileen Goo is my classmate. You know, like, I think when her birthday, her last birthday,

they put her face up on all the billboards in Times Square. So I was more like a zoo animal, which is sort of a... It's a weird position to be it. There are a lot of eyes, especially because I didn't mean to be a journalist. I really, like, did not set out to be in this position. You know, why didn't you just pick the Acapella group, man? Right? I don't think I have the voice for it.

I hate to say it. But look, it's also a really special thing to belong to a community that you care about. I've loved Stanford since I was seven years old. That's what I fell in love with Stanford. And, you know, I think if you love a place, you want it to be better. And that was, a lot of the reason why I stuck it out and why, you know, it was important for me to put out this book while I was still a student there, not to do the thing where you leave and you dish on all the people you've just been friends with. It's like, no, this is what I've encountered. This is what my reporting shows, and I think it's important to talk about it.

Now, you just graduated. I'm curious. What is next? Is it grad school? I can't imagine any school would want you to come? Yeah. Prince of Bridges. It's a little tough, I'm sure. What happens? I don't know. I don't know.

I'm enjoying the ride while I'm on it and trying to hopefully start some conversations about, you know, this Faustian bargain that Stanford has made with Silicon Valley. I love it. It's truly a remarkable book. I highly recommend it. How to Rule the World is available now. Theo Baker. Explore more shows from The Daily Show Podcast Universe by searching The Daily Show. Daily Show wherever you get your podcasts watch the daily show weeknights at 11 10

central on Comedy Central and stream full episodes anytime on Fairmount Plus this has been a Comedy Central podcast