The Daily Stoic - Chuck Klosterman: The NFL Explains More About America Than You Think

Episode Date: February 4, 2026

Few writers understand American culture like Chuck Klosterman, which is why he joins Ryan ahead of the Super Bowl to talk about how football reshaped American culture.In this episode, Chuck and Ryan discuss what football really reveals about American culture, power, and the stories we tell ourselves about expertise and control. Chuck shares his observations, strange historical parallels, and personal stories that connect sports to technology, identity, and how monocultures form and eventually fade.🏈 Pick up a copy of Football by Chuck Klosterman📚 Chuck is the author of Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs, But What If We’re Wrong?, The Nineties, and now his latest book Football. 📱Follow Chuck on X @CKlosterman 🎟️ Come see Ryan Holiday LIVE: https://www.dailystoiclive.com/San Diego, CA - February 5, 2026 Phoenix, AZ - February 27, 2026 🎥 Watch the video episodes on The Daily Stoic YouTube channel: https://www.youtube.com/@DailyStoic/videos🎙️ Follow The Daily Stoic Podcast on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/dailystoicpodcast✉️ Want Stoic wisdom delivered to your inbox daily? Sign up for the FREE Daily Stoic email at https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Get Stoic inspired books, medallions, and prints to remember these lessons at the Daily Stoic Store: https://store.dailystoic.com/📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, and FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. One of the craziest experiences of my life happened in Phoenix. This would have been either 2019 or maybe February 2020. I don't remember exactly. but I got invited to do a talk at the NFL owner's meeting.

So that's 32 billionaires, 32 head coaches, 32 GMs, and then all their families. I did this 10-minute talk on Stoic Philosophy. It was actually sponsored by TED, like the NFL had Ted put on miniature TED talks at the NFL owners meeting. It was surreal. And it was actually funny. I was talking to Roger Goodell, who is the commissioner of the NFL. And he was like, I'm a huge, Mark, a surrealist fan.

which was just a surreal little experience. And I was thinking about this because I'm heading out to Phoenix. At the end of this month, I'm going to be doing a talk that you can come to and grab those tickets at daily stoak live.com. But no, I was thinking about this because my son is playing football now. He plays flag football down in Westlake. And we've been seeing, like, parents who are like hardcore football parents. Like not hardcore, hardcore Texas football, but certainly. like the most animated sports parents that I've seen.

And football is just a crazy game. It is nuts. I mean, I love it. I love watching it. I've been to a number of NFL games. I love writing about it. I'm thinking about it. It's probably my favorite sport.

Like, football isn't just a sport in America. It's like part of the culture. The famous example is like of the 100 most watched television events in the last year, like 90 plus of them were football. I mean, the president is talking about who's performing at the Super Bowl halftime show. And in the last election cycle, it was a major death now that the president didn't feel up to doing a Super Bowl interview. Right? I think that kind of tells you everything you know.

They were like, oh, if you can't do an interview at the Super Bowl, he can't be president. So that intersection between football and culture, life, myth, story, Chuck Lashman's like the best writer in the world at that. He's the author of Sex, Drugs and Coco Puffs, but what if we're wrong, which is a book I love, the 90s, which is a book I love. And then his latest book, Football, he's written for the New York Times, The Washington Post,

and GQ and Esquire and ESPN. He's also founder of Grantland, one of the greatest journalism websites of all time. So when I found out one of my favorite, favorite writers was writing a book about one of my favorite sports. I was pumped and I was very excited to see if Chuck Klauschumann wanted to come back on the podcast. I'm very excited to bring you this interview here during the Super Bowl week. In this episode, Chuck and I are talking about football, talking about AI, talking about shared cultural experiences, what the future generations

will misunderstand about this moment in time right now. You can follow Chuck on Twitter, at C. C. Costerman and definitely check out his new book, Football. And if you want to listen to his other interview on the podcast, I'll link to that in today's show notes. And I hope to see you in Phoenix at the end of the month. If you're the owner of an NFL team, you probably don't need to come. But everyone else, very much welcome. I'll see you at dailystokelap.com to grab tickets. I think about this thing that you wrote all the time. I think we even talked about it last time, but it's one of my favorite insights of yours that pertains to football, but it explains, I think, life generally. You were writing a piece about the Cleveland Browns. You were there in the off

season and you're walking around the facility. And as it happens, I think you're you were profiling Michael Lombardi who actually introduced all my books to professional football. Well, I mean, he was there. He was part of the organization at the time. At the time, I was there because they had sort of said, we will allow you to sort of watch the draft, our drafting experience, which did not happen. But that was what the promise was of me showing up. Yeah, but what I took out of the piece, which was not the main subject of it, but it was just one of those little insights, which is what I think long-form journalism is best at as these like little sort of asides. And anyways, you catch the whole Brown's organization basically watching ESPN to see what is happening. Like you're like, these are the experts of what they do and they're just watching football television journalism.

the rest of us. And we like to think that there's something more going on behind the scenes, whether it's like in politics or sports or entertainment or whatever. And then you realize they're kind of just like the rest of us. And I mean, obviously today it would be them scrolling Twitter or their Instagram feed. But you're just like, you want to think the experts have some super exclusive intelligence that they're getting. And then they're kind of just doing the same as the rest of us. Well, I mean, you either sort of imagine that they have some sort of separate elite version

of this kind of dialogue or discourse, but you certainly don't think that they are using what I think most people think of is like just kind of like the lowest form of discourse. Like the most consumer-oriented, you know, almost like the creation of narratives and all these things, you know, that we sort of see, like,

When I watch talking head stuff on ESPN, guys talking in a roundtable or on Fox, I know that they're talking about, you know, real things and they have insight and they're former players and experts, but I see it more as an entertainment vehicle. Yes. That this exists to basically get us from game to game, how to fill up this time. It was a little strange to see these guys to make it, you know, about to make a draft pick and they're watching these things intently. Now, part of me wonders, are they watching it intently with some aesthetic distance?

Like, are they actually watching it for the things about it that are untrue? But I got to say, it didn't seem like it. Like, they would sort of nod their heads at the part you're supposed to nod the head at. It was like, it was, you know, it was a surprising thing to me, you know. Yeah, it's like you wouldn't want a hedge fund manager just watching CNBC all day because you would think that that's late already. Like you would expect the newsmaker to be getting their information from somewhere other than the news. Because typically in life, if the media is covering something you really understand, you know, a situation happening in your hometown or maybe a story about you or whatever, you know, it's almost always wrong to some. And that's not even a criticism.

It's just kind of the imperfection of the thing. That if somebody is trying to explain a technical matter to a real technician, it's going to always seem flawed. And that's what I thought would have been the case with like the GM of an NFL. football team that if they were watching the NFL network, you know, discuss some offensive linemen from Tennessee or whatever, they would not be going like, well, this is something I got to care about. This is, I would think they'd be like, couple of these guys just don't get it. Like that thing they're saying about leverage, that's fake.

Like, we know that that's just fake or whatever. Maybe not. You know, maybe not. Maybe there is, maybe there is less of a chasm between the bottom of society, the top society than we think, at least intellectually and ideologically. Maybe that is actually, you know, since we live in a totally mediated culture, maybe that is what sort of connects the top and the bottom. I don't know. There's a phrase for that. It's honestly something more people should understand. I think it's called the gal amnesia effect. I think Michael Lewis coined it. But you have a decent definition of it in the book. You said, anytime I read an article about a subject I legitimately understand, the article has been at least partially wrong, a reaction that's become increasingly pervasive. national story about a localized conflict will seem erinous to the local population it depicts.

Any entry-level exposition about a technical problem will seem imprecise to genuine tacticians. And then the amnesia effect is the part where then when we read or watch something about something we don't understand, we defer to what we've just been told as if the area we have expertise is the exception and not the rule to the insufficient coverage or the tendency towards inaccuracy. Well, and I think everyone who thinks that they have something to offer, whatever that skill is, they kind of see it that the value is the uniqueness of it. That it's coming from them, that it's specific to them. But as soon as then they're kind of confronted with this kind of consensus collective view, there's a little anxiety that maybe that in order

to have my unique idea get across, I first got to show that I understand. and what the parameters of the discourse is. Like I have to show that like I understand what everybody else thinks in order to somehow enter my new thing. You know, it's probably not a bad sort of impulse because, I mean, if you jump right in with like sort of the counterintuitive idea, I think it leaves some audience, you know,

to think like, well, this person doesn't even understand what the playing field is. It's like they're making up a new game or whatever. I definitely see this with AI. Anytime I ask AI a question, about something I do know quite a bit about, and I'm like asking it to find something that I just don't want to spend the time

getting the specifics on or whatever. Anytime I kind of know the answer it's supposed to give me, I'm always very disappointed with the quality of the answer. I get bit by a jellyfish, and I'm like, what should I do? I'm like, well, it says I should do this. So that's obviously what I'm going to do. You know, I'm incredibly deferential when it's well outside my area of expertise

and I'm just desperate for any kind of confident answer. But if I were to ask it like what the best restaurant in Austin is, I'd be like, this thing doesn't know what the fuck it's talking about. What do you make of the synchophantic nature of AI that this sort of built-in tendency it has to always begin with some kind of compliment to sort of insert this idea that your question is especially, you know, trenchant? Well, like, now, do you think that this is that this is part of the, that the creators of AI were like, well, this is, this is actually what people want.

They want to feel as though they're being helped by someone who is subservient. That will give them less fear. That it's not like a hell situation where it's like, you know, that this is a situation where, oh, look at this, this, this, this AI system is behaving as though it's lucky to be talking to me. Or am I actually personifying it too much? Like, why do you think that is, it's normal nature? No, I do find that annoying and weird. and I think revealing about what your sort of average human wants.

I also find it strange where when it's wrong and you're like, hey, that's obviously wrong. What about this or that? And then the quickness with which it goes, oh, you're absolutely right here. And so like there's something not just annoying about its overconfidence in giving you incorrect or insufficient or bullshit answers, but the obsequiousness and the immediacy and the spinelessness with which it will change its mind over and over and over again until you go, okay, that's good. That's what I wanted.

There's something revealing about that, too, where it knows that what you want to do is feel right more than you want it to give you what is right. And the speed complicates it, too, though, because like, let's say you had a personal assistant and you had them, you wanted, you need them to look up a bunch of information about state capitals or whatever. Yeah. And you're going through the. information they gave you by hand and you notice that they got something wrong about you know they

Carson City they didn't say was the capital of nevada and you told them this uh they would be like ohp you're absolutely right i know this was my job to do this and i made this mistake it's almost like the i is doing that instantaneously right like they're finding out that they're wrong thinking about it feeling i don't know a shame about it and coming it's it is it is bizarre although i wonder like are we the only generation of people who are going to have this dissidence in the same way that like really people our age are the only people who are obsessed with the difference between the pre-internet world of the posting internet world that we're constantly saying like oh you used to have to go to a travel agent or whatever if you want you know now you don't have to like people older than us don't really

see that you know like elderly people they maybe never really use the internet in a in a practical functional everyday way. People younger than us, it's like, oh, we're the only age, kind of. Like, basically if you're 40 now up to maybe 60, like, that's the only window of time where you fully experience both paradigms. When I was watching the Wild Card Games this weekend, there's this Microsoft AI commercial where the guys like the running back or whatever runs by really fast. And then he goes, ooh. And he starts, like, typing in queries to chat GPT or whatever, to narrow down. Rank them by this and then do this and then do this. And like what strikes me about it is just no one would do that because no one would

trust a thing that like imagine if Excel, Excel does all sorts of calculations for you, right? And if Microsoft Excel was just wrong like 10 to 15% of the time and you're like, you just added all these cells up incorrectly and you were like, that's wrong. And then Excel was just like, oops, yeah, you're right. Let me do it correct this time. Right? Like the error rate that we're willing to accept with chat GPT is like, or any of the AIs is so enormous to me. It strikes me as like this crazy thing that no one's talking about.

Like we're like, hey, it's amazing. It can do this stuff. But also it's like preposterously laughably wrong. A significant percentage of the time and you don't know what that time is. But by the way, you should lay off your staff and replace it with this thing. Well, but it is, you know, interesting. I do think about, like, the early days of Wikipedia. Yeah. How, like, when I was in a newspaper, the idea in those days, if you would use Wikipedia at all as any kind of source,

it would have been like, you're going to get fired for that. You know, this time. Now, it actually seems probably more secure than most sources of information. But is that just because everything else has gotten worse? Well, that's part of it, certainly. But also, I think over time, sort of these things that are all kind of user-generate or whatever, they are going to improve. I mean, it's very interesting.

Like, okay, so I'm sure you're familiar with this. This anthropic lawsuit about books. I was just filling out the thing the other day because my agent was like, no, no, no, I can't do it for you. You have to do it. And now I'm like, I have to fill it out like 20 times. Yeah, well, actually you don't. Okay.

And this is how I know. Okay. So I hear about this secondhand. I didn't know anything about this. For people who don't have any idea what this is, Anthropic, which I believe is the search engine, I think that people call Claude. I don't use this one.

So it turns out there's like this class action suit. And you can opt into it or you can opt out of it. And what initially I thought was if you opted into it, it meant you were giving them access to your books. As it turns out, they've taken them all already. That's all in the machine. So if you have any works that were used by Anthropic, if you fill out this form, I believe you get like,

it's like $3,100 per work and then you get half in your publisher gets half. So, you know, I like you, I had a lot of books on there, right? So the actual amount of money was not insignificant, okay? So I'm like, I'm going to do this. I'm going to opt into it. But it was very difficult to do it with all these things until I asked chat GPT how to do it. And it made it incredibly easy.

It did a lot of the things for me. I mean, it was the first time that I ever used one of these things in a way that was actually practical. I don't, you know, in every other situation I've ever been in professionally, what, like, to me, Chad GPT is good for like, you put a sentence in and go, like, is it grammatically correct? It's good for stuff like that, you know? But this was the first time it actually gave me how to, like, take all of the works

and make it into one file and presented all at once. Yeah. And then it's checked it all for me. And it said it can look up to see if to make sure it was received. It was like, so this thing that I'm technically suing. right i'm suing the idea of this system which is already taken all of my work about i was out of the barn or everyone you want to see it but it's out so it's like well you get this little money now in a way i was almost like well what happens if i i guess if you don't opt in the only upside is you there could be a lawsuit

that you could opt into later they say the settlement will never be this big i don't know it's it was it's a strange deal it really like it was a real collision that like of modernity like this thing that everybody sort of said was going to happen, all of a sudden it was like, it already happened, that already happened, you know, it's like, as soon as I have to start filling out like complex forms, I start to immediately go, wait. Now, how much am I getting paid for this? Because, uh, I might just not do it. Well, yeah, because then suddenly you're weighing it against time, right? Yes. Like, is the amount of time this is going to take worth what I'm going to get back? Like, you can notice what I get back, you know? Yes. And then what are the chances that I'll

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And you can use code Stoic at Monarch.com for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first year at monarch.com code stoic. You know, it's funny, obviously, you talk about this at the beginning of the book. Like, you know, the thing that people want to compare football to is, you know, the Roman Coliseum Gladiator Games. But I remember I was in Istanbul, maybe seven or eight years ago. And the hippodrome there, there's a racetrack in the middle of Istanbul,

which was at one point known as Constantinople. And I'm reading this sort of exhibit about it. And I didn't know how big chariot racing was in the ancient world. That like chariot racing was like after the sort of rise and fall of the gladatorial games, chariot racing becomes sort of the main sport of the Roman Empire. And I'm reading about this event. This is like in 500 AD or something. There's a chariot racing.

And basically the chariot racers get, it's like red and green and blue. and the different colors are basically associated with different political factions. And apparently there's a there's like a chariot race during the reign of Justinian that goes sideways. And maybe there's allegations of cheating. I forget what it is exactly. But like this riot breaks out. And like 30 or 40,000 people are killed in a riot during a chariot race in the center

of what was then the Roman Empire. And I remember just thinking like, okay, yeah, this would be like, if if the different divisions in the NFL became associated with Republican or Democrat or libertarian or whatever. And then during the Super Bowl, a riot breaks out. And the end of the story is the emperor is almost forced to abdicate because like his chariot faction loses and then he tries to intervene. And so there is something about like whatever the dominant sport is in a period of time that that just becomes absorbed into culture and into the entire sort of political and social system of a country. And it is weird that football has become that. You sort of marvel at

that at the book that like you wouldn't think it would be football and somehow it is football. Well, I mean, football has done this in a way that's also so clear. I mean, it is, it's not really a debatable thing. There's no argument in the United States over what sport is most reflective of society or most popular of all these things. Like we understand it. Football is an interesting thing because, you know, it starts in the 19th century and sort of evolves on its own for about 70 or 80 years and then intersects with sort of the rise of television. And that is really what makes this happen in terms of the sort of the metaphorical and symbolic significance it takes. takes on the things about society it absorbs,

the things about society it reflects. You know, and that, you know, is chance, right? You obviously can't, you know, start a sport before the invention of a medium and think like it one day it might work for it. I don't think the inventors of television saw, this is a perfect vessel for football. I think they thought that about boxing and horse racing

and things like that, you know, baseball. But to me now, and big reason I wanted to do this book is I think if you're thinking about the United States from the last half of the 20th century. And you're trying to understand it through another thing, through an outside idea. Like, football is probably the best source for that. I don't know if that will be true going into the 21st century.

But I think that for the last half of the 20th century, like football was and is this like sort of like kind of reflective, profound thing. It profound in kind of an underrated way. Like it is just a sport. it is a form of entertainment, it is kind of just a distraction. And yet there is, I think, a deepness to why it became, you know, so central to not just like, you know, American popularity, but like American identity, specifically certain regions of the country where football is, I mean, almost inarguably the most important extension of culture in those

places. Yeah, it's like the only monoculture left. You make a point in there that I didn't think about, which is like, it makes sense that soccer is the most popular sport in the world because anyone can play soccer anywhere. And you can play it in a bunch of different conditions that are all close to, you know, what you would see or experience, like watching it professionally or watching it on television or whatever. And then you're like the very small number of people that play football, American football, versus how popular it is, that feels like it says something. Like it is weird that the supposedly democratic country has as its game and its sort of iconic sport, a fundamentally elitist game in the sense that not that many people play

it. I mean, maybe not elitist, but exclusionary. For sure. Yes, yes. And, I mean, there are many things about this that seem to contradict what we What you would expect if say you were some alien, you know, thinking about what America wants to think about itself. Okay. The fact that no team sport is so dictated and is so controlled by things outside of the field itself.

You know, the play coming from the press box down to the sideline sent in by a messenger. Got to look at the Byzantine code on your wristbands, you know. It's like it's the most controlled thing. And one of the, you know, the popular ideas, I mention this often. I mentioned the book like this essay that art critic David Hickey once wrote about basketball was that the larger ideal was that any rules or sort of bylaws of the sport should try to liberate the players. Well, that's what we care about, right?

We care about the people on the field. So we want to give them the maximum amount of freedom and kind of creative expression. Football does the opposite. Football is not made for the individual. It is made for the collective. It is made in this higher article, you know, stratified thing where what you're seeing is never accidental. It is the most corporate sport, not just in terms of the extension of how it works in actual business. The construction of the game has many sort of similarities to any kind of highly controlled system is built.

And I think that it kind of shows that this is what people want. We want freedom for ourselves. Yeah. We want control for the rest of the world. Like, we want to feel like we have agency, but we're more comfortable, I think, seeing others act without it. Yeah. Yeah.

No, and your point about, like, what are we going to think about what football says about us 50 years from now, 100 years from now, just like, what do we think about what the various sort of cultural obsessions about the Romans and the Greeks says about them? Like I was in Greece this summer and one of the things that I I find so interesting is like the Greeks had a bunch of different running sports. But all of their running events, none of them involved them going around in a circle. Like they had straight sprints and then their distance ones involved like running to a line and then running back. It was this like sort of you would do these multiple stadium length wind sprints basically. And I don't know what it says, but it says something.

and interesting that they weren't just, like, the track is circular because they would do chariot events, but people wouldn't run in a circle. What does that say? It's just weird. You know, there's just endlessly fascinating, revealing little quirks that you learn about a society when you study what it watches. But here's the deal. When we talk about something like that as a retrospective thing, like we're looking back on this. We do exactly what you just did. It's like, what does it mean? It must mean something, right? And the only meaning that we can apply are typically meanings that would exist in the present tense. Yeah.

Like it had just never occurred to them this, that they had a very linear way of thinking, that they somehow they believe the curves, you know, the curves of the track created some kind of, you know, mystical advantage. Like, you know, we always have to think, what was the reason for this? And the fact of the matter is, there probably was a reason for it. They're probably maybe even a real kind of practical explanation. But that's not how we want to think about it because we think of it as, history and history want to have meaning.

That's a big part of like sort of, I guess, kind of the conceit of this book, which is that I know that there is going to be a time in the future when football is not the last remnant of the motto culture. It's not the center of like how American entertainment and, you know, and recreation operates. It's going to be something that is either, I don't think it'll probably be, I don't think it'll be gone in a totality, but it will be this niche thing, this minor thing. And then people are going to try to explain why. And I am, I'm not sure exactly what that description will be, but I think it will be wrong and I suspect it will be pejorative because that's usually how we work.

We look at something in the past that failed and we're like, well, it failed because it had a problem. And that problem was endemic to the world it comes from. So I wanted to do a book that was like, okay, so you read, you know, obviously it's kind of a kind of a gimmick because I'm trying to sell this book to people who are alive. I'm doing this podcast, right? I'm not doing this podcast for people who have not yet been born. I do not expect people to listen to this podcast in 100 years and then find this book. Sure. But I do like to think about time in this way where like, how can I reflect what the present actually is like for people who will have no way to access it?

Like, whatever we think about Roman gladiators, you know, it's a ton of knowledge about the mechanics of how it worked and all that. But I don't think it's possible for people in this day and age to do. truly understand what it really felt like or what the motive was or what people wanted or how it was view like we assume it was viewed in some way like the way we view football i guess i can understand that relationship but i bet it wasn't that way you know i always kind of almost i don't concerned is der on word i guess obsessed with this idea of like i want things to be remembered the way they actually were not the way we can project the present onto them It is interesting, though, like we assume when there is a monoculture that it is, in fact, an actual monoculture and that there wasn't a divergences of opinions at the time, right?

So we go, okay, the Romans really liked gladiatorial games. They obviously thought it was okay to, you know, send criminals and whomever in there to fight and die and how grotesque and violence this is. And then I think it's really interesting, you know, there's this essay that Seneca writes where he's not talking. talking about this at all. And then suddenly he kind of goes into this tangent and he's like, why are we doing this? It's so violent and horrible. Like who likes this? You know? And you go like, oh, yeah, some people thought it was dumb then too, right? And so we always assume that everyone was on the same page and certainly they weren't. Oh, absolutely. Certainly. Yes. And you know, but what I'm saying is the people who are critics of football now in a future world, those people, I think, are going to be seen as the guideposts.

Because the thing failed, right? And it will seem like, oh, well, you know, they're saying it's barbaric. And it was just, it was like a blood sport or whatever. That must have been what it was. But, you know, you just bring up just kind of casually, like lots of interesting things. Like we mentioned the monoculture, right? Yeah. Okay.

So what's something that's a thing? A lot of people who study or follow TV, know. They know that the last episode of MASH was the most watched show in history and that will never happen again. that it is now absolutely impossible that a show could have that many people watching one episode all at the same time. And yet, what were people saying at the time?

They were saying the monoculture was over because cable television had come into play. And suddenly it was possible to get, you know, the New York Times in Seattle. The world was becoming this sort of already, these things before the internet exists were kind of using these terms. You see, you'll go back and find things

where people use terms like memes and like, you know, at the global village and all that stuff. So this thing that we now understand to be the apex of the monoculture, I have a 53 million people or whatever it was watching this episode of, you know, a Korean War sitcom or whatever. At the time, they already believed the thing that we say about it now was over, that the monoculture to them had been, you know, the 50s. That was a monoculture, you know, for the 20s.

Yeah, it's, it's. so weird realizing that there was a present moment at every moment in history. I just went down this weird rabbit hole. Did you know there was another Winston Churchill? Like in the late 1800s, early 1900s, there was an American writer, a novelist named Winston Churchill, who was so famous. Like in 1901, he had like the bestselling book in America. He was so famous that Winston Churchill went by Winston Spencer Churchill for most, like people don't even know Winston Churchill, the statesman, supported himself as a writer. And there's all these like, there's this great book called No More Champagne, where it's like basically a biography of Churchill as a writer and as a

guy who spent more money than he had. And there's all these like things about him complaining about his agent and his publisher and it's fascinating. But, but like Churchill went by Winston Spencer Churchill so people wouldn't confuse him with Winston Churchill, the author, who was selling millions and millions of books. And he's just totally forgotten. Like, just nobody knows that he exists. Even though he sold millions and millions of books. And if you had asked people in 1906, are people going to remember who Winston Churchill was? They'd be like, yeah, he's a great novelist.

the idea that we would remember him as the guy that saved the world, Western civilization as a statesman from a different country, would have been like utterly incomprehensible. Are you a big Churchill guy? Do you know a lot about him? Yeah. Because there's one thing I've always wondered about him. I'll tell this anecdote, and maybe you're familiar with it.

I had heard that, so, you know, in those, in his era, he's talking about him with political era. You know, everybody smokes, right? Everyone was smoking. So he would remove all the ashtrays from the root. And he had figured out a way to sort of not need to ash his cigarette as much. And eventually someone else would ask him for an ashtray. And he felt this gave him a tactical advantage.

What was the advantage? Like what would be that? What would that advantage be? Like they would have to ask him for an ashtray? Yes. And that was, and he saw this as sort of like that it was almost like who blinked first or something. But I've always wondered, I've heard that story more than once. But I've never had an explanation as to what the advantage is.

would be. But I don't really doubt it, right? Obviously, he knew what he was doing, you know? I mean, this is a guy who was drunk all the time and yet save the world or whatever, you know, was like, he's an amazing person. It's weird. I've read a lot about Churchill and I've never heard that story, or if I have, I skipped over it, not thinking much about it. You know, the other weird one you hear all the time is, like, they go like, do you know how much shit there was on the streets of New York City and, like, the horse era? You know, like, I heard that one again the other day. Chicago especially. They all. Chicago. Because they called Chicago the city of horses.

Yeah, there's just like manure everywhere because there's so many horses and then one day it's just gone. But that's one that happened in my lifetime, obviously not as much. But just like the idea there was smoking ashes everywhere all the time. And then just like that, it disappears. And then every once in a while you're in a casino where they let you smoke and you just go, I can't imagine what the world was like when it was like this all. the time. I remember on it, we went on a trip as a kid. We were in Arkansas and we stopped at like a sizzler or something. And it was still, there was a smoking section and a non-smoking section.

And that's the last one that I remember being like, oh, this is horrible. It is amazing how something can change and it's almost like that period just disappeared. Like there were ashtrays in hospital waiting rooms. Yes. Like you could smoke in the hospital. You could smoke in the hospital. Do you know Sam Gwynne? S.C. Gwynne. He wrote Empire of the Summer Moon. He wrote that book, The Perfect Pass, about the invention of the forward pass in football.

He's an amazing writer. She wrote this book called Empire of the Air about the Hindenburg. It's about like Blimbs, you know? But they're not called Blimbs. I'm forgetting how to pronounce the actual word. But anyways, he's talking about this one famous one that goes down like the Hindenberg.

And there's this whole section in the book about there was smoking rooms on those blimps. Those blimps filled with highly jammed, yes, highly plamble gas. There was a sealed smoking room on

those blimps. And like, it's not just like, oh, this used to be a thing and we forgot about it. But it's like, no, no, there used to be like legalized insanity. Just like everyone was collectively insane about something. And then we've just pretended that it didn't,

didn't happen. Well, I mean, although like, This has come up in a few other podcasts. Have you heard this story about, you know, the San Francisco 49ers have seemingly many more injuries than every other team over the last five years. And now people are wondering, is it because of their practice site is located next to this like electromagnetic site or whatever?

It's like it's right next. If you look it up, there's, you know, is it possible in some future world? Or like, do you realize that, like, people didn't even realize that having, like, an electrical plant near people was that, but yeah at the same time here in the present like it would be weird you'd really be a marginalized person if you were like i refuse to come within one mile of a you know of a power plant or a

transformer or something but if it suddenly became obvious that that was like the main factor for a whole laundry list of problems then we'd be like people were so crazy it's like smoking a cigarette on a zeppelin or whatever you know but it's not it's not because we don't have that understanding now. We're always trying to do this. We're always trying to put the understanding of the world we have now onto the past. I mean, I'm not blaming people for doing it. I do it all the time. It's just, it's, but it's crazy. It's a, you know. Well, they bring the smoking thing back to sports. It is crazy when you watch those, you look at those videos or you, you see photos of like athletes smoking during halftime, smoking in the locker room. Because that one isn't, it's not like,

oh, you shouldn't smoke because, you know, you might get cancer many years from now. Like, they were coughing. Like, smoking is something where, like, the smoker tangibly daily feels the consequences to doing the thing. No one would feel that more directly than an athlete doing a sport with lots of cardio in it. And yet, there they are. Things get sort of built into your brain and they don't really change. I'm looking at you, you're wearing this New Orleans Saints jacket, you know.

So when I think of the New Orleans Saints, part of me still reverts back to my first exposure to them, which was the year I really got into football cards and the Saints went one in 15. So my natural impulse, my natural inclination, when I think of the Saints, is to think of, part of me says like, well, that's like the worst, that's like the worst franchise. They've won Super Bowl since then. Everything has changed. If someone were to say, if I were asked to rank, every franchise in the NFL historically,

the greatest or the worst, they would not be at the bottom for sure. But there's a part of my brain that sees that. Like I guess where they always say like the lizard part or whatever. And I'm like, oh, yeah, they had Archie Manning and nothing else. They had Chuck Muncie, but he wasn't good yet because he didn't go to the Chargers. I still think of the first understanding I had of the Saints, you know? Well, my first one is I remember I got a book out of my school library and there was a picture on the front of that kicker whose name I'm forgetting who didn't have the front of his foot.

Yeah. Tom Dempsey. Yes. He broke the NFL record with half a foot. Yes. Yeah. And I just was like, what is this? This is insanity. Like, how do I not know about this? And that's what took me down the. the rabbit hole. It's strange. In a way, he had half a foot, but it was a huge advantage. I know. Because they allowed him to wear a shoe

that had a steel plate where the toes would be. So he was actually like hammering the ball with almost a literal hammer with his foot. You know, so it's always, that's always a weird thing is that for many years, I think,

believe it was a 63 yard field goal. That was no longer the record, but it was for a long time. It was certainly in, into the 90s. I think maybe a guy from Denver tied it at that point.

But there was always that, you know, it was always sort of a, like a profile and courage. You're like, you know,

like this guy with half a foot is the kick the longest field goal. And it's like, well, yes, also he did have the advantage of kicking

the steel, but, you know, it's a, well, I almost told that story in my book, The obstacle is the way. And it's not like

the record now is like 10 yards further. It's not that much further. Yeah, I think, yeah, it's, I think it's a,

It's not that much. I mean, there is probably a limit to what a kick can be, you know? Yes. And regardless, it still is an obstacle. I mean, yes, he had this advantage of this shoe that was specially designed for a guy with half a foot. But that also meant at some point in his life, he had half a foot and he was like, I'm going to pursue field goal kicking. Yeah. And that is an amazing thing, right?

I recall the last time we talked, we talked a lot about Iron Maiden. Yeah, of course. I was usually an amazing thing. Yes. So do you like Black Sabbath as well? Yeah, sure. I love Black Sabbath. And the classic story about Black Sabbath

were one of the many ones is that on the last day of working in the factory, before he became a full-time member of a band, Tony Iommi's working in the factory and the tips of his fingers are all cut off. You know, and his left hand, well, he plays left-handed, so it's his right hand that has no fingertips, you know, and he can't have, it would seem to be the end of this, right? Like his mother made him go to, work even though he was quitting she's like he got to finish her last day and he's like i'm

a musician and she's like go your last day thing comes down you know cuts off his fingertips he's kind of you know obviously depressed and and believes it over and someone brings him a record and plays the record and i don't remember the name of the artist somebody else listening to this will know the guy plays the record and tony iommi's like oh okay this is a guy's a pretty good guitar player thanks you know it's like not the greatest time for me to hear this and the guy goes okay the guy on record has one arm. He only has one arm. And then Tony Army was like, if this guy can play this with one arm, like I can figure out

a way to, you know, you know, he starts, you know, burning wax to cover his fingertips so he can press down on the strings and eventually they just, he just builds up the calluses. And the reason Black Sabbath sounds different than every other band who's tried to copy them is probably this. The fact that the guy playing the guitar does not have fingertips. But there's another part of this, which is like, there's a guy who pursued playing guitar and became a virtuoso with one arm. What motivates the person to do that?

It's like you would think that if you, like, if I lost my arm, I wouldn't give up, right? I wouldn't give up my life. Like, I wouldn't be like, I want to do something. But I don't think I would pick a job or a vocation that seems so specifically geared toward the two-armed guy. I mean, Norm McDonald always had a joke about that. about this, but the Petraeus, the printer from Australia, who had those like ski things, you know?

And, and Norm MacDonald was against this guy. And people were like, oh, why? Because you believe he murdered his life, which was always in the news. And he was like, no, no, it's that he shouldn't be a sprinter if he, if he doesn't have. I mean, that, you know, it should be like, you should have to be a biped or whatever to be a sprinter, you know. And now he's joking, of course, but there is something funny about that. The idea that, like, I'm going to try to do something that seems so geared against

the natural proclivities of my body, you know? Well, it's also weird that like we as a society, like your point about like, okay, he has a steel plate in his shoe. And that might give him this small, you know, statistical advantage in one sense. And then our sense of fairness is so binary. And obviously you could, you could connect this to a bunch of other debates that we have as a society. But we get obsessed over whether there is objectively one bit of advantage here.

and totally tune out or refuse to consider all the other disadvantages that person had. And then we're like, see, it's not, they should be excluded, right? Like, we're, like, profoundly obsessed with, you know, whether Pistorius' legs give him this slight advantage and not considering, like, okay, but 99% of the population when they were born without legs or whether they lost their legs or whatever would have just not. pursued this sport at all. This guy's obviously coming from an enormous disadvantage and the fact that he's even being considered as an enormous, you know, triumph.

Like certainly the game is not rigged in this guy's favor, even if these blades are giving him a slight advantage on the field. Yeah. Like, do you remember like Jim Abbott, the pitcher? Yeah. So this is a guy who only had one arm, you know, so he would tuck his glove underneath his kind of his stump or whatever, pitch with one hand,

then jam his hand into the glove, and then he would field with it. If the ball came to him, he would then kind of pop the ball up and throw to first base. Now, so he was an amazing story. When I was a kid, that would be like,

like he could get a weekly reader or whatever, and it's like, look at this guy. He's a one-arm pitcher, you know. You know, he had a few seasons at the end of his career that were really abys. In all likelihood, if he had been a normal pitcher,

maybe he would have been, you're relegated to AAA or double A or something. And he was. but it's odd because you know I say that and yet those were still some of the most amazing

stories and successes anyone could have like he's pitching with one arm it would be like like somebody asked me who like my favorite drummers are and I would be like oh yeah John Bonham and you know it's like but like I should probably say the guy from Jeff Leppard he has one arm right

like he literally can't do drumfills it can't if it's impossible but yet you know so but I don't think I don't think of him in that Wait, I don't think of him as an elite drummer, even though the thing he's done is the most amazing thing a drummer probably has ever done to be a one-arm drummer and a band of that magnitude, a hard rock band where drumming is really important. Granted, there was all this technology to help him and all this, but still. So the performance superhighway of your body are your blood vessels. You have 60,000 miles of blood vessels in your body that deliver oxygen and nutrients to every cell. That's your cardiovascular system. You've got 60,000. miles of blood vessels that deliver oxygen, nutrients to every cell in your body. And this is why

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setting it up that maybe you weren't doing yourself any favors by writing it for this group versus that group. I wonder if there's something revealing about football in that there's a lot of great baseball books. There aren't that many football books. Is there something about football that like it's such a televised sport that we don't, we don't read about it, but what, or maybe that's just baseball's sort of was the dominant game in the era when books were more popular. But, but I guess there's the blind side. I mean, there's a cliche. about this. There's a cliche about sports books, which is that the best books are like a disproportionate to the size of the ball. So it's like like golf. A lot of, a lot of writing about

golf. Okay. Baseball. A lot of writing about baseball. Tennis is now. You know, football less. Actually now basketball has sort of changed this. That there's that that the sort of the the meaning of basketball in part because it has like such. an ability to discuss things like, you know, race and these things. Basketball has become almost like easy symbolism or easy allegory. But I'll say, like my publisher did not want me to do a football book. Like he's straight up said, like football books don't sell. I think the thinking being that, you know, people who love football don't necessarily

want to read about it. And people who sort of have like a, I don't know, ideological or intellectual issue with football, aren't interested in the sport itself. So it's like hard to find this middle ground, you know. But this is the book I wanted to do. So it's like I'm always surprised when I talk to other writers and they tell me and this happens a lot. I bet you've had this experience with people that they tell you that their agent or their publishing house kind of convinced them not to do a book they wanted to do. That they'd say like, well, it's not commercial or it's like they're like that has been tried before and it's failed.

And it's like you cannot think that way. I mean, it's like, Like, because you have to work, you know, for a book, you work on it for a year, and then it takes another year before it comes out. So in a way, you're like kind of living with this thing for two years. Like, it has to be something you want to do, even if nobody else wants it. I mean, that is the most important thing. It's got to be something you want to do, you know? Yeah, no, no, I mean, I think there's two separate issues there. I just think it's, it's like, there's something about how television-centric football is that it's not lost on me that it's, it's not

a literary sport either. But baseball, which is kind of boring to watch on TV and great to watch in person, is somehow the more literary of the sports. But so is boxing. That's true. Yes. So it's like the thing about football, the thing you're mentioning is something I hadn't really thought about. I mean, I've thought a lot about obviously this book about football's relationship to television. I didn't think about this, though. The idea that by being so married to television and that, you know, one of the things like kind of the aphorisms I guess using this book is that like, you know, football was a completely mediated event, even when there's no media involved, that now the experience of watching a football game live with no cameras is still understood

by the consumer as it would be seen on television. It is possible that because, you know, this, this kind of interlocking idea of this entertainment medium and this game, just sort of became the same thing. And so dominant that, you know, the 100 most popular broadcasts in the year 20, 23, like 93 were NFL games, and then three or four more were college football games. I mean, that's just a crazy statistic.

It makes no sense in any other society. There's just nothing like this, right? Maybe that does overwrite the possibility to write about it. Yeah. Like, in a sense, it's like, in the same way it's, you know, it's like a, if you're doing, you know, film criticism, you're usually talking about the ideas and you're sort of also talking about the plot of the film.

But you don't want to talk about the plot of the film too much for two reasons. One, you don't want to give it away, but also, it doesn't really work. A description of a story, well, either of a film particularly, because it's only like two hours, is either going to seem like weirdly rudimentary or too complicated to really get, like the visual part of film is a hard thing to write about only the best film writers are really good at it. Football, I guess, in the same way, because of the visual experience of television

is so pervasive and dominant in the mind of every consumer, it is difficult to describe. Like describing a football play, and I do it a few times in this book, always seems awkward. Well, there's too many characters. There's two, like, boxing, baseball,

obviously has a decent amount of guys on the field, but the action is so distributed in football. it's very hard to describe. And it almost goes against our natural instincts. Like I thought it was revealing there was an interview. It might have been on their podcast where where Taylor Swift was talking about how she thought that the Kelsey brothers had faced off against each other. Like she didn't, it didn't occur to her that they weren't would have never been on the field at the same time. And, and you're like, oh yeah, because that's not how you would design it if you were thinking about designing it for being at like like the idea that the best players are not like that

the two leaders of the teams are not on the field at the same time is not how you would guess the biggest game in america is is designed there are so many things about football that if you describe to someone who had no idea about it it would seem not just confusing but like almost straight up bad. Like if you like this thing, like you said, like you could say like, okay,

so the best player in the league might not touch the ball the entire season. It would be very easy for that to happen. Okay. The fact, and I just talked about in the book, but you know,

it's like, so like the Wall Street Journal in 2011 did this kind of study where they found that in a three hour broadcast of an NFL game, there are 11 minutes of action. And this is often described

as like, it's used by people who are trying to convince you that football is not interesting or whatever. Yeah. And as it turns out, I think 11 minutes within a three hour window is actually perfect.

But in a pitch meeting, it would make no sense. Yes. Like if I was saying like, hey, I came up with this new board game. It takes about three hours to play. However,

you only make 11 moves during the game most of the time. You know, like nobody would be like up. It would be like, you know, like risk without moves or whatever, you know, sure.

Yeah. And they actually do some riffing on it on that, on that, Bergatsi S&L skit, the George Washington one, where it's like, okay, it's, it's football, but you don't use your feet. So, oh, so there's no kicking? Well, there's some kicking.

And then it's like, and it's kind of worth this many points. And then sometimes it's worth this many. The only thing more confusing than American football is Australian football. And I had the experience. I went to one of their games and they were explaining it to me. And I was like, what are you talking about? This is like, you took the most complicated. and nonsensical game, and you made it much more complicated and nonsensical.

It's kind of perfect. But it was weird to be like a foreigner watching a football game and going, oh, this is, this is what people who are not Americans think when you talk to them about the Dallas Cowboys or whatever. Yeah. I think another sport with this, cricket. Yes. Like when the first time, like, someone tells you, like, well, a cricket game, it might take

two days. It might take two days. It's like, why would it take two days? Like, what's going? What's happening? this. And it's like, well, it's not much is actually happening. But it seems very confusing. But in some ways, that is the charm of these things. I mean, what I think that like, sometimes, you know, it's like in the book Bright Lights Big City, you know, which is nobody thinks about it anymore.

But I think about it all the time because there's no, there's almost no other good novels in the second person. Okay. In that sense, Jane McEarnerney kind of ruined it for us, right? No one can do a second person novel now. Even all these years later, if I wrote a novel, in the second person. Jay McHenry mentioned every single, you know, so he was like, that alone is the brilliance of that move. He's like,

I'm doing this. But there's a scene in the book where the guy walks into a bar and like he asks, you know, there's a sports, I can't remember what the sport is even, but it might be like hockey

because he says like, what quarter is it? And the guy's like, it's the second period. And it's because this character knows nothing about sports. And he says, like, my whole life I've been cut out of the world's largest fraternity. And I do sometimes think about, but I mean, this is kind of a gendered thing,

like of guys who don't follow sports at all. I can't imagine what it must be like to go to a lot of the functions like I go to as a father. Like if we go to some event, some school event, and it's something, you know, the kids are doing whatever they're doing, the wives are usually talking and the guys are talking. And the likelihood that we are talking about our kids or sports is about 98%. Yes. I think there was a time when people would have talked about politics, but that's very touchy now. People are very nervous about that now. I live in the Pacific Northwest, which is one of the weird things about this is people don't like to talk about their jobs. Like when I was in New York, if someone started talking to you, like, you met them.

First thing they'd ask is, what do you do? Here they might be like, what kind of mountain bike do you own or some fucking bizarre thing? Because there's a chance you might not have a job, right? Yeah. There's something, well, yes. Well, also this, I'll hear there's this, I say this is crazy. Now, this is something that before I moved here, I wouldn't have said, that sounds positive, but now it seems crazy.

This real emphasis on do not let your job define you in any way. Never give the sense that what you do is something, you know, it's like, well, actually what I do is my identity. But regardless, what I'm saying is for these dads, right? We're sitting around talking about sports and now gambling. that also always comes up. And there's always some people just hanging out there. And in my mind, I think, oh, they're kind of quiet. Maybe they're shy.

But then another part of me is like, they just don't care about Auburn and Alabama. Like, they must think we're insane sitting here talking about whether or not the line on an Alabama Auburn game is too high. That's like, oh, it's eight and a half. You've got to take them. It's a bizarre thing, you know? And I don't even gamble.

I don't gamble. But I'm constantly talking to guys. is about betting lines in football because it is just part of being a middle-aged dude now. That's what you discuss, you know? And luckily, my entire life prepared me to do that because I've been thinking about football constantly for 40 or 45 years. It was so funny. I've been trying to get my kids to like football since basically they were born, and it's not

worked. I have two boys. And they just came home from school one day this year, and they're, they like football because some kid at school likes the Eagles and now they like football. And it was before bed, you know, a couple weeks ago. And my son was like, can I watch my iPad before bed? And we're like, no, you know, you don't do that. It's time to go to bed.

He's like, can I watch something on your phone? No. And he's like, hey, wait, isn't it Monday? Can I watch the Monday night football? And I go, yeah. And so I go and I get the laptop from watching it a little bit. And then it goes, I just figured it out. And I go, what?

And he's like, football is an excuse to watch TV. And I'm like, you got it, dude. You figured it out. crack the code. Like, that's what it is. It's, it's just a thing to watch on TV. I mean, saying this makes me sound like a 90. But this thing you described, I think was also a key to kind of the all-encompassing nature of football during the last half of the 20th century, which was that, you know, when I grew up and a lot of people like me, most people like me, there was one television in the house, was in the living room. And, you know, it was usually, it was controlled by your parents,

off in your dad. And if there was ever a football game on, that's what we were watching. Like it didn't matter. And they knew what the teams or the investment. There was nothing that we were going to watch instead of football if it was on. So like I'm the seventh kid in my family.

Even my sisters who don't care about football really at all. They understand the culture and the kind of mechanics of football much better than like most people I meet now just because it was this shared sort of experience. If your son had, if you'd been raising your son in the 80s, those first three steps of can I watch the iPad or can I look at that? That wouldn't have been there. It'd be like, can I stay up? Yeah, well, okay, Howard Coselle is on. You know, so any, any, would you just sit there and watch it. Sure. I do think that part of, you know, you always hear these stories now that are just completely, and they're probably exaggerated, but they're mystifying

to me in some ways where people are like, I can't go home at Thanksgiving. I'd politically disagree with my parents and my uncles or whatever. Like, I can't do that. Like, I'm cutting my family off or whatever. And or people who would be like, I feel very isolated. It's like I don't really have a social, you see these statistics where it's like men averaging less than one friend. You know, it's like all these, the academic of male loneliness. I too wonder how much of that is a manifestation of the end of the completely shared monoculture of the living room.

Where there used to be stuff that we all watch the same shows. It's just that if you're watching anything, this is what you're watching. And now that would never be the case. There are many situations where me, my wife, and our two kids are all watching separate things simultaneously. You know, saying it's hard to get your kids to watch football. You know, I think every guy kind of, every person maybe who likes football kind of wishes that their kid did too. It's a very difficult sport to get your kid into because it doesn't have a natural kind of engagement. There's so many rules.

You know, sometimes I'm watching the red zone And my son comes down And it's like, I don't know if he understands It's like it's going from game to him Because he's never thought of these things. And I'm totally comfortable With my kid not caring about football, not playing football, I in no way would ever want to enforce

The things that I like onto my kids. I just think that's the worst thing you do. But I always think to myself, you know, there was a period in my life in my 20s I didn't really have anything to talk to my dad about. you know, but we did still talk about like, who was Notre Dame recruiting, you know, did the North Dakota State Bison win the previous weekend? It really did allow us to sort of have this surrogate relationship until I got old enough to recognize. It's like, oh, my dad's going to

die and this is, these are important. You know, it's like things changed. I hate the idea that, like, that there could be a period where that's harder to find with my kids. Like, maybe it'll be film or maybe it'll be music. It'll be something else. I'm not going to let this. happen and football's not the only way but man that was an easy way to have it happen you I had an expert level knowledge of football when I was like nine or ten because I would read and memorize every statistic in the sporting news I would watch the NFL today I would watch any time there were everything in Sports Illustrated if it was about a sport I liked I read I consumed every aspect of this so even as a nine-year-old kid I remember you know like older people at our house

relatives or whatever. And I could talk to them about these games in a way that, you know, that they think, I think they thought was cute, but it was also completely normal. It was like two adults talking. It was the only adult conversation I was having in a way. And that's just, it's hard to do that with like magic to gather it. You know, it's like it's hard to do that, you know? Yeah, yeah. And you'll talk to a kid about football in a way that you wouldn't talk to them about politics or something. There's an equal equality under the game kind of thing. Like you're allowed to have opinions about it as a nine-year-old in the way that you're not about other monoculture things. And it's like, I mean, it really is like a simulation or a simulacrum.

It's like the stakes are lower. And the same way you're talking about, the same things you would be talking about. Like if you're talking about, oh, you know, oh, should Mike Tomlin be forced out or whatever? Or like, you know, is there some kind of, you know, stylistic problem with Lamar Jackson or whatever? these are in many ways, like kind of complex, nuanced things. Yes. But in sports, you don't, the nuance can sort of be not ignored, but it can be the underlying part of it.

The top part is just the conversation, you know, in politics, that is, it's harder to do. I mean, it happens in politics. If you're talking about what's going on politically, in some ways, you're talking about these fundamental ideas, like about, you know, what is democracy really does, you know, what is fascism really? all these things, but it's, you're right, it's, it's harder, you know, and it's less interesting to them. Yeah. No, no, it was my. I'm so glad it, it, it happened. And now it's like, now we have something to watch and sort of, that's not, you know, brain rot on YouTube. So I'll take it. Yeah, now it's weird because some people heard that and they think that they just, that you meant, oh, YouTube rots your brain.

There actually is this thing called Italian brain rot, right? Maybe every parent knows that. But like, you know, it's like, anybody who doesn't, they hear that term and they're like, oh, it's just like, that must be the term they use now to describe, like, kind of useless, frivolous information. No, it's actually these creatures with Italian names that do nothing. I mean, that, and, you know, the whole, I just find this stuff really interesting, like the whole six, seven and all these things. They all, so much of like kid culture now is based in a kind of absurdism. Yeah. that I do think is reflective of something more than just kids are weird. You know, because there's always been aspects of that. Kids have always been into kind of absurd things. I mean, people will be like, oh, yeah, they used to have pet rocks or whatever. But this is different where it seems as though the absurdism is the complete meaning of it. You don't you think that's because the kids are contributing to the culture for the first time?

Like in the sense, like I feel like what kids used to be into, even relatively recently, You know, it's like, hey, kids like Paw Patrol because presented between these choices of shows, they seem to like Paw Patrol more than these other shows. Now they're like the kids are actually talking to each other or have much more control over the remote and the kids are, it's not just a one way relationship. Like the kids are driving the means in a way that they weren't before. Oh, well, I think you're right about that for sure. They're also like these ideas are allowed to sort of flourish in these silos of youth. Where, you know, if say in the past or whatever, it's like if, if I'm watching facts of life or whatever. And for some reason, Tudy and Natalie are always going six seven, six seven.

Like I could see like someone older in the house being like, this is stupid. Like we're going to change to Magnum or whatever. Like, you know, it's like we're not going to watch this. Whereas now they're able to like, like the whole thing with the Minecraft movie is a great example of. this where it's like people were seemingly surprised that these kids were going to this Minecraft movie and like there were all these innocuous things that made them just go ballistic. But it's like they were able to build that world in private. And then suddenly it spills into the world at large and it's just confusing.

And you know, young people have always been confusing to old people. But what also is interesting is that we're also now expected to understand this more than our parents or our grandparents were. Like, you know, the very first book I wrote Fodorok City, I talk about this sort of of all. Like, one time, how it was like my dad was at the kitchen table, my whole family, and he was talking about our neighbor's cattle, okay? Our neighbor had many different breeds of cattle.

He had some herfords. He had some dairy cattle. He had like, oh, it was weird. He had like, no one did this, right? And my dad was talking about seeing this, this small herd of, like, disparate cattle. And he was like, what a motley crew that is or whatever. And everybody at the table starts chuckling, laughing. Like, ha, ha, ha, and they're all looking at me.

And my dad's like, you know, what, what? Now, some people would hear that story, I think, and be like, oh, see, that's sad. It was like this thing that I loved as a sixth grader or whatever. You know, my dad had like, I didn't feel that way. I was like, this proves my dad has never been in my bedroom. Yeah. Because I had a motley crew bumper sticker over my bedroom. bed. I had a Motley career post.

I had, like, he obviously had never snooped in my room. He never looked around. Like, I felt really, it was almost a secure thing to me. It was like, it showed that he had absolutely no, and I'm crying, I'm the seventh kid, so my dad was a lot older than the typical father. Now, it's almost impossible

to imagine that happening. Like, I mentioned Magic the Gathering. Like, I never played that game in my life until my kid got into it. Now I play it most days. So now I have this, and I have this understanding of the game and all these things like and what's good about it the problems with it it's just real interesting because you know they always say as a parent you can't be a friend you need to be a parent but the way modern

parenting works it's very difficult not to be friends with them because you're sharing all these things my kids like to listen to the top 40 station so i know all those songs like that wasn't how it was for me or anyone i knew growing up i didn't know one person who was like, oh, yeah, I'm going to go see Docking with my mom. Like, they would never happen. That would have never happened, you know? Yeah, it's weird. It's also weird.

Like, I wouldn't, like, when I was a kid, Pokemon was not cool, right? And it's weird that it's not just it wasn't cool. It was for losers. And now it's for everyone. It's weird, like, it's weird that it's still around, let alone it doesn't have any, uncool or cool. It's just a thing.

You're not a loser for liking Pokemon. Lots of people like Pokemon. But it's weird for me when my kids are taught. I have to remember like, oh, I don't need to remember what I used to think about Pokemon. We can just talk about Pokemon. I mean, Dungeons and Dragons is a great example of this. The fact that like, so when my kid got into Dungeons and Dragons, I was like, well, this is kind of interesting.

He must be sort of in that part of the social group. That's not what it is. It's like, it doesn't seem to have. even a relationship to gender anymore or or the idea that if you play sports, you wouldn't play Dungeons and Dragons that has gone. In a weird small, like this happens in a big way in like the world we live in, but also in a small world,

I guess, with children, which is that inevitably the counterculture always becomes the culture. In a weird way for you growing up, Pokemon was your kid version of the counterculture. It was for people who did not like the other things kids liked, who felt alien. by the normal things, right?

So they got into that. That happens in music. This happens in film. This happens in literature. It's always this way that the thing that is marginalized, if it touches people in a deep way, those are the people seemingly who enforce the ideas about culture later because it means something different to them.

They're getting involved in something. This is why the vast majority in the 90s and early 2000s of music critics and rock critics had all come from a, punk background. I was completely out like seen as very odd that I did not, that that all the people I worked with at Spin and knew it with the other magazines at the Village Voice, they were all fundamentally people who had been into punk rock. And then they so they were the, they were the underground culture, and now they dominate sort of the over culture. That's just how it seems to work. And, and, and, uh, it does in some ways sort of detract from the meaning of anything that's commercially successful.

Because in all likelihood, like the idea of like what Taylor Swift right now sort of creates musically, it is so popular. Nothing has really been that popular since Michael Jackson. It may not, though, have sort of the influence that logic would dictate. Like logically, that should be by far the most influential music of the future. And it probably will not be in the same way that Michael Jackson's thriller, while having influence, is not as influential as some of the things around it that seemed significantly less significant at the time.

I actually thought of you the other day. Have you seen this documentary? It's on YouTube. It's like a 20-minute thing. It's by that comedian Rob Shear. I think that's who did it. I'm embarrassed if I'm saying his name wrong. Anyways, it's called Taylor Swift Dads,

and he just interviews different dads that are waiting in the parking lot at SoFi Stadium while their daughters are inside watching Taylor Swift. And it's a very lovely sweet little, like, 20-minute YouTube video. And it talks about a lot of the things that we're talking about. Like some of the dads are like, I have no idea what's happening. I don't even know why I am here. And then other ones, they know all of it.

And they're really supportive. And then there's some dads. It's like they couldn't afford tickets. So they're just sitting outside listening with their daughters in the parking lot. What mostly struck me about it, having watched a bunch of sort of documentaries about music from, you know, the 60s and 70s and 80s is like there used to be a lot of that. There were lots of bands doing stadium tours. There were lots of bands. Obviously, Taylor Swift is singular,

but there would have been lots of things that people used to line up for when they would come out at the record store at midnight or whatever, and that's gone. But here's what, that might not be totally true. And I know it feels that way for sure. But I am consistently surprised to find, to hear about some artist.

And I'm like, they played two nights at Madison Square garden they played the Hollywood bowl it's like you know but the thing is because we have stripped away that record store part yeah there's no longer MTV and radio doesn't exist in the same way and everything is you don't see

sort of the the outsized part of it that lead you to believe well of course when they tour it's going to be a big deal what has happened now in music is that the only way to make money is touring so like you know band like you know geese or something I remember a couple months ago I can't remember with the name of the

is now, but they had sold out of like four nights at the Bowery ballroom in New York, and they have no record. Yeah. Like there's already this following of it that's sort of, I think, built online or whatever. And so it is, it definitely feels like we have lost that. The idea of like, oh, you know, Blue Orsher Cult is playing, you know, in Anaheim or whatever, and it's a sold, you know, their tour is sold out. Even though Blue Horse Your Cult at the time is maybe the 14th most popular hard rock band

or whatever, they're still that big. That, that, it doesn't feel like that happens now. Not everything is like a mystery to anybody who's outside of the world. Yeah. But like, you know, the thing you say about Taylor Swift is, it is what I have found with my kids is that they love it if I have knowledge about what they're into, but they dislike it if I have opinions. Like, they like that.

I know, like, who Chapalron is. And I know her backstory. And I know her songs. But if I was like, in a way, you know, I. If any time I start actually giving an opinion about what I think about this, it's like that's when they start using it. The cringe now is the word they use. It's like they appreciate my ability to keep up and be informed about this. They do not appreciate any actual idea I have about it.

Well, I think that's because knowledge signifies interest in something that they're interested in. Yes. And opinions implies judgment. And so they want the first part and not the last part. Even if the opinion is positive, they're like, no, no, no, no, no, I just want, I just want you to recognize this is important to me. I don't actually care what it means to you. Yes. Yeah.

Totally. No, this has been awesome. Well, I thought the book was fascinating and I always love reading everything you do. So I'm glad we got to chat again. Well, I appreciate you having me on. Thanks so much for listening. If you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes, that would mean, so much to us and it would really help the show. We appreciate it and I'll see you next episode.