Trillbilly Worker's Party - Episode 201: The People We Choose To Be Around

Episode Date: June 3, 2021

We talk about the 1999 Michael Mann film, The Insider, and then talk about how to "cultivate" your "friendscape" in the post-pandemic age Support us on Patreon: www.patreon.com/trillbillyworkersparty

What is that, an H3, H6? H4N. H4N. Yeah, that's right. You can be impressed all you want, bud. Okay. Try to talk if you can. Have you ever talked?

I'm going to try for the first time. Okay, good. I think this will work. I think it's going to work. I don't know how it's going to sound, but you know what? It's just like recording somebody out in the field, which I'm very familiar with. Yeah.

I've done that. This will be like NPR quality. Pretend I'm... We need some ambient noise, though. Yeah, pretend I'm a strapping young reporter from a community radio station, and you're Morris Dees. Okay. Okay.

All right. I can do that. Mr. Dees, what was it like fighting the Klan in the... What was it like fighting the Klan in the early 1980s? He used to go drinking with all those Klansmen stuff. I think so. He would just be like, no, they weren't racist. They just didn't want their daughters to fuck black guys. I'm like, uh. Yeah, stuff. I think so. He would just be like, no, they weren't racist.

They just didn't want their daughters to fuck black guys. Yeah, yeah, I think so. Well, Morris D. understood where his bread was buttered, and so he also understood that the Klan understood that they knew where their bread was buttered.

You think they had an understanding? I think so. There is a weird ecosystem like that. It's like the symbiotic relationship between like uh you know motorcycle gang members and cops for example yeah they kind of need one another to exist yeah yeah yeah um for sure no um yeah morris d's Sure. No, yeah, Morris Dees. It's interesting actually thinking about him because he was obviously an embodiment of the very specific American style of activism known as being an attorney.

Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. And on that note, I watched a movie last night. And on that note, I watched a movie last night. Have you ever seen that movie The Insider with Russell Crowe, Al Pacino? I know the movie. I've never watched it. It's a Michael Mann movie. Okay.

So I, like, I'd never seen it before. I was aware of it. It was, like, one of those movies my parents probably rented out, and it sat on the, you know, table. You just got, like like three days worth of late fees on it and just never watched it right my parents probably tried to watch it and fell asleep in the first 30 minutes or something yeah it came out in the late 90s so this movie is very interesting there's a there's a very specific courtroom drama it kind of is although very little of it takes place in a courtroom. But what it is, there's a very specific kind of American movie. And I guess the best way to frame it would be like,

throughout American film history, there is someone known, there's an interdimensional entity known as the newsman and there is also on the other side an interdimensional entity known as the insider and the inner the insider and the newsman they kind of what is the inside are you talking about like a like a source a whistleblower okay yeah the our man on the inside yes someone who's the insider yeah someone who's who has a front row seat to corporate malfeasance or whatever yeah or corruption or whatever local government corruption all that stuff yeah decides i'm turning a new leaf you know i'm i'm not gonna put up with this anymore um whether it's out of self-preservation or some moral conviction it's hard to say but like for example a good example would be all the president's men

yeah um or that movie the post remember that movie the post yeah we saw the theater didn't we did yeah by the pentagon papers yeah then there's State of Play, also featuring Russell Crowe, playing a reporter this time. Yeah. In The Insider, he's the insider. But in State of Play, he's the newsman. Russell Crowe does that

in a lot of things. Even in American Gangster, he was the cop that was trying to get at the truth, you know, like trying to... Yeah.

He's always trying to find the truth. Yeah. Speaking of Yeah well I'll come back to that in a minute But yeah this is a movie about the truth Ultimately And another movie in that kind of same genre

That we never talked about on the show But I kind of wanted to Was Dark Waters with Mark Ruffalo Mark Ruffalo yeah All of them basically have the same format. In Dark Waters, it's C8, you know, Teflon. In The Insider, it's tobacco and nicotine and the chemicals they put in cigarettes

to make them more addictive. In All the President's Men, I guess it's, what? I mean, it's Watergategate but we don't even know really what yeah yeah there's all kinds of those like that wag the dog yeah yeah anyway yeah yeah you see what i'm saying though right there's a specific type of american movie yeah where there's a somebody's trying to get at the truth and there's somebody trying to stop them from getting at the truth that's exactly what it is basically no but there is someone trying to bring them over to the other side the newsman usually yeah sometimes it is a lawyer sometimes it's the

newsman yeah whatever but the insider is about yeah russell crowe plays a chemist for um one of the big tobacco companies. And it's funny because a lot of this movie is set in Kentucky. Because, like, tobacco. Tobacco, okay. And so there is this really weird interplay between various parts of the South. So, for example, Russell Crowe plays this chemist for a tobacco company and he like defects. He actually gets fired because he like, because he like can't handle his liquor or something.

Okay. And, um, and so they. So automatically this is another wrinkle. He's like not a credible whistleblower because he's a drunk. That's exactly right. He's not a very, he's not a perfect person.ower because he's a drunk. That's exactly right. He's not a perfect person. He's a deeply flawed individual. And he doesn't,

he's not up front with the newsman played by Al Pacino. That's a funny role for Al Pacino. Dude, it's fucking hilarious because like, I feel like most of this movie exists just for, as an excuse for Al Pacino to scream a lot.

Yeah. We're gonna do what we want to do you're not gonna stop the truth stuff i mean like he plays al pacino plays uh an investigative reporter for 60 minutes so it's like it's like and christopher plumber plays mike wall Wallace for 60. You remember Mike Wallace? Like the journalist Mike Wallace? Yeah, the journalist Mike Wallace. Chris Wallace from Fox News' dad. Are they really?

Yeah. Yeah, that makes sense. Wow, family of newsmen. That's a diseased kind of thing. Of course, you know, it's like, I guess, you know, you see him a little bit. I think Tom Hanks played him in The Post. But Ben, what's his name? Oh, yeah, Ben.

Search of the B. B, Ben. Bradford? Ben Bradley. Ben Bradley, yeah. There was an era of newsmen that was almost like, they weren't so much interested in the truth as they were interested in, like, fucking Playboy models partying with, like, John F. Kennedy and like john f kennedy and then like you know writing softball pieces basically they

were like propagandists for you know yeah i think a lot of them actually this movie kind of gets into that it was just very funny it shows that some of the newsmen were just motivated by like who they got to interview like their legacies like christopher plumber's character mike wallace he's got a thing towards the end where he's not sure if he wants to report on this whistleblower coming forward he can't decide because he's afraid that this tobacco company is going to sue cbs out of existence and he's like he's like i got to interview the ayatollah you know i got to break uh jfk and all this stuff and he's like, I got to interview the Ayatollah. I got to break JFK and all this stuff. And he's like, but they don't remember you for the things in your early career.

They remember you for the last thing you did. He's like, and I don't want that to be my legacy. Can you imagine a journalist being concerned about their legacy at this point? It's like, it's just been so thoroughly thoroughly i don't know what you would call it but it's just been so third like who are like the revered newspaper men and women of today you know what i mean is it brett you know is there somebody out there it's like just like reveres brett stevens for his like you know might not agree with his politics but like like... It's people like Maggie Haberman. Yeah, yeah, that's a good example, yeah. You know, who...

I mean, and this is the case also for Mike Wallace or whatever. I mean, their whole career is just built off of access, basically. Yeah, yeah, yeah. They're just a mediator between... I don't know. They just exist to be limited hangouts, basically, for the public. Bob Woodward, all those sort of famous Watergate journalists. It's just like they all have their access, and they've built their career off that.

Well, Al Pacino... That's why it's hard to be poor and be a journalist. That's exactly right, yeah. Al Pacino plays one of the last journalists with integrity in this movie. Okay. And early on, actually actually you get insight into his character because it tells you that i have no idea if this is real or not i forgot to research this after i watched it but apparently he used to write for ramparts magazine he plays this guy

named lowell berg bergman i think right ramparts magazine was like this is like soldier of fortune or something no it was uh it was like a left it was like a new left publication in the 60s oh okay or you know like uh i never heard of yeah it was i mean it it went out of business or whatever in the 70s i think okay um but it was kind of like one of the publications of the counterculture movement yeah so it's in it's this interesting thing where i mean and the post kind of gets into this as well and all the president's men

where it's like for the 60s to be valid to be legitimated the individuals from that generation still have to serve some purpose and if it's speaking truth to power and presenting and unveiling some purpose yeah and if it's holding truth speaking truth to power and in you know presenting

and unveiling this information to the public then they can still hold on to like their rad radical cred you know yeah it's i mean i don't know it's it's a very interesting thing um but so anyways so russell crowe, yeah, he gets fired. You don't find out till later in the movie specifically why he gets fired. And it wasn't even that big of a deal. I think it was because they were pressuring him to put this chemical in the cigarettes. And he thought it was unethical or something like that. Listen, now listen, I'll give the American public a clean cigarette.

Okay? listen now listen i'll give the american public a clean cigarette okay but i draw the line and put tar nicotine and benzadrine anything else in those cigarettes i it i don't know it's it's just so so he leaves he has to sign a confidentiality agreement um meanwhile al pacino's character starts doing this story about cigarettes and he just coincidentally reaches out to Russell Crowe's character because he's heard through the grapevine that he's like some badass at cigarettes or something

and so he reaches out to him and Russell Crowe's like look I'll do this but I can't talk about specifically my work with Brenner Williams or whatever tobacco company and pacino i've said and and pacino is like you gotta do what you gotta do for your family for your kids you know like every fucking like scene is just how pacino just

appearing to appealing to this guy's like sense of of duty and purpose to his community and family. I mean, he is, yes. But at the same time, he's trying to get that story. It's an interesting movie. Honestly, if it was set in an alternate universe, I think it would be a masterpiece. But just because I know at this point how the media works, how this type of litigation works, how all this basically works, I was just like just like this is fucking it's so superfluous it's so unnecessary also like it takes place usually in real life like over a period of 15 years hard to encapsulate all that in like a 90 minute movie that's exactly although this movie was two hours and 38 minutes maybe they got four years of it is

a slow fucking burn, man. It is a slow... I mean, but, I will say, one of the best things about Michael Mann movies is Michael Mann, maybe better than any other director in the 80s and 90s, explored how characters faded to their

circumstances come to make decisions about. I mean, there's that scene in heat where pacino and de niro are at the diner got a great ass she got a great ass like yeah he he was fated to make that yeah yeah so um so yeah so i mean so like that that's why this movie is kind of good it's like how do these characters gonna decide to do what they're gonna do like pacino he's trying to decide if he wants to like risk if he wants to put this guy's life out there like as a whistleblower you know like

does he want him does you know what's that gonna mean for him is it ethical to do that like can he should he talk him into it and russell crowe, on the other hand, he's getting death threats. Someone sends him an email that's like, fuck you, fuck off. I'm going to fucking kill you. Which is never explained. At the end, there's that title card that says where they all end up.

What happened to Crowe's character? He was fine. He went to go teach chemistry. And then he got lung cancer and then started making meth okay well you know it's hasn't um so no but so really so so uh so a lot of like i said a lot of this movie takes place in kentucky um like the executives at the tobacco companies are all like southern like kentucky like everybody in this act this movie has the weirdest kentucky accent they're like

oh they do a bad one man dude it is like his wife has the a whole fucking movie i was like what is what's going on here and then like the the CEO of the tobacco company has this, like, you know, Louisville-in-Kentucky accent. Where he's like, I think we got the message across. I think, uh, it sounded like Shelby Foote. Yeah, but it. They give everybody a Delta accent. Well, no, but actually, that's weird. So, there's a scene where he has to go down to Mississippi.

So I've explained this movie entirely out of order, but you know. For Russell Crowe to go on 60 Minutes and not get sued for violating his NDA, he has to go be a deposition witness in a case in Mississippi. So before he gets on the plane to go down there they like serve him so he has a gag order and can't talk but he goes down there i'm imagining guy looks like t-boom pick and it's just intercepting right before he steps on the plane says i think you need to take this son yeah he does um so he gets down there and he meets with his lawyers in mississippi who are also good old southern boys and so there's this courtroom scene where he's his good old southern boy lawyers are trying to

depose him and the good old southern boy lawyers for the tobacco company are trying to stop them from deposing him and so they're like you will not violate your nda and then his lawyer gets up in his face and he's like this is the state of mississippi you will not come down here and tell us what to do and like it's just like this it's supposed to be this like scene where you're supposed to be like hell yeah man like yeah that's the real south you know yeah yeah yeah so fucking i like like actually theoutherners are actually flipping off the federal government. They're in, like, all that kind of stuff. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

We play by a different set of rules down here. That is exactly, that's what it's supposed to convey. Yeah, yeah. You try to come down here with your fans and lawyers. Your country lawyers and gentlemen of fortune. Dude, it was a totally bizarre scene. It was pretty funny. But anyways, I don't know.

I guess towards the end of the movie, I was just like, I just couldn't understand really what was at stake anymore, though. Because it's like, okay, sensibly, he needs to go on 60 Minutes and speak his truth. He needs to live his truth. The movie is basically about living your truth. Yeah, yeah, yeah. He's supposed to go on 60 Minutes, but like I said earlier,

the tobacco company has threatened to sue 60 Minutes out of existence, so they don't want to do the story anymore. Al Pacino's pissed. You know, he's screaming and throwing things. hissed um you know is screaming and throwing things just um basically being uh his character from dog day afternoon but yes serpico yeah based yeah yeah yeah um but but like the weird thing about this and then i don't understand in any of these movies from dark waters to the post to any of them it's like it doesn't matter ultimately i mean i guess the snowden thing was the closest example to that in a recent memory

but what did that do i mean i guess it just told everybody what was going on but it didn't end any of it yeah and it's the same thing with this. It's like, I mean, why do corporations fight so hard to keep their corporate secrets secret? Like, they don't have to. It's like, they're going to get away with it anyways. Why do we have to go through the song and dance of having a whistleblower and having them, you know, speak truth to power in the media?

Because it's not going to matter anyways. I don't know. The whole thing is just basically theater. Yeah. Which I guess is why it makes a good movie. Yeah. But I don't know. There thing is just basically theater Yeah Which I guess is why it makes a good movie Yeah But I don't know there's just something about those specific movies That just uh some of them are good

What was the movie It's like Gary Webb's Murder Oh yeah dude I never killed a messenger Yeah I never saw that one With Jeremy Renner Yeah Dude that one is...

Did he break the CIA crack smuggling story? I think that was the big one, yeah, that he got done up for. Yeah. I have a book of his stories, and the only reason I have it is because early in his career, he did like a big expose on mob outfits, mafia groups that were laundering money through the coal industry.

So they were. Because he's from Kentucky, right? Yeah, he was. Northern Kentucky, yeah. Like the Cincinnati. That web last name kind of gives it away. So, yeah, for a brief time, like in the 70s and 80s, mob, I mean, coal companies were mobbed up. Oh, yeah.

Which is funny. I mean, could you imagine trying to, you know how like in Sopranos how they sit around outside the construction outfit? Could you imagine a bunch of Italian mobsters sitting around outside a coal mine? A bunch of coal miners. In West Virginia, they would be both. The Italians would both be the coal miners and the mobsters. I drove down here from fucking Cincinnati. Yeah.

To get black lung? To get fucking, look at me. I'm catching a draft in this fucking coal mine. Are you trying to fucking kill me? Yeah. to get a fucking look at me. I'm catching a draft in this fucking coal mine. Are you trying to fucking kill me? Yeah. Well, I never saw that movie. For some reason, I thought we watched it together at the old house.

I wish we may have, man. I've seen a lot of movies that have just kind of came and went. Well, anyways, The Insider. I do, I kind of like, I gotta say, I kind of like I gotta say I kind of like the archetype of the grizzled

newsman you know like Charles Bowden like you know oh yeah Charles Bowden those type cats

that just you know yeah the guy that wrote that chaos book what was his name Tom

shit I forget his last name wrote the like Charles Manson and the CIA and all that

stuff it started out i think as like an assignment for i don't know if it was vanity fair or some magazine and then it turned into like a 20 year long obsession that turned into a book no i i uh the the grizzled newsman archetype tom o'neill that's his name yeah i mean look i i respect it it would be nice if we lived in that world yeah it did have me thinking like i wonder if podcasting will ever be at that same point where we're trying to squash will so like we have a defection like you know tanya you know defects she's like the whistle she's gonna blow the whistle on it

and we're trying to silence her or i mean it's like and the secret is like we're just frauds just something even more innocuous like we're homosexuals remember like you didn't want to be out of as a homosexual at one point right now. Now it's, you know. Right. Well, now it's Pride Month. Yeah. Yeah. Speaking of that, speaking of Pride Month, I've been going through old, you know, we talked about it on the show last week,

about going through the microfilm. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I found a great old speaker piece from 2003 this is from july 2nd 2003 i'll let you honestly i have entire speaker pieces and i thought that would be a good exercise we have just from yesteryear yeah we'll do that we'll do that one no no can you give me something on the keyboard? That might be tough with this setup. Yeah, with this Zoom, but I can edit it back in.

Here, a little Speak Your Peace Pride Edition. Do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do-do. In response to the prejudiced person making a comment on being gay, oh, I mean homosexual, is it okay if we use the word homosexual do you know what ignorance means someone who ignores the truth and the truth is you are not of god so don't judge someone for being gay unless you want to be judged for being ignorant too god bless you to the person wanting to know they're not alone, I'm gay. I'm a female. I just wanted to let you know there's actually a gay hangout

in the neighboring county, Not County. Thank you. Gay pride. I like how this turns from, like, profiles encouraged to, like, kind of cruising. Right. Yeah. Right. I thought you might enjoy that.

Well, if you want a safe place for gays, move to Knott County. Knott County being probably the least gay county I can think of off the top of my head. Apparently I'm wrong. I thought old speaker pieces would be a funny bit because you can... That's 2003. That was 2003. Wow. You can... It's like a time capsule you know what i'm saying yeah it's like opening up um anyways i don't know i'll find i'll find a whole one later um so anyways that concludes the movie corner the insider um there's something i wanted to talk about though

on the show for real for real this week what we got to read take me up okay so there's a couple articles going around right now you know now that the pandemic is

I guess you could say over there yeah motherfucker tell that to people You know, now that the pandemic is, I guess you could say, over. Yeah, motherfucker. Tell that to people. Tell that to... I'm sorry. I'm censored by the... Cancel people. You can't do it.

I can't give you my unfettered opinions because I'm afraid of backlash, man. Dude, you can't do this show anymore because I feel censored. I never thought I would understand what the big comedians were talking about, like Chris Rock and Dennis Miller.

Yeah, but... All the big shots. You know? There's just things I can't say and that causes the quality of the show to decline.

You think the Dice Man would have went for this? Remember when the police raided Apple Shop for playing Andrew Dice Clay? Someone played Andrew Dice Clay. Now, that might be the one example in history of Andrew Dice Clay actually being subversive. You know? Somebody almost, a teenager almost got shot in Apple Shop for playing Andrew Dice Clay over the railways. A police precinct almost burned down

and we might have had a revolutionary situation on our hands over Andrew Dice Clay. Over Andrew Dice Clay. Okay. So, like I said, pandemic's kind of winding down. There's been this sort of spate, and there's one i want to cover with tanya when she gets back um about ghosting your friends this summer uh or other people just

ghosting in general um but there's like this sort of niche cottage industry of think pieces about like how to behave you know it's like this the underlying assumption here is that like you exist in a vacuum you're a little baby you had your brain completely wiped to a blank slate over the pandemic and you don't know how to behave anymore yeah you're like those dogs that they conditioned here are the new rules of ghosting yeah yeah here are the new rules of of ghosting yeah yeah here are the new rules of friendship or whatever yeah yeah yeah no i mean it literally that is the format every fucking that that we're going to talk about what happened to the grizzled newsman he started he had to work for buzzfeed to feed his family and now he's like a listicle guy writing things like that basically 12 exit wounds i used to write i used to write for soldier of

fortune magazine now i'm doing buzzfeed listicles about exit wound and entrance wound sizes honestly that might be better than working for 60 minutes that was that was another thing i like couldn't get over in this movie i was like 60 minutes man like the show that my parents would watch sometimes yeah 60 minutes yeah like the movie opens with him interviewing a hezbollah guy like literally al pacino literally so not nazrilla am i saying that right that literally was it he's like you got a public face we can help you yeah um that's anyways 60 minutes anyways the grizzled reporter from ramparts magazine who who's this okay this is my last comment on this movie. It also... I'm gonna watch this tonight. It also throws out there that his mentor was Herbert Marcuse.

Do you know who that is? Herbert Marcuse. He was like this new left figure. He was like a sort of psychologist. I feel like I do know him. He wrote about like... I think he was Angela Davis's thesis. Okay.

Her dissertation advisor. He was like... I'm trying to... Eros in sexuality, I think he was Angela Davis' thesis. Okay. Dissertation advisor. I'm trying to... Eros and sexuality, I think, might be... Somewhere like one of the Cal... Anyway, yeah. Yeah, in California. I'm trying to remember. He has a book called Eros and something.

But... A bit like Kusa. Not to be confused with Nick Mancuso, the actor who who uh later later in his career started just being in all the uh left behind movies that could be a potential career arc for us i you know we should do we should reboot a left behind movie but with like an ensemble cast of like real ass actors making an ironic christian film that would that would rule the play the premise of left behind is

incredible like the the we need we need to do the spinal tap like of like left behind christian movies okay all right um yeah okay all right i don't know what that i'll i didn't mean to Okay, alright Yeah, okay, alright I don't know what that I didn't mean to throw that at you in the mid But we'll work that bit out and read that next week Okay, alright You know me, I see a good bit I have to immediately walk it out

I have a blank slate Like I said, I'm like those conditioned dogs From the 30s that You know, was conditioned by scientists To act a certain way yeah so when i see a good bit in front of me you gotta take it um also like those dogs from the 30s are us every every american post-pandemic um giving rise to like i said a cottage industry of people who try to explain how to act now there's this one

writer who's been writing multiple things like this for the new york times her name is kate murphy um she has made such hits as we're all socially awkward now um comparing the effects the pandemic can lock down to literal prison. Okay. Okay. There is this one from April. The pandemic shrank our social circles. Let's keep it that way. You don't need to rekindle your friendship with your kid's soccer teammate's father if you don't want to.

And then there's the one that just came out yesterday, the other day how to rearrange your post-pandemic friendscape quote-unquote friendscape that's it's quoted in the title um so this this actually this article actually is a good distillation of those other articles so we'll read it any traumatic experience like, like a breakup, health scare, death in the family, or financial crisis, has a way of destabilizing social networks. We instinctively gravitate toward those who provide comfort and support and reflexively withdraw from those who drain and drag us down.

It was no different at the height of the pandemic, except that the risk of infection meant we had to be more intentional about how we should show up in these spaces, obviously, and maybe even a little calculating about who we allowed in our orbit. For many, the pruning process was eliminated. I'm so goddamn stupid. I was thinking in my head, infection from what? Tom's a long hauler everyone by the way um for many the printing process was illuminating if not a little liberating covet 19 provided an excuse to shed unsatisfying and

unfulfilling relationships while giving people the time and space to strengthen bonds with those they truly cared about as pandemic restrictions ease in the United States, and we may once again belly up to an all-you-can-eat buffet of social activity, the question is, will we pile our plates and gorge, or be more selective and stick to what nourishes and sustains us? Psychologists, sociologists, and evolutionary anthropologists say it behooves us to take she's kind of bearing the lead here because these previous articles relied very heavily on evolutionary psychology okay which

is a totally bullshit discipline so what does the butcher baker and candlestick maker have to say they say it behooves us to take a more curatorial approach when it comes to our friends because who you hang out with determines who you are. Bro, let me tell you something. A weird thing. You just said the word curatorial, which is a disgusting use of that, by the way. But it's like, oh, yeah,

you should be able to mix and match and just sow the right friend group. You know what I mean? to mix and match and just sow the right friend group. It's just this perpetuation of the human resources-ization of human interaction. This is terrible. Keep going. No, you're right. What it is is it

presupposes that there is a perfect friend group that is going to facilitate your upward mobility. Yes. Gain you access to status and all that kind of shit. Upmost maximize your happiness, your content, or whatever. Presupposes that there will be no strife or difficulty or anything.

Yeah, no. So, yeah, like I said, they kind of rely on evolutionary psychology here. This is kind of where the direction they're going in though. We take it for granted, but having friends is exceedingly rare in the animal kingdom, said Dr. Nicholas Christakis,

professor of social and natural science at Yale University and author of Apollo's Arrow, a book about the impact of COVID-19 and past plagues on society. Other members of the Friendship Club include chimpanzees, elephants, and dolphins. Friendship is an evolutionary advantage, he said, that allows us to form alliances, cooperate, exchange ideas, and learn from one another.

Having friends who encourage, stimulate, and support you is associated with improved immunity, lower blood pressure, and higher cognitive function. Having no friends, toxic friends, or superficial friends, not only... Having run around a bunch of fakes and lies. That can not only make you feel insecure, lonely, or depressed, but also accelerate cellular aging and increase your risk of premature death. So, that's an interesting thing. I'm not really sure how you... The weird thing about life is that it is a very messy thing. And it's really hard to tell

sometimes whether a friend is toxic or beneficial for you. Sometimes they might be toxic. Sometimes they might not be. Sometimes they might be toxic. Sometimes they might not be. Sometimes they might be toxic at times and beneficial at other times. You're not going to be able to curate the perfect configuration of people. Because nobody's good, man. Because everybody is very imperfect.

Yeah. Everybody's very flawed. Yeah. God. Like the person who holds people to standards of perfection is not going to have any friends. Yeah. It's so weird.

I mean, I don't know if human resourcization is the right word for that, but like just the sort of like, I don't know, teen magazine trait version. Like somebody said, oh, I'm an empath. Uh-huh. Somebody tells you they're, you-huh somebody tells you they're you know somebody tells you they're an empath chances are they're a sociopath it's exactly the opposite they they actually lack him so they're getting out in front of it's like how do we hit like sometimes i'm empathetic sometimes i'm incredibly selfish you know what i mean it's like i don't know no that is the i mean

no one is consistent in that regard i mean there are people who are truth sociopaths but they're rare you know yeah yeah and we shouldn't marginalize them either i've been saying it it seems as if it should be easy to distinguish between true and false friends but that's not always the case oh okay There's some nuance here. Research shows that only half of our friendships are mutual. That's, wow. Yeah, that's a, yes. That is, only half of those who we think are our friends feel the same way about us.

I wonder, you know, it's a fun, it's not fun. Sometimes it's torturous, but a fun thought experiment is this. Like I loved I loved to shit talk I then I bond with a lot of people that are catty and like gossip and stuff like that and I understand some may view that as a socially destructive behavior I find it sort of galvanizing in a way but a funny experiment is to think man who's out there saying bad things about me right now is like and sometimes you're just it's like you're probably just being self-important people probably aren't saying much about you anyway but it is it is it's it's kind of up there with like who thought you were like really hot and was into you but just never said a word about you know what i mean yeah i know what you mean for sure um or let's see uh yeah only half of

those who we think are our friends feel the same way about us blame egoism optimism or perhaps the fact that social media has turned friend into a verb or it could be that we are socially slothful friendships take a significant amount of time and effort to develop and maintain, so we often settle for whoever happens to be around or is pinging us online. It's inertia that keeps you tied to friends whom you find tiresome because it's easier and less anxiety producing to keep them around than it is to cultivate new friendships. The pandemic shook us out of our social ruts, and now we have an opportunity to choose which relationships we wish to resurrect

and which are better left dormant. Ask yourself, who did I miss and who missed me? Also think about friendships forged during the crisis. Maybe with people in your pandemic pod or neighbors who regularly came by to commiserate. If you thrived and found solace in their company, commit to keeping them close. Rather than thinking about who you want to keep or purge from your social network, Suzanne Dej White, a professor of counseling at Northern Illinois University, suggested imagining how you want to arrange your quote-unquote friendscape,

where people inhabit the foreground, middle ground, or background, depending on how much time and emotional energy you invest in them. So not only are you handpicking who goes, who stays, and your friend thing. This is all bullshit anyway because like, maybe I just view it differently by virtue of where I grew up at, but like, you're just kind of bound to time, place, and circumstance

about who your friends are. It's totally random. It is absolutely. Now, as you get older and your mobility increases and all that kind of stuff, that obviously changes and you have more

curatorial power over who you spend time with and who you consider dear and whatever, whatever. But it is weird to just do this strata of like, I don't know, they're like systematizing your relationships with other human beings the same way you would like systematize how you clean your house or something. That's exactly right. I mean, think about the people you grew up with like the

friends you had since the some of the earliest days of your life turk bird dog snow cone and weed eater golf cart beef big snack these are just a smattering of people that i was in contact with right usually those people aren't like i don't know how to put it like sort of delicately like those are people that you know intimately but not because you chose them really and not because they chose you really although some cases yes they have chosen you and they will never go away but But just because of, like, as you said, circumstance, time, place, if you're in a foxhole, you'll be friends with anybody. Oh, yeah. There's no strangers in a foxhole for sure.

It's just this weird idea that, because, like, I even feel that way. You're right. As you grow older, you maybe get a little more determinacy, or you might get a little more control over or power over the curatorial aspect of it. But even then, as you're older, you can only work with

what you got. You can't put out a wide... You can't cast a wide net and just interview every person in your state. Also, it's being presumptuous that they'd want to even, like some of these people that you're like curating into your circle, like who's, in their mind,

they might be like, God damn, I hope she doesn't curate me into tier B. Like curate my ass out of your social circle. When in doubt, when in doubt doubt let's just call it you know yeah yeah yeah yeah um okay this is the this is the part that's pretty insane so yeah you've got the friendscape picture picture it in your mind foreground middle ground and background it requires daily or weekly attention to maintain foreground friends. So there are necessarily a limited number of slots.

Four to six minimum. Or maximum, I'm sorry. Actually, that actually links to a story that says your brain limits you to just five best friends forever. So there's literally scientists who study how many best friends forever. Dude, that's bullshit. That stupid it's like whoever whoever invented the like the myspace like top five is

came up with that concept anytime something anytime something claims to be scientific but it's like in a firm round nice number like well i mean not five's not nice and round but it is like you know like an easy number to work with yeah like anything that's in like fives tens hundreds uh-huh top 50 it's like horseshit it's arbitrary totally you know what i mean right you're right like why not seven why not seven why not the top 634 you know what i mean right right just because it doesn't look as tidy in your mind that is a really hilarious idea this is kind of gets nobody's like i'll hey mom i'll be home by 732 you know what i mean you're right why not though it's the same as 730 or seven because we like sleek uh efficiency i guess. You're right. This whole field of science that we've just stumbled upon here,

she doesn't name it as explicitly in this one, but she did in the previous one, the one about your friend's circle shrank. So what? Keep it that way. What this is, is it's a group of evolutionary psychologists who spent a number of years trying to determine

how many friends the human cognitive capacity can handle and the way they've done that is they've done it you know longitudinal study over many many years if you listen to the episode i did with daniel imarvar about like very good by the way yeah one of my faves that i totally spaced i was supposed to be on it turned out fine if you listen to that um this kind of does something similar in the sense that it makes an assumption based off of like what humans were doing like let's say 20 000 years ago and says like that that is what we need to aim for so like they'll what we need to aim for is uh eating once every nine days and dying at age 31 with six friends with yeah but with yeah with the appropriate number of quaintness. Right, right, right.

This does, yeah, I mean, this is evolutionary psychology. They're basically looking at like, yeah, how did humans interact with each other like 20,000 years ago? Okay, well then that tells us the human brain can handle only about six friends. You just pulled that out of your ass.

I mean, granted, they go through all kinds of, you know, peer-reviewed study and stuff, but I don't know. I mean, I don't really see how you can apply that to the modern day or whatever. I don't know. You know, so anyways, the foreground, limited to a number of slots. Some of those may be filled by your romantic partner,

parent, sibling sibling or child because they are front and center foreground friends are the ones who have the most profound impact on your health and well-being for good or ill this seems to me and this again this is the thing that bother bothers me about evolutionary psychology this seems to me to be something determined more by culture you know what i'm saying like i mean a society with a different understanding of family and social relations would probably beg to differ it would probably not i don't know i mean granted i don't know i've only lived in this society but present. I could see a situation where the definition of who is and isn't family isn't as rigid as it is with ours, and therefore, I don't know, man.

Do you see what I'm saying now? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't see how you can make those kind of like biological claims about things that kind of seem like they might be more cultural. And based on mostly guesses. Yes, pretty much um and this is the article this is the paragraph that really blew my mind uh indeed depressed friends make it more likely you'll be depressed obese friends make it more likely you'll become obese and friends who smoke

and friends who smoke i'll have you know i'm the only fatty in my friend my direct friend group okay fuck you and friends who smoke or drink a lot make it more likely you'll do the same also i smoke a lot but you don't so i don't yeah um the reverse is also true. You will be more studious, kind, and enterprising if you consort with studious, kind, and enterprising people. This is like, they pay for this dreck, and this is just people just like,

you're judged on the company you keep, and they're just interpolating this for the fucking BuzzFeed generation. Specifically for the BuzzFeed generation that has emerged from a pandemic and is now being told by a whole coterie of social scientists. That you're now a smooth, fresh baby right out of the womb. Exactly. And here's how we need to restructure society now.

It starts with no new friends. No new friends. That actually is an interesting thing. There probably is, and I hate to get conspiratorial here, but there's definitely got to be some sort of movement by a group of social scientists to be like, you know, now's our chance. Now we can remake the body politic

and the way they interact with each other. Because we can't change political economic circumstances. We will try to... Change social interaction. Yeah, that's your truth. That's right, man. Social interaction and, yeah, psychology. It's the fucking...

It's the Adam Curtis thing, basically. Yeah. It says that people are basically irrational. You need to keep your social circle tight because we don't want you being friends with too many people. We don't want you being nice to too many people. Once you start getting to like three and five, you need to calm down.

Right. Also, yeah, if you want to be studious, kind, and enterprising, you need to be with other studious, kind, and enterprising people. Yeah. That part also linked. I'm really interested to see where these links are science direct is passion contagious the transference of entrepreneurial passion to employees that's a scientific study that it links to kindness is contagious study into exploring engagement and adapting persuasive games for well-being.

Jesus fucking Christ. Academic and social motivations on students' academic performance. There's some credence to some of these, but... Anyways. Yeah, you'll be more studious, kind, and enterprising, etc., etc. That is not to say that you should abandon friends when they are having a hard time, but it's a good idea to be mindful of who you are spending the majority of your time with, whether on or offline, because your friends' prevailing moods, values, and behaviors are likely to become your own.

That's the thing about this. It keeps dialing in and out. It'll dial into these really ridiculous claims, these hard claims, and then dial back out and be like, kind of make these just vague platitudes, like, oh, still, you know, be friends with people. Still. Still.

You don't want to be thought of as a dick, but, you know, just kind of give them a soft ghosting. Right. Right. Then it, you know, goes on to talk about the hallmarks of good foreground friends.

Again, the fact that anybody would need to need to be taught this like granted i mean i'm i'm in therapy so i'd obviously like i need to be taught some things but the idea that i need to cultivate a front middle and back row of people and then, you know. It's like you're picking a goddamn school band. Jeff, your first seat this month. Your first chair. Who's the French? And then you can shuffle them around by how well they're playing. Right.

Tanya, you've been slacking and not showing up. I'm bumping you to third row this month. She gets third row this month. People who do not belong in your foreground are those who don't seem genuinely pleased when something good happens to you and show a glint of schadenfreude when things go wrong.

Another clue is they are boastful, self-righteous, fault-finding, or prickly in conversation. Or they always shift the conversation back to themselves. I had a recent, I won't say who it was, but a friend of mine got his dream job recently. Whatever that means to you. To him, it meant this. And another friend of mine that I used to live with in college was in competition for the same job. college was in competition for the same job and whenever whenever he called me to tell me not the guy used to live with the other friend that got the job called me to tell me about getting the

job i said uh yeah what did so-and-so have to say about it he just said this is bullshit the whole thing was bullshit i'm like so let me get this straight you got your dream job it was not this person's dream job but something they applied for and when you got it over there their response was the whole thing was handled poorly maybe not a foreground friend probably a third chair guy i feel like most people do this already but putting a name to it and like codifying it seems very strange to me. Yeah. And, like, there might be an ulterior motive.

Yeah, for sure. Susan Hitler. Is that really? It really is. But it's spelled, like, H-i-t-l-e-r susan hitler a psychologist and author of the power of two which looks at friendship in the context of marriage cautioned that you also want to look at yourself when making decisions about who you want to populate your post-pandemic world. It may be you, not necessarily the other person who's making the relationship asymmetrical and

unsatisfying. There's one thing I know about me. It's not that I am wholly unsatisfying. So I'll go ahead and say, yes, it's probably my fault. Oh man. A solid and good friendship is one where both of you are able to work through intentional and unintentional slights it's not the lack of conflict that determines a relationship success said mo mo mazad hajat professor of psychology who studies friendship i want to study french What's Nasrullah's first name? Oh, Hasan. Hasan Nasrullah. In an interview with Al Pacino,

Hasan Nasrullah talks about the importance of friendship. In fact, repaired rifts are the fabric of relationships rather than patches on them. As you go through issues, blah, blah, blah. Like I said, it's just kind of like empty platitudes like that but like they sprinkle in some of that hard sciences science in there to be like yeah but i mean this is the the influence of malcolm gladwell looms large that that is exactly right you're you're exactly right they take like sort of vague ambivalent self-help stuff and then sprinkle in some hard science, which is usually arrived at through some very specifically culturally influenced positions.

Yeah. And then they call that, I don't know, self-improvement or whatever. And honestly, we're living in an age where i mean we've just been through something that was i hesitate to use the word traumatic but it was something that was out of the ordinary that kind of rearranged everybody's expectations for the future so i guess we need some sort of word for that i just hate to use the word traumatic because it just gets thrown around so much. Right, it's just, yeah, it's a bit overused.

But it was, but also too, like what is the, what's the anecdote for, you know, like a lot of people cultivated. I felt like the last time I saw something like this happen was like Y2K. People got on some free love shit because the assumption was incorrectly that in a matter of months or days or whatever it is you know the world's going to

cease to exist because of some sort of like we just didn't like program computers to roll over correctly or something right and then now i feel like people cultivated a mindset of no future during this and probably i mean for like a lot more warranted reason i mean people were just lost you know we lost uh you know portland oregon essentially you know what i mean yeah and uh yeah i don't know what like i don't know how you like rec I don't know how you, like, recalibrate just, like, in the aftermath of it, like, having presumably survived. You know what I mean? Yeah. Like.

Yeah, I mean, if you thought that self-improvement cults were bad enough, like, I can only imagine how bad it's about to get. You know? I mean, like, if you really want to stay sane, just join some sort of traditional organized religion. Because it's either that or someone's going to try to swoop you up into some friendscaping scam. I don't know. Gosh, damn. Yeah. We'll, for $9.99 a month on a subscription service, we will cultivate your friends,

and we will call and have the tough conversations for you with people that you no longer want in your social circles. We are heading in that direction. Yeah. Absolutely. Because that's the thing, like, we also deeply despise conflict. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah. Confrontation of any kind.

Yeah. So, I mean, yeah, if you can just make all the aspects of your life efficient if you can outsource every aspect of your life to some app corporation or whatever subscription subscription service um and just streamline all those you know make everything smooth streamline all those elements of your life yeah um we're definitely in a political economic um uh situation to where that would be an appealing thing right now i guess i don't know for ten dollars a month on the new patreon tier we will reorganize your social life and have the tough conversations for you. I'll call...

Mark, is it? Yeah, Tom Saxton here. Calling on behalf of Jeff in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. See, here's the thing, Mark. This is not really working for Jeff anymore. He's so busy. He's got so much going on that, you know,

I had to step in, do a little arbitration here. But basically what I'm trying to say is you're out. You're out. And then he's like protesting. He's like, I'm not even third chair. Not even third chair. Like, buddy, listen, just from where I'm standing, me and you confidentially, you're not even seventh chair. And Mark, I mean, it's kind of what it is.

You really want to be friends with this guy you know that's how it's got a dud that's great yeah no give us ten dollars a month yeah we'll rearrange your friendscapes yeah look i've got a lot of i have a lot of experience mixing and matching, facilitating conversations. Turn your life over to a podcaster. Might have the tough combos for you. That's right. The way that's what we do is it's hard hitting. We hold people to account.

That's right. And your friends, your friends you don't like, they're no different. And if you ever try to blow the whistle on us, we'll come after you, motherfucker. There is no grizzled newsman waiting for you on the other side. I have terrible powers, which you don't understand. I have hitters in every city. The day of the grizzled newsman is long gone. Yeah, if you're on Patreon, we read the exit surveys.

Also, we also have access to your information. How do you like that, motherfucker? Your address. Your credit card. Let's start doing it. Start sending live snakes to people that's unsubscribing to Patreon. Yeah, you thought it was your t-shirt, but it's dead. Just three pissed off copperheads

That have been shaking up That'll teach you to say that the quality is deteriorating Yeah that'll That'll teach you motherfucker The third month in a row Hey you try doing this You're not perfect God damn it

Oh wow Just old school like Italian vendetta stuff against everybody that stoops to filling out an exit survey sending some sort of trap to where they open it it cut severs both of their thumbs Oh, wow. Let's see. Anyways, let's finish up this article. Sometimes all it takes is just letting the other person know you don't like it when things aren't right between you, that you care.

Sometimes you're just not feeling it. It happens. And usually it's not because of some breathtaking betrayal. More often, it's an accumulation of dings that wore you down over time. That is true. It's not even like, it's not even. Sometimes it's just, it's just, everybody gets bogged down in their own shit, particularly as you get older. And it's a lot of it's just you just feel like you just don't want to let anybody down or that like, you know, you feel like they're not getting anything out of your relationship with you

or whatever the case may be. And you're also getting closer to death and that makes you more grumpy. Yeah, yeah. Be honest with you. As a person, I'm growing, so if a relationship can't flex, if it can't survive, it can dissolve or just snap. If you feel guilty but you have to snap if you feel guilty but you have to

remember you feel guilty but you have to remember if you're changing so is the friend blah blah blah i mean some of this is good advice but it's whatever um uh of course your personality and your history will with the other person will determine how you disengage but often the best course is just to slowly back off. Politely decline the other person's invitations and don't extend any of your own. Ghosting is almost never a good strategy. Unless someone is irredeemably toxic, it is better to be gracious. Let the person gradually recede into the background, rather than erasing them entirely from your friendscape.

You never know. Just as you can outgrow friendships, you can also grow back into them. Anyways, that's Kate Murphy, author of You're Not Listening, What You're Missing and Why It Matters. That must be a terrible gig because all of Kate Murphy's friends, the ones that she's just not,

they know how she feels about them. Right, right, right. She's taking a bullet for everybody else. You're right. kate at her at great cost to her own social uh yeah honestly you're right this future historians will remember the heroes of the post-pandemic the ones that bravely stepped out there and said look it's not okay to ghost your friends after a deadly pandemic. Those people are the brave men and women working at Kroger.

That's part of being a first-line worker. Exactly. So anyways, thank you, Kate Murphy, New York Times. Jesus, man, my allergies. I cannot clear my throat. Yeah, I know, man. I'm scratching my fucking eyes over it. I'm dying. It's red as shit. Yeah, I know, man. I'm scratching my fucking eyes over it. I'm dying.

It's red as shit. So anyways, we got over an hour. Thanks for listening, everybody, this week. Anything else before we go? Yeah, go sign up for that Patreon. Don't be a little pussy-ass bitch. We're trying to hit 5,000. My quality's deteriorating.

You know what? Maybe your perception of things is deteriorating. Right. You ever thought about that? Right. I think about that actually daily with me. Yeah, I'm becoming more and more disconnected from reality by the day. Yeah, go sign up for the Patreon.

That is P-A-T-R-E-O-N dot com slash Trill Billy Workers Party. There's some good stuff on there. We interviewed Jesse Wilkerson just a couple weekends ago. That was a great interview. And we talked a little bit about this very briefly. About the, you know, because we also talked about the geriatric millennial thing. Yeah. And that's kind of related to this in a way i don't know yeah just this kind of like social science that tries to

redefine social relations without doing anything about the underlying political economic yeah circumstances yeah so anyways there's there's good content on there that also talks about this. Yeah, friendship under communism would be an interesting... Well, that's kind of what I was getting at earlier in the sense that, like, a lot of this is determined by

culture, you know, which is obviously determined by political economy. You ever... Let me ask you a question. Have you ever, like, really liked somebody? Like, just kind of like, like, oh, I definitely want this person in my life. I want to be friends with this person.

And you just have nothing in common? But you just feel so warmly for them, but, like, when you talk, it's just like, we got nothing, that's still like this yeah definitely friendships are complicated and and it's a lot well trying to put a scientific rubric on them is pointless yeah because like love it's just it just is you know you don't really there's no way to really determine how or why it happens. It just happens. It just happens to you. I don't know. I mean, and that's the complicated thing about it, too,

because sometimes you might find that one of your best friends is a monster. Sometimes you might find that the person you're in love with has done bad things, too. I mean, what are you going to do? Life is not streamlined and smooth. That's just the way it is. Wisdom. See, that's what you get

when you get closer to death. Wisdom. Yeah. Been nice if it could have came, you know. Alright. A little earlier.

15, 20 years ago. Yeah. Okay, anyways, if you want more wisdom, go to the Patreon. Subscribe there thanks for listening everybody uh and we'll be over there uh next time you want to listen bye see you later see ya