WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 1062 - Rachel Maddow

Episode Date: October 14, 2019

Marc sees Rachel Maddow on TV almost every night. But there was a time when they saw each other every day, back when they worked together at Air America Radio. Rachel and Marc talk about those early radio days which turned out to be a transitional point in both of their lives. Rachel also explains how her early days of AIDS activism and public policy studies eventually led her to the broadcasting career she has now, which is something she never imagined herself doing. They also discuss depression, prayer, self-confidence, and why she felt compelled to write her new book, Blowout. This episode is sponsored by Vital Farms, Stamps.com, and The RealReal. Sign up here for WTF+ to get the full show archives and weekly bonus material! https://plus.acast.com/s/wtf-with-marc-maron-podcast. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck

nicks what's happening it's mark maron this is my podcast, WTF. Welcome to it. Well, this is an exciting day, really. It's Rachel Maddow Day. Yes, Rachel Maddow is here. You know what the weird thing is? I know Rachel. I don't know her great, but we go back. I think some of you know that. I mean, people who listen to Air America back in the day know that. But we go back. We were both at Air America together from the very beginning. So there's a little history there. And now, like I rely on her almost exclusively outside of print stuff.

At the end of the day, I watch Rachel. It comforts me. She puts things into context. She helps me understand things. She makes me not panic as much as I could be panicking. And I respect and appreciate her. And I need her. So there's this very odd situation with Rachel because she came over here. I swear to God, she's doing a book tour. She's out here. Well, she was out here. It was just last week we did this. And she literally taped her show live in Burbank, drove over here. Like 25 minutes after she got off of my TV, she was in my house, like a half hour maybe, talking to me.

And I just watched her show on television. So it is about a week or, like, it was last week, so there is some information in here that might have be dated already in terms of news, but I think we had a very nice conversation, and she's got this new book that I skimmed. I got the gist of. I couldn't dive into it all, but I will. I have a plan to do it.

It's called, I swear I'm going to read it. I swear it's on my homework. It's on my homework list. It's called Blowout, okay? And it's about the Russian oil industry. She's a great writer. It reads very well. I'm just trying to make excuses for me not finishing the book before I talk to her. But that wasn't the conversation I wanted to have. You know how this works.

So Rachel is here. And that is, that is actually something to be excited about. I was excited. I was very nervous to talk to her. Now let's get caught up with some other stuff. The last few dates of my tour are fast approaching this Friday, October 18th. I'll be at the James K. Polk Theater in Nashville. Saturday, October 19th at the Tabernacle in Atlanta, and Saturday, October 26th at the Masonic in San Francisco. And of course, I am finishing everything with the big

finish, the big special taping at Red Cat Theater in LA on October 30th, but that is very sold out. but that is very sold out. But for tickets to all the other remaining dates, go to wtfpod.com slash tour. I also wanted to mention that in San Francisco, I didn't do any posters. I have not done posters in a while. And I'm bringing some posters.

I'm bringing some posters to San Francisco. An artist reached out to me. She lives in Austin. I met her. Here's what happened. So she wrote me an email about stuff and I went and looked at her work and I was like, what the fuck? What is this? It's like serious

autobiographical, raw as shit kind of comic art art and she lives in austin uh raquel jack on uh instagram r-a-q-u-e-l-l-e-j-a-c and she was i think she was a fan she wrote me an email and then when i was out there uh I got her into the show and I met her. And I knew she had to do the poster for San Francisco because I think her style lends itself to it. She just comes from a tradition of it. She does all kinds of stuff, but she's very painterly. But her comic shit is hardcore and raw and real and fucking frenetic and colorful and disturbing and I'm like

this is fucking genius so I asked her to do a poster for San Francisco for me and she did it and it's at the printer now so I'm gonna have about a hundred of those in San Francisco uh they're gonna be it's gonna be an art print run, and they're going to be about $40. But I think they're four color, but it's going to be fucking. It's something, man. So that's exciting. It's weird. I think I'm almost more excited about the poster than I am about the show itself. Is that wrong?

I just haven't done a poster in so long. What else? Oh, there's our friend John Hodgman. You know John. He has a book coming out tomorrow, October 15th. It's called Medallion Status, and it's a sneaky examination of fame, identity, and social status. As John looks back on the past two decades of his life where he unexpectedly launched a career in showbiz. And you can pre-order that now or pick it up starting tomorrow wherever you get books.

So that's exciting. Let's talk about life in general I've been at it and I got to be honest with you folks you know the last few shows were just great you know I've been opening I've been using this opener Mary Radzinski from Philly she opened for me in St. Louis and then she opened for me one other place and then she lived in Philly so I had to do Philly. She opened for me in St. Louis and then she opened for me one other place and then she lived in Philly. So I had to do Philly at the Miriam Theater and then I had her come up to DC with me and then do also do Boston. And she's just a great opener for me. She did a great job. She's very funny. You can check her out too. Am I plugging my peers day? Mary Radzinski, R-A-D-Z-I-N-S-K-I. Great job she did. Very funny.

And so we did the three shows. And as you know, I was supposed to tape the special in Boston, and that didn't happen. And I felt like I disappointed some people. I had kind of a brain fuck about Boston because of that, because I had to do two shows. And that means I had to fill up the Schubert twice, piss off the Wilbur and, uh, and not shoot a special. So there was a lot of things going on up there and returning back to the place I started comedy, which is always sort of strange. It's like going to the, to the site of the abuse. And, uh, so there is a little PTSD

involved in that. And it was just kind of fucking with my head. And then the Kennedy Center, that was fucking with my head for a whole other bunch of different reasons. It's huge, 2,400, I think, seats, and it's the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C., and I'm in the belly of the beast where just down the street the monster is ruining everything and also pacing the halls, aggravated and fuming,

uh, figuring out a way to accelerate the end of the planet earth for his own means. So he can get off the hook. I think the monster, the douchebag president douchebag, uh, real,

I think he thinks in some level that if he takes the world down with him, he won't have to pay the price for anything he's done. If we all die at the same time as him, then everybody gets off the hook in some fucked up way it's dark and cynical but true not exactly the way we all want to go though is it but anyways I'm at the Kennedy Center and and then Philly I was psyched about Philly because I get a good sandwich in Philly and I've worked at the Miriam before so I did the show at the Miriam first and it was great. Mary did a great job. I got there that day. I had the roast pork with the sharp provolone

broccoli rabe at Denix, Tommy Denix. And that's what you do there. And that's what I did. And then we did the show and it was great. So then we took the train up to DC and I was nervous, but I sold the fucking place out, folks. I sold out the Kennedy Center and I'm doing heavy shit, man. I don't think any of the stuff I'm doing is political. I think it's observational, although I do talk about what's going on politically and it's pretty heavy, some of it. But it's observational because for me me observational means a rational relatively objective person looking at what's going on which is horrible but i also was able to transcend some

stuff because the last time i played a hall that big uh carnegie was okay but i do this thing where like when i do shows in rooms that are over 1800 people i feel a little dwarfed and sometimes i fall into myself and it can be very tenuous. I can do a good show, but it's more intimate than it should. I kind of lower the level of the venue, of the hall to me, whereas I should really rise

to the occasion of the hall. It's hard to tell either way and there's something to be said about making someplace huge, incredibly intimate, which I'm going to do anyways, but to sort of plow through that weird insecurity of not being able to carry or hold on to over 2,000 people. And it

was a deep sort of insecurity. I mean, I could do the shows. I did Carnegie. I did the Festival Hall. I've done BAM. I've done these big shows and I do well, but I never felt like I owned them properly. And I got to be honest, folks, and I'm not tooting my own horn. I'm not blowing smoke up my own ass or whatever it is. But I rose to the fucking occasion at Kennedy Center. It was a great set. It matched the venue. It was fully confident, fully present, room to riff, but a different vibe.

It was like a big breakthrough in a way, which I was very thrilled about. And I was happy everybody came out who came out. They witnessed something. My mother came out. My mother was there. It's always interesting doing a pretty, pretty crass joke about my mother. But, you know, I believe she can take the hit. And she did. My mother likes to be talked about. And I think generally, like no matter how bad the joke is, the worst she'll say to me is, was that necessary? Was that necessary? Yes, it was. But Boston was a whole other ball of wax.

I was beating myself up about Boston. But again, there was victory here. Personal victory, folks. Personal victory. I've been going back there, and I've been doing shows there for years. So this year, I was going to shoot the special there. And I've talked to you about this. I booked the Schubert Theater because I didn't want to do it at the Wilbur,

which is where a lot of the comedy is done in Boston. That guy, Bill Blumenreich, he runs the Wilbur. I've worked for him before. And, you know, they want you to shoot there. But I chose the Schubert because it would be different. And I wanted to do a different looking special. Then it turns out the Schubert, you know, couldn't accommodate what we wanted to do. So I had to make an executive, a creative, and I guess executive decision to not do it there.

And I didn't know where I was going to do it, but I was disappointed. But there was nothing I could do because all these specials look the same. And I wanted to at least have a different vibe. You can't it's not like reinventing anything. It's not rocket science shooting a special. But those theaters all look the same. And we lucked out. It's going to be something interesting at Red Cat.

I'm excited about it. But despite that, so i'm heading in like i know from the get-go i've pissed off bill i know from the get-go there's audience that we're we're excited about a special and that's not happening i know i'm in i got to go to boston and now no special taping i got to you know at least populate two shows at a i think the place seats like 1800 there's just this weight of my past there. And I've talked about this before and I thought I transcended it, but sometimes I don't, I get to Boston and it just creeps up on me just years, man. I mean, I started my career there and I was

just this aggravated, sensitive, neurotic, angry Jewish kid, 25 years old. 1988, I started working and I was running around the entire New England area in very compromised performing situations, trying to get through to people that were nothing like me. There was nothing I could do to charm them. I couldn't be myself, but I was trying to get through. Do you understand? And that went on for years. I mean, just seriously, just trying to get a laugh and dives all over the New England region, just being angry, bombing, and just pushing ahead and getting fucked up. Just trying to get people so unlike me to like me and laugh. And it was fucking traumatic. Most of the fucking time, just leveling. I mean, the intensity of the anxiety and my blind determination to keep doing it

at this point is really almost incomprehensible. It's incomprehensible to me now. incomprehensible to me now. So bottom line, the fact that on Saturday night, I did two shows for people who came to see me, see me specifically in that city. People who know me, people who understand where I'm coming from and enjoy what I do was definitely special. It was, it was, it was more special than, than taping a comedy special because I let go of something, man. I let go of something. It's over. The PTSD from the beginning of my career in the trenches of New England, taken a beating. It's fucking over.

And you know what I did when I went there? I spent some money. I stayed at the Fairmount Copley Plaza Hotel when I was a freshman in college. Once in a while, a few times a year, I would get all dressed up, put a tie on, drive in from fucking Milton, Massachusetts when I was at Curry College. I think I might have even been underage. And I went to the Oak Room, I think it was, or the James Room.

The room is not the same, I don't think. At the Copley Plaza, it's an old luxury hotel built in the very early 1900s. And a guy named Dave McKenna used to play piano there. He was a real dude, a real jazz dude. I remember being there one night and Zoot Sims came by after a gig and sat in. And I didn't know much about jazz, but I knew I liked the vibe of the place. And it was a special place to me.

And it seemed like a place that I would never get to, that I never would belong there. I was just a dumb college kid dressing up, pretending, but I never thought I would stay there. It was just a different world. And I fucking stayed there. And it was beautiful. I wasn't even there 12 hours. And it cost money, but it was beautiful. There was some closure there. And there was some closure with the two shows in Boston. They were great shows.

And that's not nothing, folks. It is not nothing. Whoo, Rachel Maddow. I think I've been saying her name wrong forever. I say Maddow. Rachel Maddow, but it's Maddow I think I've been saying her name wrong forever I say Maddow Rachel Maddow but it's Maddow like shadow Maddow Rachel Maddow I was so nervous and excited to talk to her we did it in the evening because I said as I said earlier she shot her day she shot her show live over here in Burbank and came right over here. She's on crutches. She did a thing.

She hurt her ankle. But we got her upstairs, and we got on the mics. We had a lovely chat. Her newest book is called Blowout. It came out last week, and it's already a number one New York Times bestseller. If you haven't gotten one yet, go get it wherever you get books because it's well-written, it's accessible, and it's deep,

and you learn shit. So here's me and Rach talking. Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a

special bonus podcast episode where I talked to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products in such a highly regulated category, and what the term dignified consumption actually means. I think you'll find the answers interesting and surprising. Hear it now on Under the Influence with Terry O'Reilly. This bonus episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. Are you self-employed? Don't think you need business insurance? Think again. Business insurance from Zensurance is a no-brainer for every business owner because it

provides peace of mind. A lot can go wrong. A fire, cyber attack, stolen equipment, or an unhappy customer suing you. That's why you need insurance. Don't let the, I'm too small for this mindset, hold you back from protecting yourself. Zensurance provides customized business insurance policies starting at just $19 per month. Visit Zensurance today to get a free quote. Zensurance. Mind your business. yeah come on i mean but what did you want to wear cans yeah all right why am i nervous why are you nervous i mean yeah specifically why are you nervous tell me about your nervousness i will well first of all i um i watch and uh and rely on you every night. So even though we have a personal history, I can't believe you're sitting,

there's some part of me, like I stopped my life to watch your show so I can get some context. I'm about to cry. So I can get context on the world. Because I'm not, you know, it's not that I'm not active, but no one makes sense of it like you do

or like Brendan McDonald. You know, like I'll call Brendan. But as a resource and as a producer, like I can only bother him so much. And I can't really text you. So I'm watching your show and I'll text him. I'm like one of those old middle-aged men. It's sort of like, is this really a problem she's saying it is? Like I'll text.

Like Brendan knows when I'm watching your show because I'm texting him like Trump does when he watches Fox and Friends to the country. I'm texting Brendan. Like, this iterative point that Rachel keeps hammering away. Is she just stuck on this, Brendan? Right, exactly. Or is this just really important? Exactly. Is it just her or is it this important?

What does Brendan usually, does he usually, like, talk you down? Like, oh, no, Matt is making too big a deal out of this. No, he just, like, it's like, I still to this day, even from when we worked at Air America, I don't know where you guys get your information. It's a secret source. And like, you know, I look at my phone. I've got I think I'm subscribed to all the things on my phone's news. But then you guys hear things like, well, why didn't I get that firsthand? Why am I not in the loop on this?

So it's usually that kind of stuff like is this really happening you know the secret source is for me i'll tell you yeah my secret source is always like the last three paragraphs of the article that's where the that's where the nobody ever gets to that part of the article there's always like one little extra fact they save for there it usually has like a little kicker element to it like a little irony to it yeah yeah and that's the thing that i'm like i I'm going to do the history of that, dating back to the Beloponnesian Wars. We're going to start there.

The portal is in the end. Exactly. So that's why I'm nervous because I know we have, it's hard for me to see you as just like the person that I used to see hanging around Air America because now, because like when I met you, I think you had a crew cut and you wore a baseball hat a lot. You're a little heavier. And you were just always like sort of leaning over a lot of papers.

Yeah. I have a backpack full of paper that I brought with me to talk to you today. If that would make you more comfortable for me to get into that thing. I think I might even have a hat. Oh, good. Well, no, If that would make you more comfortable for me to get into that thing. No, it never made me. I think I might even have a hat. Oh, good. Well, no, it wouldn't make me more comfortable. It would give me that same feeling I got back then.

I'm like, should I be working more? Is there? I just read a few things. Isn't that enough? But did I seem like the same? I mean, not did my workout seem the same, but do I seem like the same person personality wise? Yeah. Yeah. No, I think, well, you seem more but do I seem like the same person personality-wise? Yeah, yeah.

No, I think, well, you seem more confident and you would hope that would happen. Is it interesting? No, I don't feel more confident. You don't? No, but I don't know that I think about my confidence level. Like I don't think about myself as being on some sort of confidence arc. Well, right. I get it.

No, but I mean, I think what it was is that, well, I don't know when you decided what you're, before we get into this real quick, though. So now you ended, you came over here from doing the show. Yeah. And when you left, you just told me in my living room that the Turks are about to invade Syria. Yeah. So now you said that like it was happening. I've got to go because lawrence is here uh but we'll keep an eye on it now do you do i keep an eye on it because now i'm going to be keeping eye on it i just want to make sure that you you you left us all hanging and now we're in this like is that happening and

what's going to happen and if there is a chance that if there is in fact an invasion of syria tonight if the turks and the russians are are going to invade Syria and overrun the Kurds, there's a chance, yes, that I have to go back to work. Oh, really? That happens every once in a while. Like, you know, when Trump shot Tomahawk missiles

at Syria, I had to go back to work for that. Sometimes things like that happen, but mostly it just means I worry about getting calls. Yeah, I guess addressing the confidence thing, I think you're so busy

and so engaged in the narrative that you are, the Maddow life. I mean, why would you even think about insecurity? I mean, I know you talk about it a little bit. When you talk about your book, you're sort of- Nervous. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But I don't even know where that- You wrote a whole book, and where'd you find time to do that?

I can barely- I'm a mess. Really? Yeah. that i can barely i'm a mess really yeah like physically i'm a mess and this book in particular like the two things you've done lately the the bag man podcast about spiro agnew and this book about the the petrol global petrol nightmare uh blowout i mean were these reasons the reasons why you were compelled to write these things or create that podcast, were they to find deeper explanations of things that you were already engaged? Because they seem sort of like they come out of nowhere, the ideas for the book, but these are things that you needed to know about. Well, yeah. Make yourself feel better

or something. Well, with Agnew, I kept doing little historical anecdotes about Agnew. Yeah. And every time I did them, I would find that what I assumed had happened was not actually the case. Right. And so I latched on to the Agnew story because I realized I didn't know much about it. I started citing it in little ways. And then I realized I was kind of not getting it wrong on TV, but getting it wrong in my assumptions and my research, which made me more interested in it. And then when we got Trump and Pence, I was like, oh, dear, I think this might end up being really important in part because there was so much

discussion about around the Russia investigation in particular as to whether or not Trump could be indicted and what it meant, whether he could be charged and all that stuff. And that ended up being what blew up the Mueller report and stopped Mueller from concluding anything in his report. And a lot of that stuff was adjudicated through the Spiro Agnew case that we've forgotten about. That's Gonzo. So that's... I know, I like how you talk about a we,

that, you know, it's you and like maybe a handful of 60, 70-year-old people. We've all forgotten. Everybody, how can... Where are the ag new people? Where are the ag new people? But no, a lot of us, I'm not saying that's bad, but a lot of us are learning that for the first time. But isn't it, I mean, if you think about it just in the abstract, everybody knows we talk about Richard Nixon a hundred million times a week, maybe, you know, if you average it out, Nixon's constant references, constantly analogize to other things in the news that don't deserve it. So the fact that his vice president resigned in disgrace after pleading NOLO to a bunch of felonies for an active extortion scheme he was carrying out from the White House, you think that would be a more famous thing we remembered about Nixon, given how much we talk about Nixon and his crimes. So it's just weird

that that disappeared. Yeah. I don't know how people remember anything. There's so much going on, really. I mean, it is important. And I think a lot of what you're doing that's helpful to me is at least finding some precedence for monsters. Yeah. You know, and also like what always amazes me is what small time grifters so many of them are. But the weird thing about my relationship with your show is like I have like I get excited when I see Barbara McCabe, you know, like. Barb!

Yeah, like Joyce Vance. Oh, this will be good. I'm at that point with it. But so the blowout book, though, was it, you know, you're I'm not going to say obsession, but your investigation of mild obsession with the Russians. I prefer to think of it as focus. Focus. Yes. But did you did you need was there something that you sought to bring it all together and you saw it in the Russian oil industry? Yes. Yeah. Well, yes, because what I didn't understand is why Russia, not why they attacked us. Like I sort of got that there were reasons for the undertax, but I didn't get why they were so they so recklessly attacked.

Right. Think about if Hillary Clinton had been elected president, which is what everybody thought was going to happen, including the Russians and including Trump. Yeah. They did not cover their tracks barely at all, especially in the initial hack of the Democratic Party. They let it be known that they were doing what they were doing. They were obviously trying to undermine Clinton for governing, right? Trying to make it so that she'd have a harder time assuming she would be president, assuming she was going to be president. But Hillary Clinton was already a Russia hawk.

If she became president with Russia having done this to try to help her opponent. Yeah. I mean, imagine what she could have unleashed on Russia as president. And nevertheless, they still saw the risk and reward balances being worth it to try to do this thing, which seemed crazy to me. It also seemed crazy to me that all of the secret communications between the Russian government and the Trump campaign, all these things that they lied about that only got uncovered after the fact were all about sanctions. Right.

And then I started to realize, well, maybe their desperation is linked to their sanctions needs. Right. And that really gets you to oil really fast. So, yeah. So that the economic, near economic collapse of the country and would make them, they don't give a shit. They're just going to go for it because- It's worth it.

Right. Right. When the stakes are that high, when you have an- I mean, they're a country of 150 million people with an economy smaller than Italy's. Right. Right? Italy is like 60 million people. They've got an economy smaller than South Korea.

South Korea is 50 million people. The reason they have such a crappy economy is because it's only got one thing in it, which is oil and gas, which happens all over the world. Oil and gas is a bad thing to build your economy on. And the only sort of way that Putin has to project power, given that he's so weak, is by using oil and gas as a weapon. And so you kind of put all those things together and you realize, oh, Western oil companies and American oil companies enabling that guy and keep propping them up and propping up that economy and propping up that system of how they're throwing their weight around in the world. That's bad. Right. And we as Americans could actually affect that because our laws govern essentially the Western oil majors because they all want to do business here or they're headquartered here. So if we made our laws tougher on the oil and gas industry, we could stop them from doing a lot of the damage they do around the world. But doesn't it seem to you that there's a lot of people in American, at that level of wealth and power that want to unleash that Russian money badly?

It just feels to me that everything that's going on is like a lot of money up there that they just want to get rid of. And we just need to tap it. up there that they just want to get rid of. And we just need to tap it. Well, I mean, the way that Putin screwed up the economic fortunes of his country, I mean, Russia ought to be in much better shape than they are. I mean, I know that they went through the collapse of the Soviet Union and everything. That was hard. But they really did screw up in terms of trying to build their economy as a single entity, as a petrostate economy, rather than diversifying. The reason they couldn't diversify is because in order to do that, you need like rule of law

and judges who judge and property rights. And Putin did not want any of that. And so instead, he just allowed this very gangster, poorly run oil industry to be everything. And he steals a lot of the money from it from himself and they throw their weight around. And it's all these guys who are running these companies that are his judo buddies from when he was eight. They're not even good at running their one terrible industry. But he's created this kleptocracy where people get incredibly wealthy at his say-so and then they're expected to serve him. And what all those people do is they take their money out of Russia and they launder it around the world. And that makes countries like the UK and the real estate market in New York and Miami and all those sorts of

places that are happy to do this money laundering, which is very remunerative, it makes them all corrupt and part of it. So I had this fantasy, not a fantasy, but like sort of this idea that Trump is going to, once he gets pushed out or leaves office, or if he ever leaves, he's going to immediately seek asylum in Russia. The first time he took an overseas trip, remember he went to Saudi Arabia? That was his first trip. I literally was like, I wonder if he's going to stop in Moscow. He and Snowden could live together. Well, I mean, it's possible, isn't it? If he has to live in exile, wouldn't that be an amazing end to this story?

Putin would give him a crappy little apartment. He'd be like, you're just staying here at first and we're moving you into a palais later. You just have to stay here first. And then a week later, he'd be like, Vlad, I'm still in this crappy tower block. No, no, we're working on your palace. He's going to punish him for life for not being president for life. He failed. Yeah, the worst thing in the world to be, I mean,

if you're a dictator, if you're like, I mean, Putin arguably is the richest man on earth. Yeah. If you're a rich

kleptocratic freaking dictator, the worst thing that can happen to you is for you to be an ex-dictator. Yeah. Right? Like there's no,

there's nowhere for you to live. Yeah. And you're not going to get to cash out all your bank accounts. Yeah. Right? Like there's no, there's nowhere for you to live. Yeah. And you're not going to get to cash out all your bank accounts. Yeah. It's like, it's like the mob.

You know, everything gets seized. So it's, it scares me. Like I feel like we're going down a scary path. Right now,

there's some, I feel like there's something happening right now with Russia, like trying to, trying to get what they think is theirs. Like if Russia is part

of this attack on the Kurds, the Kurds happen to sit on lots of very oil-rich territory. If that's part of what's going on here, that's scary. If undoing the attribution of the U.S. government that Russia is who attacked us in the 2016 election, if Bill Barr is undoing that right now, that's important. I mean, Trump just told Zelensky that he needs to do a deal with Putin on the Ukraine war and then he can come to the White House. All of those

things, all of those things are about Russia finally getting out of the grip of sanctions and getting its oil game on again. And it all seems like it's happening right now, all of a sudden, simultaneously, really quick. And I don't know why they're making this like this move on all fronts all at once super fast i mean it feels like maybe they think their time is running out in terms of getting what they need from the u.s the trump window is closing maybe i mean i don't know it just feels doesn't it seem like it's all happening at once everything seems like it's all happening at once every day yeah and then and right when you get a little sense of like something good's something good's going to happen, you're like, oh, it's fading.

Yeah. How's the good fading? Like, can it stay for a week? I don't know. So were you always, was this always where you wanted to be? No. I mean, where'd you grow up?

I grew up in Castro Valley, California. It's the intersection of I-580 and I-880. Okay, so outside of San Francisco? Yeah, like closer to Oakland. Closer to Oakland. Yeah, I lived up there for a little while. There's some pretty parts up there, right? Yeah, not where I grew up. So you were there the whole childhood?

Yeah, my parents still live in the house I grew up in. Really? Yeah. And what were they into? What were their jobs? My mom is an immigrant from Canada. She grew up in Newfoundland. Do you have Canadian citizenship? No, I don't. I always wondered if I could get it.

I don't know. My mom's whole family is all still there. I appreciate that. That to me means that you really are not only an American hero, but you still have hope. It would seem to me that- That I haven't fled to Toronto already. Well, just checked. You know, like, if I got to go, will it be easy for me?

So, like, I respect that because as soon as he was elected, I called an immigration lawyer. And you've got a Canadian mother and you didn't even look into it. You're much more optimistic than i am can i tell you though like actually the sad part of that yeah is the to the extent that i have thought about it like if i ever needed to go like you know something went terribly haywire i wouldn't want to go to canada because my mom's whole family was there and what if i got them in trouble oh right like what if i put them at risk by being this you know whatever international bad actor who showed up because of my family connections to them? Like, wow. I'd rather just go to like Estonia or something.

Right. You're at a different level of visibility in terms of exile than me. Like, I'd just be another scared Jew wanting to get out from under it. You'd be a national political personality and pundit and intellect. And they'd be after you. personality and pundit and intellect and they'd be after you well it just depends on if you were leaving because you're being chased yeah or if you were leaving because you wanted to slink away well i think that is the the the last uh bastion of this democracy is they'll give us a choice to leave an aggressive choice might be time to go it's all we're saying it's up to you have you ever looked into for exactly i would actually like to go to ireland but i'm

gonna stay i'm gonna hang i'm unwilling so would you go to ireland is that what you're gonna i'd like to go to ireland i have no reason you know there's nothing about i know i'm not i'm i'm a jew but uh but there's something about ireland that i love yeah and there's something like when i have a fantasy it's always like sitting out on on a on some sort of cliff with some rocks and an aggressive sea and a lot of green around and just sort of like, this is good. Is this what you imagine Ireland is like or have you seen this part of Ireland? I've seen the lower part of it. I've been there a few times, but I'm going back and I'm going to go up north. Great.

I've seen pictures of that part of it. But then I'm always like, what about day three? What about the week two? Yeah. I don't know so you're in the castro valley your folks still live there what's in your mom's canadian my mom's canadian she emigrated to this country when she was uh early 20s yeah uh met my dad when he was in the air force he was captain in the air force how long was he in the air force for uh he was out before i was born so he was uh i don't know like a couple years he was a captain don't know. Like a couple of years? He was a captain. So I mean, he's there long after. Stateside or just in Canada? Stateside.

Oh, okay. Yeah. So he was a U.S. He was U.S. Air Force. My dad was born in New Jersey, grew up in Arizona and San Diego. So you got Jersey in you. A little, yeah. I come from Jersey, yeah. My girlfriend's from Perth Amboy. Oh, really? Yeah. Born under the outer bridge. I know that sign. I don't know if I've been to Perth Amboy, but it's on the way to the shore, isn't it? Yeah. Her dad ran a, or her grandpa ran a longshoreman's bar. Wow. So like first shift, like 6 a.m., like round, like. Oh, really?

The breakfast crew is here. Exactly. Yeah, raw eggs dropped in beer, that kind of thing, the eggs on the table. We went back there a few years ago to see like what had become of her grandfather's bar and it's now a restaurant this is i think it's a dominican restaurant but this thing that susan had always tried to describe to me that i'd never been able to imagine i finally got to see in action in the new iteration of what her grandfather's bar would have been which is that you walk in and there's the counter which used to be the bar and then the family home is adjacent and upstairs yeah but not an entire

story and so from the bar you can see the feet of the family in the residential part of the house you can see them walking around but only up to the knee that's bizarre and so if you're like a kid going over to grandpa's bar to hang out after school or whatever like you see grandma's feet you can yeah i'd see the people who look into the bar from the floor you can crawl around and see all the dudes at the bar while they're you're that's wild isn't that crazy does she remember that yes vividly oh so she was like she got to have a relationship with her granddad and that whole thing yeah also she likes the smell of beer of course lucky for me

i hope that it's not to that point where you smell like beer most of the time. Just some of the times. Saturdays. So, okay, so you're there. And what are you doing as a kid? Because I have a hard time picturing Rachel Maddow as a child. I just was like, were you always intense and focused? Did the world weigh heavy on you?

It's so funny that you think of me as intense. You think of me as intense now? I watch you every night. Well, yeah, there's a lot of words in the show. It's kind of a fire hose. No, no, I don't feel, no, I feel like you're light. I don't find you to be, no, I don't, I maybe intense was the wrong word. Maybe focus is wrong, the right word. And maybe kind of like, I feel like you, like, um, what's the vibe is like,

you're always your brain, whether you want it to or not, is always working on something. Yeah. Except for the beer time. But you're're able you can compartmentalize that yes i do actually i'm pretty good at compartmentalizing which is why i think i've been able to do it this long yeah that i don't um like we're pretty good on my show and the whole staff of not working through the weekend like we don't have to be if we don't have to be doing a show on the weekend we don't trade new stuff you really kind of go that's it that's it which is good yeah to a certain extent that happens in the overnight hours too although sometimes sometimes you have to break that. But I think that we've got a pretty good show culture in terms of compartmentalization. And I really am sort of

religious about it. When I go home on Friday night, it's like a three and a half hour car ride. And I'm either driving or if I'm not driving, I read the whole time. And as soon as I walk in the house, I put work away and I don't do anything else for the rest of the night or Saturday or into Sunday. Like phone off kind of shit? Yeah. And I don't fight it at all. It just feels natural. And I think that's good because if I don't do it, like this past weekend, I didn't do it because I'm on this book tour. And so I kind of got to stay on it. And the way I'm doing the book tour. And so I kind of got to stay on it. And I'm doing the way I'm doing the book tour events is that somebody is asking me questions and they're going to ask about the book, but they're also going to ask about new stuff. So I felt like I really needed to know what

was going on in the news. And so I didn't turn my brain off at all over the course of this weekend. And I think it made my Monday show really stupid. I'm trying to remember if I watched it. It didn't make an impression. I mean, I think it was fine, but it was much less sharp and incisive. Because you didn't have a reset. Oh, yeah. All the points just blurred together. And tonight's show is actually a little bit like that, too. If I don't get turned off, then I can't turn it back on again.

And it's like an engine running too hot or something. What are you doing when you're growing up? What are your interests? So I'm growing up in Castro Valley. I have an older brother. We're sort of, we're only four years apart, but we don't, we're not close. Is he still around? He's still around.

He actually came to LA this weekend to come see me do a book event, which was really nice. We're actually getting closer now. Really? Yeah. I'm 46. He's 50. And like for the first time in our whole lives. Does he have kids and everything?

We're making friends. No, he's a single guy. He lives in San Francisco. I think he's gonna move to new york at some point but like he's just we've we've been chalk and cheese our whole lives and now like in my mid 40s and his late 40s and 50s like we're finally starting to talk to each other that's interesting which is interesting it's been a weird thing in the past couple years what do you think do you guys ever like is it just sort of like you finally have sort of let go of something or do you talk about why you didn't talk? No, I don't think we're going to talk about why we didn't talk.

But I because I think at least I don't want to because I have let go. Yeah. Like I think I was really holding on to all of this childish resentment stuff for a long time. And eventually and I thought I was over it. Right. But I still couldn't deal with him. And then eventually I just decided to actually be over it. And it and it you I mean, what's the connection

between the head and the heart there? Like you can tell yourself to let go of it all you want. Right. But if your sort of heart doesn't let go of it, you can't, it doesn't change anything. And I think finally my heart kind of let go of it. And now, I mean, we're not best friends or whatever, but we do get along.

It's amazing when that happens in your heart. Yeah. Where you, I think it's about, it's more about an evolution, personal evolution and self-acceptance that enables you to do that. Like, you know, why am I holding onto this? I'm okay with myself. We're old. And it's like the same with parents. Like, you know, what am I really going to get at a holding onto this? They are who they are and, and, and, you know, we're not going to last forever. So. Yeah. Yeah. But why do you think

it's about, why do you think, yeah, why do you think self-acceptance is the gateway there? Because I think that, you know, when you, I think you have emotional expectations out of people who have either wronged you or for whatever your resentment may have been, you think that somehow or another it's going to correct, it may be made correct. And sometimes it just never is. And it's, and if you accept that and you accept that, you know, whatever it might have been

is either, you know, not relevant anymore or not. It can't be made up. You know, it's childish to hold on to it. The injury to me is healed. Yeah, it's healed. Or as you get older, you're like,

it doesn't even matter somehow sometimes. I mean, I don't know what happened, but I just find that there's a lot of things as i get older where i used to be so important and i don't give a shit and it's just yeah where's the time for that right yeah and there's also like all the crying that's involved you know with letting go of stuff it's weird you know when especially with family because there's that moment where you like there's a release of this weird thing where this emotion when you decide to be like all right well you know we're we're we're older and you know and and you know we're blood and and you know it's

you know i'm not expecting anything but let's you know what's let's be here now like yeah and we're family yeah somehow yeah i don't i mean it can't work for everything obviously if things are really horrible yeah but it when it does happen it happen, it does feel like a remarkable thing. I do think that you can't will yourself into it. No way. And I think that a lot of therapy is organized around the idea that you should understand the rationality of that and commit to doing it and decide to doing it. And that's fine. It gives you language to talk about it or whatever, but it's not the same thing as being able to do it and that i think is actually a more like sort of

not necessarily spiritual but like a much more um it's a it's not an intellectual thing no it's emotions and intellect are two different things yeah for sure and and like there you can you know cognitively act differently you can behave politely you can be nice you can cognitively act differently. You can behave politely. You can be nice. You can act as if. You can take contrary action. And that's nice on a social level, and it may maintain some sort of connection. But until your heart lets go or the forgiveness is there, I don't know. I do think, though, that when you fake it, like you're describing, like making yourself behave the way that you don't feel, sometimes that can kind of show yourself a little bit of a path.

Sure, yeah. Like this is what it would be like. Right. Like step outside yourself a little bit. Like this interaction is not bad. Right. It could be like this all the time. If I wasn't faking this, this would be nice.

Well, it gives you that space, even though it's fake, to see them as people. Like to get out from under the whatever the the obstacle is. Right. You know, it forces you into the relationship. I also just I mean, honestly, I think it comes down to maturity at a certain level. Like it's about like, you know, and maybe that's about maybe that's what you're saying in terms of like letting go of stuff for yourself first. I mean, ultimately, just, you know, grow up and get over it. Yeah. Yeah.

I mean, not to be not to, grow up and get over it. Yeah. There's, yeah. That's, I mean, not to be, not to be too airy fairy about this, Mark. Yeah. And it's nice if your heart can go along with that. Yeah. And you get along with your folks. I get along with my folks. Great. I didn't, I mean, I, as an adult, like as I, I came out when I was, uh, right after I got to college and, um, they had a hard time with me coming out. And then soon after I came out, my brother came out too. And they had a hard time with me coming out. And then soon after I came out, my brother came out too.

Oh. So they had two gay kids. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that wasn't awesome. And so there was some rocky time there, but we made up and they're amazing now. And actually they get along better with Susan than they do with me.

Uh-huh. So there's a real, like, it's good. I feel very blessed in terms of my family. That's wild. I like, it's good. I feel very blessed in terms of my family. That's wild. I mean, on some level, it makes it special to have two gay kids. I'm not sure that's the word they would use. But special's a word. I mean, I think they like us both, and I think we're fine.

Yeah. But I think they must have felt like they hit the opposite lottery at the moment. Yeah. But now everybody's relaxing into it. Yeah. And you have a good... And your dad, what did he do after the Air Force thing? He worked for the water company.

So he worked for the water company in the East Bay, which is called East Bay Municipal Utility District. Yeah. And he became like a real authority on the ways that local places in California fight for water with each other. So what inspired you? Like, so when you were in high school, what were you doing? Were you like a jock? Yeah, I did sports and I don't know. I mean, I was kind of, you know, a jerk. A jerk? I think I was a jerk really I mean I don't know well you're probably what you were cocky or no I think I was just self-obsessed right yeah well did you feel

like uncomfortable yeah I mean not more than anybody else I think I mean I wasn't I think I had a pretty normal yeah childhood and upbringing yeah I mean like I was self-obsessed and I still am I am still self-obsessed but in high am, I am still self-obsessed, but in high school, like I never felt like I fit in anywhere. But I think when you have sports, at least you got that. It's a thing to do

and it takes up a lot of time. And there's people. Like you have a, you know, you learn, you know, group dynamics. Like, you know,

you can be with other people to play a game. You know, I didn't have that. At a specified time, that ends and then you have to go do a different thing like that's very that's very helpful it's helpful and you always did good in

school yeah why why is that i think the secret to being good uh getting good grades in school for me was reading comprehension i think that was the thing that i was actually good but you must have been somewhat of uh like you had like you wanted i don't know like i there at some point i knew i wasn't going to get straight a's but but you must have been one of those people it's like you're going to ace this shit right i got i definitely got good grades i mean i didn't get uniformly good grades but i got good grades right but i do think that like like i wasn't i'm not great at any one thing in school i think the one thing that I really can do is reading comprehension. And weirdly, I think that applies to almost everything because that helps you take tests because it makes you read the question better than other people who don't.

Math? I'm not. You know what I'm terrible at is dates, which is weird because I have such an interest in history. I can't remember. Like, I don't know. Like, I sort of know Susan's birthday, but barely. I don't know either of my parents' birthdays. I can't remember, like, I don't know, like, I sort of know Susan's birthday. Yeah.

Like, but barely. I don't know either of my parents' birthdays. I don't know my anniversary. I don't know. Right. And historical dates, like, I can remember years because I can put them in context of stories. So dates.

But I can't remember, like, if you asked me the year of an important historical event, I can't tell you unless I work it out in a contextual way. Well, I think, like, because the reason I'm, reason i'm like curious is that like i think when we were working together there was a sort of like a a kind of a a narrative around you you know like you know we were all kind of there in the middle of the night i was doing the morning show and uh you were like in the beginning well we can get there american a minute but the like it's like she's a road

scholar and i'm like i don't even know what that is, but I've heard of it. And it means that you're really smart and special. What is that even? Like, I still not even sure what a Rhodes scholar is, but I knew you were one of them. And I would just see you in your baseball hat, standing over papers going, it's a Rhodes scholar. That's what they do. Look at them work. And then you learned that David Vitter is also a Rhodes Scholar. And Bobby Jindal. Chris Christopherson. Chris Christopherson, indeed.

Yeah. But like, what was the, when you decided to go to college, you went to Stanford, right? Yeah. To study what? I did public policy. So what inspired you out of high school to start getting involved in that? I mean- So that has a story. So that is, so I'm six, I'm a year, I was a year early in school because I skipped first

grade. And so I was 17 when I graduated from high school. You tested out of first grade? I was tall. Oh, okay. And so I think it was an anti-bullying initiative for the short kids. So I was a year young and I started to come out to myself and figure out that I was gay when I was 16. And so my last year in high school was a little different because I was starting to figure out something else about myself.

And I kind of stopped doing sports. And I had a choice. I'd been recruited by a couple of schools to go to school on athletic scholarship. Did you have to go through like, you know, the secret dating and all that kind of like thing when you not really no no because i didn't come i didn't i started to come out to myself at the like after i graduate from high school then i got to college and i was like yes i'm definitely gay and then i came out right away it didn't like being in the closet was not going to work for me yeah right look at me yeah i didn't want to say anything but people always talk about that like oh you're the first gay person to be you know to win this thing

or to be hired to do this thing i'm like yeah there were other gay people before me you just couldn't tell that they were okay because look at me i'm just the first one you know about anyway yeah so okay so i was so i I came out and this was, I graduated from high school in 1990. And so this was like really the apex of the AIDS epidemic. And I grew up in the San Francisco Bay area and it was a, you know, it was a really, really tough time in terms of people not that much older than me dying. And so I, in coming out, decided pretty early on that I felt like, well, if I'm going to be part of this community, my community is going through something and I want to try to be helpful. And so I became an AIDS activist pretty quickly upon coming out.

And so I started doing stuff with, I worked in an AIDS hospice in Oakland when I was 17. And I did a bunch of AIDS awareness and AIDS activism stuff on campus. And then I joined ACT UP and I was an ACT UP kid. And all of that made me, that's why I did public policy, because I was like, I'm working on a problem that is a public policy problem and I want to be better at making these arguments. So I did public policy with a concentration in healthcare, because we were working on the healthcare industry to try to get cures made. And then I did, I really, I wanted to, I think what I actually wanted to major in, had I not had this kind of utilitarian attitude toward it, was philosophy. Yeah.

And so instead of doing that, because I didn't have the money or the time to do a double major, I did an honors program in ethics, which is like a mini philosophy degree. And that for me was really helpful because I felt like it made me a better arguer, which is again, a utilitarian thing I wanted to cultivate because I was an activist and trying to learn how to make good arguments to change this thing that I was trying to fix. And then you say that you graduated with a degree in public policy. Yeah. And did it help you? Were you able to apply it? Yeah, it did. I mean, I did,

public policy is an interdisciplinary thing at Stanford and so I did, you have a choice about sort of which, you could take it in a more poli-sci direction or you can take it in a more quantitative direction and I did tons of statistics

and that ends up helping both in reading comprehension and figuring stuff out in assessing people's arguments about numbers and also in sort of credibly talking about quantitative stuff that helps. Right. And also knowing that, you know, what was happening politically was that, you know, an entire community was being abandoned, you know, on a policy level. Right. And so you had to have the weapons or at least the ability to push back and call bullshit and fight the fight. And I felt like, first of all, I'm a lesbian.

I'm not a gay man. So I'm not at the same kind of risk. Right. Also, I am young coming into this in terms of the people who are most people, the people who are dying are just slightly older than me. And I've got access to this incredible educational resource. How can I use all of those privileges as opportunities to make me more effective? And it was like this really utile thing in terms of the way that I approached that. So it wasn't even a political incentive. It was

a social incentive. It was like, I'm going into politics. You were like, how do we get help for these people through the system that we have? Right now. And what I have access to right now, how can I use it to best set me up to do the most help, to do the most good? And did that start to define you politically? I mean, were you defined politically before that? I didn't really have politics. And I've never really been all that, I know this is going to sound weird, but I've never really been all that motivated by electoral politics. Like I definitely had issues and stuff that I cared about. And I got really good at the California legislature because I worked on California AIDS policy for a long time. And I ended up getting sort of focusing on HIV in prisons because I felt like that was weirdly a very winnable thing i felt like it was low-hanging fruit where we actually could get stuff changed and it would make a difference for a bunch of people with hiv so i got really good at understanding policy around prison stuff and health care and health care and and that it all helped and that was my politics right that

was the kind of stuff that i worked on and um oddly it's not you know people would sort of frame that i guess because you're you as progressive but it's really just it's basic human rights stuff it was problem solving yeah yeah and and just health care for sick people yeah i mean what i one of the things i worked on was a hospice bill uh the former mayor of los angeles antonioaraigosa, when he was in the California state legislature, one of the things that I worked on was getting him to sponsor a bill so that people who were dying of AIDS in prison would be released into the hospital where the hospice system agreed to provide secure facilities so that even though these were prisoners who had

not yet served out their terms, if they were going to die, they could die outside prison in a palliative care environment that the hospices promised would be secure. And they did that. And they did that. Wow. And that is, you know, it's a small piece of this, but is that liberal? Like, I don't know. I mean, it's a, and is it electoral politics? No, you know, it is, you know, eventually down the line, you want there to be somebody like an assemblyman via Rivera-Rosa there who's inclined to help you on something like this. Right. But it was really about getting stuff fixed.

And how does a Rhodes Scholarship work? How does the next phase? Was there any time between undergrad and grad? Yes. So I was living in San Francisco. I was doing ACT UP stuff. And I was working at the AIDS Legal Referral Panel, which is a legal services organization for people with AIDS. Where in San Francisco were you living?

I was living in the Mission. Oh, yeah, me too. I lived there for a year and a half. Really? What street? I was on Guerrero. South NS. Oh, nice.

My 22nd. Got it. It was a little heavy back then. I was just going to say, that was a little... It was like 93? Yeah. That's around my time, yeah. San Francisco's weird. It's very weird time, yeah. San Francisco's weird.

It's very weird. I don't know what's happening there. I was just there this weekend, and I was like, I don't recognize anything. But I never knew what was holding that city together. I didn't understand the power structure, how it was laid out. It always felt very kind of like chaotic and electric to me. And still, if you get off of that BART station at Mission and 16th, it's still like,

what the fuck is happening on this corner? Yes. And Mission and 24th too. I mean, it's the same, it's the same thing. It's crazy.

And it's always been like that. But growing up in the Bay Area, to me, that was the city. It was the only place I could imagine living as an adult and the only place

I wanted to be cool enough to live. It's a pretty cool city, really. It was. There are a few places in America that feel like city-states, that feel like, yes, technically this is an American place, but this is its own place. It is. And San Francisco is one of those.

I think part of it, part of the magic of San Francisco is the vistas because of the hilly nature of the city and the architecture. Everywhere you turn, it's like, this can't be a real thing that I'm looking at. This is a real vista. Yeah. It's wild. And it gives you a feeling. It gives you a sort of, I don't know, bigger than yourself feeling about that city.

It's cinematic. You can see yourself in a movie every second that you're walking through that city. And also so much of it is built on individualism. Mm-hmm. You know, the nature that, you know, this is a safe haven for all types of people trying to define themselves. You know, whether it's the gay community or the hippies or whatever. The prospectors. You know, it was just always based on a sort of rugged kind of weirdness.

And it really, you can feel it always. Yeah. And now that it's so rich with all the tech stuff, it feels, I don't know. Are they erasing it? I don't know. It just feels different. I mean, A, the housing costs are insane and so no regular people can live there anymore. Well, New York feels the same way.

It feels different. Something's been robbed or moved. New York is big enough that as some things change and become homogenized and pureed, other things descend and become ungentrified and stuff moves around. I mean, San Francisco is so compact that as it's being sort of suffused with gazillionaires, it is turning into something that feels a little bit more like a theme park. It just doesn't seem like it does. Some things don't work.

And I never know where do the people go that they push out? Yeah. I mean, do you know? Elsewhere. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's, I don't know. They're on the out? Yeah. Do you, I mean, do you know? Elsewhere. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, there's, I don't know. Here, they're on the streets.

Yeah. It's terrible. Well, this, so I don't know. I always thought that I'd be a Californian. I always thought that I'd live long-term in California. And now I can't imagine. I live out, I mean, I work in New York, but Susan and I live in rural Western Massachusetts.

And like, it's very clear to me, that's where I will live the rest of my life. Oh, it's beautiful. Yeah. By Springfield, not by North Adams. Yeah, not far from Springfield. Yeah, sort of between

Springfield and North Adams. It's from the hill towns of western Massachusetts. Yeah, yeah. It's pretty out there and they've got that amazing museum there now. I will live there forever.

What is it, Mass Mocha? I will live there forever. Yeah, it's great and there's good people and you know, you have space. There's trees. It's where the animals

live yeah that's how i think of it all right so you do this in between you know stanford and and and wherever like you're working for the at the hot or the resource center what is a legal referral panel and then when do you when do you do the oxford so stanford asks me to apply for road scholarship and i was like okay and i didn't really think that much about it. Why did they ask you? Because you're like honors? I had good grades. And I guess they thought that,

I mean, it's a prestige thing for the school that they want their graduates to win these scholarships. Yes. And so I think they have a program that they, I don't know, put your resume through or whatever. I had left Stanford a little bit early. I had a lot of debt and I had enough credits to get out. And so I left after three and a half years. And so I had already lot of debt and I had enough credits to get out. And so I left after three

and a half years. And so I had already been gone for a while when they asked me to apply. And I was like, well, I don't have any plans to go to grad school. I don't have any money. And I don't know what I'm going to do next. So somebody's asking me to do a thing. Okay, I will. And I ended up winning, which was a real surprise to me. And you studied? will. And I ended up winning, which was a real surprise to me. And you studied? Political science. I was admitted to the master's degree and I did the master's program for one day. And then I applied for a transfer to the doctoral program, which is a much easier way to get into the doctoral program than just applying to it directly. What does that get you? You're a doctor? Yeah. And the master's would have been what? You'd have to call me master.

Seems like doctor's better. Yeah. Yeah. So in transferring into the doctoral program from the master's program is like no sweat. But just directly applying to the doctoral program, having not done a master's, I never would have got in. Right. So it was a little trick. So you got the doctorate in political science.

Political science. Politics is what they call it, but it's political science. Was there any life-changing mentors or teachers there that, you know, kind of, did your brain change there? I left Oxford and moved to London for most of the time that I was there. So I was, I mean, the AIDS epidemic was still what it was at the time. Protease inhibitors were really the big breakthrough in terms of treatment, and that wasn't until 1996. And so I was doing my doctoral degree before then, and i really felt like i was lost in oxford and so i moved to london and i joined an aids treatment organization there and started doing activist work again and then did

that alongside my thesis which was on the aids movement so now how do you get from there after you do all this work to like when i when i got gig, so I guess it's still the late 90s, but how do you get to radio? So I ran out of money in London and I had not yet finished my doctoral dissertation because I was spending all my time doing activism stuff. Were you having fun at all? I was.

Can you have fun? I had an active social life once upon a time. I did. But you're like, you know how was. Can you have fun? I had an active social life once upon a time. I did. But you're like, you know how to. Can you have fun? Marin. Look, I'm not good at it. You know, you seem pretty good at it.

You know, when you talk about it, you seem to know how to have fun. I'm just asking, you know. I did have fun. I did once have fun. Yes, I had. You seem to still have fun. You know, I hear you talk about it occasionally. Yeah. You fish. I did once have fun. You seem to still have fun. I hear you talk about it occasionally. You fish.

I fall down. That's fun. What is that? Do people know that you're hobbling about? Yeah, three months on crutches. Did you say that on the show? I've talked about it a little bit. I was stepping from a thing down onto a thing, just stepping down and I missed the step. And I tore two ligaments on the outside of my ankle. And then I flipped back the other way and rolled it the other way and tore the big ligament on the inside of the ankle.

And when that one tore, it ripped off a piece of the bone. So I broke it and sprained it at the same time. Yeah. And because the ligaments on both sides are torn, totally torn, it won't stabilize. Usually when you tear ligaments, it's only on one side of the joint. So did you have to get surgery? No. I mean, I went and saw a surgeon, but he was like, it's just going to take a long time to heal. Really?

Yeah. I think by the end of this month, I'll be off crutches. All right. I hope. All right. So you broke. You leave London. I broke. You leave London. I broke.

I leave London. I move back to the United States. And I really want to get my dissertation done because I am never going to go to school again. And I've put in all this work on the doctorate. And I'm not going to leave without getting the freaking degree. Yeah. And so I was like, I need to prioritize. I need to just go somewhere where I will be miserable, where the only way I can get out is by finishing.

And so my dad's best friend from the Air Force was a Republican lawyer in Southern California, and he said that I could work out of a broom closet in his law office. I was like, that'd be miserable. That's good. Or I had friends who had moved to Western Massachusetts and opened up a gay B&B.

And I was like, that sounds like hell on earth. New England, in the winter, they were raising dogs. I had no interest in animals whatsoever. Part of the country I had no interest in whatsoever. And a B&B, so like hospitality, not a specialty of De La Casa. So I was like, that actually sounds like real hell. I'll do that. And I thought it would be.

So you're going to go to a place that is warm and sociable and just lock yourself away and be miserable? Yeah. The whole idea, I was like, I want to be someplace that has nothing to offer me. So the only way out will be finishing. Yeah. And I've now lived there for 20 years and I have a dog and I'm super happy and I love winter. Are your folks Republicans? Republicans no they're not they they were more conservative when I was growing up right now they're to the left of me especially my dad my dad is like the left of you yeah what

does that look like and like who we talking well like Bernie left further I don't know who they're they're very um uh what's the word practical when they talk about the democratic primary like they're all about who can beat trump yeah were you brought up with like religion and stuff yeah catholic really yeah huh my mom is from a very catholic family she has sisters who were nuns and stuff and my dad jewish family but never practicing and really like ashamed of it and then like christian science and weird stuff and so he didn't really have anything going on and then he converted to catholicism when i was eight wow yeah so i grew up catholic with hell you grew up with hell yes well that wasn't like in the house no yeah who knows where it is you know i don't know if this is it i don't know if we're all in it

but but so but were you like from a young age did you have that fear where all those ideas planted in you did you have to remove them at some point did you think that maybe you would remain religious did you struggle with that i left i stopped paying attention to religion at a time when i became super obsessed with myself right so i think when was that well like or i think we're talking about like high school and I stopped paying attention to religion at a time when I became super obsessed with myself. Right. So I think. When was that?

Well, like, I think we're talking about like high school and coming out and all that stuff. Like I became, I was so obsessed with myself and so full of myself. Yeah. That I stopped thinking about the constraints of the world in a way that included religion. And I didn't come back to it for a long time. But I never really like fought it or was tortured by it. Yeah. At least as far as I remember. I also kind of, my memory writes over every six months or so.

So I don't know. And you, but you came back to it? Yeah. I consider myself religious now. Really? Yeah. Catholic-y? Yeah.

Huh. I know. I doubt the Catholic church is happy about it, but too bad they're stuck with me. They've got enough problems. And I'm sure they're, you're the least of them. When you have those kinds of problems though, I'm exactly the kind of problem you want to focus on. Exactly. Yeah, exactly.

But, like, is there – because I don't have that thing that needs to find the God thing. Like, where do you find comfort? Were you in a darkness? No. I find prayer to be helpful in my own life. Yeah, I mean, I can understand that. I've prayed before, but I don't know what I'm praying to, but I think that the act of it is something. The act of stopping your other mental, I mean, I very rarely pray out loud. I'm always just praying in my head. And the act of stopping what your brain is otherwise going to do to do a deliberate thing, which is based around giving thanks, I think is both a reset in a way that's like a psychic pause.

But I also think it helps you get your head on straight. And it helps. It makes me not a better person, but it makes me more the person that I want to be. So it's primarily around gratitude. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's around gratitude and sort of humility and acknowledging things that I'm doing wrong. I think that's part, like, I think that if you hit your knees and do it, like that's that humility of that,

no matter what you believe in. Like if you say, I'm going to humble myself, you know, that, that those are well-worn psychic channels. Yes, exactly. And it works, honestly. I mean, prayer is a daily part of my life and it has made my life better and made me a happier person and made me more effective at the things I want to do.

Have you been unhappy? I have depression. So that's a different thing than unhappiness. But I... I think I, like for your whole life? Yeah. Well, since I was like 10. Really?

Yeah. How does that manifest in your day to day? Well, you know about depression. I know. But is it like, do you get the heavy heart dread type or nothing? My depression is cyclical. And so it's not every day. And so what happens is I get it for a throw of a few days every every few weeks oh yeah and uh and when it happens i sort of lose the will to live like i

just like right right nothing has any meaning and but you get the other side too do you get a manic few days you know i less than i used to i really used i used to have like a pretty even balance of mania and depression and now I have very little mania. It's like one sixth of what it used to be. I don't have real mania mania because my old man kind of has that. But there's a few days sometimes where I'm just sort of like, wow.

But not like, I'm going to buy things. It's just sort of like, I feel great. Yes, maybe inappropriately great. Maybe I haven't done anything to deserve feeling this much energy. Is this what joy is? Yes. I love that. I mean, I still love it. Again, I can't predict it. I can't recognize that's what it is when it's happening, but I wouldn't give that up.

No. Yeah. But so you never medicated? No. No. Just doing a little prayer and managing the depression. Yeah. I found- Riding it out. There are things that are good for me. Yeah. So exercise is good for me.

Yeah, yeah. Susan can see it like a light switch. In your eyes. So I can't tell. I mean, even after living with it for 36 years, I still can't tell when I'm depressed because part of depression is not being able to have emotional consciousness. Yeah, because you believe it. Yeah.

You're like, oh, it's over. It's over. There's no, any time I've ever felt joy. Because you believe it. Yeah. You're like, oh, it's over. It's over. There's no, any time I've ever felt joy, I was misled. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. It's like, you just lose the ability to see that. But having a partner who can tell me that's what's going on, even if I can't emotionally process it, like I can hear it and it can remind me to like, make sure you exercise,

make sure you sleep, make sure you don't do anything dumb, that kind of stuff. Right. Well, that, yeah, because it's a vibe. I mean, like if someone loves you and you've been with someone a long time, you can just see it in their eyes like right away. You're like, okay. That's what this is, honey. Who are you? Yeah, exactly.

You don't love me. I know that one. You don't. I understand. You think you don't. I understand. You think you love me. It's nice of you to say. But who could love me? Basically.

The worst. But I feel it. Yeah. But I've actually, it's good that it comes and goes because I've talked people out of loving me. You know you really commit you you could you could sell it especially if you're a good arguer like you can put together a good argument you know you don't even know me how how horrible dark i am it's just terrible remember that nice thing i once said to you i didn't mean that i didn't mean that it was trying to you know be apologetic it was one of my evil tricks because i'm evil i know yeah worthless it. Worthless. It's dark. Okay. So you're

up there and I don't understand how you get to radio. So I'm taking odd jobs while I am trying to finish my doctoral dissertation while I'm living in Western Massachusetts at the gay B&B in the winter with the dogs. Are you just like the wet blanket of the place? Are you the buzz killer? I'm the handyman, but I don't know how to fix anything. Oh. So I ended up needing to like find things to do to make money. I applied to work at a video store and I didn't get the job. And then I became a delivery person, but I had a car with electrical problems. And you know, those are intermittent.

So that was hard. And it's cold too. It's cold. And I did not know how to drive in snow. So that was bad. Yeah. Then I got hired with like another handyman job and I broke the plumbing at the place that I was. I installed a pressure sprayer on a faucet backwards, and so it blew up the faucet.

You had no idea how to do it? No idea. I've done that. I tried to be a gardener for one summer in Boston when I was drinking a lot, and I removed all this woman's myrtle. I thought they were weeds. I got halfway all her ground cover. I just ripped out. She's like, what did you do?

I'm like, doesn't it look clean now? Yeah, but that's supposed there i'm like i don't know i don't know but look dirt look what i found there was dirt under there that's kind of i mean i ended up doing landscaping as one of my terrible jobs there was this woman who um knew the people who had hired me to be the handyman who i blew up their faucet yeah they had a friend who had just bought a house in the country and it had been a house that had been rented and had been kind of a mess and had like lots of, it had like thorn bushes in the yard and, and broken windows and crayon on the wall. So I was just fixing it up.

And so she said that she needed like a high school boy type laborer to come in and not do anything that had any skills, but like to dig up tree stumps and to haul away thorny things. I was like, I'm your guy. And so that was one of my odd jobs. And I showed up at that lady's house to go do that work. And that was Susan. And it was love at first sight. And that's how we met. That's crazy. It was amazing. It was great. And everything changed. And everything changed. My whole life changed. And then one of the other jobs that I subsequently got was as the the news girl on a morning zoo radio show you'd never done radio never and you never you had no real

desire to be a news girl no news girl no so was this a morning zoo situation yes dave in the morning dave brunell on 100.9 wrnx which is now a country station in Holyoke, Massachusetts. Really? Yes. So you're real radio. I know. Yeah. We were more, we were like, you know, DJs. Yeah. I know. I know.

The guy who was the board op was, his name was Paul Scarpino. We called him Pino. Yeah. Right. Dave in the morning. We never used his last name. He was just Dave in the morning, Mr. In the morning. And I was the news girl.

So you were kind of like, you had to, I used to do a joke about it. There's the main guy, there's the laughing guy, and then there's the shocked woman. That's me. I was the shocked woman. I was Robin. Yes. There's one guy going, and the other guy going, and the woman going, yo, fellas. That was 1000% accurate. That was exactly, I loved it. I loved it, yeah. It was fun getting up, right? Like a good morning crew is pretty exciting.

It was, the hours sort of sucked and I had a long drive actually to it in the winter driving and the whole thing. But the getting, actually getting to rip and read AP copy and mark it up myself and change news stuff and then talk with the guys about the news, I just loved it. And that was it. Yeah, It just like, that was the beginning of your broadcasting life. And then I did that for a year. And then I went back to Oxford to do my, I'd finished my dissertation,

went back to Oxford, did my oral exams, got my PhD. From Morning Zoo to Oxford. Two weeks later was 9-11. And after 9-11, a lot of the radio stations stopped playing music and started doing just like all talk and information stuff. It was a very sober time. Yeah. And I volunteered at a station in Northampton. I said, can I come in and do live shifts? Like, can I do fill-in shifts? Yeah.

And they said yes. And that quickly turned into me getting the morning show myself there, which was The Big Breakfast with Rachel Maddow on 93.9 The River. Wow. And I did that until Air America was founded. And then I had a friend who knew Liz Winstead because he had been her favorite bartender. And I got him to give Liz my reel. And Liz said she wanted to hire me. Liz and Shelly Lewis.

I just saw Shelly. Yeah. Did you? Yeah. Yeah. I love Shelly. Yeah. And they hired me to come to Air America to be the news girl on the Liz Winstead, Chuck

D. morning show. But in the morning show that you had, the big, what was it called? The big breakfast. The big breakfast. Were you doing, what was it, two, three hours? Three or four, I think. Three or four hours of just you? No, just music.

I was DJing. Oh, you weren't doing commentary. You were just- No, I was doing news and interviews and commentary and like little PSAs and stunts and stuff like that. But all, you know, regular morning shows. So playing music too. Giving away tickets to the Miles Davis show. But not politics, really? Not really.

Isn't that wild? Yeah. I mean, I didn't, I had this whole other life at the time where I was still being an AIDS activist. Sure. And I was still doing all, I mean, I was like trying to desegregate the HIV units in Alabama and Mississippi prisons, but then also like giving away concert tickets in the median during the eight minute, you know, fish song. Yeah, of course. Live radio is great. It's wonderful. Yeah. And then, okay, so you get drafted into Air America, which is, were you excited about that? Or did you see it as sort of like, I'm just a news person? Oh, no.

I was like, I can't believe this exists. I can't believe I get to be even a little part of it. I told everybody in the sort of activist world when I got hired at Air America, I was like, I don't know if this is going to work out, either the entity or me. But I'm going to go try this for six months. And so I'm going to put everything that I'm doing on hold, give all my projects to other people. I'll probably be back in six months. Go me. Yeah. But I'm going to go try this for six months. And so I'm going to put everything that I'm doing on hold, give all my projects to other people. I'll probably be back in six months.

Go ahead. Yeah. And then it's, you know, turned one thing into another. And eventually I got my own show. Well, unfiltered got canceled.

Well, I remember like, you know, cause we were all there. I remember there was this weird, like I'm, I'm hung up on this thing that, that happened between us that it wasn't bad,

but I was like, I, I was living, you know I was living, uh, you know, in this apartment there, you know, uh, an old apartment I had my, my wife at that time was in LA. I was going kind of crazy and I decided I was going to try to make the Angelica kitchen. The, well, I decided I was, I was looking, trying to figure out how to make that cornbread that they make there. And I remember I made, I worked, I found all these recipes and I made this very dense, really horrible cornbread and I brought it into Air America. And for some reason I just had made, I decided because I think I went to one lesbian run vegan restaurant that, that lesbians really like

cornbread, dense cornbread. So, so I was like, Rachel has to try this. Like, and I just, like, and I was just so dead set on you trying this recipe I made once. And it wasn't that good. And like, you eventually were like, everyone's saying I have to do this. And you were very nice about it. And you tried it. And you're like, okay. Did you tell me that I needed to do it?

Or did you tell other people to tell me? Like, you actually brought other people's pressure to brand? No, it was very important that you tried this horrible cornbread I made. Did you think it was good at the time? I thought it was something. Yeah. I needed a lesbian to sign off on it for some reason. Well, I don't remember your cornbread, so it didn't scar me.

So if you would take my affirmation now, even if it didn't work then. It wasn't that great, but I felt embarrassed about it. I found it embarrassing. Cornbread. great but i felt embarrassed about it i think it's like i found it embarrassing cornbread i mean i think when i think about like lesbian stereotypical foods or like things that straight men might misunderstand about what lesbians yeah uh what was like a vegan thing it was like you know i had a lot of stuff yeah but it was complete i say i would assume like what i would guess like eggplant right like oh lesbians must love eggplant no i i I just, I had an idea about a way of life

that was something I made up based on one experience at a health food restaurant. And I thought that's how I'll connect with Rachel and her crew cut. Rachel. Her crew cut and stooping over a large pile of papers. But so like, but I remember you go, like you went from news you went from news person, but you were barely a newsreader. You became a co-host of Unfiltered pretty quickly, right?

Yeah. They integrated you right in. Yeah. And then me and Riley were in the morning. I guess you were there because what happened? Did Flanders bail or something? Yeah. She ended up doing her own thing.

They thought it was going to be Laura Flanders and Chuck D and his winston i think this is how it went and then laura decided she was going to do her own thing instead yeah and so then i stayed on as the news girl but they kind of augmented my role so that i would have this bigger role with them right and then like uh right and then then everything went down like we were in the morning and uh you guys came after us and then danny goldberg came in and disrupted everything fired us then you had like you had a two like a one hour show from five a.m to six a.m and then mark riley came on oh yeah for two hours and then you had like and then they moved you and then you had two hours after riley or you guys split a block oh i know i would sometimes do i would fill in for somebody else after that.

Right. Yeah. But my regular gig was that 5 a.m. gig and then they did just kind of ping me around. And that's when you like, you know, we used to see you like, I guess we weren't quite fired yet when you first got that or something

because you'd be up all night. Yeah, I'd come in at midnight. You would do five hours of prep. Yes. Oh, and you were just all these different piles. But I did no callers no guests it was just me talking scripted for an hour and that and that's what you that's what broke you really right i mean no i mean that's how you got your big break i mean the one thing

that danny goldberg did right and i bad mouth him all the time because i can't stand him for what he did to us but like he knew you were great and everybody knew you were great, but he really championed you to a point, didn't he? I write over, like I said, I write over my bodega camera. Yeah. I honestly don't, I mean, I started doing that 5 a.m. show.

I loved that. It was killing me in terms of the hours, but at the same time, remember, then I got the gig on Tucker Carlson's show on MSNBC. Right, where they were in Secaucus. Right. And so his show was live at 11 PM. And so I would go do that. I'd wake up in the morning, which was at night. And then I would go to Secaucus, do that show with Tucker Carlson for an hour and then come back,

start working on my show in the car and then work overnight from midnight to 5 AM, do my show from five to six. And then I'd go to a bar. Yeah. So I had a really weird set of hours. Yeah. But also I had this foot newly planted in the TV world. Right. With Tucker.

Weirdly with Tucker. And then I started getting, you know, book for other things. He's awful, right? He wasn't awful to work with. Oh, okay. Yeah. I mean, he was nice to his staff i remember like there was a something weird that happened with the staff where like somebody was somebody behaved inappropriately toward one of his producers and he like totally stood up for her and like like shamed and horrified

the person who would behave badly and like really was stand up so that was your your foothold that was how you got into tv yeah and so because of, what was going on at Air America, and we were, I mean, it was such chaos. Yeah. Right? And the move from over by the Empire State Building into Chelsea and everything was so- The original studios was so uncomfortable. It was like we had almost colonized a black station. Of WLIV.

That's right. And it just never felt on the level. It was weird. A lot of that stuff was weird. But all of those transitions, I just, again, and I may be wrong about some of this because I don't have a great memory for these things. But my experience of it now, looking back at it, is that I kept a lot of the stuff going on at Air America kind of at a distance, kind of at a remove because I was doing my own thing. It was crazy hours. It was really hard to focus on anything that happened during the day because I was asleep all day long and then I had this other work to do. And so I was just doing that. And then ultimately I ended up transitioning more into TV. And now like the way you're diplomatic about like Tucker Carlson, it's like kids are like, you know, you guys are all on TV. I get all that. But at this point where things are so strained, I mean, is it still possible for you just to look at them and it's like, well, it's just the other side

and they're doing their trip and I'm doing my trip. I mean. I don't watch them. No, I know. I don't either. But I know they're there. I can hear them under the door. But you don't get involved with being angry or that. I mean, to the extent that we are competitors, it's based in ratings numbers that come out at the same time every day that we can all see. Right. But it's not like I do anything to try to compete with Tucker or with Hannity or Chris Cuomo or anything. It's just we're all doing our things sort of parallel alongside each other and you cite them without

malice at times tonight i cited fox i noticed that yeah like they they had this story first and i'm like and here's what they said about it you were mad well no i mean not to credit them no i know you got to do what you got to do so like now all these skills that like i think that's what in terms of like not getting involved with what was going on in America. I felt that way too, because we were doing six to nine and then you're out, you know, but, but all the skills you learned and that you employ, I mean, you're one of the great teasers.

You're like, you know, no one like there. And that's like a radio thing. I mean, I know it's a TV thing also, but were you aware of picking up all these particular skills? That was like, I was schooled at the church of Dave in the morning. Like I know how to like

hold you until after the commercial. When we come back, we're going to be taking the fifth caller and you'll never believe what we're giving away. Got to get ready to dial now. Yeah. It's all gets planted, right?

And you know that like, when that moment where you're like, how long we got? Six minutes. I'm going to go eat. Right. Exactly. Right.

Also, you know what? I need to set up a dentist appointment. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm going to get on the phone now because I'm sure. Yeah. Yeah.

That stuff. You know, the thing that I miss from live radio is I had a soundboard. Did you guys have a soundboard that you could actually fire or was all the sound stuff fired from the control room? No, there was one there. I never used it much like you know randy rhodes used a 360 yeah yeah no i i think i still have one i stole from air america i think i have the 360 i loved 360 clips on there and everything yeah i mounted all this stuff on there you know like we're burning daylight like okay we're like yeah yeah like it was a couple of those i love

that stuff like i want those not only on tv like i want those in my life in life yeah i want like a little keychain version of that you can do it with your phone i think yeah so all right i guess we got to kind of come in for landing here when you come to los angeles where do you stay in hollywood do you have hollywood friends i just stay wherever anybody will put me i just i was just stay in a hotel oh okay yeah um no weirdly i'm from the'm from the Northern California, Southern California rivalry that Southern California doesn't know about. Yeah. Like, I grew up with a whole chip on my shoulder about L.A., and then I found out that everybody from L.A. thinks San Francisco's nice. Oh, yeah.

I thought it was a mutual rivalry. It's not at all. No one in L.A. is really happy. You know, we don't know why we're here. We think we have to be here. I don't know why we're here we think we have to be here i don't know people seem all right so uh now let's talk just to close up now are you um it seems to me that you know outside of when things get you know tragic that you're you're i don't know if you're optimistic but you you kind of stay diligently on on top of kind of you know revealing what's going on contextualizing what's

happening and all its horror uh but you you rarely seem completely freaked out that's acting yeah okay you know i can tell usually when i'm watching you like oh god this isn't going to be good look at her face yeah but i do you do do you believe in your mind or in your heart that the system will correct? I mean, or is that just a waste of time for you? I mean, I don't know. That's a very hard question. I mean, there are two things that I have a hard time with. One is that I just get emotional on TV Like it's often for positive things as much as it is for negative things. Like I cry at the national anthem. Like it always happens. Like I just got, I have that thing. And so some of some, sometimes what you're seeing on TV is me just having.

And the good moment. Yeah. Yeah. Um, like there's this, this bit that I was trying to read out of the book, um, at book events, which is, um, cause I've been trying to read a piece from the book that's about Ukraine because of the impeachment thing about Ukraine. And I get to this point in the bit that I was reading, which is about this guy at the protests at the Maidan while Yanukovych's snipers are shooting protesters and all this stuff.

And this guy stands up and he's wearing a surgical mask and a plastic helmet. And he starts saying like, we will never be slaves. We will be free. And Ukraine will be in Europe and we will be free. And every time that I read it, even at these book events, like I just, and it's not because of something terrible. It's because I'm moved by what he says. And that happens to me all the time. But in terms of the big stuff,

in terms of where we're going, I do, you know, we're a country that had a civil war. We are a country that put an attorney general in prison for 17 months for not that long ago. You know, we're a country that went through an impeachment in the 90s. Like we're a country who's been through a lot of these things. And I think that this president is uniquely angled against the things that we most need to make us an ongoing democratic concern and so that is a very acute problem yeah but i also have to believe that we're resilient given what we've been through before okay what do you think well i just uh like in terms of how i'm exploring it with comedy is that it just feels to me that with the disconnect and with the sort of the amount of information flying around on and in everyone's hand in every given moment i think sadly if if enough people are just okay you know things will go on as they are i i i'm actually doing a bit about how you know if trump doesn't leave and actually i'm gonna paraphrase it says well it's authoritarian now in this like initially most of

us would be like he can't fucking do that but But three days go by, like, no, I guess it's authoritarian. But the scarier part of the bit for me is like six months down the line is that, you know, the number of Americans that will be like, you know, I'm not really feeling it. You know, I thought it sounded scary, but it's not really affecting me. I didn't even have to change my cable provider. You know, like there's that element of how we live that there's such a disconnect between civic duty or even civic education or how the government works for us with smart people. I'm scared that it'll just creep up on us. And that the information that a lot of people, no one's getting the same information anymore. And everything's sort of cherry picked or there's a bubble here or a bubble there.

There's no unified sort of information unless something horrible happens. And even that gets spun. So I just think that it's all of a sudden we're going to, even though you know what's happening or I know what's happening, that we're going to wake up and a lot of these things are going to be gone. Yeah. And it will have happened and we're still here and we then need to be making decisions about what to do.

Right. It's not like, I mean, you know, people say this about particularly difficult transitions in history that when you look back on it, it's clear when the light switch flipped.

But when you were living through it, it wasn't clear when you were supposed to actually stop living your life the way you were in order to sacrifice to save your country. Right. Like we didn't, you can't see those things when you were supposed to actually stop living your life the way you were in order to sacrifice to save your country right like we didn't you can't see those things when you're when you're in it in the same way that we like to believe we would when we look back on it that's i

mean i'm trying to read as much fiction as i can sort of about these types of democratic transitions oh yeah just to be able to try to imagine it better uh-huh um and that's you know reading fiction written contemporaneously to other democratic losses and democratic transitions. There's a lot in the book, too, about how these economic structures around oil, you know, create strongman situations. Yes. They prop up autocratic dictatorships, but also they take good government and turn it into crappy government by capturing it and co-opting it. And the good news in the book is that I tell a story about what happens

in Oklahoma, where Oklahoma still deep red, not turning blue, not having a revolution, nevertheless stands up and is like, you know what? I know we're totally dependent on the oil and gas industry and they've completely come into control of our state government. But we need to keep our schools open five days a week instead of four. And they need to pay taxes and we need to stop having them induce earthquakes. And the people of Oklahoma stood up and made those things happen despite all the efforts of the oil and gas industry to stop that from happening. You can actually rein in the forces that are hurting you.

You just have to work at it. You actually have to commit to do something. And there's never been so many that have been so shamelessly trying to get away with everything they can than right now. This guy is just a portal to the worst sort of like exploiters and greed monsters. But he's also a wuss. A complete wuss. to the worst sort of like exploiters and greed monsters. But he's also a wuss. A complete wuss.

And whenever any Republican stands up to him on anything, he immediately caves. Yeah. And so that gives the Republicans incredible power and it gives constituents of Republicans incredible responsibility to get them to stand up. And they pick their battles. You know what I mean? Like they pick weird things

on which they're going to stand up to about when they let everything else slide. Turks and Syrians. Exactly. But we don't know what happens. We can check our phone now. I've got to get my eyes on it. All right. Well, it was great talking to you. Mark, I miss you. I miss you too. It's nice to see you, man. Nice to see you. There you have it. Did you get to know her a little bit? Did you know that stuff? There you have it. Did you get to know her a little bit? Did you know that stuff?

I love Rachel, and I was thrilled that she came by. The book is Blowout. It came out last week. You can get it wherever you get books. And don't forget, when you hear cage-free eggs, that means the hen still only gets about one square foot of space. At Vital Farms, all the hens are pasture-raised with at least 108 square feet per hen and outdoor access all year round. Vital Farms.

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I'm going to thumb pick the guitar because I want to feel it so it might be a little it might be a little janky is that the word Thank you. Boomer lives! Hi, it's Terry O'Reilly, host of Under the Influence. Recently, we created an episode on cannabis marketing. With cannabis legalization, it's a brand new challenging marketing category. And I want to let you know we've produced a special bonus podcast episode where I talk to an actual cannabis producer. I wanted to know how a producer becomes licensed, how a cannabis company competes with big corporations, how a cannabis company markets its products

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