WTF with Marc Maron Podcast - Episode 628 - Chris Hayes

Episode Date: August 12, 2015

MSNBC’s Chris Hayes steps away from the anchor chair and into the garage to talk with Marc about life outside of cable news. Chris explains how his upbringing shaped his political conscience and how his career in journalism fine-tuned his sense of empathy. He also reveals what he really wanted to do before going into news and why he hasn’t given up that dream. 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.

Death is in our air. This year's most anticipated series, FX's Shogun, only on Disney+. We live and we die. We control nothing beyond that. An epic saga based on the global best-selling novel by James Clavel. To show your true heart is to risk your life.

When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series streaming February 27th, exclusively on Disney Plus. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. 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.

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 episode is brought to you by the Ontario Cannabis Store and ACAS Creative. Lock the gates! store and a cast creative. All right, let's do this. How are you? What the fuckers? What the fuck buddies? What the

fucking ears? What's happening? It's mark maron this is wtf my podcast thank you for listening thank you for being with me during this interesting time in the world today chris hayes is on the show now chris hayes is is one of the smart guys he's he's solid his scholarship is solid his cultural criticism and political uh criticism solid bright dude what what's he like as a person who i don't fucking know i know more now because i talked to him it was interesting to talk to him because he's a journalist guy and he's an earnest dude you know and he means it he's a political commentator and as some of you know i i did my time doing a bit of political talk way back and i and i decided that it was not for me to do because my passions lied elsewhere well maybe i should rephrase that

my anger lied elsewhere it lied wherever i would lay it i don't want to divide i want to embrace and bring people together in their pain and insanity and make us know that we're all very similar and that our fears and frustrations and hopes, dreams and horrendous dark places are the same with very little variation where none of us are that profoundly unique or necessarily interesting in our fucking insanity and problems so why wedge the political acts in the middle of that i think if more people dealt with their personal problems and personal issues and really sort of uh owned up to them and sat in themselves comfortably, we'd have a much more interesting and realistic political dialogue. And that's where it ends for me today. We'll stay in the trenches of self, if you don't mind. I'm going to be doing some international travel in Dublin, Ireland.

I'll be at Vicar Street on Wednesday, September 2nd. On Thursday, September 3rd, I will be at the South Bank Center in London, England, as well as September 4th there again. I hear tickets are selling well. I haven't been there in years. I've never been to Dublin. I think I was there once at the airport, leaving after being in Kilkenny, which was okay, not a great experience, but I'm excited about Dublin.

Then on Thursday, October 15th, I'll be at the State Theater in Sydney, Australia. On October 16th, I will be at the Palace Theater in Melbourne, Australia. And October 17th, I will be in Brisbane City Hall in Brisbane, Brisbane, right? Australia. I'm looking forward to these trips. I have not done England england uh or australia in in years i was at the melbourne festival and it's just um it's going to be fun to to be where i'm at now and to be there and who knows maybe it'll be like the most exciting international travel in my life i do tell you be honest with you between me and you once i get on the plane

once i get to where i'm going once i get into a hotel room that i'm not really responsible for in some ways not that i'm going to do any damage but there's a piece to it there's a piece to it and i'm looking for some peace of mind because i almost lost my fucking mind the other night if you if you don't mind me saying yeah i came unhinged a little bit and i think some of you saw it coming uh you know over bullshit but this is just it some of you saw it coming. You know, over bullshit. But this is just, it is what it is. It's the way my brain works. It's, you know, it's just the way my brain works.

I had the health panic. So I went to the cardiologist. And I tried to cajole him into believing that I was, you know, pretty sick. That, you know, my heart, my ticker was going. But he did the similar test that I had the other doctor. He said, everything seems fine for now. But he said, we'll do a stress test. We're going to do a cardiogram. So I'm going to do that, not next week, but the week after. I was going to do it next week because I was fueled by panic. And I thought like, you know, I'm a time bomb. I'm a ticking time bomb. I better go get this

shit done because I know something he doesn't know, even though he didn't seem very stressed about it, about the situation. So here's what happened. You want to know how I lost my mind? I bought a car. And the dude over there at Glendale Toyota, Alejandro, man, he helps me out. So we got the car. They cleaned it up.

And I got, here's what I got. I got a black Toyota Cam camry hybrid that's right i had a camry and i just got a little nicer cam you know why because between you and i i don't give a fuck about cars i just think like i sold my car the classic shit box uh you know baseline camry that had nothing in it that i bought online without driving it in 2005. Just ordered it online. They drove it to my house. I gave them a check.

And I've been driving that for the last 100,000 miles, a little less. I just don't care. I don't want to have a car I care about. So I sold that to Ryan Singer. I gave him the Comedian Pal price. Guy's out on the road. He's hoofing it out there. He's going town to town doing the business.

They're driving across country. That thing as a Toyota still got a lot of life on it. Ryan's a good friend of mine. I gave it to him for a grand. Toyota Camry, 2006. $95,000 and change on it. Gave it to him for a grand because I know it's going to go to a good cause. Ryan's fucking swinging those jokes out there in the middle of nowhere doing the fucking job. And that's a comedian's car.

And a comedian needs it. So there you go. That's that story. We'll see where that car takes Ryan Singer. I'm going to interview him about where that car takes him and what happens in that car from here on out. That'll be like a secondary series, a sub-series of the show. All right. So I'm excited about my new car. I'm driving it around. You know, pick up the girl, pick up Sarah. We drive it around. I said, what do you think, baby? She says, nice. It's got the Bluetooth, got the whole business. I don't know how to work anything

in the car yet, but it's exciting. So then, you know, nighttime starts to come and I drop Sarah off after I give her a little cruise in the car and i'm driving home like these headlights kind of suck and i get into my driving like well that's because there's no headlights at all the switch is on headlights not working what the fuck is this about so in that moment this is the way my brain works it's like who can i call right now to fucking lose my shit on over this new car i bought today that's got non-functioning headlights where do i start tweeting at toyota like i had to restrain a pen and tongue as they say in the secret society but you know i tried to keep it together but my brain's been going a little haywire lately because i think things are going too well for me so so i don't freak out

instead i set my clock for 6 15 i'm gonna be the first on the service line because i just leased that car and i got a fucking beef and i'm gonna lose my shit so i drive down to toyota glendale seven in the morning i'm there it's one the first like fourth or fifth person there met this dude mike from jersey we talked jersey for a little while we hit it off i tell him about the headlights he's like yeah man i don't think i've ever seen that before then finally the the service manager comes in older guy white haired dude, seemed like a nice guy, told him what was up. He said, I never heard of that before. And of course, I'm thinking, fuck, a unique electrical problem on my new fucking car.

Welcome to Lemonland, motherfucker. That's what I said to myself inside. But I didn't express those feelings outwardly. I said, really? Never seen this before? So what's going on so i sit there and wait and i'm freaking out because i think like now it's just going to be a battle with this new car boy that new car buzz didn't last very long then old dude white haired dude nice dude comes into the waiting area he says there's no bulbs

there's no bulbs in the headlights and i'm like what the fuck no bulbs how the fuck did that happen but it was probably the best case scenario because that means my electrical system wasn't fucked he's like i don't know and i'm like no bulbs that happened on the assembly line they just forgot to put the bulbs i've never seen it it's a big deal over at the service area how the hell did this not have bulbs maybe some kid or somebody lifted them when they were on the lot but then it became sort of like i don't know if we got these bulbs i'm like this is the toyota place he said well if you wait till the guys the sales guys come maybe we can take them out of another car.

And then out of nowhere, this mystical service elf shows up. This little guy goes, I got him. And I'm like, yeah. So I don't know where he came from, but that's all he said. He just waved a baggie like a guy who just got his drugs. Little baggie, I got him. I'm like, dude, put those fuckers in. So that worked out.

So now the bulbs are working. That was a close close one and now i'm happy about my car again but anyways a lot of things were going on all at once and my brain exploded and i and i and i yelled a bit and i tried to start a fight my girlfriend i yelled at my manager and you know because there was too much coming in and i had to like you know i got to travel and and you know i'm getting my driveway done and that was everything was going to happen at once the deck the driveway there's going to be demo here i got interviews next week and and i just it's because i have no capacity anymore and i'm not sure i ever did to to see more than a day or two ahead and that means schedule that means everything it's like everything's a fucking surprise to me like a goddamn child i'm like oh my god i'm i'm getting on a plane tomorrow so like i just short-circuited i just short-circuited and i started texting brendan who

some of you know now i'd like to read that directly to you because uh if you have a question about how to handle uh a mark maron in your life um i was losing my mind and i didn't know where to put my frustration because i couldn't make a decision about something i'm just texting brendan just like what the fuck am i gonna do there's too much going on i don't know i can handle this schedule blah blah blah blah i don't need to get into specifics i sent like 20 texts just just spinning down the fucking hole of self. Like my brain was short circuiting because there was going to be work done on my house all at the same time that I got to do interviews and I got to travel. And, you know, there was just a million after a certain point, everything starts to happen at the same frequency.

Like, hey, somebody just texted me and wants to go to lunch. That's exactly the same as, you know, I have to fly to Australia. They all come at me with the same intensity. So at some point, there was this text. I said, maybe you don't understand what the fuck I'm dealing with here. I texted that. And he had not really responded to anything because I was in a flurry, a flurry of panic and anger just coming through

in text form maybe you don't understand what the fuck i'm dealing with here i said and then and then a little text balloon goes brendan just text back call me if you're going to do this that stopped the fury that stopped the frenzy so then i'm like uh then i call him like hey man i i okay i'm sorry about all the text i just i don't know this is my fucking mind and he gave me a a a suggestion to move some things forward to clear out, to look at my calendar and see where I could possibly do the things that I just spontaneously let happen. And I said, no, I can't. I'm not going to be able to change that. And everything was able to be changed.

And I did not have a stroke. Call me if you're going to do this. See, that's where texting falls off, is that when the excited, kind of like, I'm fucked flurry of text happens, and you just go, you know what? Maybe this is something you should do with your call me. And then it all went away.

And that's why we've worked together for so long. Did I mention I saw my wild cat, scaredy cat, the one with the fucked up mouth, just popped a fucking skunk right in the head. Just paw popped him right in the head. Skunk was looking around. They were both kind of waiting for food. And fucking scaredy cat was just sitting there

on the step of the deck being cool. Fucking skunk is spinning around sniffing the air looking for food got a little too close to scaredy cat pop boom right in the nose skunk didn't even know what to do he's like am i gonna spray this motherfucker am i gonna you know make some weird noises with my feet and jump around in a weird way to see if that has an effect yeah i'll try those well i'm not gonna spray yet because it takes a lot to bounce back from that shit so i'll just do a little weird panic dance and see if that works check look at what my tail does motherfucker nothing huh scared he just held his ground skunk freaked out went away then fed that cat that's a tough cat that cat don't give a fuck all right let's see who chris

hayes really is or let's have a conversation with him. You know, you get a sense of the guy. You know, we're not going to talk like he talks on the TV show. We're going to talk like a couple of guys talking. Maybe I should give him all this credit. Chris Hayes has a show on MSNBC called All In with Chris Hayes, and that airs weeknights at 8 p.m. on MSNBC. Did I mention that twice? Chris Hayes, right now with me in the garage. You can get anything you need with Uber Eats. Well, almost, almost anything. So no, you can't get an ice rink on Uber Eats.

But iced tea and ice cream? Yes, we can deliver that. Uber Eats, get almost, almost anything. Order now. Product availability may vary by region. See app for details. Death is in our air. This year's most anticipated series,

FX's Shogun, only on Disney+. We live and we die. We control nothing beyond that. An epic saga based on the global bestselling novel by James Clavel. To show your true heart is to risk your life. When I die here, you'll never leave Japan alive. FX's Shogun, a new original series streaming February 27th,

exclusively on Disney+. 18 plus subscription required. T's and C's apply. After I talked to the president, like, I know that choices were made, that he decided to do this show. It wasn't a fluke. Right.

But then when you're talking to a politician, like, people ask me if I was nervous, but I talked to politicians before. So how do you get that guy to be a person and not, you know, get that front? And I think just the nature of the intimacy of it made it a very different experience. But he must have had an agenda on something.

I think he said it was to sort of reach out to people who were apolitical in a sense. Yeah, I think they are very attuned to the fact that there is this proliferation of channels by which people can be reached. And in some ways, those are frontiers that have yet to be settled by other people. And I think they're very smart about that. So they can sort of come around the side. Yeah, that's exactly right.

Where it's like, oh, well, there's all these people that listen to this person. There's all these people that listen to this person right all these people that not only listen to this person but i think in in a very savvy way like trust this person right there's a sort of vouching and validation that happens yeah and sometimes sometimes the best way to get your message out quote unquote yeah is when you're not in a situation where you're explicitly, you know what I mean? Sure. And I think that was the weird, the feedback was really,

like, I think that a lot of people just kind of, like, stopped giving a shit about, you know, him or what he had to say. You know, just in the general population, people who are not necessarily politically minded or keeping up had just sort of dismissed him as well as the president and that's that so i think that a lot of a lot of the feedback i got was people saying like i forgot how much i like that guy right yeah so he did something right that's right that's right and and and it that goes back to the point that the two of you made which is a a point that I think about a lot, which is we are capable of relating to all sorts of people and bonding with all sorts of people and having affection, admiration for all sorts of people whose politics we don't share when we take the politics. That's right.

You know, that was an important thing. And it's one of the reasons why I stopped doing politics. I mean, I don't know how you walk through the world on a day to day-day basis with you know uh 48 of the population go that's that fucking guy do you have to deal with that you know it's only happened to me twice and and and i i'm lucky enough that twice that's it out in the world yeah because because they don't want my exactly exactly my my particular level of the the the the very specific strata of of fame and or notoriety i have yeah is such that it is mostly only to the people who like what i do yeah as opposed to broadly to the people that would hate me right so i'm not walking around like michael like michael moore is sort of this like identifiable icon yeah right for a certain kind of conservative right um so i

just don't i don't attract that one time i was in new york once and my child had needed to be changed into starbucks and was and she was wailing yeah and this guy was like start berating me about ruining the country really and i was just like hey buddy i like i don't care and i take care of my kid that was it that was it and that's and the one a few other times people have in passing said things but i've never had like some you know confrontation you don't feel compelled to argue at every turn if somebody approaches you in the street i don't one of the things that I love the most when I first started being a journalist was the feeling, the relief, the unburdening of not being compelled to argue. Like that all my job was to listen. Right.

I would go and report on things. I'd go to an evangelical college to do a convocation. And it was just liberating to say, I'm not here to persuade these people that I have the right politics. And I'm not here to convert anyone to my worldview. I just want to hear what, I'm just going to listen. And it's an amazing unburdening that happens when you are in a position where I don't feel any, it's not incumbent upon me to argue.

Well, but now it is. Now it is, I know. What'd you do to yourself? See what you did? You sold out. Now you gotta argue. Well, let me say this though. We argue a lot, but I mean, I just, you know,

I just spent, I've spent four or five days here in California where we're doing this show on the drought. And, you know, I always spend all day with a Central Valley farmer. Right. Who is very different politics. Can you get me up to speed on the drought? Because I think I might water my yard once too many times a week.

How much of the onus is on me, Chris? I'd say it's about 80% Marin. Oh, shit. It's short of the line. I figured. I knew it. The water authorities. What are you finding

well let's go back so when you were a journalist and you had a certain amount of anonymity under other than a byline how did you get into that where let's let's start at the beginning like in a logical way where'd you grow up i grew up in the bronx the bronx like uh what kind of what kind of family like working class yeah so my it was a working class, middle class family. It was in the Bronx in the 80s. My mom is from the Bronx. Her father had a mozzarella shop in an Italian neighborhood in the Bronx. In Arthur, like on Arthur Avenue?

On Arthur Avenue. A mozzarella shop. Literally. Your grandfather. My grandfather. Made the good shit. Exactly right. Do you remember him?

Yeah. Yeah? Yeah. He died when I was about seven, I think. But yeah. Do you remember the shop? Did he have it still? The shop closed before I was born. remember him uh yeah yeah yeah he died when i was about seven i think but yeah did you do you remember the shop did he have the shop closed the shop closed before i was born um but do you have like memories of arthur ave did you oh my god the place next to it was borgatti's which is the

across from uh uh the church yeah which is where they they make fresh pasta we used to go we used to go to arthur avenue every weekend and the fresh pasta with like the cornmeal dusting yeah yeah yeah um isn't that amazing those things from childhood that are like defining like i've only been to arthur avenue once it's just mind-blowing because it that shit it just doesn't exist anywhere man they're like out here or almost any other city there's only a few cities where you have real the reason why italian food is good is there's italians there yes yeah well and i remember when we went to, you know, I grew up Arthur Avenue. We go to the market and the market had, there was a stall where people bought live chickens. Yeah.

And there was like the butcher where it was like real butcher. Taking apart the whole cow. Oh, that's an animal. Yeah. Yeah. Right. Being. No denying it.

Deconstructed in front of us. Yeah. And then I remember the first time we went to my family went to italy you know when i was in 17 or so yeah and i was like completely familiar it's like oh this is sure this is like arthur avenue yeah yeah does your mom speak italian she doesn't know she's uh uh her folks did but she does not so so what'd your dad do see but you're not all italian so my dad uh up in Chicago and was a Jesuit seminarian. He was going to be one.

He was going to be a priest. Spent seven years in the seminary. Lived in Peru for a year. Doing missionary work? Yeah. I mean, like, in basically the poor, what are called the barriadas outside Lima. Yeah. Not missionary work. The Jesuits are not, like, super. In basically the poor, what are called the barriadas outside Lima. Yeah.

Not missionary work. That's not real. The Jesuits are not like super. No, they just work out of a church. Yeah. They just do a lot of like social justice work and sort of helping the poor and stuff like that. So that's what he did? He did that. And then he came back and he ended up at Fordham, you know, which is Jesuit school to sort of finish his education.

Brendan went there. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. you know, which is Jesuit school to sort of finish his education. Brendan went there. Yeah, exactly. Fordham looms large in my life because a lot of the people that would later form my parents'

social circle came out of Fordham because it was all these kind of social justice lefty Catholics. Yeah. And so my dad and his like cohort of seminarian friends rented an apartment near arthur avenue and marion avenue that was one floor up from the one my mom grew up in that she lived in and it was through that that they that they met and that that's and that he gave up the priesthood so the story officially always and my parents will listen to this yeah the story officially always is that he had decided to leave before uh-huh meeting my mom but you know my mom has told this story about when, you know, when they first started hanging out, like my dad had the collar.

Right. Like. She knew. I mean, her mom, when it became clear there was something going on between them was like, I think like a bit scandalized in the beginning. Because like she had met this dude as like, oh, the nice, the nice priest upstairs who wears the collar and i was like wait a second so you so the story has been somewhat perhaps uh mythologized to take the onus off of your mother i have i sometimes have my suspicions that is the case i i don't know but but i've been you know the truth is there

chris where's your journalistic integrity can't you push your mom a little bit i have not i have not set them up for a grilling on this but but yeah that's the that then they met and uh and my dad had already at that point through sort of being in the in the jesuits um been doing these community organizing in poor neighborhoods in the u.s in chicago in the bronx, um, been doing these community organizing in poor neighborhoods in the, in the U S in Chicago, in the Bronx. And so when they, you know, he left the priesthood and he and his friend from the same Jesuit class started an organization, the Bronx that was basically doing housing organizing against landlords. Um, my mom was a teacher and I, so I grew up in the Bronx in the eighties at a time when my dad was doing community organizing and the bronx was you know the bronx in the 80s was like gnarly i mean

i i did not grow up in you know um the project yeah or the south south bronx you know we lived in this neighborhood in the northwest bronx yeah uh that was you know a standard kind of working class neighborhood um but you know they the world that my parents friends who they're still very close to and are still this kind of world around me and my brother yeah um these were all people that were kind of like engaged like community organizers community activists in the bronx in the 80s like doing really you know amazing work it's interesting though because like you know as much as the Catholic Church gets demonized, and probably rightfully so,

for a lot of nefarious bullshit with money and predators, which I think has been going on for centuries, I think people forget that there are a lot of those, a lot of the civil rights organizers, there was this always this, the charitable arm and the community arm of the Catholic church has done a lot of good. Incredibly. And that tradition is an amazing tradition.

I mean, the people that come out of the church with that kind of real, um, godly commitment to the least of these, when you encounter those folks like it is an amazing thing to encounter and those are your parents friends yeah i mean yes i mean in some ways i mean i i you know i don't want to you know they're not saying but and they should be the first to admit but they were they're you know my dad and my mom and and the people around them were all people that were you know they were people that were really doing the work. It's like there was no glamour and there was no money in trying to save people from lead paint in the Bronx in 1985. Right.

You're just doing that because- Isn't that interesting? You want to see the world be a better place, and that's the work you're going to do. And that's what you grew up around. Yeah. And what did your mom do? My mom was a teacher in the Bronx and then stayed home for about nine years with me and my brother and then went back into education where she worked for an arts nonprofit in the Bronx

and then did arts administration in the Bronx. It's fascinating. So you grew up in this weird environment of somewhat selfless activity. Yeah. I mean, neither of my parents in the duration of my life ever worked a single day for a for-profit operation. That's so anti-American. Not a single day. I mean, I just like, and also and also sort of no one none of their

friends did either i mean everyone worked for either non-profits or civil servants you know the government my dad ended up going to the health department where he did you know he just retired actually where he did he worked in in harlem and yeah and other poor neighborhoods on public health stuff so and did you now like you, you know, there's something about, like, I don't know, like on a spiritual level. And I think this was something that's lost on a lot of people that there is something about helping others that makes you feel good. Yes.

And, and it does make the world a better place, but people have become very self-involved culturally now. That, you know, sometimes I have a slight sense of panic at the disconnect between human beings. But I've also found that, like, especially in New York City, and it's one of the only cities I've experienced it, is that, you know, if someone goes down on the street, something happens on the street in New York, It's astounding how many people are like there to help. Yes. Someone will immediately take charge. It's funny because people have the opposite view of New York. There's like the famous Kitty Genovese murder, the woman, she was murdered in this courtyard

in, I think it was Queens and she was screaming and no one helped. And this was like this sort of iconic moment of like the shame of New York City where like no one helps anyone. And my experience in New York is 100 100 the opposite always me too if someone's walking around with a map yeah and on the subway and they look at a little loss it's like yeah balls to a flame of like you you need directions and then and when they walk away with them at three people go oh fuck i don't think i told her hey yeah yeah exactly it's absolutely no it's absolutely true like how many people i've given directions and two two minutes later, I'm like, oh, shit, that

gave the wrong train. It gave them the wrong train. F is all the time. I don't know. Enjoy Coney Island. Yeah, yeah. Sorry. It'd be good for you, an adventure.

But no, but it's true. So how did that mold you? I mean, seeing this, what were the expectations out of you? Were you brought up Catholic? Yeah, we were brought up Catholic. So your dad's a believer he is a believer yeah we would go to we went to church every i went to church every sunday i went to ccd on wednesdays and then on sundays i don't even know what ccd is i don't even know what it stands for you know sunday school catechism okay all right you don't know what it stands for no come on chris you're the wizard i used to get out of school early on Wednesdays and go over.

And then, so yeah, my brother and I both raised Catholic. With the fear of hell. You know, we had a very, we had Catholicism. Like my father was raised in a Catholic home where it was like old school Catholic. Right. Like his parents, until the day they died, went to church every morning they were incredibly devout yeah they were incredibly anti-abortion he's not italian your father no he's irish okay okay so there you go the two yeah exactly but but i guess also there's a practicality to coming from his generation

of catholics and somebody is dedicated to the work, the social work of Catholicism. I think that when you live that life, you're a little more practical about putting the fear of God into your kids. Absolutely. Like, we did not grow up in a home where, you know, I did something and then was consumed by guilt that I was going to go to hell. Right. But I think, like, I think that's my, my parent, my dad's generation of Catholics.

That's their experience of the religion. I mean, and I think it was incredibly, it turned so many off. I mean, there's so many people, you know, the,

the FARC fallen away, Roman Catholic. Yeah. Who were just completely scarred. Yeah. It just that, you know, at six or seven being urged to contemplate eternal torture and damnation because you took a piece of gum out of the drawer you shouldn't have.

Right. Which was a lot of people that generation's experience of Catholicism is still today. I'm sure some. Well, I think they did. The family or the parents would display some of the the um disciplinary action onto the church absolutely so like you know they they it afforded them a little bit of freedom just to let the church terrify their children that is i think that's really true or or in the cases of the nuns yeah yes beat beat the crap out of them and also the school discipline right i mean yeah it's like

these are all sort of tools in the tool chest yeah yeah like yeah confining the behavior of children yes is there's like do this because i said so and then there's like do this because if you don't you will burn in hell for just generations of self-loathing guilt-ridden yeah it's screwed a lot of people up i mean it's funny because i am no longer a believer and yet i'm i'm both no longer a believer and yet my feelings about the kind of Catholicism I got are largely positive and warm. Do you know the day that that happened? Yes, I do. Really?

Yeah. I got to Brown University freshman year. Brown. And I was- What year did you graduate? 2001. Uh-huh. And I was committed to going to

church yeah and when you got to brown when i got to brown yeah and this is you know when you're 18 or whatever 19 like you know waking up early at brown like to go to church it's you know you're there with celebrity kids and legacies and smart liberals yeah and i needed you needed some sort of order. Yeah. I mean, it seems like, well,

I think I wanted, I think I had some sense that I, that it was an interesting test of my faith that if I was going to do this while I was by myself. And I remember going to early that fall, I went to mass and the, and the priest gave a homily about the passage in the gospel in which Jesus said, what god has joined

let no man render sunder um and that is i don't even know what that means it's about divorce basically it's basically the sort of it's the it's the the kind of theological basis of the church's objection to divorce right and he just went on this like long anti-divorce homily and i was just like i'm out really i just was like this is that that's what that's when jesus left you i was just like this is preposterous and i think that my my response to him in that homily in that moment was was less theological and more just like political or practical sure but what it meant was i was just like i got no time for this and then i just stopped going and then once i stopped going and then, I started studying philosophy as the thing that I did all the time.

I just like, I just came to the belief that, you know, there is no God that we, this is rational. Yeah. Like broke it down. Yeah.

I mean, I don't think that like, I don't say that in any sense of like, that is the one true, like that, that was the conclusion I came to, but the conclusion was preceded by the ebbing of practice you know i mean i think there's like my point is that like

all of these things about our belief systems are inextricably bound to our habits and practice and life world sure it's a control thing yeah i mean it's the way we right it's the way we control the crazy amount of stimulus that pour into our life. And also it's just the sort of the repetition. You know, I think that, you know, a lot of religion is like sort of encouraged OCD with ideology. You know, like there's a repetition of ritual and whatnot that it kind of grounds you in something

because when you're untethered, it seems like you sort of used your brain to sort of tether you. But a lot of people know they don't want to to execute that so they're just sort of like they keep the order going yes i mean i i had a friend of mine who who became very religious yeah after not after being not that religious who basically said that to me oh really like i just need something to keep no not only only that, but that people do. And that like, he sort of now looks at secular folks as like, just like a drift. Like, how do you even. Well, you got your iPhone now and it takes up a lot of distractions.

I've been doing. Refresh. Yeah. Refresh. I've been working on a bit of, I just started doing this bit of that. Like, I don't know if it's my age or what, but like, you know, if I set my phone down for a few minutes, i get an existential terror it's almost like when i when i set my phone down it's like i'm dying i'm dying give me the phone where's twitter you can feel that like it's

physically like in the chest yeah in the same place that that real like panic attacks or anxiety starts like that your heart is and that you should be you should be okay like i drive home sometimes i don't put the radio on or you do you take time do you like because you know meditation is a practice which i don't do unless i'm just in my car but like just to feel silence and the tactile sensations of like having your hand on a wheel and just knowing that the vessel you're occupying is temporary it's just like maybe i'm going too far with it i should be thinking about other things but but I feel it now. I don't know how old you are, but in your life,

did you, you did not have a spiritual craving or did you find a higher purpose? I mean, were you looking for answers? No,

I think my, I think I'm a person who's sort of biological makeup, neurological makeup is disposed to anxiety. Me too. It's it's it's horrible sometimes i think it's getting a little worse really dread yeah i yes dread and dread and

nostalgia in this potent mix of like i i think i'll explain that to me a little bit the way that the way that my anxiety is always manifested to me is just the the keen awareness of the on rush of time towards permanent non-existence but that's that's not necessarily nostalgic unless you know but it could be in these specific moments where you all right where the nostalgia will sure will rise up and that's where i went to college yes yes and then it's like. Right. Right.

And you kind of like tunnel feeling. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's all passing. It's all passing. It's all passing. And I also understand that getting back to this religion thing about how if I really did believe in an actual sense in an afterlife, like that would be.

Relieving. Massively mitigating. Well, that's the whole. That's the big pitch. That's the big pitch. And the big pitch and like it's like awesome like if you believe that in your in your cells yeah like that's great like i would love to feel that way i would love to not feel it's like having health care it's very similar eternal that's why canadians are sort of like you know kind of cool i mean they're not incredibly interesting all the time, but there's some basic thing that they relaxed about.

Yeah. Well, I understand that. And I feel the anxiety. And I think after a certain point in your life, it becomes like it's interesting that you know somebody that turned back to religion. that turn back to religion because for me, it's like once you go through a rational period or you've turned your back on religion or you were never prone to a spiritual search or a need for a God to sort of come to one at 60 or 70 years old, it's almost sort of like I'm going to turn that part of my brain off. I've had enough working the angles.

So now I'm just sort of like, yeah, there god and uh now i'm i'm i'm gonna just relax i just wonder all the time about whether like i find that process fascinating because i just it's unclear to me whether you can will yourself to that or or how that comes about the suspension of disbelief yeah like yeah it's crazy it's like it's it so so how do you deal with your anxiety what do you just do just overwork yeah i mean i think focus on the things like i actually find there's some people who have anxiety that is exacerbated by having like a lot of tasks yeah and mine is in some ways the opposite like having goals and projects yeah is what i find is the most satisfying way.

Like the concreteness of embedding myself in the finishing of a task is I find like incredibly satisfying. And so that's the show every day. I gotta make a show every day. That's longer term writing projects. That's like the projects, the projects, the projects, the projects. To me is the thing that really like makes me feel relieved of that.

And do you find that like because a lot of this stuff you're writing about things outside of you. I mean, you know, how much like of your, you know, your your heart and mind and your your personal sphere is is being avoided. Right. How much of your life is just specifically about avoiding the terror? No, I mean, well, I think we all, right, we all cope with it. It's like a human condition, right? So I think, you know, I have kids now. How many? I have two.

Really? Yeah. Oh, so that's full time. Yeah. I mean, like, and that actually, like, I've been away from my family family this is as long as i've been away from the kids we left on friday a week you know it's gonna end up being like nine eight or nine days and it's a really fascinating thing about doing the face time doing the face time i actually that what i do with my three-year-old is i like send her these little dispatches that i like record and i texted to her and then she

texts me one back and i do these like sort of like quasi news report you know where i'm like oh you know we're about to this is a this is a helicopter that fights fires and we're gonna go up in that and oh you do that yeah and then i said it to her and and she sends me questions back so you're actually you know you're doing a show for your child i'm doing a show for my child exactly this is chris hayes your dad good evening from california i'm your dad i'm on location um so what was the did you study philosophy was that your major yeah that was my major in fact it was uh it was philosophy of math and science oh my god i did i did very like i did like advanced deductive logic and girdles proof and um but that's math it was math yeah it's math yeah so

you didn't you didn't dick around with like spinoza and whatnot i did some of that too like i i you know i took existentialism i took epistemology and stuff like that but um i was specifically on the the philosophy of math so logic track the logic track yeah let's say the numbers don't add up so that's uh that's clearly not true exactly i remember i had this this this experience uh yeah it's really insane experience where when you're moving apartments at some point you know when you're taking your you know that that talk about like a nostalgia opportunity right when you have to go through your books and like you're taking i'm surrounded by this shit there's shit i've gotten from college i still think i'm gonna going to read. I still think I'm going to read some of this shit.

A Thousand Plateaus by Deleuze and Guitar. Let's make a wager right now. I did some underlining in there at one point. Did you read that book? You know those guys? Yes. What was that about? I don't know.

All right, all right. I have no... Okay. I'm never going to get to it. But I had this experience where one of the books I took off was one of my deductive logic books from college. Yeah. And I open it up, and in the margins are these just furious extensive notes. Yeah.

And it literally might as well have been written in Chinese. Like, I could not believe that the person who wrote those notes was a version of me who understood any of this. Yeah. Because it was so remote to me. Yeah. I was just like. Yeah, it's weird, right? Who wrote, who was that person?

That was me, but I don't, I can't make sense of any of this anymore. You're loading your brain up. You were in it. I was in it. You're training. Yes. So what was the original idea?

What did you want to do with your life when you were in college? I mean, I know you ended up the journalist and this guy that hosts a show and is fighting the good fight, but you must have been more selfish at some other point. Well, yeah. No, I really wanted to be a performer. I wanted to be a theater. I mean, I did a ton of theater.

Really? Yeah. Like plays? Yeah. You were an actor guy? I was. A director, actor. My friends wrote a ton of theater. Really? Yeah. Like, you plays? Yeah. You were an actor guy? I was. A director, actor. I directed a...

My friends wrote a musical I directed. I did a solo show my senior year. I acted. I was in Three Sisters. I wrote plays. I wrote a lot. You wrote plays? Yeah.

How many? Three or four, probably. Really? Yeah. Three act? Like, one full three act. No shit one full one full three act no shit smaller ones of the one act solo show when when are you gonna get back to that i want to actually you do yeah i do i i i definitely at some point want to do theater again what would it take i mean wait

i mean how it seems like you have a mission. So how does a guy like you just pull out to do some theater? That's a good question. I mean, that's an unanswered question. You know, did you do theater? I wrote a couple of plays. Yeah, I knew that. But I didn't, you know, I was not the theater school, but I did, yeah, I acted and I directed and I was, you know. But I ended up pursuing that.

I didn't, you know, I tried to save the world route for a few years and I was like, I'm too selfish for this. Get back to talking about myself. I mean, the world is great and all, but. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, I think part of what I love best about the show now or doing the work I do is that there's

some part at which it feels like we make a play every day. Yeah. Like there's a bit of that like esprit de corps, like we're making a show. Right. And the show has to come together and there's lights and tech. You're kind of in show business. Yeah. I mean, in a way we are.

It's all show business. News, everything. It's all shows. There's a lot of things that you guys do up there. Performing. Yeah. But I miss, yeah, I miss the i miss the theater i loved i loved it was like who are your guys like what do you what are your you know what are you who your playwrights um you know designated mourner um by wallace sean oh yeah oh yeah i've i i don't know if i've read it but

it's a it's really an that's like my sort of aesthetic, which is a sort of like long and ruminative monologue driven kind of, I think I read the fever. Yes. Right. The fever's great. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Great. Um, um, and then I also, I like musicals a lot, like this show that I'm on Broadway, which, um, is by a friend of mine, Hamilton, um, is, you know, it's about Alexander Hamilton, this hip-hop musical about Alexander Hamilton. And I, you know, I think there's two types of people in the world. People who, like, love musicals and hate musicals,

basically. It's, like, a very polarizing... Well, I think the people that hate musicals are afraid of themselves. Like, I know, like, there's a certain, you know, I think, slightly macho posturing yes yes because like you know i i find that if i go to a musical i don't seek them out but if i do i'm i'm just crying immediately exactly because people are singing it seems so vulnerable to me

it is an i could not agree more like there is something that a musical can do at some switch it turns on emotionally that is for me nothing else reaches it's crazy i don't know why i don't seek them out you know what i mean because i feel like if i do i have to change my lifestyle i don't know i don't know who i'd be anymore the kind of person yeah yeah i gotta be i'm the musical guy i'm gonna fan yeah i'm gonna see it again it's the 20th time he never gets old for me. I'm going to be one of those guys. There are people like that. I know.

I got a friend who's a really kind of like cranky, cantankerous dude who I've known for years, and he literally will take it. He lives in New Mexico where I grew up, and he goes to New York once a year just to go to musicals. It's like he gets it out of his system. Well, that's interesting. So you wrote a musical or you just directed one? I directed a musical that my friends had written that we did in college in my junior year.

So how do you, when did your heart break and you decide that was not a practical future for you? Well, I got out of college and my now wife and I moved to Chicago. And I basically, for the first few years i was in chicago why chicago um she's from chicago right i had family there my dad's from chicago oh yeah yeah and it was so much cheaper than new york that was the big reason and it's interesting it's actually over over time i've sort of been to enough cities where i i know the cities that you know actually kind of are uh authentic in their own thing i mean there's a lot of cities that you know i don't want to piss off any cities but like there's a few cities in america that are just sort of like this is you know a real deal kind of historic thing that still survives there's this organic nature to it and that's one of them right yep it's its own thing it's its own

thing and it's also like because because of the cost of living relative to other sort of cultural meccas that people will go to is so low what you get in chicago is there was all these people in their 20s right like you know paying 250 a month of rent 300 a month in rent, $300 a month in rent, and then maybe waiting at a table here or two, but then, like, writing their show or doing comedy or painting. There was a lot of space for people to kind of pursue this kind of work

or do really amazing, like, you know, social justice work. And all of that, in some ways, is kind of was facilitated by how much cheaper living right it was like new york in the 70s right exactly like yeah there was a time where a lot of cities had that but now it almost doesn't exist anymore not even where it's supposed to exist and i think that's kind of diminished the arts communities in general absolutely like if you

can't have a bunch of poor creative people living somewhere and you know six to a loft that's right that that That is what facilitates. I mean, when we think about these places that were that, you know, the Lower East Side in the 80s, they were that because it was cheap. Yeah, it was all about space. It's having the space to work and to create and to put on shows. And, like, you could do it. Like, you know, like, we got a loft and we're, you know,

we're putting on a show it doesn't it's not we we put on even when even when i was 27 28 my buddy of mine um who had who i'd gone to college with and done theater with like i just directed a solo show of his in the basement of the apartment that we had it's great and we got like i, this is not legal in any sort of fire code sense, but we got like 100 people in there. I think you're right. There's a statute of limitations. Exactly. Chicago fire department.

There's not going to be some right wing rag going, Hayes broke the fire code in Chicago. Putting on his lefty plays. But, well, what do you think about that? I mean,

how do you feel, you know, when people talk about the National Endowment and about the necessity of arts and culture? I mean, it seems to me that even creative people, like, you know, I even become condescending. Like, I did a stand-up show that they have once a month or something at this collective, you know, downtown here that do that kind of stuff, that do plays, that do, you know, provocative political stuff. and and you know i i've seen that all we've seen it before whatever it is but this is another generation doing that but there's part of me that thinks like you know this has been done before yeah but how does that how does that nourish you know have you thought about that you know what the arts actually do and what their place is i have i mean my mom worked in the arts was like

an arts administrator and worked for this non-profit in the arts yeah you know i i think for me personally the most important training i got for my life yeah was through the theater i did in high school and college really how so a huge part of adult life yeah the two biggest things about adult life i find yeah it's presentation occupying your space yeah standing in looking someone in the eyes delivering yeah to them yeah and collaboration like working with other people to make a thing work and we had this student-run theater at brown where we you know we controlled the building we got to and we would have these long meetings where we would decide who's gonna you know all these applications and we'd fight over who's gonna get the space for the next show that was closer to

adult life than any other thing I did yeah in my four years at a you know great university yeah because it was it was just about the basic mechanics of group decision making and collaboration yeah yeah and so i think that this is in some ways a practical argument for how important the arts are but just i think like every kid should have that awakened in them the creativity and the collaboration the creativity the collaboration the sense of like i can make a thing with my friends i think you know that and and how do we do that and how do we skirt around conflict and yeah how do you win an argument in the room you know like those were meetings that's all they were which is like the least glamorous parts of the part of the arts yeah but also for me the most instructive i i understand what you're saying about collaboration

and arts but there's also something about the freedom of expression yeah you know on an individual basis i mean i hear what you learned but i always wonder like you know people get so self-involved it's in and not entitled but everybody's expecting to win the lottery or be the be the next genius and and there's a there's not a lot of um uh sort of attention paid to the the just the the act of of expressing yourself that is yes i mean the difference between doing a thing because it will get recognition and doing a thing because that thing expresses something yeah fulfills you yeah it is so hard in a media landscape that is in a very literal fashion built upon the endorphin rush

of the ping of recognition. And also it's very accessible. I mean, you know, there is the ping of recognition, but now anybody, like there's something about the very design of content or what people call content

is that, and there's a freedom to it. Like, hey, everybody can do their little thing and put it up on YouTube. And with or without the expectation, you know, I think it's great that everyone has a voice and that they can show it. But, I mean, but, you know, some voices are better than others. Sure. And that's just the way it is. But there is a way to nourish a delusion around like you know putting things out in the

world with these expectations yeah i mean i i think that i really early on when i first started doing journalism freelance writing when i was in chicago oh yeah let's get to that what what made you go like the arts well i would do them both i would i would do i was doing theater and i was doing some freelancing and and and this relates to this point in in that i would write articles and they would be in the alternative weekly yeah and and then like poof they'd be gone they'd be gone no internet yet no internet yet yeah very early i mean there was internet but it was these were not articles so you had to walk down the street with somebody and get the free paper i would go the first day that i had a byline yeah it was in the winter and i got on the bus and rode it south on clark Avenue knowing that the van that dropped off the free paper came from downtown.

Yeah. And I went south until I hit a bookstore that I knew that was south enough to have it and I got it. They were like fresh off the press. Yeah. I grabbed it and like saw my byline. Yeah. I still remember that moment. Amazing moment.

It's greatest. But it's also, what I came to realize is that it was going to be a path to misery for me if the way that I valued the work was the reaction it got. Right. Because sometimes it would get a reaction. Sometimes it just like dissipated. And so in the same way that you're saying- Did you really realize that at that point? I really did.

Yes. As opposed to like, you know, that's not some some sort of you didn't uh you know uh retrofit that no i realized in that moment now i have lost sight of that a million times since yeah you know what i mean like yeah i can hold that in my mind well that will intellectually well that's sort of as that's a result of what you were talking about before this weird endorphin clickbait immediate gratification uh media situation we have so you fall victim to that because now you're making a show that's out in the world you're like did it go viral or did it did people did anyone pick up on that yeah did get traction yeah so uh so yeah so it's not as opposed to like

was that did we did we make a thing that was good right right good thing in the world i'm proud of yeah yeah as a as a thing as a little thing did Did we chip away at the big problem? Yes. All right, so you start by doing, but also it's interesting in how you talk about theater is that that's also something that happens with community organizing. That's also something that like, you know,

you were in a creative environment, but it sounds to me, you know, from what I've read about people who do it, specifically our president, and about what you're saying about your father. I mean, that whole, that whole undertaking of facilitating social change on that level is completely crazy in terms of like, you know, sitting in a room full of people and making decisions. Oh yeah, absolutely. And in both ways, sitting in a room full of people making decisions and also you can't be looking for recognition or like victories every day. No, I mean, most of the time you're just there and no one cares and you're not and you're losing. Right.

That's that's fucking mind blowing to me. And that's what people don't realize. Like, you know, I pulled myself out of the political dialogue because I knew I was a fraud on some level in that. Like, you know, yeah, I was angry. I was concerned i'm a bright guy but you know bloviating about something or or or taking bits of news and going like fuck the power you know that's all fine but the way shit gets done is in rooms full of people that know they're losing right you're making incremental growth for people that have nothing yeah that's that's where it happens it's not some dude like you know pounding his hand you know on television well look i don't hear well no that

wasn't a shot at you no no no oh believe me i i don't have no illusions about my relative um efficacy compared to the people that do the kind of work you're talking about but i do think here's my feeling about about sort of this in general which is on a on a kickoff in a football team yeah all right the way a kick is covered is everyone is has to stay in their lane and not all chase the ball because if everyone chases the ball you open up a huge gap for big returns and so there's this incredible impulse to chase the ball because you're like that the guy is there i want to go tackle him and you are coached keep in your lane because if you chase that opens up an opportunity for a big run back right and i sort of think about social change like people all have their lanes yeah like so

your lane is everyone happy in their lanes i don't know if they are but i do think that like not everyone's going to do the same thing right and and there's all sorts of different things people can do that actually do like make the world a better place all right so you're you're writing for the alt alt paper in chicago doing your plays yep yep yeah yeah that's exactly walking around you're in your heavy over. All three of those are exactly correct. You stayed with the woman that you met back then. Yeah, we've been together since we were 19. Yeah.

So, yeah, that's something. What happens? What makes you leave behind the arts and really start to, what did you decide your mission was? It was less a decision and more that it was easier to make a living. And I was getting more traction writing as a journalist. And I ended up getting a full-time job at a small lefty magazine called In These Times in Chicago. I remember that magazine. Yeah.

It's been around forever. It's still around. It's great. And I honestly think like if I, if someone had hired me to be the artistic director of a small theater company, like. Ah, the missed opportunities, Chris. I would have done that and. You'd still be there.

You'd be the old guy. I would still be there. He was here in 1980. Yeah. He's been here for 20 years that guy yeah probably drinking a little probably very different no i mean i think i'd be happy doing that too um but um so basically i just started getting more traction and then and then also there was this era right around around sort of 2004 2005 where the internet starts to really that that kind of like, that moment, which you, I'm sure, remember, because that was sort of the same moment of kind of peak anti-Bush mobilization, Air America, all this stuff, the net roots, the blogosphere.

At that moment, then, all of a sudden, there's this way for the work I'm doing in Chicago to start finding this larger and larger audience through the internet. Yeah. And as I'm doing that work and writing it and they're getting a little recognition, that sort of sends me on the path towards, you know, doing what I'm doing now. Well, what, in terms of social responsibility, obviously you were, you were wired because of your childhood and because of the models you had in your family and, and, and your old man and whatnot. What was driving you? What, what, what was the one thing that was sort of like outside of just basic lefty politics i mean everybody sort of locks into one thing what was it that made you be like you know we've this has got to be fucking changed i don't know i mean i it's so so a sense of sort of justice, injustice.

Yeah. Political commitment is so essential to who I am and how I was raised. Right. It's almost impossible for me to like pull it out and look at it and examine it. You know? Sure. It's a very visceral thing. It's like, I can't imagine not feeling that way. Right.

About things. Right. In the world. What do you think is, like, if you were to, like, to separate the social conservatives and to separate, you know, sort of the hate mongering and divide and conquer, you know, nature of right wing media and everything else there are conservatives that believe that their way is correct oh yeah and and and and and then there are are lefties that that believe that you know this is the way to life what what do you what

is the primary difference in your mind when you strip away the bullshit that's yeah i um because it seems like the the righties real conservatives are almost darwinian that if you can't survive or or win and and and do it without government help that uh you know you're just what are you gonna do you're just gonna accept your lot in life i I think there are competing values about what a good society and a good life are. And there are, and again, this gets back to this sort of visceral sense. Like, I have a visceral sense of, like, equality and fairness. I don't have a visceral sense of, say, purity. Right.

I just don't, it doesn't,'t like it doesn't scan to me yeah what was that you know purity the sanctity of like marriage is like a pure institution that's being like infected by gay marriage for instance right right well those are those are social issues but there are there are these economic issues that seem to like the the difference but in right where like fairness so yeah here's another example like i have an i have a sort of visceral attachment to to fairness right whereas i just like i don't that that sort of visceral libertarian impulse of like yeah step off and get off my back right right right the place where politics really functions which is like in the like flushed cheeks at a thanksgiving dinner table that is

related to but distinct from all these arguments we have right there's some moral intuitions that people have whether they're born with them whether they're they get them through life experience that there are things that that that fire them morally yeah that that are wrong and right and and conservatives liberals have different things that that kind of fire them morally. Yeah. That, that are wrong and right. And, and conservatives and liberals have different things that, that kind of fire them up more. Yeah.

Yeah. No. And, and it can be very hard. Like it is hard to put myself in the shoes of people that viscerally feel angry about air regulations or, or there's, or, or angry about light bulb. You know, this was like a pet cause for a while was changing the light changing the light yeah to more energy efficiency and i i can understand like oh i can understand big interests that want to

diffuse regulations which a lot of that was just right astroturf for them well they were just dragging angry people along but that's the thing is that that argument that argument they're gonna have to change your light bulbs like that captivated something in some segment of people and it was it is now impossible for me to make the empathic leap into the shoes of a person who is really angered by that well it was like i just like, I can think about it and I can analyze it. I could report on and talk to people that feel that way. But there are certain things that it's just very difficult to be like. Of course, because they're angry about other things. They've just been sparked by garbage.

These people are walking around feeling like they've been gypped and they didn't get theirs. And that's that whole thing is how do the Republican Party convince people to vote against their economic self-interest? How do they do that? Yeah, but I think I don't buy that argument in some ways. Or what I want to do is I want to approach politics in which i grant people regular people we're not talking about like corporations who are trying to you know what i mean we're talking about like actual people who actually have politics like people that walk

around have jobs you know whatever we're not talking about like you know a coal company that's like we don't believe in epa regulations right i want to grant people that their beliefs have as much sort of like not legitimacy as in their their right but integrity that they are about what they say they are but you can't empathize with those people i just can't put myself into the into the mind space i can sort of try to understand and see where they're coming from because i just think there are certain irreducible moral instincts we have but i think most people have them and there's a belligerence that is that is that is stoked that like like i realized this the other day is that the democracy really depends democracy functioning really depends on the number of people that are okay

not great yeah not shitty right i'm okay you know that i got problems and so there's that that that freud line about how the the point of of of analysis is to turn like unsparing misery into ordinary unhappiness right i think it's a line like it's like it's similar right so i i feel like like even with gay marriage even with the people that like it becomes the evolution of democracy or a culture it the reason it's difficult is that you know people are stuck in this way of thinking but eventually once something becomes you know uh legitimized legally or otherwise or culturally you know those people that are like that's fucking horrible they but within a certain amount of time they're like no

i guess just the way it is now like they they will accept it and and it seems that the people on the margins who continue to to push back against it are are become a minority and that's the way democracy works is that people aren't necessarily happy with the collective decision but eventually they suck it up and they live their fucking life yeah and i think a lot of the light bulb stuff and that stuff is just people holding on to something that they feel is being like you know like this isn't what it used to be well that yes and that that feeling that that intuition that thing that like that it's not the way things used to be right one of the fascinating things is that as you get older it becomes easier to sympathize with that instinct well Well, yeah, but also like, like the,

the kind of like old man yells at cloud kids these days, get off my lawn. Like that used to be a thing I had no subjective access to and is now a thing I have subjective access to because I will feel that way sometimes about things that 14 year olds are doing and pictures are taking of themselves and putting online. I have this very conservative impulse, which is like, we gotta stop that don't do that yeah yeah like that we didn't in my day we didn't do that i wonder what it really does but also like but that type

of nostalgia that you know we're talking about and and this used to be for the weird thing about it is it was it far it was far yeah it was before anyone even even having experience of it. Whatever this used to be is, this normal way of living that was once America, is before my lifetime, really. I'm 63. So in 1963, I mean, that's not the whatever people. No, yeah, 1963 I was born. Born in 1963. You just said, I'm 63, and I was like, what the?

But I think a lot of people are holding on to something they never even had experience of. It's an idea. But there's some, you know, I may be misquoting this, but there's some ancient tablets from, like, Sumeria that are about, like, you know. The good old days? Kids these days, basically. Well, yeah, I get that. You know what I mean? Like, there is this, like, eternal sense of, as part of the human condition, like, there was this thing before we came, this thing to which we will return.

But I think what the real threat to people like you and I, or maybe what I'm projecting onto you, is that it's more than just kids these days. It is the deterioration of real community. And it seems that, oddly, people that have less have a tighter of real community. And it seems that, oddly, people that have less have a tighter sense of community. I think that if you talk about class issues, the one reason why whatever the lower class is survives

is because, for better or for worse, their communities are much stronger. Yeah, I mean, I think when you, there's this trade-off that happens as either societies get richer or people get richer in which people move around a lot more. Yeah. Like the idea that, you know, I know people who have, you know, people my parents age who have five kids who live in five different cities. Like that would have just been unthinkable.

Sure. Stay in the neighborhood. It's insane. Yeah. Right. And and there's a trade-off there the trade-off is people move because they have opportunities and they have like different parts of the country and and the thing they give up is you know in we're all in the same neighborhood and grandma and grandpa are here and they'll watch after school and that stuff is you know that's a tangible and real loss yeah to you know to not have that like i right now, like I live in New York city and my brother lives a mile and a half away.

My parents live, I live in Brooklyn. My parents live in the Bronx. I love having my, like, particularly when you've got kids and we go up to my folks house on the weekend, we have like, my mom makes amazing Italian food and we just got a bigger car so we can give my brother a ride back from, you know, from the Bronx down to Brooklyn. Like, that is really, that's special. Well, that's theoretically what it should be about, right?

Yeah. So what do you think, like, as a guy that's on the pulse of this and as someone who is out here, you know, reporting on the drought, literally, like, you know, because I, the tone of reporting and the tone of, you know, the way news is presented and just the media in general, that there's this almost kind of compulsive, you know, predatory necessity to get things that capture people's imagination over news. And there is a sense that, you know, we're just spiraling towards the end every day. And I tend to believe that that that might not necessarily be true you're right i mean basically i would say bad news good news

right bad news is that like a this is a the western united states is a dry place that exists because of unbelievably um expensive aggressive and remarkable water projects. Right. Right? Okay. As a general matter. There's not enough water here. It was invented.

Yeah, but of course everything's invented too. There's sometimes- No, but I mean the city was set up. It's what Chinatown's about. Yeah, right. Exactly. We're going to divert water. Yes, right.

Right. So the bad news is that it's bad. It's literally the three driest years in the history of record keeping of california like they've been keeping records since you know the mid-19th century like that's crazy it's bad and all right i'll water with the other bad the other bad thing is it will be more like this as we go into the future it will get drier and warmer because of the bigger issue. Because of climate change, yeah.

Right. That's just, I mean, we can't be totally certain. Climate models are not certain, but everything suggests that's the case. The good news is, what's amazing is there's still actually a ton of waste in the system. I had a guy on last night. We went to Central Valley. We saw this farmer who's drip irrigating, right? Half of the farmers in California still, to to this day use flood irrigation right there is 60 of the water that is used

in cal in los angeles is basically treated wastewater that's flushed out to the sea because the idea of recycling that's so politically toxic, right? See, this is the weird thing. So the good news is there is actually still a tremendous amount of waste in the system, and there's tremendous innovations that can happen to just get more from less. But this is these paradigm shifts that become impossible because of politically entrenched corporate interests who refuse to spend the money to make the changes necessary to service the better good for short-term profit or just to keep the model going.

Or just, or in the case of water often, I mean, that might be true about sort of the agricultural reasons. And the water, like, you know, the idea of taking wastewater, which is, you know, wastewater, and you can basically treat that to 100 purity run it back through the system and people are that's politically toxic and that's not corporate interest that's just people being like i don't want to drink shit yes you know i talked to the mayor two days ago and he said you know someone you know it had been dubbed toilet to tap which

he's like doesn't work but we call it showers to flowers. And I was like, you're right. Showers to flowers is better than toilet to tap. Well, but that's one of those things I think that, you know, over time, if somebody would just have the courage to do it, people would eventually be like, oh, you know, I thought at first I would taste it, but I don't. You know what I mean? Yeah. No, it's all right.

It's all right. It's all right. No, that it's all right no that you're exactly right and eventually the pressures of all this will produce that i mean that but in the bigger sense like you know and talking about like that that's a political problem on people's sort of sensibilities but like what do you think is the great unraveling here and i know that's a longer discussion you know but like you to have have a relatively corporate occupied government in the sense that, yeah, that it doesn't serve the people. I mean, where are we headed towards a sort of such a divide between classes that it's going to just become a feudal state? I mean, what do you think?

I am. I have weirdly become I can be profoundly dispirited about the state of American democracy, particularly on this this issue, the concentration of wealth and the kind of feedback mechanism between the the economy and the political system. Because wealth gets concentrated. Those people have more money. They purchase more influence over the political system. The political system acts in ways that are favorable to them that further increases their wealth. It's a money laundering operation. And it sort of like loops through. i i here's what i think the history of money in politics particularly in america and the history of american concentrations

of wealth is that eventually some scandal and backlash happens and i think the citizens united era has unleashed what will certainly end in tears what does that mean exactly i don't know what it's going to look like but there's going to be some huge scandal there's going to be some huge scandal that involves some billionaire who's got who who who funds some candidate and wants it is obsessed with one little tiny loophole in the tax code. And that loophole gets stuck into a bill and no one knows who did it. And this guy gets a, you know, billion dollar a year tax rebate. I mean, I'm sort of crafting some sort of...

Yeah, well, this is what your big... This is your big... This is the hope? This is where we find hope? Is it a billionaire's tax loophole? No, the hope is that it will, there is some level at which people will react in disgust. And there is already a lot of disgust about the way that all this is concentrated. But there's going to be, I predict there will be a galvanizing scandal.

I mean, people forget Watergate, which was about a million different things, fundamentally was a campaign finance scandal. Yeah. It was about the committee to reelect the president. It was about suitcases of cash. It was about all this sort of unaccountable money and the quid pro quo. Aren't you underestimating, though, in sort of an optimistic way, the cynicism and detachment of the population?

Maybe. But I do think that there's going to be some... The system can't keep running like this without producing a truly shocking scandal. Okay. That's my prediction. Okay. And I think there will be a moment when that truly shocking scandal happens for a whole reevaluation of the system that we've built. Because right now we are, I mean, the thing that we're running, the experiment we're running is insane.

The rules are completely unclear. The FEC is totally deadlocked. There are hundreds of millions and then billions of dollars that are going to slosh around this playing field that no one knows the rules for. It's nuts. We've never done it before. Well, that's why the entire banking system's what that's why the the entire banking system collapsed that is exactly why the entire banking system collapsed and we are basically running an analog of that with the campaign finance system now uh-huh all right well i'm well i guess well

let's hope for that hope for crisis no hope for not crisis, but hope for a moment when the unsustainability of it becomes so evident that there is a sort of mass disaster. It's a naked lunch, the Burroughs one. It's the moment where everyone sees what's at the end of every fork or something. Yes, that's it. Well, look, Chris, it was great talking to you. Thank you. I wish you best of luck with your playwriting career. And your return to the theater.

I want to do that. I'm going to hold you to it. All right. Yeah. The day Chris Hayes gives up. In lieu of no crisis, I find it impossible to continue on. And I'm going to return to the theater. That's going to be a big day. That's going to be a big day.

Thanks for talking. Thanks. That's going to be a big day Thanks for talking Thanks Good guy Solid dude Heart's in the right place at Chris Hayes I enjoy talking to him

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