You're Wrong About - Mike Lives in a Downtown Hotel

Episode Date: October 11, 2021

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you can see that happening with creators too is that like they become so resentful of this job that they feel or are stuck in that they start resenting the thing that they once wanted to do, like creating queer subtext between demon hunters. Do you want to do the tagline or should I? I don't know. We should we should just do it simultaneously somehow. We'll count down from three. Yeah. Three, two, one, go. Welcome to wrong about the podcast where we talk about as much stuff as we possibly can in three years. I thought you were going to say where Mike lives in a downtown hotel. Oh, but I was I thought of that in a while. But yeah, can we call this episode Mike lives in a

downtown hotel? I think it's good to start with an inside joke that like 1% of our listeners are actually going to get. I think so too, because then we can already create a feeling of contentiousness this early on or like really happy that you just understood that reference. So I mean, I guess we've kind of been putting this off. Neither one of us have like wanted to do this. Yeah, I didn't want it to do the thing that doing this entails. We're being so vague. Basically, oh God, Mike, what's happening? I just totally pushed that onto your plate. I acted like I was going to do something and then I didn't. We were going to mention it in the McDonald's episode, but we thought it would be a little intense to start out with that and then

do the rest of the episode. But yeah, that is going to be my last episode of You're Wrong About. If this is stressing you out, like pause this and then go watch the last five minutes of Mrs. Doubtfire and then come back and start listening again. Okay, okay, you're back. Wasn't that great? I'm crying. Are you crying? So I don't know about your friends, but like 80% of my friends have been in like a nonstop existential crisis basically since like two marches ago, but especially since this March. I'm very concerned about anyone who isn't in that place. They figured out some kind of higher level of zen-ness than I can conceive or they're just, you know, not nice. Those people are Satanists, yes. A lot of my friends have been, you know, like leaving their jobs,

moving cities. People, I think this massive injection of anxiety into an entire population makes people question kind of everything about their lives. And so for the last couple of months, I've been having this kind of nagging feeling that what I needed to do here, I've done. I've just been finding myself being drawn toward other stuff. And I know myself well enough to know that once I start getting these feelings, if I don't do something about it, I'm going to start phoning it in. I was telling my boyfriend about this and the way that he put it was, you don't want to make season eight of Game of Thrones. People's heart isn't in it anymore, and that's really obvious. Yeah, or, oh god, I never watched Game of Thrones,

but what if that was them doing their best? I don't know. Or like, you don't want to make season 25 of Supernatural. Yes, exactly. But so, I mean, when we talked about this for the first time a couple months ago, I think I said something along the lines of I wanted to leave while there was still a beautiful corpse. I want to leave the show while my heart is still in it and while I still love doing it and before it does become something that I feel like I'm going through the motions or I feel like I'm phoning it in. And so, this is my kind of preemptive strike of like, I'm going to leave this while I still really like doing it because I know that if I keep doing it for another year, it's going to be noticeable that I'm being drawn to other stuff. And also,

like when we had this initial conversation, it was a beautiful moment. I had actually driven to a beach to talk to you. I was in a park. Yeah. Like we sort of remotely made this beautiful, like conscious, uncoupling picnic. And initially, we were both just like, I don't want to do this anymore. Like my heart's not, I remember saying to you, man, I'm just like, I don't think my heart's in it. And I really felt like your heart was still in it because you're so good at what you do. And I was like, this sucks. This is going to be terrible of me to like, but I just like feel like I'm just like getting worse at it. Because like when we started doing this, I think we both felt like Billy Joel singing, we didn't start the fire. It was just like, we could barely

even get through like all the names of people we wanted to passionately like yell to each other about. And it was like, fun hall Tonya Harding, shaking babies, Dan Quayle, Murphy Brown, Satan's got a new town. And so yeah, when we had this conversation, I was like, my heart's just not in it the way it used to be. And you were like, Oh my God, me too. I think both of us had been feeling it and neither one of us wanted to say it. And then we finally said it and it felt so good. Yeah, it really, it really did. Because I was like, I was feeling like I was like going to be killing a healthy patient, basically. I mean, we talked about this when we when we talked about it in the park and beach, people who started listening to our show

during lockdown. I don't think they know how much of a different show it was before the pandemic. That's a really good point. Yeah. And like, what is what is the lifespan of our or the life cycle of our show, Ben? Because we were, I mean, like our releases were much less regular. We were kind of saying that we were doing it twice a month, but it ended up being like sometimes once a month. Yeah, it was like somewhere in there. And then I think in the same kind of thing in that as soon as the pandemic happened, we went from doing kind of sort of one episode every two weeks to doing, we were doing two episodes a week, the first few months. Yeah, because I don't know about you, but for me, a lot of that was because it was the only thing that I felt sane and or and or even

happy while doing. Totally. This show like completely saved me. Like this, this show is so inextricably wrapped up in the experience of lockdown and the first year of the pandemic for me. And we got a lot more listeners at that time. Like the show just became a completely different thing during lockdown. And also our, you know, where we were mentally and how we thought about the show also changed. And also, you know, how we thought about everything like everybody else. Yeah, like this show has had like this specific era. Yeah. And now as difficult as the situation continues to be, I feel like the show as we knew it and as we made it during that time, it's it's so many things to me, but it partly feels like, yeah, that was our wonderful cell

mate in the jail of that year. Now we all kind of want to go and not continue to be roommates. I mean, I really think that this is why we both started having the same feelings. Was it like the show like was locked down for us? Yeah. And then lockdown was over. Or at least, you know, ending up hearing reaching into the light and like some rays of hope, etc. Yeah. It felt like we were sort of coming out of this cave that we had been hiding in. I just wanted to do something else. Like I wanted to come out into the light in other ways. Yeah. And like circumstances have changed since then. So like we may be going back into the cave. Yeah. But I or just, you know, that like if we're going to go into another really difficult winter where creating things

for people is one of the things that gets us through, like we need to go with the creative juices because like if you're trying to sustain yourself through like another worst winter of your life by doing the thing that was like really vital and alive for you last year, just the relationship and the kind of sustenance you get from it has changed. So I don't know what this is going to look like. I'm going to continue to do maintenance phase. I'll still be around. I have some other kind of sort of projects, but I honestly like I don't know what I'm going to do with my life at this point. And I think I'm just going to try to sit with that for a little while. And Sarah is going to keep doing the show. So it looks like we're going to

stay on the same schedule and Sarah's going to have guest episodes and it's going to be a new thing. Yeah. And you know, one of the great joys of doing this with you was because at the time I had like, let's see, I was 30. So I had like eight, 10 years of just like things I had been trying to publish on subjects that outlets were always like, who cares? Basically, like who cares about Amy Fisher? There's no newsletter. And I'm like, the news is that we were horrible. And no one was swayed by that. Or like very occasionally they were, but it was like those were, those were always difficult to play stories. Like update, we were the assholes is not the assault mystery resolution that I seem to think it is for a lot of publications. But so doing the show, it was

like I had this like basement filled with like treasures that I was desperate to show to somebody haunted treasures, I guess haunted treasures. And now I feel like it's like we go to do an episode. I'm like, here's a wheat penny. Here's my dad's playboys that aren't as cool as the ones I've already shown you. I know. Yes, exactly. Right. And I'm just like, you know, people deserve to hear about more interesting things than like whatever I still haven't talked about yet. Yeah. I mean, we talked on that call too about how both of us feel like we've been saying the same things or it, it feels like we've, we've done our best to create some sort of typology of the kinds of stories that the media gets wrong. And I feel like people have really taken that and

run with it. Like we get so many great ideas from our listeners now about current events. They're like, I think this is what you're wrong about happening in real time. Right. And you're like, yeah, yeah, my work here is done and I didn't even do anything. Yeah. So yeah, I mean, is there anything else we want to say in this episode? Or do you have any other reflections? Actually, yeah, you know what? I realized we're not really articulating because it feels like so obvious to us is like, what did we set out to do when we created this show? Like why were we excited about it? Why did you come to me of all people? Because I think what the show is has kind of changed over time. But I think the core has always remained. Yeah. I mean, I say this about you all the time.

I don't know if I've said it to you, but you know, we're in the middle of this societal reckoning with history, with recent history, with deep past history, especially around issues of like gender and race and sexuality. And I think like your work has been a really big part of sparking that. I think that when you wrote that Tonya Harding piece, when you wrote your Anna Nicole piece, the kinds of things that you were doing at the time nobody was doing that. There were things I read that definitely informed my work and kind of showed me the way to that. But like, I think like the size of part is impossible to quantify. But like, if you think that, then that makes me really happy because I think, you know, I care about what you think.

And I think I've been a part because I was there. And like, that makes me really, really happy. You know, it's like listening to the the Hallelujah chorus. And you're like, I mean, I can't pick myself out, but I know I was in that thing. I mean, the thing that makes me the happiest is like how many articles we've gotten like reexamining these historical figures that like really got done dirty at the time. And it feels like I'm not going to remotely give ourselves like credit for it. But like, we're part of a cultural moment where like this kind of analysis of history is becoming more available and more popular. I mean, I basically like credit you a lot with that

revolution. But I also think that like, we're as a society, we're ready for these kinds of retellings now where you're not necessarily contributing new information to something. You're just relooking at what was already there and being like, Hey, wait a minute, like, we really fucked this one up. And it was all right in front of us the whole time. Yeah. And I mean, and I remember, okay, one more time for the cheap seats, the story of us. I had written this Tonya Harding article, I had a Tumblr at the time, I got this random note from this person who I really wanted to respond to, but I couldn't figure out how. From my Tumblr username, which is probably something like Berlin Darkroom 27 or something,

like something that did not tell you who I was. Yeah. And I found out years later that that was you. Like, I think a year after we started working together, you told me about that. And I remembered that. And I had done this article basically saying the truth was kind of right in front of us the whole time, but there's something wrong with us that we couldn't see it. And I, and you got the idea to do a podcast. I forget why, but like, does anyone know why they decided to start a podcast? It's like having a child. It just, there's podcasts inside of you that want to be born. Yeah, my biological podcast clock was ticking. And we had also been intact a little bit in the past. And I had read your articles. And so when you asked me about doing

a podcast together, I was like, well, yeah, like, of course, I'm going to stick myself to this extremely smart, extremely good writer. You were kind of doing the work that I aspire to do, but didn't feel like I had the journalistic chops for like, I felt I could talk about like, what was someone's a day and someone's depressing life like, and how does that kind of tell you about why they made choices they did. And you could talk about like a country. Yeah. And we started, we started recording these episodes. And as John Cusack says in high fidelity, we were just going to do a few and we just started coming in every day. That was three years ago. Yeah. And then, yeah. And then people started listening. I mean, that was another big change

to the show. That was the most surprising thing. Yeah. Is it after, I don't know, 18 months or something, people started writing about us and like people we respect got in touch and were like, I like your show. And we finally, like two years into the show, got a website that allowed us to see how many people were downloading the show. We were like, holy shit. Yeah, we were really flying blind before. And I honestly didn't really want to know. You still don't want to know. Yeah. I know that it's a lot of you out there. Hello. Yeah. And then it's like, I mean, we started releasing this show in May 2018. And so at the time it was, you know, the writing was like all over the wall and the floor and the ceiling that we were living in an age of like grand misinformation. Yeah. And

so much of what we do circles back to the question of like, as you first put it, what do we not need evidence to believe? How do we come to believe that we saw things we never saw or heard things we never heard? Right. And why does the truth elude us when it's most available to us, when it's like, you know, two inches from our faces? Yeah. I feel like Lenny Briscoe talking about the internet, but I feel like so much of online discourse already is like rehashing something you saw on TV or something on the news, like ad infinitum. And I almost feel like this show is like a journalistic version of that without journalistic access, aside from just like doing the reading, doing the work, how much can we figure out? And also just showing that that's interesting to people,

because I always feel like these stories that I had a hard time placing like have consistently been the ones that I think the most people have listened to and have told me about listening to and said affected them in some way. And, you know, I feel like kind of like spiteful glee at our ability to attract listeners talking about things that more bottom line focused outlets had no time or space for. Oh, yeah. I mean, another extremely radicalizing effect of doing the show is how easy it is to find the true story behind a lot of these historical events simply by doing the reading. The most radicalizing experience I have had doing the show is still our fucking Terry Shivo episode, where I really thought it was going to be like murky bioethics like when does life begin and

end like hard questions. And then you read the actual court documents. And it's like, oh no, there were 20 court decisions unanimously in favor of Michael Shrivo the whole time. And like court documents are public. The PDFs are like four pages long. Yeah. All you had to do was read what was right there that like one side of this quote unquote debate was lying. And the other side was not lying. And like no one did the reading. Yeah. And that's actually consistent thing is that like the information is available. We're just not using it. Our beliefs are decided by prevailing cultural trends or by fears rather than cold fact. And like, I don't know. I'm just I'm just bowled over by how lucky I have been. Oh my God. Yeah. Yeah. We've found a really nice community.

We've made mistakes that people have been like graceful and nice about. We've been incredibly privileged to to do the show. Yeah, I see people like using what they've learned from our show like better than I ever could. And I'm like, that's great. Go forth. Love it. Do great things. Mommy's tired. Yeah. Yeah. Gonna lie down. Have some Stella Doro cookies. Can I leave us with something that I haven't told you yet? Yeah. You know this part. We did a couple months ago, we did an episode on Shannon Faulkner. Yes. Who was the first woman admitted to the Citadel and like her horrible experience. And one of the other very interesting, surprising things about doing the show is that what started to happen as the show became more popular is that

when we did a show about somebody, that person would hear the show and get in touch with us. I know. It's so scary. Oh my God. It's so scary. Oh my God. And some of them have like become our friends like buddies with one of the lawyers on the Duke Lacrosse rape case now because he got in touch. He's like the nicest guy. We're like best friends. I know, man. And so within 24 hours of our episode, Shannon Faulkner got in touch with us. She said that she liked it, but I was like, I really want to hear like, if you have any comments on it, I want to hear like, how could we do this better if we're talking about a living person? Like, you know, what did we miss if there's any like addendum that we want to add to the episode, something like that.

So I got on a phone call with her. And of course, the first thing I asked her was, what did you think of the episode? And the way that she answered was, you're really lucky to be doing a show with somebody like Sarah. What? And she's right. Shut the front door, Shannon Faulkner. She really liked like your jokes and like what you added to it and the perspective that you brought. Like that was the first thing that stuck out to her. And like we were telling her life story. I know. That was the thing that she went out of her way to mention to me. And I just feel like if I'm telling anyone's life story, then like, I just am prepared for everyone to want to throw boiling soup in my face all the time.

Yes, that's what I was terrified of. Because like, I don't know, I hate being talked about. And so if like, if a podcast we're trying to tell my life story, even in a constructive or empathetic way, I don't know how I would do. But then again, she's Shannon Faulkner. She's like the nicest. I know. Yeah. And like, I'm Shannon. I appreciate what you did for America. And also I said in that episode that she played volleyball and she didn't. And I'm sorry. I felt bad. I'm sorry, Shannon. Thank you so much for telling me that. And I just, I feel like this is also the time to say like, I feel like my creativity is like a goo that I work very hard to structure and is difficult for me a lot of the time. And often it's not,

I'm just like, ah, never mind. And so like, I mean, just everything changed and opened up for me when we started working together, because you have made everything possible. I was going to say the same thing about you that you're stealing my line. Sorry. I know, I, you know, I mentioned this a fair amount, but never enough. Like you have, like not only are you brilliant, not only are you able to kind of like whiz through court documents, like, you know, Batman or something, you have been the one who's been doing the work that has been making all of this go this entire time. You have been steering this ship and shoveling coal into the engine. Yes. But did Shannon Faulkner tell you that because

otherwise? Yeah, Shannon Faulkner was texting me this morning. She was like, you should compare Mike to one of the stokers in Titanic because I sense that's his role in the program. And I was like, it's true. So do you have any final thoughts or are we are we wrapping up? Yeah, well, again, I just want to reassure everybody like I, we, me and the show will be back in two weeks. We will start with some familiar guests who you have heard before on this program. Mike, I feel like we're putting you on in your little sailboat and you're going to sail around the world. Yeah, I was thinking like a little bassinet on a river. That was the metaphor I was thinking of. Does it have a sail on it? It could. A little spinnaker. Okay. We're putting

you in your reed basket. Yeah. And then we're going to go back to the you're wrong about house and invite over some of our old friends and have a little, little potluck. Yeah. And I'll be watching you for my downtown hotel. Yeah. And also you'll be doing maintenance phase like across the street. So we can just look across the street at the, at the combo jazzer size and the bunking facility. It's just like, daddy's still with you and he's thinking of you every day. And also he's across the street. I know this, this metaphor has too many layers now. I'm in downtown. I'm a father. You're a baby. I guess the point, we could go on doing this for a really long time. But the point is that like we are lucky. We are happy listeners. I love you, Mike. I love you more.

Sorry listeners. Ditto. Same. Your mom and dad needs him alone time. You