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Welcome, welcome, welcome to Armchair Expert, Experts on Expert.
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I m Dan Rather, and I m joined by Monica Monsoon.
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Hi there.
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I got to make an introduction to someone on an email with you, and I took so much pleasure in listing you as all your many acronyms.
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Yeah.
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Not acronyms, your pseudonyms.
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Pseudonyms.
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Pseudis.
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You called me Monica Monsoon, Duchess of Duluth.
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Duchess of Duluth, Miniature Mouse.
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Yeah.
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Yeah, actually what I did is I combined a couple things, because I did Monica Monsoon Padman.
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I made a new thing basically, which is like the monsoon was in the middle with quotes, like you were a boxer.
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Sure.
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Like Iron Mike Tyson, right?
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Yeah.
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Yeah, Monica Monsoon Padman.
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When I, in college senior year, we had senior shirts, and you would put a fun name on the shirt, on the back of the shirt, and mine was Monster.
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Oh, really?
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Tell me more about that.
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Because Mon.
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Yeah, of course.
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I see the phonetic connection.
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Monster.
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That s fun.
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Were you a little monster?
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Well, I am a little monster.
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Oh, okay.
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In a good way.
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Right.
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Okay.
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I m gonna work on that.
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Maybe I ll bring a monster.
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Okay.
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Add it to your pseudonyms.
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Okay.
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Today we have a returning guest who s a friend of ours, Jared Cohen.
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You ll probably remember the last time he was here, we talked greatly about his collection of presidential hairs.
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That s right.
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It s so fascinating.
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He s obsessed with presidents, and I love it because he keeps writing books about them, but under different lenses to talk about different issues, but always through this look at the presidents.
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The book that he s here to talk about is really interesting about legacy.
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Yeah, Life After Power is the name of the book.
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Two previous books are The New Digital Age and Accidental Presidents.
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Jared is a businessman serving as the president of global affairs and co-head of the Office of Applied Innovation at Goldman Sachs.
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He s held a bunch of different titles.
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He used to work with Eric Schmidt, who we ve also interviewed at Google.
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He can do it all.
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He really can.
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And he s such a nice guy.
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He is.
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You re going to love him.
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Please enjoy Jared Cohen.
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He s an architect.
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Oh, is the air on?
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Are you okay?
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Are you comfortable?
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I feel great.
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Monty, how do you feel in your sweater?
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It s a little hot.
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I m surprised.
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Thank God!
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Okay, now we re getting somewhere.
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I never say it, but it s the truth.
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Dax, I feel like you look more ripped than when I saw you last time.
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I didn t go back and look.
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I often do, but how many years has it been?
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So I last saw you in Montana.
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That was three years ago?
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Your jawline s good.
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Oh, well, thank you.
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You know what that might be a result of?
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When I was there, I was in my big boy phase.
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What does that mean, by the way?
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I started nodding as if I knew what it was.
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I had been a medium boy my whole life.
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Medium build.
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And then I decided I wanted to be a big boy.
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So I went up to about 215, 220.
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So when I was there at that time, I was like 215, 220.
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And probably my jawline disappeared a bit.
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First of all, thank you.
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You have a very dominant chin.
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You think so?
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Yes, I m pretty jealous of that.
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I thought about wearing chin putty to look kind of extra sexy for you guys.
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That would be preposterous because you already have, you look like you could definitely be the coach of an NFL team.
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But I want one of those 19th century chins.
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It s like a little bit of Habsburg descent, but not too much Habsburg descent.
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Right, where it s like a good 40% of the total vertical space on your face.
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Yeah, like maybe he comes from totally defunct monarchy that squandered power a couple hundred years ago.
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Yes.
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I have to ask right off the bat, has your hair- President hairs?
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Yeah, has it grown?
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Has your hair collection grown since we saw it?
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Monica, I m so glad you asked.
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The answer is yes, and I ve added additional oddities to the mix.
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By the way, I last saw you all when I came on in 2019.
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Since then, there s an opportunity to collect two additional presidential locks.
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You know, Trump, which is the holy grail, although I ve declared I don t collect hair from the living.
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But let s be honest, if I could get it, I would.
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And Biden, right, it s too soon.
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You can t collect the hair of the incumbent.
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Feels like jinx-y or something.
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So since I saw you last, I got Eisenhower s hair, which you might say is ironic because he was bald.
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Oh, with an extra.
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Very small pieces of hair.
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I ve got a whole blob of John Tyler, obviously.
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It s great.
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I ve got these weird- Dude, I m embarrassed.
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I don t think I ve ever heard John Tyler.
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That was a president?
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So John Tyler was the 10th president.
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You want to hear a wild fact?
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He was born during the term of George Washington, and he has a grandson who s still alive.
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Whoa.
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Oh, doesn t that compress time in a way that s weirdly scary?
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I ve spoken to him on the phone.
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He s super old.
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So basically, he fathered 15 children, the eldest of which he fathered in his late 70s.
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And then that kid fathered, I think, like another somewhere between 12 and 15 children, the last one in his late 70s.
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And then that kid is like 102 or something.
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Okay, so for either of those men to have fathered children in their late 70s, clearly they had either mistresses or had remarried, which seems a little unusual in the 1800s.
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John Tyler was a widower president.
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He famously killed his wife.
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He did not kill his wife.
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He famously got remarried while he was president.
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So he was the first president to get married.
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A White House wedding?
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The wedding itself was held in New York.
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Have you ever been to the restaurant Indochine?
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That s where the after party was.
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Wow.
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Yeah.
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Surprised you didn t know that.
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It s so funny that this isn t Jared s occupation.
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I know.
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None of this pertains to his job.
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Anything he does.
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Other than maybe some guiding principles when you are in vastly different situations.
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But back to the 15 kids and then the 15 kids.
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The son of him, how do we explain how he was having kids in his 70s?
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Are these legitimate children?
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They re legitimate.
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Look, he was very fertile.
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Well, clearly.
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Yeah, yeah, yeah.
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A virile man.
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Yeah, very virile.
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But that means he had a wife in her 30s, presumably.
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Yeah, younger.
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There was a Delta.
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Okay.
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A resizeable Delta.
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I mean, 30s is being very generous.
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I m sure she was like 18.
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Sometimes when I say this, I had mentioned that one of our guests who was born in the 70s, I said their mother was older.
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Oh, Billie Joe Armstrong, lead singer of Green Day.
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And I said, well, your mother was pretty old when she had you and people got really mad about that.
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What is old?
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And I was like, by 70s standards, it was abnormal for a woman at 39 to have a kid.
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Now that s normal.
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It is a late pregnancy.
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So I was really placating those people when I said she was in her 30s.
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If I had to bet my life, he probably was with a 24-year-old when he was 70.
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Again, the Delta.
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Yeah.
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Okay, so you ve written yet another book that involves presidents.
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This is book number five?
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This is book number five.
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And how many of them have dealt with presidents?
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This is my second one about presidents.
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I actually have a children s book about presidents coming out in September.
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Don t worry, I m not gonna hassle you to have me back on the show that soon afterwards.
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Okay.
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But we ll talk about it now.
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Yeah.
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Okay, so that ll make three of six about presidents.
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And people who had heard your 2019 interview would know that this is a total hobby for you.
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I mean, you have a BA in what?
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History and political science, a childhood passion in presidents, an adult passion for collecting weird presidential oddities and artifacts.
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Yeah.
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Oh, did you add the new item you re collecting?
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So I have the vial of poison on a very high shelf, because I have young kids, that Charles Gouteau, the assassin of James Garfield, that his sister sent to him in prison so that he could take his own life and avoid facing prosecution.
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And I recently acquired the pencil that he used during his trial.
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And then a piece of the leather from the limo that JFK was riding in on November 22nd, 1963, when he was assassinated.
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Which was a 64 Lincoln Continental.
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I will confess, Dax, I have not committed the brand of the presidential limo to memory, but I can tell you that the leather seat was blue.
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Okay, it was blue.
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That s huge.
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That must be one of the biggest ones you have.
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It goes with a lock of JFK s hair, which is pretty rare that I ve also acquired.
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I don t want to be too morbid, but if you had gotten a lock of hair from that scene.
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I feel like that would be the most valuable.
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So I have a lock of hair from Lincoln.
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It s drawn from the most famous lock of Lincoln s hair with great provenance from the night of his assassination.
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It was taken by his physician.
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And I know the guy who has the lock, when I was younger, I got my first Lincoln autograph.
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And this was my kickback for overpaying for the autograph was I watched him pull six strands of hair from the most famous lock of Lincoln s hair.
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And I now have it kind of tied in a ribbon on my wall.
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Oh my goodness.
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And I know we talked about this last time, but
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Clearly an option for you in the future is to clone all these humans when we have that capability.
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And you could be the father of all the founding fathers.
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That s my hope.
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That s gotta be the ultimate.
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That s where this is going.
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Cause you re not going to open an oddities museum.
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Am I not going to open an oddities museum?
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We ve all thought about it.
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We ve all fetishized it, but I probably won t do it.
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Okay, and then to add just a bit more accolades to you.
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So then also you are a Rhodes Scholar and you got a Master s in Philosophy.
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International Relations from Oxford.
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International Relations.
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Why does it say MPhil?
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They don t have Master s from Oxford.
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It s called a Master s in Philosophy.
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It s just the British system.
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Same way with PhDs.
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It s a Doctor in Philosophy there.
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Oh, that kind of answers a question I never thought to ask.
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Sometimes you say a PhD and sometimes you say a doctorate or doctoral.
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At Oxford, it s a DPhil.
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In the U.S., it s a PhD.
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They re both snobby about each other s systems.
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And so then in 2019, you had a different job.
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You at that time were the CEO of Jigsaw.
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Jigsaw.
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Thank you, Monica.
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But you were also still working very hand in hand with Eric Schmidt, who ultimately we had on.
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And I think I text you, I put him in a category of like five other guests where when it was over, I was like, I think that person sees the entire picture on planet earth, which is a very rare thing to witness.
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Eric has the widest angle lens of any human being that I ve ever met.
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And you mix that with his own tremendous curiosity and his intellectual generosity, and you don t just get the benefit of his knowledge, you get the benefit of learning from him.
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I ve been a beneficiary of that my whole life.
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If I think back to kind of the original reason why I got the idea to write Life After Power, I was working for Eric when he was CEO of Google, and he transitioned to executive chairman of the company and working hand in hand with him and partnering with him as he thought through what does it mean to go from being CEO of Google to executive chairman?
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What do I want next in my professional career?
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It was so humbling as somebody early in my
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career to be along for the ride for somebody who d had the success that he had.
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And it always got me interested in this question of what s next.
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And I d been interested in presidential history my whole life.
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But after going through that experience, I started reading the end of the biography.
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You know, you have these sort of thousand page Ron Chernow biographies, and you kind of close them for the last 50 pages after they re done with the presidency.
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And most of the time, it s not an interesting story or even heartbreaking or even heartbreaking.
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A lot of them ended up extremely depressed, isolated, insolvent.
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By the way, most of the early presidents, remember they were a lot of slave owners.
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They were big landowners.
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They left office completely penniless.
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You didn t have presidential pensions until after Herbert Hoover.
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Washington s whole plantation was in a total state of disrepair.
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George Washington, I mean, imagine that people don t know this part of the story.
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So he leaves office and he goes back to Mount Vernon.
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He never leaves Mount Vernon again.
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He spends all of his final years chasing down people who owe him money.
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He has to start a whiskey business, not because he s passionate about whiskey, but he s completely broke.
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And then on top of this, he s the most famous man in America.
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So all these tourists come to Mount Vernon and they just kind of get dropped off there.
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And he s stuck hosting them and paying for them.
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And he does.
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He s endlessly kind and patient to them.
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and he has no choice and he s dealing with voyeurs.
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And so this idea that you go from being the most powerful person in the world to all of a sudden just an ordinary citizen, it s the most dramatic retirement you can imagine.
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That s a great point.
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And Eric is a good comp for that because you re climbing, you re climbing, climbing, then you get to whatever the end goal is of that.
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And then I imagine you start looking around and go, well, what s next?
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Nothing s going to top this.
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I think, and we were just talking about this, I had gone to a resort over Christmas.
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It s where you want to end up.
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And I m looking around and I m looking at all the people and I cannot help but notice that generally my trips to Holiday Inn Express, the people are much happier.
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People are having more fun.
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And I was like, what is going on?
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And then my conclusion was, you ve reached the end of the line of hoping for something more or wishing for something more or thinking of something that you re aspiring to.
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well, there s not a nicer hotel for us to really think about being at.
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And just the kind of hopelessness that all of a sudden takes over in those moments.
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And so yeah, someone like Eric or these presidents, I have to imagine it s like, what on earth would I do next?
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So it s interesting, this elusive question of what do we do next, we re all going to ask it so many times throughout the course of our life.
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And you never know when you ve achieved your greatest moment of power.
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I think if you look at Eric as an example, you would think that being CEO of Google is as high as you can get.
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I would argue that his journey and broadening into kind of unmatched public intellectual after that with expertise on such a wide swath of topics far eclipses what he achieved as CEO of Google.
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And he built one of the great companies
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of all time.
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And I think he would even acknowledge that that was not something that was predictable.
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And this is part of why being alongside him while he was going through that journey inspired me to ask the question, who else has kind of figured this out.
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And this relationship between ambition and happiness is very interesting when you look at these former presidents.
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So I look at seven in the book, each one of them answered the question of what s next in a very different way.
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Each one of them found, I think, greater purpose and meaning after they left the White House than their journey to it or during their time in it.
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And yet,
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many of them were still unhappy later in life.
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And part of what fueled their ambition after the White House is they didn t know how to not be ambitious.
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They were just successful because they found a way to channel it that helped them recapture that sense of purpose.
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I think in some respects, the only president that I focus on that I think has achieved genuine happiness is George W. Bush.
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Right.
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Yeah.
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We ll get to him at the end, but you chose seven presidents and they re spanning all the different eras, which to me seems a bit obvious, but they also span different parties.
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That was intentional, right?
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I imagine that you wanted this to remain a political and a everything else.
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It kind of worked out that way, but it wasn t intentional.
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So if you look at the 45 men who ve been president 46 times, Cleveland was president twice, you eliminate the eight that died in office, you eliminate the handful that died shortly thereafter, you kind of ignore the one who s sitting in office today or just left because too soon, and you canvass the rest of them.
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And I was left with seven by default, because there were really only seven that I thought were worth writing about.
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With George W. Bush, I looked at that a little bit differently.
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I wanted to look at the active living presidents and ask the question, which ones stand out?
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He s the only one whose popularity has doubled since leaving office, and yet he s invested less time and energy into shaping his legacy than probably all of them.
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And so that was worthy of its own study.
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Is that him or that s lucky for him that the world took a turn where we now look back and think, oh my God, he was so great.
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I mean, just circumstantially.
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It s an astute observation, Monica.
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I think it s a combination of the two.
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So one, he has this unique ability to move on.
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I went and I spent two days with him in Kennebunkport.
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I did hours and hours of interviews with him.
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Can I ask quickly, was that a hard interview to get?
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Yeah, I had known him over the years.
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I worked in his administration.
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I think it was a hard interview to get only insofar as he hadn t given any interviews about his post-presidency before, certainly at this length.
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I watched him paint for hours.
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Yeah, he loves to paint.
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He said this is a crucial part of his finding purpose.
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Look, I think Bush has this psychological uniqueness where he s not introspective.
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What he says is, you know, when it s over, it s over.
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I don t miss it.
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I genuinely believe him to sort of understand how a human being can detach in that way.
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It s like a psychological thriller into like a powerful and ambitious person s brain that is counterintuitive to everything that we know.
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I think that he has a rigorous adherence to the principle of one president at a time.
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Other presidents say they do, but they can t resist the urge to insert themselves.
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He never once has inserted himself.
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He never once mentions his successor.
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by name.
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He didn t do anything during the debates when Trump was blasting Jeb.
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He said nothing publicly.
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So it s a remarkable discipline.
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So I think that Americans appreciate that reverence for the Washington principle.
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It s aged really well in the era of Trump.
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And it s not that he doesn t have ambitions and causes he cares about.
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He s done with politics.
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What s interesting is that he s found a post-presidential voice through painting that allows him to push those causes in a way that doesn t undermine his successors.
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And the causes that he s pushing, you know, the story of American immigrants, the story of veterans, these are some of the things... How s he doing it?
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the painting.
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people in the United States that while they didn t like the war in Iraq, while they didn t like a lot of his policies, there s aspects of who he is as a person and what he championed that they don t mind reflecting positively about.
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Yes, well, I think he has a touch of what McCain had, which was I obviously was on a
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the different end of the political spectrum than McCain, but he had these moments where he displayed great character and integrity.
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Just these moments where you re like, whatever our differences, I can tell this is a good man.
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And I think that burbles through with George W. Bush.
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I know there s some sect that wants to try for war crimes, but suffice to say, I was vocally anti the Iraq invasion as well.
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But all that to say,
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My personal experience was I went to this really great resort in Africa with Kristen in 2012.
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We were there during the rainy season, so there was no guests but us.
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So we were talking with the different staff members.
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We got a lot of FaceTime with them.
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And we were kind of gossipy asking who had been there and what it was like.
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And Bill Gates had just rented out the entire place for his family.
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And then George W. Bush came up.
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Every single one of the people that worked there
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said their favorite guest of all time was George W. Bush, that he spent every single night out at the fire talking with the staff late into the night.
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There s no cameras around.
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There s no way he thinks that s getting back to anybody.
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And I hear a story like that and I m like, you know, I don t agree with him on a lot or rather I didn t, who knows where he stands now, but I can t not take that in as data of someone I appreciate or admire in some way.
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Well, what s interesting about Bush, one, he took several trips to Africa after leaving office.
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He had championed this PEPFAR program that has had a meaningful impact.
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PEPFAR?
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Yeah, the President s Emergency something or other focuses on countering HIV, AIDS and malaria and tuberculosis.
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And it really moved the needle in terms of reducing the spread of those viruses across the continent.
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But as president with the Secret Service around and the protocol and so forth, he never got a chance to actually experience the effects of it.
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With each of these presidents that I write about, there s such seemingly unrelatable figures, right?
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How many of us will ever become president?
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You can t imagine a human being that is less relatable to the rest of us.
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It has been 45 of them.
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And yet when you delve into their post presidencies, you feel this connection and relatability to them, which is what got me so excited about it, because it s counterintuitive.
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The fall from power, whether it s being fired by the American people or just being termed out, it s a greater fall than just about anything else.
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And there s a vulnerability that comes with that fall that I think all of us find more relatable.
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You know, in each one of them, there s some question that they grappled with that I found relatable.
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In Bush s case, it s this whole question of what s our legacy?
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What s our purpose in this world?
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And it s not that he doesn t
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care about legacy.
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He just has a very quarrelsome and almost agitated view of trying to shape your own legacy in your lifetime.
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And what he says is, look, they re still writing books about the other George, meaning George Washington.
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By the time they get around to me, I m going to be long gone.
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And he looks at it as just kind of sad and tragic that people would waste the short time that we have in life trying to shape their legacy after.
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And I reflected on this conversation with him.
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I ve always had this saying of like, I don t want to be ancient Egypt, meaning I don t want to waste my time trying to build a tomb that I m never going to get to see and that explorers are going to find later on and probably get sick as soon as they enter it.
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Yeah.
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And I think all of us, by the way, subscribe to that.
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There s these demons that lurk on our shoulder telling us to think about the future and think about our legacy when our actual legacy, it s our children, it s our friends and our family.
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But more importantly, it s our enjoyment of the present.
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Well, right.
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So I m always trying to understand why I think most people think about a legacy.
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It doesn t interest me at all, because I m not going to be here to observe it.
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And then I wonder, is it part of me being an atheist, which predisposes me to that?
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Because I don t think I m going to be up in heaven watching people regale with stories of me.
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So since I m not going to observe it, I don t even give a shit.
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But I do wonder if that s somehow rooted in my lack of belief in an afterlife.
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But back to Bush.
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Oh, go ahead, Monica.
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No, I just had a thought for the first time.
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Oh, my God.
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How did you enjoy it?
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It s so rare to have a new thought that I have to share it.
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Bush is maybe the only president, definitely in my lifetime, that maybe has no ego or very little ego and little narcissism.
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I think some narcissism is the reason these people come to power.
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Like I think it might be part of it and that s okay as long as it s managed.
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But I don t think he has it, which is why, not to defame him in this, but a lot of people thought he was not smart.
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But I think it s actually because he just didn t present with this ego and this trying to be smart or on or brilliant.
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He didn t care.
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I think that s right.
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The apathy about the judgments that get levied in his direction mattered very little to him as president.
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They matter far less in his post-presidency.
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Almost a Buddhist.
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Well, I think it has to do a lot with where you come from.
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And I m going to argue that his transition was aided in this in a weird way.
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The lanes in his family were taken.
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The dad was the head of the CIA.
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He knew all things.
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He was a genius.
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He was a master politician.
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Jeb was probably doing better in school.
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He was the family fuck up.
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He was getting in trouble.
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He was running a baseball team into the ditch.
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Like he was comfortable in that role.
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So I think part of it is just the benefit of he wasn t the shining star everyone was betting on.
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And lo and behold, he ends up in president.
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People start slinging mud at him.
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He s like, yeah, that s kind of my role in my family.
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I m used to this.
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So that s one thing I think is on the table.
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And then I m curious if you think the way he s seemingly so easily let go of that experience, do you think that s been informed by the fact that
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It maybe wasn t even his agenda to begin with.
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He inherited the mission and therefore it was easy to let go.
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There s two things there.
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One, I think George W. Bush, personality wise, again, each of these seven presidents I write about, they found
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purpose in the post-presidency for a different set of reasons.
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Sometimes by design, sometimes they knew exactly what they wanted to do, and being done with the presidency unshackled them from other burdens.
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In the case of Bush, he s just kind of a chapter guy.
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He lives his life in chapters.
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There s a beginning, a climax, and an end, and then it s on to the next chapter.
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But I think when you talk about legacy,
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That s really one of the big themes of the book is how we think about legacy.
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And there s no blueprint for it.
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And different presidents will be more relatable to other people.
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But the burden of legacy means different things to different people.
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So if you look at Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Jefferson is the first one that I write about as the co-founder of the Republic.
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He s 33 years old when that happens.
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33 years old when he co-founds the Republic.
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He doesn t want to be in service after that.
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He tries to retire three times and he has to serve as Secretary of State, he has to serve as Vice President, he has to serve twice as President.
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There s only three things etched on his tombstone.
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author of the Declaration of Independence, author of the Virginia Statute on Religious Freedom, and father of the University of Virginia.
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And what s interesting about that last part, which is what I focus on, his burden as a founder was they knew that they left potentially terminal flaws in the architecture of the republic.
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And if they didn t train the next generation to be able to
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iterate on those flaws and improve upon the Republic, what he founded would never survive.
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So he always wanted to build the country s first arts and sciences university, divorced from a sort of strict adherence to religion and theology.
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And so he had this idea for the University of Virginia.
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It juxtaposes in a very interesting way with what s happening at university campuses today.
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At 82 years old, in the final chapter, final year of his life, he opens the doors to the University of Virginia.
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And with that inaugural class in the first six months,
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a group of students cover themselves in masks in a way that is sort of like the anonymity of social media.
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And they start rioting across the campus that he designed.
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They throw bags of urine at professors.
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They beat one with a cane, leaving him like bloodied and humiliated.
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They chant down with European professors.
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And then here s the catch in this weird twist of Southern honor, none of them would give each other up.
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So Jefferson, who is the rector for the university, he calls an all student assembly to bring them before the disciplinary committee.
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The disciplinary committee for the University of Virginia was Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, and James Monroe, three presidents, by far the most intimidating disciplinary committee, past, present, and future.
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And here s the best part of it.
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So Jefferson stands to address the students who, again, won t give each other up.
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And before he can get words out, he starts hysterically crying.
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The image of an 82-year-old Thomas Jefferson bawling in front of them causes little five-foot-one James Madison to stand up, put his hand on Jefferson s shoulder, and before Madison can speak, the students one by one confess and get expelled.
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Listen, this is the great hack.
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I watch it with my wife all the time.
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My instinct is to, when there is a rabble, when there s crazy teenagers, they need to be dominated.
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Some alpha s got to step in and control this.
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And I ve watched the kill them with kindness approach, and it is shocking.
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I was just talking about this.
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I was driving with my best friend, Aaron, in the car yesterday, and someone cut me off.
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And he said, you know, I ve been really trying this thing.
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where instead of engaging with the person that cut me off, I just try to remember how I feel when I cut someone off, which I do often.
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I feel like an asshole.
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And then I m sitting in my car and I m an asshole.
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And if they re really nice about it, I feel like even more of an asshole.
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But if they start honking and flipping me off, then I m in it with them.
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And so I m like, that s got to be my new policy.
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But yeah, what an unforeseen outcome for him to just be emotional and vulnerable and saddened by the whole thing and that that elicits that response.
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When you compare and contrast that with today, I love this story because it s a reminder that authority matters and who sits in the seat of power matters, not just because they have power, but they command such a level of respect.
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that you don t end up with this tyranny of the majority against the leadership, whether it s at a business or a university.
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And this is why I love history, because everything that we see today, as crazy as it seems, we ve seen some version of it before.
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And a lot of the clues and the ingredients that tell us how to navigate it and tell us to calm the heck down because we re having a present day freak out, they exist in these powerful anecdotes that are lost in the annals of history or sort of stuck in the footnotes of history.
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We are collectively living the same way we live individually, which is we rediscover the same fucking epiphany every six months.
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Like, I don t know about you, but Monica and I talk about it all the time.
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I have a realization, I m like, oh my God, of course, that s what I gotta do.
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And then my second thought is, oh my God, I knew that eight months ago and I forgot it.
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We had this great comedian and actor, Rami Youssef, and he was telling us that the Arabic word for human is forgetful.
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And you re right.
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We ve done all this before.
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We just think we haven t.
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Yeah.
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And social media has not just compressed the volume of content that human beings are willing to consume.
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It s made us impatient to dig into the facts around the present.
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And it s made us lethargic about reflecting back.
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yesterday, let alone several hundred years.
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And to go back to this question of legacy and burden, so much of how we pursue a legacy, whether we re a very important person in our own mind or in reality, is a function of the burden that we feel.
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And so John Quincy Adams is another interesting example.
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This one blew my mind because to me, this is a lesson in one s ego, because as much as we do repeat history, this is
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unimaginable in the current era.
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Oh, yeah.
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I mean, so John Quincy Adams presidency was basically an intermission between two of the greatest acts in American history.
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The first one kind of top down architected for him by his famous parents, John and Abigail Adams, that kind of manufactured a president.
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And his presidency was a disaster.
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I mean, he almost drowned while skinny dipping in the Potomac and had to ride back in a horse and buggy naked to the White House.
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He was basically like a political stillborn on day one.
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So he accomplished nothing as president.
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But what s interesting is his second act, he went on to serve nine terms in the House of Representatives.
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A man who began his career appointed by George Washington dies serving in the House of Representatives alongside Abraham Lincoln, this living connection between these two generations.
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And what s fascinating about John Quincy Adams
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He felt a different burden from Jefferson, which is he only knew how to serve.
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He grew up in one of the great service families in American history.
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And so when the presidency is done, he doesn t know what to do.
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He s already served everything else.
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He just hasn t served in the House.
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They convince him to run.
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He ends up in the House.
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He has no plan.
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And over the course of a couple years in a much lower station, he finds a much higher calling.
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And he ends up inadvertently becoming the champion of the abolitionist movement because he s bored in Congress.
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And so he s just reading petitions.
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But a lot of those petitions are from abolitionists.
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And he sees the reaction from the slavocracy in Congress and thinks, how dare you try to silence these petitioners?
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They then try to silence him with the gag rule.
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that says you can t talk about slavery in Congress.
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He fights it.
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He bamboozles them.
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He outsmarts all of them.
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And ultimately, he gets the gag rule repealed.
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He goes on to basically take abolitionism, which was really a fringe and a radical cause in the 1830s.
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And by the time he dies in 1844, he s really transformed it into a mainstream movement.
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He s done a bunch of the legwork for Abraham Lincoln to walk in and take it to the next.
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I mean, just imagine that a freshman congressman named Abraham Lincoln serving alongside this like shrinking, frail, sort of weird looking human named John Quincy Adams, who s this living relic in the house.
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Where s that magic today?
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Yeah, he becomes a real defender of free speech in addition to helping forward the abolitionist movement.
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But the notion of Obama becoming a congressman
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For nine terms, I feel like ego-wise, that s unimaginable.
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I don t know if it s a different time.
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Yeah, it feels like a big step down societally.
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Yes.
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Where you re kind of getting at, it s this story of reinvention.
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So part of this question of what we do next and part of what we learn from these presidents is there s an element of reinvention.
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And it depends on what they want.
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In the case of John Quincy Adams, he reinvented himself as a public servant, and he got to experience something new.
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It didn t matter that he was in the House of Representatives and had been a president, it s that this was a cause that he decided to take on, not that his parents decided to take on.
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Whereas you look at Herbert Hoover, here s a man who lived to be 90 years old.
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He s defined by three and a half years of the Great Depression.
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Before he was president, you could not find a more revered man.
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I mean, this was the man who fed the world after World War I, fed largely black communities after the devastating Mississippi floods in 1927.
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He had risen from being an orphan to a self-made millionaire.
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And then he becomes the sort of symbol of the wealthy class with the Great Depression, and his name is in tatters.
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He was a man who needed to be needed, to quote Arthur Brooks, and he lusted after an opportunity to serve.
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He spends his 30-plus year post-presidency recapturing the title of the great humanitarian.
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And once FDR dies, it was like the never-ending presidency that just kept tarnishing him.
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Harry Truman, who also didn t like FDR, resurrects him, and Hoover kind of repeats it all over again.
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He becomes a great humanitarian, feeding the world this time after World War II.
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He reminds the world that he was a great executive because he s brought in to reorganize the executive branch of government.
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And then he achieves a bipartisan status in 1960, being asked to reconcile Richard Nixon and JFK so that during the Cold War, America looked unified.
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And what s interesting is when he loses his bid for reelection in 1932, he is sort of
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grappling with recovering his good name, which is vanity, and recovering his platform of service.
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And only when he decides he s done with politics in 1940 does he relinquish that vanity.
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And he finds a sense of peace with a very focused path towards figuring out how to serve the world again.
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And what s interesting is he does in his lifetime recover his good name.
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He just then posthumously ends up having it tarnished again.
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And so his story is a fascinating one, not of reinvention, but recovering what he once had lost.
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Right.
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Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.
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Grover Cleveland, I didn t even know this about him.
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He s the only president to ever run for a non-consecutive term and win, which obviously has some very interesting parallels we should talk about with what s happening now.
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He lost his popularity and he tried to go back in time and become president again and recapture it.
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But for him, that didn t work out so well, did it?
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Grover Cleveland, I include him as the story of kind of a comeback.
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So if each of the seven presidents represents a different model, Cleveland is the only president who has recaptured the presidency.
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that s obviously very relevant to today.
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It s increasingly looking like for the very first time since 1892.
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And the only time since 1892, you re going to have two presidents in a rematch as the nominees of the two major parties.
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It s happened only once, and only three other times in history have former presidents even run on a third party ticket.
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Van Buren did it as a free soiler in 1848.
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Millard Fillmore did it in 1856 as a know-nothing, and Theodore Roosevelt did it as a bull moose in 1912.
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But this particular rematch, we ve only seen once in history.
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But differently than today, Grover Cleveland never lost the popular vote.
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Cleveland loses his reelection in 1888 because he takes a principled stand on the tariff.
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And he basically does a kamikaze mission against the Democratic Party wishes where he loses the presidency, but he achieves his goal.
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So he had won the popular vote, but he lost the electoral college.
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And Cleveland represents a cautionary tale because there s an interesting aspect to this.
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And Monica and I were in a very juicy way talking about this before.
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Cleveland becomes the second president to get married while president of the United States.
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His best friend, Oscar Folsom, died in a very 19th century type of accident, which is a horse and bucky accident.
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Classic.
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Textbook.
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His daughter, Frances, Cleveland became her official guardian, and huge age difference between them.
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Back up.
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I got distracted by Monica s great joke.
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What a perfect timed classic.
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So his buddy dies in a horse and buggy accident.
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Then what happens?
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So then he becomes the legal guardian of his young daughter.
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Her name is Francis.
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He calls her Frank.
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She calls him Uncle Cleve.
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He starts courting her when she was in high school.
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SPEAKER_00
And while he s president of the United States, he s courting her while she s- The first term or the second?
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SPEAKER_00
It s the first term.
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Okay.
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He ends up falling in love with her.
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How does he have time?
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He s running the country.
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He s courting a teenager.
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Men always find time.
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SPEAKER_00
Well, by the way, just for the record, we ll get back to that.
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the story in a second, but just one tangent.
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SPEAKER_00
Poor Grover Cleveland is going to have his name resurrected because Donald Trump is likely going to be the Republican nominee for president.
3
SPEAKER_00
So there s a natural parallel.
3
SPEAKER_00
And while one might think, oh, this is great for Cleveland, people are going to finally remember him.
3
SPEAKER_00
It s a disaster for him because he was involved in a very not okay for the Me Too era.
3
SPEAKER_00
I don t think the resurrection of Cleveland is going to age very well.
3
SPEAKER_01
Well, according to someone you re the legal guardian of, it didn t go great for Woody Allen and age gap and a high school student.
3
SPEAKER_01
No, this is going to be very uncomfortable.
3
SPEAKER_01
Leaving high school, the secret service rolls up and the guy that s trying to take you out on a date, the president s at your high school.
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, there s an amazing story.
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SPEAKER_01
And he s your dad, kind of.
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SPEAKER_00
He basically is her father.
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SPEAKER_00
So there s an amazing story.
3
SPEAKER_00
So while he s president, he proposes to her by letter.
3
SPEAKER_00
How old is he at the time?
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SPEAKER_00
He s close to 50 at this point.
3
SPEAKER_00
And she is?
3
SPEAKER_00
She s in her 20s.
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They started the courtship when she s a preteen.
3
SPEAKER_00
So he sends this letter of proposal and she accepts.
3
SPEAKER_00
And to get ready to be first lady, her mother takes her on a trip across the Atlantic to get refined in Europe.
3
SPEAKER_00
And the telegraph operator intercepts a love letter that he sends and assumes that he s secretly engaged to the mother.
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, that would be the most natural assumption.
3
SPEAKER_00
So the papers print this and he throws a tizzy fit.
3
SPEAKER_00
Why do they keep trying to marry me off to old women?
3
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Don t they know that I love her daughter?
3
SPEAKER_00
So he s offended.
3
SPEAKER_01
Oh, thank God.
3
SPEAKER_01
They think it s the mom.
3
SPEAKER_00
Well, look, eventually they were going to find out, right?
3
SPEAKER_00
So she ends up as the youngest first lady in history, 21 years old.
3
SPEAKER_00
Oh.
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SPEAKER_00
that ll never be replicated.
3
SPEAKER_00
So he s happier than he s ever been.
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SPEAKER_00
And when he throws away the presidency, all he wants is to retire, have children, have this happy family.
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SPEAKER_00
But all she wants is to come back and be first lady.
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SPEAKER_00
So when they re leaving the White House, she tells the White House butler, make sure the furniture is exactly as I left it.
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Make sure all the decorations are exactly as I left it.
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I ll be back in four years.
3
SPEAKER_01
She s living out a kind of princess fantasy at that point.
3
SPEAKER_00
Also Stockholm Syndrome.
3
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, sure, Stockholm Syndrome, classic stuff.
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SPEAKER_01
But she decorated the place and wants it the same, so, you know, and I can t imagine she was terribly attracted to him.
3
SPEAKER_01
No, he was disgusting.
3
SPEAKER_00
Big mustache, very heavy, kind of oafy.
3
SPEAKER_00
He doesn t get compared to William Howard Taft, just because Taft was the more enormous of the two, but he was a close second.
3
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
3
SPEAKER_01
Wow, wow, wow.
3
SPEAKER_01
So when he comes back, what s the second go-round like?
3
SPEAKER_00
So the tragedy for him, so he decides to come back to the presidency, in part because she
4
SPEAKER_00
He wanted it, but he was very worried that his successor, Benjamin Harrison, was going to take the United States off the gold standard, which was going to bankrupt the country.
4
SPEAKER_00
He was worried about a rising tide of imperialism, and he genuinely felt that he was the only one who could come back and save the country from economic ruin.
4
SPEAKER_00
So he gets elected again, so wins the popular vote for the third time.
4
SPEAKER_00
By the time he takes the oath of office, the country has descended into the worst depression in its history.
4
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a group of opportunistic settlers along with the de facto US ambassador in Hawaii decides to depose Queen Liliuokalani and set in motion the annexation of the islands.
4
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And then on top of that, he sort of lost his time at peace with his new family.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so he s miserable in those last four years.
4
SPEAKER_00
And while he retired happier than he s ever been after the first term, he retires after
4
SPEAKER_00
the second term and as a second post-presidency, leaving him depressed, having lost those valuable years.
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SPEAKER_00
He had saved the country from the ruin that he worried about, but it takes him years to recapture the level of peace that he found after his first term.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so I like concluding this chapter because so many people, regardless of, again, whether they re top of their game or not, want to come back, right?
4
SPEAKER_00
You want to get back what you lost.
4
SPEAKER_00
And Cleveland offers a cautionary tale that there are certain factors that you cannot control, and maybe it s not all it s cracked up to be.
4
SPEAKER_00
The problem is we focus on the success stories.
4
SPEAKER_00
Michael Jordan came back and won three championships.
4
SPEAKER_00
Steve Jobs came back and became this iconic figure.
4
SPEAKER_00
But there s a big graveyard of people that tried that and didn t find success.
4
SPEAKER_02
They are the exceptions to the rule.
4
SPEAKER_02
Absolutely.
4
SPEAKER_02
Then we have William Howard Taft.
4
SPEAKER_02
I like this one the most.
4
SPEAKER_02
He didn t want to be president at all, but his family very much wanted him to be, and his good buddy Theodore Roosevelt wanted him to be.
4
SPEAKER_02
But he had wanted to be on the Supreme Court originally.
4
SPEAKER_02
That was his dream.
4
SPEAKER_00
Each president is meant to represent a category of problem that somebody is grappling with.
4
SPEAKER_00
So all of us know somebody, or maybe we include ourselves in this.
4
SPEAKER_00
We know what job or opportunity we ve always wanted.
4
SPEAKER_00
And by the time it came our way, the timing wasn t right.
4
SPEAKER_00
There was a reason we couldn t say yes.
4
SPEAKER_00
Life was taking us in a different direction.
4
SPEAKER_00
So we defer this dream.
4
SPEAKER_00
Taft wanted nothing more than to be on the Supreme Court.
4
SPEAKER_00
He was ideological about his love for courts and the justice system, and it was his dream.
4
SPEAKER_00
And he married a woman named Helen Niren, who wanted nothing more than for him to be president.
4
SPEAKER_00
He had three brothers who wanted him to be president, and he had a mentor and friend, Theodore Roosevelt, who wanted him to be president.
4
SPEAKER_00
And Taft was just one of these figures who, he was heavily influenced by the people around him.
4
SPEAKER_00
He ran his court as the patriarch of the family, like a impotent leader influenced by those around him.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so he turns down an opportunity to serve on the Supreme Court three times.
4
SPEAKER_00
And when he turns it down for the third time, a reporter asks his son, do you think your father will be president of the United States or serve on the Supreme Court?
4
SPEAKER_00
The response is, Ma wants him to be president.
4
SPEAKER_00
Oh, wow.
4
SPEAKER_00
And what s fascinating is he never gives up on the dream.
4
SPEAKER_00
He appoints six justices to the Supreme Court, more than any other president in history, including a chief justice.
4
SPEAKER_00
But he very cleverly appoints a chief justice who s at such an advanced age that hopefully he ll die.
4
SPEAKER_00
You think that was calculated?
4
SPEAKER_00
It s known to be calculated.
4
SPEAKER_00
Oh, wow.
4
SPEAKER_00
He gets lucky in 1920.
4
SPEAKER_00
Warren Harding names him to the Supreme Court.
4
SPEAKER_02
Well, first, he loses an election in a very embarrassing way.
4
SPEAKER_02
He comes in third for his second term.
4
SPEAKER_00
This is another tragic story of relationships.
4
SPEAKER_00
William Howard Taft and Theodore Roosevelt were best friends and Taft never wanted to be president.
4
SPEAKER_00
But when Theodore Roosevelt and he sort of split and ended up in this vicious feud that was really driven more by Theodore Roosevelt s desire to become president again, which required him to break the friendship, Taft decides to be zealous about trying to get reelected to deny Theodore Roosevelt the chance to be president again.
4
SPEAKER_00
Theodore Roosevelt storms out of the Republican Convention and forms a new party as a bull moose, and he ends up splitting the Republican vote.
4
SPEAKER_00
Split would be conservative.
4
SPEAKER_00
He basically wins almost the entire Republican vote and hands Woodrow Wilson the presidency.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so he assumes he s never going to get this chance.
4
SPEAKER_02
But an incumbent coming in third.
4
SPEAKER_02
Again, that s such a rare occurrence.
4
SPEAKER_00
Not just coming in third, coming into a distant, embarrassing third.
4
SPEAKER_00
So Taft was politically destroyed, lost his platform.
4
SPEAKER_02
Can I ask you to bring it into current politics?
4
SPEAKER_02
So the fact that Theodore Roosevelt stormed out and just decided, well, obviously the party s going to run the incumbent, but I want to run against, so I m starting this thing.
4
SPEAKER_02
Obviously we ve passed this point, I imagine, but that seemed semi foreseeable for the Democrats this go around.
4
SPEAKER_02
Because a lot of people don t want this incumbent to run again.
4
SPEAKER_02
And I imagine there s some presidential hopeful that thinks, even though I won t be the party nominee, I got to run against.
4
SPEAKER_02
That seemed like it could have happened.
4
SPEAKER_00
So it s very interesting, like when I set out to write this book, obviously, I wasn t thinking about the 2024 election, because writing books takes forever.
4
SPEAKER_00
And we find ourselves in a situation where two men, one who s an advanced septuagenarian and one who s an advanced octogenarian, both presidents are about to embark on a rematch.
4
SPEAKER_00
And we re in this situation, despite the fact that both of them have less popularity than last time, because you have two presidents that don t want to give up power.
4
SPEAKER_00
We ve never been in this set of circumstances where you have these two candidates that are so old and both presidents.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so this question of a third party naturally has come up a lot in the context of the 2024 election.
4
SPEAKER_00
But the history of third parties is very important.
4
SPEAKER_00
One time in history that a third party candidate has won the presidency and it was 1864.
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SPEAKER_00
We re in a civil war and Andrew Johnson was picked by Abraham Lincoln to form a new National Democratic Union ticket.
4
SPEAKER_00
But this was a peculiar set of circumstances during the Civil War.
4
SPEAKER_00
Every other third party candidate in history has done nothing but take votes away from one of the two major parties.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so here we re about to enter, as we kind of go into less than a year until the presidential election, the open question of third party selfishness.
4
SPEAKER_00
number of third party candidates that will enter the race and they ll tell themselves all kinds of stories.
4
SPEAKER_00
This is the righteous thing to do.
4
SPEAKER_00
It s about the issues.
4
SPEAKER_00
Maybe I have some kind of a chance.
4
SPEAKER_00
But make no mistake, any third party candidate, whether it s no labels or someone else entering the race, is going to take votes away from one candidate or another.
4
SPEAKER_00
I believe that RFK Jr.
4
SPEAKER_00
will take away from Trump.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think everybody else takes away from Biden.
4
SPEAKER_00
The problem is this election is going to come down to a handful of districts in six states.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so even single digit thousands of votes, 10,000 votes here, 10,000 votes there, it matters a lot and it can flip a state.
4
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
4
SPEAKER_01
Anyone who is doing it to be like, oh, Biden s too old, but who s a Democrat is fucking us up.
4
SPEAKER_01
I mean, that is just the truth.
4
SPEAKER_01
We can t hand over anything to Trump at this point.
4
SPEAKER_02
Well, again, and I just love seeing how often these debates funnel into, this is a very Conte and utilitarian argument.
4
SPEAKER_02
So if I m a Conte and I m like, no, no, I will do the right thing.
4
SPEAKER_02
This is unacceptable.
4
SPEAKER_02
These are the two options.
4
SPEAKER_02
There s virtue in that claim.
4
SPEAKER_02
I reject that this is so it just is really like, does the means justify the ends or the ends justify the means?
4
SPEAKER_02
I think both are very compelling arguments and I don t think anyone should be embarrassed to feel either way.
4
SPEAKER_01
But you say this a lot, right?
4
SPEAKER_01
You say, are we living in a world that should be or a world that is?
4
SPEAKER_02
Sure, I do.
4
SPEAKER_01
And we are living in what is.
4
SPEAKER_01
And right now, what is is Trump and Biden.
4
SPEAKER_01
I know.
4
SPEAKER_01
And we have to make decisions based on that.
4
SPEAKER_01
For four more years, that s it.
4
SPEAKER_02
I have a fantasy though where, yes, it s Trump or Biden, but there s this enormous silent majority that is just participating because they believe in that.
4
SPEAKER_02
So it may turn out that 60% of the country, and I think that s probably accurate, doesn t want either of them.
4
SPEAKER_02
My pick wouldn t be a Democrat or a Republican.
4
SPEAKER_02
It d be like a hardcore centrist that goes, no, no, I m going to split both these fucking votes.
4
SPEAKER_00
I think the most dangerous third party candidate is the invisible candidate of not voting.
4
SPEAKER_00
This to me is the biggest wild card, which is given that both candidates are, let s just say, not terrible.
4
SPEAKER_01
But hold on.
4
SPEAKER_01
Biden is not a terrible president just because he s old.
4
SPEAKER_01
He has done a good job.
4
SPEAKER_01
It is not fair to say.
4
SPEAKER_02
He went to Hawaii and looked at 3000 people who had just had their entire life burnt to the ground.
4
SPEAKER_02
And he said, I didn t know exactly what you went through.
4
SPEAKER_02
Our house burnt down, which wasn t even true.
4
SPEAKER_01
But you re taking one sound bite, one thing that he said versus what he s done over the past four years.
4
SPEAKER_01
It s not fair, especially compared to what was before that and what will happen again.
4
SPEAKER_02
Here s what I think, Monica.
4
SPEAKER_02
He isn t even within the top thousand best options to run the country.
4
SPEAKER_01
But are you even following?
4
SPEAKER_01
OK.
4
SPEAKER_00
So to arbitrate between the two of you, it is a matter of fact from the polling that both of them are less popular.
4
SPEAKER_00
That is a statement of truth.
4
SPEAKER_00
So I worry about large segments of the population not voting.
4
SPEAKER_00
Not voting is, by the way, depending on what state you re in, is a de facto vote for one candidate or the other.
4
SPEAKER_00
In each state, there s one candidate where the voter turnout problem with certain communities is a bigger vulnerability.
4
SPEAKER_00
And by the way, for Biden, there s a real question about Michigan, if the war in the Middle East persists of large numbers of voters in Michigan choosing not to vote, which again, by not voting there, it s a de facto vote for Trump.
4
SPEAKER_02
Really quick, drill into that because I m from Michigan.
4
SPEAKER_00
In and around Dearborn, very, very large Arab American population, very upset with Biden s handling of the war in the Middle East.
4
SPEAKER_00
Supporting Israel.
4
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
4
SPEAKER_00
And so if you re the Biden camp, there s a concern that you have that come November, if the war is still going on, I assume the policy stays the same, that there s a risk of some of those voters not turning out.
4
SPEAKER_02
The only hiccup for that logic, in my opinion, is Trump is
5
SPEAKER_00
even more pro-Israel than Biden.
5
SPEAKER_00
So that assumes a level of rationale.
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, I think there s a recency bias that we find with a lot of different parts of the electorate.
5
SPEAKER_00
And look, it s very hard to get in the heads of the electorate as well.
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, the one thing we know about polling is it s consistently wrong, and yet we continue to put it up on this pedestal as right.
5
SPEAKER_00
How many times do the polls have to be incorrect, where we basically just declare they don t matter?
5
SPEAKER_00
The problem is, absent something else to fill that vacuum, we can either make up our own facts or we can rely on what our opinion is.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, we do the best we can.
5
SPEAKER_01
We poll.
5
SPEAKER_01
That s about all we can do.
5
SPEAKER_01
But I interrupted you.
5
SPEAKER_01
So that s what s currently on the table.
5
SPEAKER_01
We okay?
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
5
SPEAKER_01
Okay, we got sidetracked with William Taft.
5
SPEAKER_01
When he does end up getting appointed to the Supreme Court as the Chief Justice, what is his career like then?
5
SPEAKER_00
William Howard Taft is a fascinating case study in what it looks like to defer a dream and finally achieve it in the last chapter of life.
5
SPEAKER_00
His last 10 years of life where he s Chief Justice of the Supreme Court are by far the happiest years of his life.
5
SPEAKER_00
And so look, it s an incredible story of persistence.
5
SPEAKER_00
And it s a reminder that the most powerful position we may achieve in our lives is not necessarily the one that makes us the happiest.
5
SPEAKER_00
He s the only president to serve at the top of two branches of government.
5
SPEAKER_00
So he s a unique figure in American history.
5
SPEAKER_00
And was he a better chief justice than he had been a president?
5
SPEAKER_00
Oh, he s a much better chief justice than he was president.
5
SPEAKER_00
I would describe him as a boring, but very important chief justice.
5
SPEAKER_00
First of all, he believed that the Supreme Court needed its own building for proper separation of powers.
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, imagine this, the Supreme Court used to be in the basement of the Senate.
5
SPEAKER_00
So talk about meddling from the legislative branch.
5
SPEAKER_00
But the Supreme Court, before he took over,
5
SPEAKER_00
was kind of a somewhat feckless institution, overwhelmed by cases, no ability to stack rank and arbitrage.
5
SPEAKER_00
And he sets in place a series of reforms that massively improves the efficiency of the court and radically transforms it into the institution that it is today.
5
SPEAKER_01
What I take away from that is ego, basically, kind of like what we were already talking about, that you have to step over the notion that you re demoting yourself, that your greatest happiness might be a job that was under, in quotes, the one you previously had.
5
SPEAKER_00
I think a lot of the presidents that I write about did this.
5
SPEAKER_00
Jefferson, if anything, I think he felt the presidency was a blow to his ego.
5
SPEAKER_00
and a waste of time and not necessary for him to ensure that the next segment of the Republic was preserved.
5
SPEAKER_00
In the case of John Quincy Adams, the ego was in being hyperactively serving the country.
5
SPEAKER_00
In the case of Cleveland, he didn t lust after the presidency.
5
SPEAKER_00
Remember, he didn t want to come back.
5
SPEAKER_00
His ego was wrapped up in making sure the country wasn t economically destroyed.
5
SPEAKER_00
I think Carter is the first one that you really have to talk a bit about.
5
SPEAKER_00
ego, because when he s defeated by Reagan for reelection in 1980, it s really devastating.
5
SPEAKER_00
He loved being president, perhaps more than anybody.
5
SPEAKER_00
And he leaves office and he says, you know, my faith compels me to do whatever I can, whenever I can, for as long as I can.
5
SPEAKER_00
And he makes a decision to do the opposite of what George W. Bush did and not leave the spotlight.
5
SPEAKER_00
He s a million dollars in debt.
5
SPEAKER_00
So he has to deal with that first, because his peanut farm pretty much went bankrupt in a blind trust.
5
SPEAKER_00
But Carter leaves office and says, you know what, screw this.
5
SPEAKER_00
I m not going to stop being president.
5
SPEAKER_00
I m going to transform the idea of being a former version of my greatest act into an institution in and of itself.
5
SPEAKER_00
And he builds a post-presidential administration, and he does some great things.
5
SPEAKER_00
I mean, guinea worm basically doesn t exist anymore.
5
SPEAKER_00
It was a disease that was incurable, was devastating large portions of sub-Saharan Africa, and he basically eradicated it from the globe.
5
SPEAKER_00
But he did a lot of annoying things as well.
5
SPEAKER_00
So when George H.W.
5
SPEAKER_00
Bush is prepping to go in to get Saddam Hussein and Iraqi forces out of Kuwait, Jimmy Carter secretly writes a letter to all the permanent members of the Security Council, except for Margaret Thatcher, because he doesn t trust her, basically asking them to turn on the United States and not vote for a UN Security Council resolution.
5
SPEAKER_00
Jim Baker says, if this isn t a violation of the Logan Act, which is that you can t moonlight U.S.
5
SPEAKER_00
foreign policy without being in government, I don t know what is.
5
SPEAKER_01
So I was a child when Carter was in, but he s probably the first president I remember seeing on TV.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I guess my thoughts about Carter, if I had to summarize him, was that he was genuinely a very nice and good and principled man, and that maybe he proved the point that
5
SPEAKER_01
You can t really be so nice and principled as the president because you re dealing with adversaries and enemies that are not playing by the same moral code as you are.
5
SPEAKER_01
He seems to be a test case of that.
5
SPEAKER_01
When he leaves office, the Iranian hostage crisis is in full swing.
5
SPEAKER_01
There s people in Tehran that are waiting to be rescued, that he doesn t really know how to navigate that, and the economy is in a fucking nosedive.
5
SPEAKER_01
Is my summation of him in my mind, is that semi-accurate?
5
SPEAKER_00
I think that s right.
5
SPEAKER_00
Carter leaves office just about as unpopular as Herbert Hoover left office.
5
SPEAKER_00
And he spends his final hours as president working to finalize a deal to get the hostages out.
5
SPEAKER_00
And as one more insult to Carter, the Iranians don t sign on the dotted line until after Reagan s been sworn in.
5
SPEAKER_00
And Reagan very graciously sends Carter to go greet the hostages.
5
SPEAKER_00
There s an argument that he did it to just get Carter out of the country so he wasn t a nuisance.
5
SPEAKER_00
But what s interesting about
5
SPEAKER_00
Carter and Trump side by side.
5
SPEAKER_00
If you go back to the founding fathers, they created a republic to be the anti-monarchy.
5
SPEAKER_00
And they were very worried about ex-presidents.
5
SPEAKER_00
So Hamilton in Federalist 72 writes, does it serve the stability of our government to have half a dozen or so men elevated to the highest office in the land wandering around us like discontented ghosts?
5
SPEAKER_00
he legitimately was asking, what the heck do we do with our ex-presidents?
5
SPEAKER_00
And here we are 200 plus years later, and I think we have an answer to Hamilton s question, which is, ex-presidents can either be your greatest ally, or they can be your foe.
5
SPEAKER_00
By the way, Carter was both.
5
SPEAKER_00
Carter was a tremendous ally to George H. W. Bush when they sent him down to Panama to monitor the election and challenge Noriega.
5
SPEAKER_00
He deployed valiantly, consistently with the administration and did a lot of good.
5
SPEAKER_00
But
5
SPEAKER_00
when Bill Clinton sends him to North Korea because he knows it s Carter s lane, instructs him to be a messenger, makes it very clear you don t have any purview over US foreign policy, and Carter says, fine.
5
SPEAKER_00
And then Carter negotiates his own nuclear deal, and Clinton finds out about it on CNN.
5
SPEAKER_00
That s an example of a disenchanted ghost.
5
SPEAKER_00
Again, you look at Donald Trump, who s been a thorn in the side of his successor.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s interesting that we re still grappling with this question of what to do with ex-presidents.
5
SPEAKER_00
We just have examples now
5
SPEAKER_00
of how they function, but the founder s question persists.
5
SPEAKER_01
Carter was the longest living post-presidential chapter of his life.
5
SPEAKER_01
For 42 years, he was out and about after he left office.
5
SPEAKER_00
He s, yeah, we have to say active post-presidency because he s still alive.
5
SPEAKER_00
He went into hospice care almost a year ago.
5
SPEAKER_00
But you re right, though, his active post-presidency ends at 42 years.
5
SPEAKER_00
And what s interesting is you compare and contrast Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush.
5
SPEAKER_00
Both of their popularity has surged in the post-presidency more than just about any other post-president, but they did it in very different ways.
5
SPEAKER_00
Carter did it by being a thorn in the side of his successors, but also being a partner to his successors by doing good work that reminded people of some of his virtues, election monitoring, disease eradication.
5
SPEAKER_00
People like seeing old, gentle presidents kind of endearing.
5
SPEAKER_01
He s always, to me, felt like Mr. Rogers if he was a politician.
5
SPEAKER_01
Like, oh good, Mr. Rogers is there.
5
SPEAKER_01
He s going to worry about these people eating.
5
SPEAKER_00
It s interesting, when I tell people that I wrote a book on seven post-presidents, the first name they always say is, oh, you must have included Carter.
5
SPEAKER_00
Why do you suppose?
5
SPEAKER_00
I think some of it is, if you look at the age of Americans, most Americans today know Carter as a former president and never experienced him as a president.
5
SPEAKER_00
I was born in 1981.
5
SPEAKER_00
I was born in the year Reagan was shot, not the years that Carter was president.
5
SPEAKER_00
So I only know him as a former president.
5
SPEAKER_00
So I think his longevity, the fact that he s not been an invisible post-president,
5
SPEAKER_00
he s the one that everybody immediately thinks about.
5
SPEAKER_00
I think we could all agree that regardless of one s age, you re probably not reflecting a lot on Grover Cleveland and William Howard Taft and even John Quincy Adams, despite his famous last name.
5
SPEAKER_01
Now, you didn t include him for obvious reasons, I guess, but where are we tracking Obama?
5
SPEAKER_01
Thus far, it appears to me that
5
SPEAKER_01
He has launched kind of a media business.
5
SPEAKER_01
He seems to be like a middle ground between Carter and Bush.
5
SPEAKER_01
And by the way, I just want to flag, I admire both qualities.
5
SPEAKER_01
I admire that Bush has such reverence for the office that he has proceeded the way he has.
5
SPEAKER_01
And I admire that Carter got into that game to change the world and he never quit trying to change the world.
5
SPEAKER_01
I see the virtue in both things.
5
SPEAKER_01
It appears that Obama is somewhere in the middle of those two on the spectrum.
5
SPEAKER_00
So far, if I look at Obama s post-presidency, it s very TBD.
5
SPEAKER_00
And I say TBD because we wouldn t be talking about William Howard Taft if he hadn t eventually gotten to serve as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court.
5
SPEAKER_00
So sometimes they arrive at it late.
5
SPEAKER_00
What if Obama goes back to the Senate?
5
SPEAKER_01
Wouldn t that be mind-blowing?
5
SPEAKER_00
Obama left office a pretty young president.
5
SPEAKER_00
He left office still relatively popular, which is unusual.
5
SPEAKER_00
A historic figure with a real following.
5
SPEAKER_00
I would argue that there s been two follies so far.
5
SPEAKER_00
One, I think his post-presidency lacks definition.
5
SPEAKER_00
Maybe not to him, but to those of us sort of voyeuristically looking on, I think there s an element of we don t get it yet.
5
SPEAKER_00
We see the activities, but if you ask me what sense of purpose is he driving towards in the post-presidency, it s hard for me to ascertain at this moment.
6
SPEAKER_01
I think it s kind of an unfair level of expectation we have, too.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s like, by all rights, he should be able to hang in Martha s Vineyard and ride out the rest of his life.
6
SPEAKER_01
He aged himself 16 years within eight years.
6
SPEAKER_01
The dudes deserved it.
6
SPEAKER_01
And yet, I do feel this weird thing of like, he s such a principled, powerful, and effective human that I guess I think he should do stuff.
6
SPEAKER_01
What do you think, Monica?
6
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, I think it s because we love him so much and we miss him.
6
SPEAKER_02
because of the way things have gone.
6
SPEAKER_02
I think we re feeling a little bit desperate.
6
SPEAKER_02
But he is, though.
6
SPEAKER_02
Did you guys see the movie?
6
SPEAKER_02
The Julia Roberts and Mahershala Ali?
6
SPEAKER_00
Is it a doc or a narrative?
6
SPEAKER_02
No, it s a movie on Netflix right now.
6
SPEAKER_02
Leave the World Behind.
6
SPEAKER_02
It s a book, but his company produced the movie.
6
SPEAKER_02
And it s so obviously hitting you over the head with these separations and polarizations are gonna kill us.
6
SPEAKER_02
So he s trying to help and sort of impact us and tell us what to do.
6
SPEAKER_01
Mitigate the divide.
6
SPEAKER_02
Cautionary tales.
6
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_01
That s what I would want him to do.
6
SPEAKER_02
I think he s trying to do it without doing it in the political arena because the political arena is ridiculous right now.
6
SPEAKER_00
Part of the problem is he s sort of straddling the Carter and Bush model.
6
SPEAKER_00
So he s injecting himself enough into the debate to not be able to absolve himself of responsibility and say, I just want to hang out at Martha s Vineyard.
6
SPEAKER_00
But he s not diving into a set of issues in enough of a way to drive that agenda.
6
SPEAKER_00
I accept the fact that there can be something in between Bush completely moving on and expressing himself through painting and Carter never going away.
6
SPEAKER_00
There s every reason to believe Obama might get there.
6
SPEAKER_00
I didn t include him because I don t believe he s there.
6
SPEAKER_01
There s no conclusion for you to really draw yet.
6
SPEAKER_01
But the book does draw conclusions and through these examples
6
SPEAKER_01
There are lessons in managing stress and in transitioning jobs, shifting from someone who lives to work to someone who works to live.
6
SPEAKER_01
Tell me what philosophies you walked away from and which ones you cherry-picked a la carte that you hope to infuse into the sadly second half of your life.
6
SPEAKER_01
We re almost there.
6
SPEAKER_00
I m 42 years old.
6
SPEAKER_00
I found at times myself sort of tortured by writing this book.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s a weird thing for somebody who s 42 to obsessively spend three and a half years digging into the last chapter of life.
6
SPEAKER_00
You re left feeling quite insignificant because you realize these people achieved a level of influence and impact that you ll never achieve.
6
SPEAKER_00
And a lot of them struggled in that final
6
SPEAKER_00
chapter of life.
6
SPEAKER_00
I felt sort of tortured by that.
6
SPEAKER_00
And in the midst of writing this book, I also transitioned jobs.
6
SPEAKER_00
I spent 13 years at Google and Alphabet and then went to Goldman Sachs.
6
SPEAKER_00
And it was a stark contrast.
6
SPEAKER_00
I went from remote work in an unregulated tech company where I had total flexibility to a regulated industry where you pay for coffee, you go into the office five days a week, you wear a suit, you can t just like take a bath at two in the afternoon.
6
SPEAKER_01
Why did you take that job?
6
SPEAKER_00
Because that s where you re at currently.
6
SPEAKER_00
Almost all my friends, plus or minus their 40th birthday, made a decision to either not just change jobs, but change careers or double down on what they re doing.
6
SPEAKER_01
Post-COVID or 40?
6
SPEAKER_01
What s more relevant?
6
SPEAKER_01
I think the combination of the two forced a lot of us to reflect.
6
SPEAKER_01
It turned out perfectly for you to not know.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
6
SPEAKER_00
And it s funny when you re working remotely, you kind of tell yourself this story that I m living the dream.
6
SPEAKER_00
I see my kids all the time.
6
SPEAKER_00
I can be on my own schedule.
6
SPEAKER_00
And only when I started at Goldman did I realize there s a set of rituals that I was missing.
6
SPEAKER_00
The ritual of saying goodbye to my kids and going off to work and then coming back and having them greet me at the door.
6
SPEAKER_00
The ritual of giving a shit what I looked like.
6
SPEAKER_00
and a vacation, not like working where I sleep or working where I eat or working where I go to the bathroom.
6
SPEAKER_00
It gave you a compartmentalized life that maybe you missed.
6
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and so that was sort of interesting.
6
SPEAKER_02
Stay tuned for more Armchair Expert, if you dare.
6
SPEAKER_00
What is your role there?
6
SPEAKER_00
So I m the president of global affairs and I also co-head innovation at the firm.
6
SPEAKER_01
Cause every time I ve emailed you in the last year, you ve been in a dramatically different time zone and we literally can t get on the phone.
6
SPEAKER_01
You ve been in the Middle East for the last three months and you were in Africa at one time.
6
SPEAKER_01
obviously something international is afoot with this job.
6
SPEAKER_00
Part of the reason I went to Goldman Sachs was not an intuitive move.
6
SPEAKER_00
You would think the other direction would be more intuitive.
6
SPEAKER_00
I would always been interested in this relationship between business and geopolitics.
6
SPEAKER_00
Geopolitics has always been my passion.
6
SPEAKER_00
And basically until COVID, unless you were at a tech company or like an energy giant, geopolitics didn t really impact business that much, right?
6
SPEAKER_00
You had a tech competition between the US and China, but it hadn t turned into this very, very complicated
6
SPEAKER_01
It s a really quick give an example that s so on the surface right now is you have Taiwan, who s currently making all of the chips that we all need.
6
SPEAKER_01
And China very much believes Taiwan is part of it.
6
SPEAKER_01
And there is great fear that they are going to invade and claim it.
6
SPEAKER_01
And then because they re holding this tech, Taiwan s going to get a lot of international support, probably including us that otherwise wouldn t be on the table.
6
SPEAKER_01
So like when you look at tech and finance, it s so intertwined.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s so intertwined.
6
SPEAKER_00
intertwine, but it s even bigger than that.
6
SPEAKER_00
So when COVID happens, the geopolitical center of gravity moves from this kind of war on terror framework that we ve been in for 20 years to a competition between the US and China, where the US realizes, oh, my gosh, we re completely relying on China for all types of supply chains, not just tech.
6
SPEAKER_00
China realizes, oh my gosh, it s a huge, huge problem that the US has such a dominant position with the dollar as the reserve currency.
6
SPEAKER_00
And by the way, the two countries are basically locked in a battle for the world s technological infrastructure being built, and they have very different models.
6
SPEAKER_00
So all of a sudden this happens, and every single business in every sector and geography finds them caught in the crossfire of this competition.
6
SPEAKER_00
And all of a sudden, this platform that I m on at Google, which is really about tech, I feel it shrinking.
6
SPEAKER_00
Which is a funny thing to say, because you think about the reach of Google.
6
SPEAKER_00
Google is the best platform in the world to talk about tech.
6
SPEAKER_00
But all these non-tech businesses are getting dragged into the geopolitical dynamics.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I was sort of in search of a platform that was broader.
6
SPEAKER_00
And David Solomon, who s the CEO of Goldman Sachs.
6
SPEAKER_00
And a DJ.
6
SPEAKER_00
and a DJ, we d been friends for 13 years, and we d always get together once a quarter for a meal.
6
SPEAKER_00
And I remember we were each other s first dinner during COVID, where you could go to a restaurant.
6
SPEAKER_00
And he said to me, there s a huge shift with all the businesses that we work with, which is all they want to talk about is geopolitics.
6
SPEAKER_00
And it strikes me that we need a machinery to offer them an opinion about where this is going, but we need to just commercially help them navigate it.
6
SPEAKER_00
He said, I don t know exactly how it s going to work, but come to Goldman Sachs and let s figure this out together.
6
SPEAKER_00
And it s honestly, it s been the most extraordinary year and a half of my career, because how many times in your life do you walk into a new building in a sector you ve never thought much about or worked in where every day you re learning something new and you ve got hundreds of new people that you didn t know exist?
6
SPEAKER_00
The last time that happened was like summer camp, honestly.
6
SPEAKER_00
Right.
6
SPEAKER_01
Or college or something.
6
SPEAKER_00
It s a very unusual and precious experience.
6
SPEAKER_01
But isn t it the most energizing and it slows time down again for you?
6
SPEAKER_01
I find that to be a great gift when you can submerge yourself in something that s completely out of the operating system that s working in the background, your subconscious forcing you to be present and mindful and thoughtful.
6
SPEAKER_01
The context can do that for you.
6
SPEAKER_00
Someone I know you ve had on a number of times, Adam Grant, who s a mutual friend of both of ours.
6
SPEAKER_00
I sort of somehow convinced Adam to be my unofficial therapist during COVID.
6
SPEAKER_00
I couched it as be my coach, which he sort of reluctantly agreed to.
6
SPEAKER_00
It really turned into therapy.
6
SPEAKER_01
The medical board probably prefers that distinction as well.
6
SPEAKER_00
But this was at a point where I felt so overcome by worrying.
6
SPEAKER_00
And because I could sense my platform shrinking, but I couldn t quite define it, I started to get very anxious about what s next.
6
SPEAKER_00
I was living to work, meaning my entire day was taken up by working for some sort of unknown outcome.
6
SPEAKER_00
And Adam encouraged me, he said, have some structured worry time.
6
SPEAKER_00
He s like, what are some things that you habitually do?
6
SPEAKER_00
I said, I love taking baths.
6
SPEAKER_00
I just sit in warm water for hours.
6
SPEAKER_00
I love a bath.
6
SPEAKER_01
You re so unique with oddity collection.
6
SPEAKER_02
I know, you re a very special person.
6
SPEAKER_01
You are.
6
SPEAKER_01
I wanted to say about nine times throughout this, the fucking recall of the names in the day.
6
SPEAKER_01
You re so brilliant.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s bonkers.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s very intimidating.
6
SPEAKER_01
It s like talking to Wikipedia.
6
SPEAKER_02
Also this morning, I was looking you up again and I saw the Goldman Sachs thing and I was like, is this the same?
6
SPEAKER_01
Same Jared.
6
SPEAKER_02
I got nervous.
6
SPEAKER_02
I was like, oh wait, it s a new Jared.
6
SPEAKER_00
Right.
6
SPEAKER_02
Because no one can transition industries like that.
6
SPEAKER_00
Well, what Adam taught me was two things.
6
SPEAKER_00
One, if you re a worrier, you re a worrier.
6
SPEAKER_00
Focus on what you have agency over, which is just give yourself some structured worry time.
6
SPEAKER_00
So when you work out, when you sit in hot water, just decide that s what I m going to worry about.
6
SPEAKER_00
That s what I do.
6
SPEAKER_00
And it gave me a lot of clarity.
6
SPEAKER_00
And what s interesting about this job is
6
SPEAKER_00
I don t quite know how that transition happened mentally for me, but if I reflect on my sort of year and a half at Goldman Sachs, I would say the biggest and most important attribute for me is going from somebody who lives to work to somebody who feels like I work to live.
6
SPEAKER_00
I don t know how long it ll last, but at least at this moment in time, it s the first time in my life where I don t think about what s next.
6
SPEAKER_00
And so people ask me, what do you want to do next?
6
SPEAKER_00
And I say, honestly, I woke up this morning.
6
SPEAKER_00
I feel like I have the coolest job.
6
SPEAKER_00
The people I m interacting with, the things that I m working on, the issues that I m grappling with are the exact ways that I want to spend my time.
6
SPEAKER_00
I go home.
7
SPEAKER_00
I see my incredible three daughters and wife.
7
SPEAKER_00
I go to sleep and what I want to do next is I want to just do that again tomorrow.
7
SPEAKER_00
I would say to the extent that I do worry time now, I worry about that being a fleeting chapter of my life and getting sucked back in to the morass of what I experienced before and maybe
7
SPEAKER_00
We should all just be paying attention to our forecast indicators that when you find yourself working and living to focus on what s next, maybe you need to shake something up in your life.
7
SPEAKER_01
We bring it up nonstop.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, the more you can be obsessed in pursuing process over results, generally the happier you re going to be because the results are completely unknown and out of your control.
7
SPEAKER_01
But the process is largely in your control.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
7
SPEAKER_01
Now, I think there s a pervasive stereotype about finance people.
7
SPEAKER_01
And even Goldman Sachs, I think, is a triggering word for a lot of people post 2008.
7
SPEAKER_01
But I will say we ve talked with Ray Dalio in particular.
7
SPEAKER_01
I think I went into that interview with one sense of what Ray Dalio might be.
7
SPEAKER_01
And then after we met him, I m like, this is one of the most spiritual, thoughtful, generous, creative people.
7
SPEAKER_01
Are you finding that to be the case where, like, your own stereotype of that sector has been challenged?
7
SPEAKER_00
I wouldn t say I had a dogmatic view of finance.
7
SPEAKER_00
I viewed it as something that I would never be interested in.
7
SPEAKER_00
And finance as a topic in the abstract was never something that I gravitated towards.
7
SPEAKER_00
But in context, I find it really interesting.
7
SPEAKER_00
Because if you look at all the geopolitical tension, we re probably in the most unstable geopolitical moment in more than two decades.
7
SPEAKER_00
And if economists are saying we re going to have a soft landing in 2024, the geopolitical landing is going to be a very, very hard one.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yes, there s a war in the Middle East.
7
SPEAKER_00
Yes, there s a war in Europe.
7
SPEAKER_00
But it s the sustained tension between the U.S.
7
SPEAKER_00
and China that s going to get worse for longer.
7
SPEAKER_00
Taiwan gets all the oxygen.
7
SPEAKER_00
I worry more about a conflict in the South China Sea, but I worry that the short term dynamics around supply chains, where we remain overly dependent on China for a number of supply chains that can t be diversified, is what s at greatest risk of shocking the system.
7
SPEAKER_01
I also think people are generally a bit naive about how much the economy plays a role in our overall social stability.
7
SPEAKER_01
When you look at times where unemployment falls below some threshold, that s when revolutions happen.
7
SPEAKER_01
It is such the bedrock we build everything else on, and it can easily be undervalued, but I think it s incredibly important.
7
SPEAKER_00
If you look at every economic anomaly that you see today, it has some geopolitical explanation.
7
SPEAKER_00
If you look at every geopolitical dynamic, it has some economic explanation.
7
SPEAKER_00
And so what s interesting about being at a place like Goldman Sachs, you sit at the nexus of these two things.
7
SPEAKER_00
So I m able to look at the world now through both vantage points.
7
SPEAKER_00
And sometimes I m led to a conclusion about what s happening geopolitically by an early warning signal I see in the economy and vice versa.
7
SPEAKER_01
So is it safe to say your role right now is to be looking at the geopolitical landscape of different regions and or countries and trying to predict how stable that will be for business?
7
SPEAKER_00
box.
7
SPEAKER_00
And then I go and I find all the different pieces of expertise that exists throughout Goldman Sachs that exists with clients of the firm, and I piece them together into some kind of conclusion about what s happening.
7
SPEAKER_00
And then I take that conclusion, I show up to all the businesses that we work with, whether they re sovereign wealth funds, or multinational corporations, or family office, and you realize that the combination of what we know, as Goldman, what they know, because they re seeing a lot, you end up with
7
SPEAKER_00
an enormous amount of expertise in the room.
7
SPEAKER_00
So that s the first part of the job.
7
SPEAKER_00
But then the second part of the job, which is more exciting is given this sort of one plus one equals three dynamic, can we generate a new opportunity together that we re only able to think of because of this combined expertise.
7
SPEAKER_00
So one model is there s a set of mandates that as a business you re chasing.
7
SPEAKER_00
There s another model, which is you roll up your sleeves of the businesses that you re working with, and you come up with a mandate together and you chase it in partnership.
7
SPEAKER_01
How are you in the Middle East currently?
7
SPEAKER_01
You ve been there for the last three months.
7
SPEAKER_01
What lens are you looking at that through?
7
SPEAKER_01
What are you seeing that s really not being talked about?
7
SPEAKER_00
In the last three months, I ve been in just about every country in the Middle East and North Africa.
7
SPEAKER_00
I ve met with the leaders of most of these countries.
7
SPEAKER_00
And the social mediafication of this war is unlike anything that we ve seen before.
7
SPEAKER_00
There s more hours of footage uploaded to all the major platforms than there have been minutes of the entire war.
7
SPEAKER_02
Oh my God.
7
SPEAKER_00
And it s being algorithmically targeted in ways that we ve never seen it targeted before.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s creating an element of identity politics on the ground.
7
SPEAKER_00
But more importantly, it s creating a reservoir of content that I believe is going to risk radicalizing the next generation.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it ll resurface for the next 20 years.
7
SPEAKER_00
And I like to remind people, the 9-11 hijackers, they were radicalized by watching far less footage that had no algorithmic component to it coming out of Bosnia in the 90s.
7
SPEAKER_00
So this is on another scale.
7
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I just listened to a daily about the Houthis and I was really shocked to learn that all the recruitment or a good deal of the recruitment is happening on TikTok.
7
SPEAKER_01
And I guess my knee jerk was how could that be allowed on TikTok?
7
SPEAKER_00
Why aren t there any guardrails?
7
SPEAKER_00
I think the challenge with all of these social media platforms is they re so vast.
7
SPEAKER_00
They are very difficult to regulate.
7
SPEAKER_00
The adoption is at such a scale by young people that you can t put it back in a box.
7
SPEAKER_00
it s become a seemingly intractable problem.
7
SPEAKER_00
I remember, you know, at the height of ISIS, I interviewed a lot of former ISIS fighters.
7
SPEAKER_00
And when I was at Jigsaw, we spent a lot of time in Iraqi prisons interviewing incarcerated ISIS fighters.
7
SPEAKER_00
And the thing that we were always struck by is how much the internet took somebody who was never religious, sometimes they actually were another religion before, how fast
7
SPEAKER_00
technology allows the radicalization process to happen.
7
SPEAKER_00
And that was a very different algorithmic moment.
7
SPEAKER_00
And so the algorithms are just an evolutionary accelerant in the radicalization process.
7
SPEAKER_00
And radicalization takes on a lot of different forms, but the most pervasive attributes of radicalization are, it s the process by which
7
SPEAKER_00
one learns about an issue in a bubble and how that bubbled information reinforces explanations for why they don t like something that is happening in their lives.
7
SPEAKER_00
And it becomes a great diversion.
7
SPEAKER_00
And the more it distracts from a trouble that they have day to day, the more zealous they become about it.
7
SPEAKER_00
It has a self-accelerating quality to it.
7
SPEAKER_00
To me, this is one of the seminal challenges of our generation.
7
SPEAKER_00
And isn t that what Jigsaw was kind of addressing?
7
SPEAKER_00
When I was at Jigsaw, and it s still thriving, but part of the reason I founded it was I believed as you added another 5 billion people to the internet, all the problems of the physical world would spill over online.
7
SPEAKER_00
And the only way to get ahead of that was you had to build technology to address the challenges that were destabilizing the internet.
7
SPEAKER_00
What we found is it s very difficult.
7
SPEAKER_00
If you look at dis and misinformation, one of the biggest challenges with it is all the evidence suggests that once somebody has absorbed the disinformation or received it, you really cannot retroactively change their mind.
7
SPEAKER_01
This is why fact checking doesn t work.
7
SPEAKER_01
Totally.
7
SPEAKER_01
We had a bunch of experts addressing this.
7
SPEAKER_01
It does nothing.
7
SPEAKER_01
You will never out fact somebody.
7
SPEAKER_01
You re not going to hold up a book to them and get them off their position.
7
SPEAKER_00
It s actually even worse than that because all evidence suggests that when you try to interject to tell somebody something s wrong or something s falsified or you should double check your sources, no matter how you slice it and dice it, that interstitial or that injection makes somebody more likely to share the falsity that they ve absorbed.
7
SPEAKER_01
it encourages them and fuels them to be even more virulent.
7
SPEAKER_01
Oh my God, Jared, you re so smart.
7
SPEAKER_01
I ve had 20 minutes to think about our little dust up and I want to say, A, I apologize.
7
SPEAKER_01
I just want to acknowledge, I know why I m so emotionally activated by this particular issue is to me, it s very reminiscent of
7
SPEAKER_01
Let s ignore the truth for our loyalty to a patriarch.
7
SPEAKER_01
Let s lie in service of our loyalty.
7
SPEAKER_01
Feels very dysfunctional family, the alcoholic who we re pretending is not an alcoholic.
7
SPEAKER_01
It s really ripe with childhood stuff for me.
7
SPEAKER_01
The notion that I m saying, no, this isn t the best option.
7
SPEAKER_01
Everyone s saying, no, but you re a Democrat.
7
SPEAKER_01
It has more weight than it should.
7
SPEAKER_01
And that s on me.
7
SPEAKER_01
And obviously I m not promoting anything that would elect the other person that I like even less.
7
SPEAKER_01
It really brings up, let s all just ignore these things that are uncomfortable because we re on this team and that s our dad.
7
SPEAKER_02
I definitely understand that.
7
SPEAKER_02
And I appreciate it.
7
SPEAKER_02
And I will say, and I include myself in this, everyone in this room is extremely privileged.
7
SPEAKER_02
We re so privileged that we get to look at the Maui comment or these little things that are just like fringe.
7
SPEAKER_02
these things that aren t that impactful for what they re doing.
7
SPEAKER_02
And I think that s just because of our privilege.
7
SPEAKER_02
And if you re in it and you re looking at really the state of the country and what s going to happen, it s just so much a no brainer.
7
SPEAKER_02
It scares me that we would be pushing anyone away from that.
7
SPEAKER_02
And if Trump gets elected, we know him at this point.
7
SPEAKER_02
It s not going to be a presidency.
7
SPEAKER_02
It s going to be four years of him getting back at his enemies.
8
SPEAKER_02
It s gonna be a true disaster that we can t have.
8
SPEAKER_02
But yes, I appreciate that.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, something else is happening in my body when that topic comes up.
8
SPEAKER_02
I get it.
8
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_02
It s hard.
8
SPEAKER_01
What do you think about all this, Jared?
8
SPEAKER_00
The country s at a pretty critical inflection point right now.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I think it s very easy to make it about Biden or make it about Trump.
8
SPEAKER_00
I actually think it does a disservice to the inflection point to focus on the people.
8
SPEAKER_00
At the end of the day, 70 million people roughly voted for each of them, and probably some version of the same will happen.
8
SPEAKER_00
Again, this election is not going to be an election where one candidate blows out the other.
8
SPEAKER_00
And so we re missing something
8
SPEAKER_00
systemic that s happening in this country.
8
SPEAKER_00
And we re doing a disservice to it when, again, we focus on two individuals.
8
SPEAKER_00
I m not trying to trivialize.
8
SPEAKER_00
At the end of the day, they re the likely presidential candidates.
8
SPEAKER_01
But you re right, they re the emblem on the hood of the car.
8
SPEAKER_01
The car is the issue, but we re really hyper-focused on just the emblem that sticks out of the end of it.
8
SPEAKER_00
People are really not just upset on both sides, but the polarization is getting much, much worse on both sides.
8
SPEAKER_00
And look, if you had asked me in 2019, and maybe you did, I would say we ve been through polarized moments before.
8
SPEAKER_00
What s unique, though, is we ve never been through such a polarized moment.
8
SPEAKER_00
in an era of not just social media but hyper-algorithmic targeting within these social media platforms.
8
SPEAKER_00
It s uncharted territory because it s adding machinery into the mix that s guiding a lot of this polarization.
8
SPEAKER_01
You re right.
8
SPEAKER_01
And even in my lifetime, I ve seen these little swells of this issue or that that is divisive.
8
SPEAKER_01
But what is great is humans fatigue.
8
SPEAKER_01
And I think if there wasn t this intervention with the tech, naturally, I think it would dissipate a bit.
8
SPEAKER_01
I think we re all exhausted from it.
8
SPEAKER_01
But we have this thing that s smarter than us that s hacking a region of our brain that is the cocaine that can keep you up past 24 hours.
8
SPEAKER_01
So it s like we have fatigue, but we have this dopamine machine in our hand that can get us back online and make us rally for another two hours.
8
SPEAKER_00
This idea of mental isolationism, I think it just doesn t work for the same reason that geopolitical isolationism doesn t work in an era of globalization.
8
SPEAKER_00
Every time I talk to people, the words I hear are, I m overwhelmed, I want to opt out, and it s just not pragmatic and it s not realistic.
8
SPEAKER_00
That being said, I do think that there s interjections that we have to make in our own lives.
8
SPEAKER_00
I had sort of a big transformative moment over New Year s, I m not sure what triggered it, where I just decided that it s not just that I m on my devices all the time, it s like a real addiction.
8
SPEAKER_00
I feel it when I don t have my phone, I am reaching for something.
8
SPEAKER_01
You re in a dopamine deficit and you re uncomfortable like you re an addict.
8
SPEAKER_00
I m certainly not trying to trivialize addiction by drawing a false parallel, but I think we are all addicted to our devices.
8
SPEAKER_00
And what I find is some of the solutions are actually very simple.
8
SPEAKER_00
Like I come home now.
8
SPEAKER_00
And there is no reason for me to be on my phone from the time I wake up to the time I drop my kids off at school or from the time I get home in the two hours while the kids are awake before they go to bed.
8
SPEAKER_00
And I find it s actually not enough to put it out of reach.
8
SPEAKER_00
So my thing is I put it in my coat pocket, in a closet, in a different room where I close the door.
8
SPEAKER_00
I ll tell you the biggest impact that I felt is I feel more present, but it actually changes the behavior of my kids as well if they don t see me addicted to it.
8
SPEAKER_01
Well, they re not competing also for your attention, which has its own set of outcomes.
8
SPEAKER_00
What s hard is then I go on a trip when I m away from my family and I m on my phone the whole time and I come back just like heavily addicted to it again.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_01
Well, Jared, you re incredible.
8
SPEAKER_01
I think you ve absorbed Eric Schmidt s most impossible landscape of knowledge, and even more impressive than last time.
8
SPEAKER_01
So I hope you ll come back.
8
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, thanks for coming.
8
SPEAKER_00
You re such a good guy.
8
SPEAKER_00
You re such a fucking good guy.
8
SPEAKER_01
Of course you and Adam are friends.
8
SPEAKER_01
All right, well, be well.
8
SPEAKER_01
I want everyone to read Life After Power.
8
SPEAKER_01
It s incredible.
8
SPEAKER_01
There s beautiful lessons to take away from all these different folks who have, as you said,
8
SPEAKER_01
made the biggest transitions imaginable.
8
SPEAKER_01
So thank you and good luck with the book and we ll see you again soon.
8
SPEAKER_01
Thanks guys.
8
SPEAKER_01
Stay tuned to hear Miss Monica correct all the facts that were wrong.
8
SPEAKER_01
It s okay though, we all make mistakes.
8
SPEAKER_01
Jared Cohen fact check.
8
SPEAKER_02
Jared.
8
SPEAKER_01
I think we need to disclose for full transparency to the listeners, the cherries.
8
SPEAKER_01
The cherries.
8
SPEAKER_01
That we just went through an incredible ride.
8
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, and you re gonna go through the same ride.
8
SPEAKER_01
I m gonna go through the same.
8
SPEAKER_02
No, no, the cherries.
8
SPEAKER_01
Oh, should they choose to listen to the cult episode of Armchair Anonymous?
8
SPEAKER_01
That was heavy.
8
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, it was heavy.
8
SPEAKER_01
What s your energy out of 10 right now?
8
SPEAKER_02
It s low.
8
SPEAKER_01
Could you give it a number?
8
SPEAKER_02
Well, I m on malaria pills.
8
SPEAKER_01
Do you feel yours at all?
8
SPEAKER_01
Because I don t.
8
SPEAKER_02
I feel a little funny, just a little bit though.
8
SPEAKER_02
Not like crazy.
8
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
8
SPEAKER_02
Which is good.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
8
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, it s just hearing a bunch of stories of people being taken advantage of is hard.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yes, it is, it is.
8
SPEAKER_02
It s so sad.
8
SPEAKER_02
The worst thing you can do is take advantage of a vulnerable person.
8
SPEAKER_01
Especially the ones that were born into these ones where it s like, well, to leave it is to leave every single person you ve ever known or loved in your life.
8
SPEAKER_02
Exactly.
8
SPEAKER_02
I mean, it s all bad.
8
SPEAKER_02
It s if you re born in, you re losing everything.
8
SPEAKER_02
If you were recruited in, it s because you re vulnerable to that and you got preyed upon.
8
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_01
Which is also heartbreaking.
8
SPEAKER_02
Horrifying.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_02
Rough, rough, rough.
8
SPEAKER_02
But that s coming.
8
SPEAKER_02
That s coming for you.
8
SPEAKER_01
That s coming your way.
8
SPEAKER_01
You want to feel, maybe don t listen.
8
SPEAKER_02
No, they should actually, I think this one is,
8
SPEAKER_01
Should be mandatory?
8
SPEAKER_02
Required listening.
8
SPEAKER_01
Oh wow, we ve never done that.
8
SPEAKER_02
Then I m gonna.
8
SPEAKER_01
Okay, so use it or lose it?
8
SPEAKER_02
Is it a lizard?
8
SPEAKER_01
What s RL?
8
SPEAKER_02
Required listening.
8
SPEAKER_01
Oh, required listening.
8
SPEAKER_02
We re doing something a little different today.
8
SPEAKER_01
We are.
8
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, we re gonna do a couple quickies.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, some facties on our good friend, Jared Cohen.
8
SPEAKER_02
Yes, who we love.
8
SPEAKER_01
What a good boy.
8
SPEAKER_01
Brilliant.
8
SPEAKER_01
Total good boy club.
8
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, best boy, you mean.
8
SPEAKER_01
Best boy.
8
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, and he is so smart.
8
SPEAKER_01
He s so smart, I know.
8
SPEAKER_02
He s crazy.
8
SPEAKER_01
We talk to so many people, it really humbles you.
8
SPEAKER_01
Or it humbles me.
8
SPEAKER_01
My God, all the names and the dates and the this and the that, wow.
8
SPEAKER_02
I know, pretty impressive.
8
SPEAKER_02
So we re gonna do a little bit of facts and then we re gonna play you our segments.
8
SPEAKER_02
There s four of them, four episodes of the Puzzler Podcast.
8
SPEAKER_02
AJ Jacobs, who we ve had on this show before.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
8
SPEAKER_02
Who we loved.
8
SPEAKER_01
Very fun episode with him on.
8
SPEAKER_02
Yes, where we did puzzles.
8
SPEAKER_01
So many puzzles.
8
SPEAKER_02
Oh, it was great.
8
SPEAKER_02
And now he has a podcast where he does puzzles.
8
SPEAKER_02
He has people on to do them, and so we did that.
8
SPEAKER_01
We were guests.
8
SPEAKER_02
And this week, he did a Monica and Dax week.
8
SPEAKER_01
Week, like Fargo.
8
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_01
We got our own week like we were a great television show.
8
SPEAKER_02
Exactly, and they re quick little episodes, and so we re just gonna play them for you after this.
8
SPEAKER_02
Maybe you ll enjoy it.
8
SPEAKER_01
And then go listen to AJ s podcast.
8
SPEAKER_01
For more puzzles.
8
SPEAKER_01
Follow it, yeah.
8
SPEAKER_01
They re very short and fun.
8
SPEAKER_01
They re a little blast.
8
SPEAKER_01
I think a huge percentage of people do these different New York Times daily.
8
SPEAKER_01
Wordle.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, Wordle s one.
8
SPEAKER_01
There s the math one.
8
SPEAKER_01
There s, you know.
8
SPEAKER_02
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_01
I think people like little pops of.
8
SPEAKER_02
Sure.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_02
Intellectual stimuli.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_02
Okay, so a few facts for Jared.
8
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
8
SPEAKER_02
One, and this is the most important one.
8
SPEAKER_02
What s the brand of the presidential limo that Kennedy was assassinated in?
8
SPEAKER_02
Your guess was a 64 Lincoln Continental.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
8
SPEAKER_02
And it s a 61 Lincoln Continental.
8
SPEAKER_01
Ah, okay.
8
SPEAKER_02
So you were close.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, three years off.
8
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, but close.
8
SPEAKER_01
I can t even say I knew with any certainty what really, what year I thought it was, other than I think he was killed in 64.
8
SPEAKER_01
What year did he get assassinated?
8
SPEAKER_01
Maybe it was 63.
8
SPEAKER_01
So I was kind of assuming it was like a current model.
8
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, 63.
8
SPEAKER_01
November.
8
63.
8
SPEAKER_01
Okay, so that thing had been around for a couple of years.
8
SPEAKER_01
Probably takes a year to build one of those things, though.
8
SPEAKER_01
Sure.
8
SPEAKER_01
All the bulletproof stuff.
8
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, yeah.
8
SPEAKER_01
Convertible.
8
SPEAKER_01
Not a great idea.
8
SPEAKER_01
I don t know that there s been convertibles since post.
8
SPEAKER_02
I don t think they should ever do that.
8
SPEAKER_01
Well, have you noticed what the Pope rides around in the Pope mobile?
8
SPEAKER_01
He s got like a huge glass roof, so you can still, so it s like he s in a convertible, but it s bulletproof.
8
SPEAKER_02
So people can see him.
8
SPEAKER_01
I can see him.
8
SPEAKER_02
You know, one time I was walking down the street home from here and the president drove by.
8
SPEAKER_01
in that monstrous car.
8
SPEAKER_02
But I mean, it was kind of hard to, well, which is on purpose, I believe.
8
SPEAKER_02
I didn t know what car he was in.
8
SPEAKER_01
Was there a bunch of motorcycle cops?
8
SPEAKER_02
I mean, it was- Hundreds.
8
SPEAKER_02
hundreds of cars in succession, same type of car, and then motorcycles and all these things.
8
SPEAKER_02
And it was him, and then he went to Little Dom s.
8
SPEAKER_01
No way.
8
SPEAKER_02
I m pretty sure.
8
SPEAKER_02
I find that really hard to believe.
8
SPEAKER_02
I really think so, I really, really think so.
8
SPEAKER_01
Was it Donald Trump?
8
SPEAKER_02
No, Biden.
8
SPEAKER_01
They call that, he drives around in a Cadillac limousine that s like all the American presidents, or the last bunch.
8
SPEAKER_01
I know this from working at General Motors because it s part of the fleet program.
8
SPEAKER_01
So I believe he drives around on a, in a Cadillac limousine, but it s on a suburban chassis so that it can withstand a ton of
9
SPEAKER_00
weight because that thing weighs so much because of all the armor and stuff.
9
SPEAKER_00
But it has a fun name.
9
SPEAKER_00
Will you find out what the fun name of the president s limousine is?
9
SPEAKER_00
Not like, it s like the monster or the something.
9
SPEAKER_00
The beast.
9
SPEAKER_00
The beast.
9
SPEAKER_01
Cool.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_00
And it looks preposterous.
9
SPEAKER_00
It s a Cadillac limousine, but it s very, the wheels are huge.
9
SPEAKER_00
It looks like a monster truck.
9
SPEAKER_01
Wow.
9
SPEAKER_01
I don t remember that part.
9
SPEAKER_01
I just, I just saw him.
9
SPEAKER_01
And then I was at Little Dom s after that.
9
SPEAKER_01
And he- You found his wallet?
9
SPEAKER_00
He was there.
9
SPEAKER_01
He was there.
9
SPEAKER_01
There s no way they were letting people- He stayed in the car, but someone came out and got his food.
9
SPEAKER_00
Oh, okay.
9
SPEAKER_00
I believe that.
9
SPEAKER_00
I didn t believe he sat at a table and ate at Lil Dom s.
9
SPEAKER_00
They d have to shut down the entire restaurant and they would have had to do background checks on others.
9
SPEAKER_01
No, he would have been like, she s cool.
9
SPEAKER_01
I know her.
9
SPEAKER_01
She s good.
9
SPEAKER_00
I ve heard her show.
9
SPEAKER_01
She s great.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
So anyway, that was exciting once.
9
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
9
SPEAKER_01
What does PEPFAR stand for?
9
SPEAKER_01
The U.S.
9
SPEAKER_01
President s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.
9
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
9
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
9
SPEAKER_01
Was George H.W.
9
SPEAKER_01
Bush the head of the CIA?
9
SPEAKER_01
Yes, he was.
9
SPEAKER_01
He was a director, yep.
9
SPEAKER_00
Under Reagan?
9
SPEAKER_01
Ford brought Bush back to Washington to become the Director of Central Intelligence under Ronald Reagan.
9
SPEAKER_01
Wait, he served as a 43rd Vice President, Vice President under Reagan.
9
SPEAKER_00
Oh right, he was his Vice President.
9
SPEAKER_00
He can t be the Director of Central Intelligence and the Vice President.
9
SPEAKER_00
Or if he has to investigate himself.
9
SPEAKER_01
What about also he was the president?
9
SPEAKER_00
He was also the president, he s had a lot of jobs.
9
SPEAKER_00
Wow.
9
SPEAKER_01
Remember, wasn t it him who s like, nurse gown was open, you saw his butt?
9
SPEAKER_01
I hated that.
9
SPEAKER_01
Oh, did that happen?
9
SPEAKER_01
I think so.
9
SPEAKER_01
I hope I didn t make that up.
9
SPEAKER_00
When would he have been in a nurse gown in front of cameras?
9
SPEAKER_00
For Halloween?
9
SPEAKER_00
Did he go as a patient?
9
SPEAKER_01
George H.W.
9
SPEAKER_01
Bush.
9
SPEAKER_00
Did he go as a patient on Halloween?
9
SPEAKER_01
No, he s old.
9
SPEAKER_00
I know, but why would there have been cameras in the hospital?
9
SPEAKER_01
I m gonna look up George H.W.
9
SPEAKER_01
Bush butt.
9
SPEAKER_00
Or hospital gown too, sounds nice.
9
SPEAKER_01
Okay, I think I made it up.
9
SPEAKER_00
Maybe it was on a cartoon.
9
SPEAKER_00
Maybe you saw it on the Simpsons, I could see them doing it.
9
SPEAKER_01
It s never really been my show, but.
9
SPEAKER_00
It s impossible not to catch some episodes though, right?
9
SPEAKER_01
Maybe it was somebody, I know it was somebody, and I remember thinking, this is a disgrace.
9
SPEAKER_01
Like, they don t need to do this.
9
SPEAKER_01
Anyway, you mentioned that Rami said that the Arabic word for human is forgetful.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yes, the Arabic word for human being is insan, which is derived from the word nasyan, which means to forget.
9
SPEAKER_00
And I want- That s a good one.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, I know, I like that.
9
SPEAKER_01
Now, D. Phil versus PhD.
9
SPEAKER_00
Right, that s what they do in England.
9
SPEAKER_01
In England, they call it a defil.
9
SPEAKER_01
You hate that?
9
SPEAKER_00
Sure, it s just one more thing to learn, I guess.
9
SPEAKER_00
Can t we all just call it the same thing?
9
SPEAKER_01
Well, I mean, really, we, exactly.
9
SPEAKER_01
Then we re the ones that changed it.
9
SPEAKER_00
And we just flipped it?
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, because PhD is...
9
SPEAKER_00
DPH.
9
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, DPhil is a Doctor of Philosophy and PhD is a Doctor of Philosophy, but we just did, we messed up all the, we messed up all the letters.
9
SPEAKER_01
Why d we do that?
9
SPEAKER_01
Sure, be unique.
9
SPEAKER_01
Why d we put philosophy first?
9
SPEAKER_00
Well, cause they were the parents and we were the kids and we wanted to have our own thing, yeah.
9
SPEAKER_00
It s an age old story, really, liberal arts education.
9
SPEAKER_00
Think about it.
9
SPEAKER_01
Oh, one thing I really wanted to bring up.
9
SPEAKER_01
He says that William Taft s wife, it sounded like he said Helen Mirren.
9
SPEAKER_00
Oh, sure.
9
SPEAKER_01
And it s Helen Heron, which, so he said Helen Heron, but if you don t know Helen Heron, you heard that as Helen Mirren.
9
SPEAKER_00
And you re familiar with the actor, Helen Mirren.
9
SPEAKER_01
Wonderful actress, wonderful, wonderful actress.
9
SPEAKER_00
Celebrated and cherished actor.
9
SPEAKER_01
Also someone, if she asked for your dick mold.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
Also someone, maybe Kristen would say yes, maybe.
9
SPEAKER_00
I totally agree, yeah.
9
SPEAKER_01
If you don t know what we re talking about, listen to the Bradley Cooper fact check.
9
SPEAKER_00
Right, this one might be real crazy conversation to just hop into.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, I think Kristen would be fine with that penis mold to Helen Mirren.
9
SPEAKER_01
Those are my facts, obviously Jared s full of facts, that s all he does is talk about facts.
9
SPEAKER_00
He s a fact machine.
9
SPEAKER_01
He is, but I trust him.
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, he s a trusted brand.
9
SPEAKER_01
He s a very trusted brand.
9
SPEAKER_00
I guess I have one update about whiskey.
9
SPEAKER_00
Oh, okay.
9
SPEAKER_00
Because when I told the girls that I had told the whole story about whiskey on the podcast, they said, and then you told them about him getting lost.
9
SPEAKER_00
And I was like, no, because that happened the day after we recorded.
9
SPEAKER_00
So same week, rough week for Whiskers.
9
SPEAKER_00
Same panic, too.
9
SPEAKER_00
All of a sudden, no one knows where Whiskey s at.
9
SPEAKER_00
And this is at a point where we have eight house guests, and then there s us four.
9
SPEAKER_00
So we have three families staying at the house, and then us four.
9
SPEAKER_00
And everyone is deployed to find Whiskey.
9
SPEAKER_00
I sit it out.
9
SPEAKER_00
I m like, someone needs to stay at the house.
9
SPEAKER_00
And like, if he just walks into a bedroom, I can.
9
SPEAKER_01
Sure.
9
SPEAKER_00
This is going on for a while.
9
SPEAKER_00
Like an hour?
9
SPEAKER_00
People are in cars.
9
SPEAKER_00
Kids are crying.
9
SPEAKER_00
If people are, you know, he s gotten eaten by a coyote, he s been hit by a car.
9
SPEAKER_01
What time of day is this?
9
SPEAKER_00
This is like midday on a Sunday.
9
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
9
SPEAKER_00
Everyone s on high alert and looking.
9
SPEAKER_00
There s a lot of little kids staying at the house.
9
SPEAKER_00
All these little girls are really upset that the dog they just met has probably been eaten by a coyote.
9
SPEAKER_00
So again, it s just pandemonium.
9
SPEAKER_00
Sure.
9
SPEAKER_00
Everyone s unhinged.
9
SPEAKER_00
And then at some point after about an hour of this, someone,
9
SPEAKER_00
Here s barking from the yard.
9
SPEAKER_00
So there s a, we have a dog run.
9
SPEAKER_00
I don t know how someone would get in trouble in this dog run.
9
SPEAKER_00
You let them out the back door of the house and it s totally fenced in and it s like fake grass so that they can pee on it and stuff and doesn t ruin it.
9
SPEAKER_00
Well, also there s like a trench where the electrical stuff and everything has been buried and there s a drop.
9
SPEAKER_00
So there s wood that covers that.
9
SPEAKER_00
So no one falls into that hole.
9
SPEAKER_00
Somehow whiskey got himself in there and it s just been in a box.
9
SPEAKER_01
With the clothes?
9
SPEAKER_00
Yes, he s under a wood.
9
SPEAKER_00
He s like somehow, he s gotten himself somewhere he can t get out of, and he s under a sheet of plywood.
9
SPEAKER_01
Oh my God.
9
SPEAKER_00
Barking, and someone hears his faint bark.
9
SPEAKER_01
Oh.
9
SPEAKER_01
He s with all those wires?
9
SPEAKER_00
The tricks will not end.
9
SPEAKER_00
The wires, well no, there s nothing exposed down there.
9
SPEAKER_01
Oh, oh, oh.
9
SPEAKER_00
It s like an access box in case someone has to get into there.
9
SPEAKER_01
How did he get there?
9
SPEAKER_00
I guess he was able to, there was a big enough gap that he could get himself down in there and then he couldn t get out.
9
SPEAKER_00
But he s just, he s under a pile of wood in the dog run.
9
SPEAKER_01
So you got him out?
9
SPEAKER_00
Yes.
9
SPEAKER_00
Got him out.
9
SPEAKER_01
But you didn t cry like you cried when Matt got under the pool?
9
SPEAKER_00
No, because again, we re like hot on the heels of Valentine s Day, and I m like, this dog won t quit.
9
SPEAKER_00
It s like every couple days now, the whole family s going to be in a tizzy.
9
SPEAKER_00
And then, oh, I just want to add too, because I had a fair amount of commenters say like, why don t you just get him doggy steps to get up on the bed?
9
SPEAKER_00
And guess what?
9
SPEAKER_00
I did that.
9
SPEAKER_00
I did that a year ago because it was already annoying a year ago back when it was still much better than it is now.
9
SPEAKER_00
get him doggy steps, they re soft, they re inviting, they re nice, put food on every layer of it.
9
SPEAKER_00
He won t do it.
9
SPEAKER_00
He will not walk up steps.
9
SPEAKER_01
And let s remind people, he has three legs.
9
SPEAKER_00
I know, and he does, but he somehow gets up the steps in the house to the second floor when he wants to just fine.
9
SPEAKER_00
He s an obstinate little bastard.
9
SPEAKER_00
He d rather be lifted than walk up those steps.
9
SPEAKER_00
Of course, who wouldn t?
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and he knows if he sits.
9
SPEAKER_01
Except he doesn t also wanna be picked up.
9
SPEAKER_00
He doesn t want to be picked up and he doesn t want to stay on the bed anymore.
9
SPEAKER_00
Um, yeah, last night trying to watch the final episode of Mr. And Mrs. Smith.
9
SPEAKER_00
Other update.
9
SPEAKER_00
What an incredible finale.
9
SPEAKER_00
I m like,
9
SPEAKER_00
I m so mad we re gonna have to wait probably two years or something for the next installment.
9
SPEAKER_01
I mean, they left it up to like, they could or couldn t.
9
SPEAKER_01
They don t have to do another, but I want them to.
9
SPEAKER_00
They must do another.
9
SPEAKER_00
I know.
9
SPEAKER_01
Okay, so he is wreaking havoc.
9
SPEAKER_00
And again, it was a power struggle.
9
SPEAKER_00
So I had put him on the bed, he jumped off, put him on the bed.
9
SPEAKER_00
I had done it four times in the middle of this episode.
9
SPEAKER_00
And then when he came the fifth time back and started barking, I was just looking at him and absolutely not.
9
SPEAKER_00
I m not picking you up.
9
SPEAKER_00
You just, you guys stayed on there.
9
SPEAKER_00
He like does this weird, like, I think they re called Pat grunts when the girls do it.
9
SPEAKER_00
It s like,
9
SPEAKER_01
Cat grunts?
9
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, he s like making this weird noise.
9
SPEAKER_00
And he s barking and I look at him and I m like, no, I m not gonna pick you up.
9
SPEAKER_00
He won t stay up here.
9
SPEAKER_00
This is madness.
9
SPEAKER_00
He s very distracted during most of the finale.
9
SPEAKER_00
And then finally, you know, Kristen took him down to bed, thank God.
9
SPEAKER_00
The problem is we have people staying in the room where his cage is, in his little box that he sleeps in his house.
9
SPEAKER_00
So I don t know if we can put him.
9
SPEAKER_01
Why don t you move the house to the main?
10
SPEAKER_03
No, to the main area downstairs.
10
SPEAKER_03
His thing is in the living room.
10
SPEAKER_00
Because he ll bark in there.
10
SPEAKER_00
So we have figured out that he likes being in the one.
10
SPEAKER_03
I mean, I will say I do feel like you guys have, like he.
10
SPEAKER_00
I know, I had a lot of people like, you need Caesar and you need a good trainer.
10
SPEAKER_03
No, not Caesar, I don t mean that.
10
SPEAKER_00
I m like, I don t have time to train this dog.
10
SPEAKER_00
I already have two kids and several full-time jobs.
10
SPEAKER_00
I don t have time to train this dog.
10
SPEAKER_03
Right, you don t.
10
SPEAKER_00
And I think he s beyond training, if I m being honest.
10
SPEAKER_03
But I just mean like, I don t think he s not, he s had a trainer and stuff.
10
SPEAKER_03
It s just, he knows what he can get away with and he does, like any animal.
10
SPEAKER_00
Like any person.
10
SPEAKER_03
I mean, I think if you just put him in his box and just let him whine and whine and whine, like eventually he ll stop.
10
SPEAKER_00
Well, you would think, but no, he doesn t stop.
10
SPEAKER_00
That s what s incredible.
10
SPEAKER_00
He has such stick to it.
10
SPEAKER_00
And so you got to applaud it.
10
SPEAKER_00
You have to let it go maybe for five days, wake up and then they re all upset.
10
SPEAKER_00
Why is whiskey barking?
10
SPEAKER_00
And then they re, they re not asleep.
10
SPEAKER_00
Cause definitely we ve tried to let them, as we d say, cry it out, right?
10
SPEAKER_03
Do you feel he s running the house?
10
SPEAKER_03
This is a codependent enabling.
10
SPEAKER_00
That s exactly what I told him when I looked at him.
10
SPEAKER_00
I said, I can t be codependent and lift you up anymore because you re upset, you re down there.
10
SPEAKER_00
It s just ruining my good time.
10
SPEAKER_00
And then you re looking at him and you re like, he doesn t understand any of this.
10
SPEAKER_00
He doesn t know how to think.
10
SPEAKER_03
That s why you gotta get him out of the room and close the door.
10
SPEAKER_00
I know, but then he ll just bark.
10
SPEAKER_00
He ll bark forever.
10
SPEAKER_00
It s crazy.
10
SPEAKER_00
Then I m like, well, let s put him in the dog run in this safe cage and then can t do that.
10
SPEAKER_00
I mean, yeah.
10
SPEAKER_00
Well, that s a whiskey update.
10
SPEAKER_03
Okay.
10
SPEAKER_00
I m sure there s more to come.
10
SPEAKER_03
Great.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_00
God knows what he ll get himself lodged in a tree or something or yeah.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
10
SPEAKER_03
Well,
10
SPEAKER_00
But watch Mr. and Mrs. Smith, it s phenomenal.
10
SPEAKER_03
Oh, it s so good.
10
SPEAKER_03
It s so good.
10
SPEAKER_03
Do that, listen to our puzzles.
10
SPEAKER_00
Listen to puzzles.
10
SPEAKER_00
Enjoy that.
10
SPEAKER_00
Enjoy your puzzles.
10
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, and try to play along.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, yes.
10
SPEAKER_03
Although we were pretty quick.
10
SPEAKER_00
We didn t do too shabby, if I m being honest.
10
SPEAKER_00
You shined in particular.
10
SPEAKER_03
You too.
10
SPEAKER_00
Well, good job.
10
SPEAKER_00
I was proud to have you as my partner.
10
SPEAKER_03
Me too, I always am.
10
SPEAKER_00
All right, love you.
10
SPEAKER_03
Love you.
10
SPEAKER_01
Hello Puzzlers!
10
SPEAKER_01
Welcome to the Puzzler Podcast, the free perfume spritz at your puzzle department store.
10
SPEAKER_01
I am your host, AJ Jacobs, and I am with today s guests, the amazing Dax Shepard and Monica Padman, hosts of Armchair Expert and much, much more.
10
SPEAKER_01
Welcome, Dax and Monica.
10
SPEAKER_00
Oh, we re delighted to be back.
10
SPEAKER_00
Thank you for having us.
10
SPEAKER_00
Can we be on every day?
10
SPEAKER_00
Absolutely.
10
SPEAKER_03
I m so sad you re not on this network doing this.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s a shame.
10
SPEAKER_00
This will be a hostile takeover and a game of puzzles.
10
SPEAKER_01
We are ready to be taken over.
10
SPEAKER_01
We will be honored.
10
SPEAKER_01
Are you kidding?
10
SPEAKER_01
Well, today, speaking of podcasts, today s puzzle is called armchair export.
10
SPEAKER_01
That s not an E, that s an O, because we are very tricky here at the Puzzler.
10
SPEAKER_01
So the idea is that all the answers in this puzzle are podcasts that you know and love, but we have changed one letter.
10
SPEAKER_01
Oh cool!
10
SPEAKER_01
So I m going to describe the podcast.
10
SPEAKER_01
So for instance, I kind of gave it away, but if this were a podcast from Dax Shepard and Monica Padman about shipping upholstered seats overseas, that would be
10
SPEAKER_04
Armchair export.
10
SPEAKER_00
Armchair export.
10
SPEAKER_00
Okay, I see how this works.
10
SPEAKER_00
I m glad you gave us the example.
10
SPEAKER_03
Me too.
10
SPEAKER_00
I thought you were just going to do one letter and see if we knew.
10
SPEAKER_00
I was like, it ll be obvious.
10
SPEAKER_00
But then I got scared that we ll expose ourselves as not knowing as much about our industry as we should.
10
SPEAKER_03
This is true.
10
SPEAKER_00
Okay.
10
SPEAKER_01
Well, these are relatively big ones.
10
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
10
SPEAKER_01
But I m here for hints too.
10
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
10
SPEAKER_03
Oh yeah.
10
SPEAKER_01
Well, I ll give you one more example.
10
SPEAKER_01
If the clue was a podcast about a guy who gulps a lot of drinks very quickly, and this was hosted by A.J.
10
SPEAKER_01
Jacobs and is featuring guests Dax Shepard and Monica Padman.
10
SPEAKER_03
Okay, the chuggler pod.
10
SPEAKER_00
The guzzler.
10
SPEAKER_03
The guzzler.
10
SPEAKER_03
Oh, wouldn t it have been the chuggler?
10
SPEAKER_00
Well, if that were a word, yeah.
10
SPEAKER_00
Chugging!
10
SPEAKER_00
And you changed all the Zs to Gs.
10
SPEAKER_03
Chugging is a thing.
10
SPEAKER_00
Juggler, the juggler.
10
SPEAKER_03
It s just one letter change?
10
SPEAKER_03
Six letters, yeah.
10
SPEAKER_01
Just one letter, right.
10
SPEAKER_01
Good thing we practiced.
10
SPEAKER_01
We could do another puzzle where you change three letters and juggler would be nailing it.
10
SPEAKER_01
Say any word you want, really.
10
SPEAKER_01
It rhymes.
10
SPEAKER_01
All right, are you ready?
10
SPEAKER_03
Yes.
10
SPEAKER_01
This is a podcast from the New York Times.
10
SPEAKER_01
It s about the latest news in small ornamental lace mats.
10
SPEAKER_01
Little lacy mats.
10
SPEAKER_03
The doily.
10
SPEAKER_01
The doily.
10
SPEAKER_01
The doily.
10
SPEAKER_01
Who wouldn t listen to that?
10
SPEAKER_00
Grandmas would unite around that one.
10
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, they would.
10
SPEAKER_01
Uh, this is a podcast about a former late night talk show host who makes meals for his hungry pals.
10
SPEAKER_00
Um, yeah, Conan, who needs a friend, but is it called, but he s making meals.
10
SPEAKER_01
It s kind of, you got it.
10
SPEAKER_01
You re there.
10
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
10
SPEAKER_01
Conan.
10
SPEAKER_01
Wait, what is the real one?
10
SPEAKER_00
That s the question we re trying to first start with.
10
SPEAKER_00
We know it s Conan and he wants a friend, but we re not sure what the perfect name is.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yes, it s not want.
10
SPEAKER_01
He does more than want.
10
SPEAKER_03
He needs a friend.
10
SPEAKER_00
He needs a friend.
10
SPEAKER_00
So Conan Needs a Friend is a real name.
10
SPEAKER_00
And then the clue was a show about a guy who makes food for friends.
10
SPEAKER_00
Food.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, exactly.
10
SPEAKER_03
So he cooks for friends or he... Needs like K and... Can you add a K?
10
SPEAKER_01
Oh, that s good.
10
SPEAKER_01
I like that.
10
SPEAKER_01
I m gonna give you credit.
10
SPEAKER_01
That is not it, but I really like that.
10
SPEAKER_01
Also, that could be a massage show.
10
SPEAKER_01
Like, he needs a friend.
10
SPEAKER_01
Yes, you re right.
10
SPEAKER_01
He gets knots out of him.
10
SPEAKER_02
Let s try to get it, though, correctly.
10
SPEAKER_01
Conan after dark.
10
SPEAKER_01
Conan needs a friend.
10
SPEAKER_01
You re thinking too clever.
10
SPEAKER_01
This is just like if you re giving someone something to eat, you are.
10
SPEAKER_03
Oh, Conan Feeds a Friend!
10
SPEAKER_01
Of course, Monica, I was right there.
10
SPEAKER_01
Conan Feeds a Friend.
10
SPEAKER_01
Nicely done, but I prefer the Needs a Friend.
10
SPEAKER_01
All right, we got two more.
10
SPEAKER_01
This podcast features first person true stories told from the point of view of a green citrus fruit.
10
SPEAKER_01
Wine.
10
SPEAKER_01
It s from NPR.
10
SPEAKER_01
They re often like very, almost twee stories,
10
SPEAKER_03
It s This American Life.
10
SPEAKER_00
I made a face.
10
SPEAKER_00
And then we got a lime in there.
10
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, it s a lime.
10
SPEAKER_03
This American... Lime.
10
SPEAKER_00
This American Lime.
10
SPEAKER_01
This American Lime.
10
SPEAKER_01
Another potential hit.
10
SPEAKER_01
Wow.
10
SPEAKER_01
Love it.
10
SPEAKER_01
We really worked through that one.
10
SPEAKER_01
We did.
10
SPEAKER_01
I could see, I saw the gears turning.
10
SPEAKER_01
Well, this one actually is a little harder, but I m confident.
10
SPEAKER_01
All right, so this one is a very big show.
10
SPEAKER_01
You may not have heard it, but it s a lovely show.
10
SPEAKER_01
It s a podcast about ropes, ties, and pretzels.
10
SPEAKER_01
Among other things, it s hosted by Chuck Bryan and Josh Clark right here on the iHeartNetwork.
10
SPEAKER_00
Ropes, ties, and pretzels.
10
SPEAKER_00
Stuff you should know.
10
SPEAKER_01
Stuff You Should Dough.
10
SPEAKER_01
Oh, because you dough pretzels?
10
SPEAKER_01
I like that.
10
SPEAKER_02
I like that too.
10
SPEAKER_00
But it doesn t even work.
10
SPEAKER_00
You re there, but.
10
SPEAKER_02
Okay.
10
SPEAKER_02
Stuff You Should Know.
10
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, Stuff You Should Know, I love that show.
10
SPEAKER_00
We gotta mess with Know.
10
SPEAKER_00
New.
10
SPEAKER_01
You got ropes, ties, pretzels.
10
SPEAKER_01
Stuff you should not.
10
SPEAKER_01
Stuff you should not.
10
SPEAKER_00
Oh, wonderful.
10
SPEAKER_00
Good job, Monty.
10
SPEAKER_01
Wow.
10
SPEAKER_01
Well done.
10
SPEAKER_01
Look at that.
10
SPEAKER_00
Those are the nicest boys in the world.
10
SPEAKER_00
I want to shout out.
10
SPEAKER_00
Those are the nicest boys in the world.
10
SPEAKER_01
I m so glad you said that.
10
SPEAKER_01
I am a huge fan as well.
10
SPEAKER_01
Me too.
10
SPEAKER_01
And actually, Chuck was a guest right here on The Puzzler.
10
SPEAKER_01
Oh, of course.
10
SPEAKER_02
Did he kill it?
10
SPEAKER_02
Did he do so well?
10
SPEAKER_01
Yes, he was lovely.
10
SPEAKER_01
And he s a good chuckler.
10
SPEAKER_01
He just chuckled his way through it.
10
SPEAKER_01
We had a good time.
10
SPEAKER_01
Well, you did great.
10
SPEAKER_01
You got them all.
10
SPEAKER_01
Thank you.
10
SPEAKER_00
I can t believe Smart List wasn t in that mix, right?
10
SPEAKER_00
I was already preparing.
10
SPEAKER_00
How is he going to change one letter of Smart List?
10
SPEAKER_00
Me too.
10
SPEAKER_00
It s kind of a made up word.
10
SPEAKER_02
But that s hard, because that word is so specific.
10
SPEAKER_02
It s hard to swap out a letter.
10
SPEAKER_00
One letter, it almost can t be done.
10
SPEAKER_00
Shartless.
10
SPEAKER_00
Oh, I got a show about someone who s never had an accident in their slacks.
10
SPEAKER_00
Shartless.
10
SPEAKER_00
That is fantastic.
10
SPEAKER_00
You just took it to a new level.
10
SPEAKER_00
Or maybe you took it down to a new level.
10
SPEAKER_00
Shartless.
10
SPEAKER_00
Oh, I hope that doesn t get edited out.
10
SPEAKER_00
Nope, that s in.
11
SPEAKER_04
We ll throw an E on it and we will keep it in.
11
SPEAKER_04
That people need to know.
11
SPEAKER_04
Well, today we have a movie-themed puzzle for you because I know you are both movie fans and have appeared in movies.
11
SPEAKER_04
And actually, I will say briefly, I came up with several movie-themed puzzle ideas.
11
SPEAKER_04
My first idea was rejected very vigorously by the puzzle staff.
11
SPEAKER_04
The first idea though, if you go on IMDB and look at DAX, if you look at your list of credits, do you know what the first- Vomiteer at Party.
11
SPEAKER_03
That way you re gonna, yeah.
11
SPEAKER_03
I wear that with great pride.
11
SPEAKER_03
If you can start a career as vomiteer at party with no lines and work your way up to a cast member on Parenthood, you know.
11
SPEAKER_03
What a life.
11
SPEAKER_03
Sky s the limit.
11
SPEAKER_04
Did it say vomiteer?
11
SPEAKER_04
The one I saw said guy vomiting at party.
11
SPEAKER_03
I think I ve classed it up by saying vomiteer at party.
11
SPEAKER_03
You re right, it s actually lower brow.
11
SPEAKER_03
Guy vomiting at party.
11
SPEAKER_03
Wow.
11
SPEAKER_04
I didn t know about the noun, vomiteer.
11
SPEAKER_04
I love it.
11
SPEAKER_03
Well, clearly I did a great job vomiting because it led to all kinds of work.
11
SPEAKER_05
Vomiteer, is it a play on volunteer?
11
SPEAKER_03
It s like Vomitorium, Vomiteer at a Vomitorium.
11
SPEAKER_05
Wow.
11
SPEAKER_03
It s got hints of Rome, ancient Hellenics, liberal arts education.
11
SPEAKER_04
Well, I was gonna do sort of a theme of other cinematic spewing, like The Exorcist.
11
SPEAKER_04
Oh, we would have liked that.
11
SPEAKER_04
Well, you re nice.
11
SPEAKER_04
next time you re on.
11
SPEAKER_04
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_04
Instead, I would love to try a puzzle called Name That Title Drop.
11
SPEAKER_04
And you might have heard the phrase title drop.
11
SPEAKER_04
My kids taught it to me.
11
SPEAKER_04
It is when a character says the title of a movie during the movie itself.
11
SPEAKER_05
Oh, I love that.
11
SPEAKER_04
Okay.
11
SPEAKER_03
Sometimes met with a round of applause if the movie is good enough.
11
SPEAKER_03
Oh yeah, there you go.
11
SPEAKER_04
I ve seen that.
11
SPEAKER_04
The most famous title drop, one of the most famous is Doc Brown telling Michael J. Fox, next Saturday night we re sending you Back to the Future.
11
SPEAKER_04
Exactly.
11
SPEAKER_04
So in this quiz, we re gonna play you a clip from a couple of movies and we bleeped out the title drop.
11
SPEAKER_04
But we didn t bleep it out, I decided I would actually say the phrase title drop.
11
SPEAKER_04
Oh great.
11
SPEAKER_04
So I can express my acting chops in case you re casting anything.
11
SPEAKER_04
But here goes.
11
SPEAKER_04
Please play clip number one.
11
SPEAKER_05
Village Police Department.
11
SPEAKER_05
Yeah, hi.
11
SPEAKER_05
Look, I m calling from Paris.
11
SPEAKER_05
I have a son who s... Title drop.
11
SPEAKER_05
I knew it from the, from the ringing.
11
SPEAKER_05
I love that movie so much.
11
SPEAKER_03
Wow, wow.
11
SPEAKER_05
And it s timely, because we re just coming out of Christmas, so I ve seen it recently.
11
SPEAKER_05
This doesn t air until August 18th, just to let you know.
11
SPEAKER_04
Well, what is it, Monica?
11
SPEAKER_04
Tell us.
11
SPEAKER_04
Home Alone.
11
SPEAKER_04
Home Alone, baby.
11
SPEAKER_04
That was so fast.
11
SPEAKER_04
That was crazy.
11
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, she was way ahead of it.
11
SPEAKER_04
Do you think you would have got it?
11
SPEAKER_03
It s hard to know, because you were saying it before the clip was even over, I think, if I m recollecting correctly.
11
SPEAKER_05
I couldn t help myself.
11
SPEAKER_03
I m proud to be in this game with you, and business.
11
SPEAKER_05
I have a feeling the rest are gonna go to you, because my brain doesn t work well like this, auditorily.
11
SPEAKER_03
No senesces.
11
SPEAKER_05
Like when people play music, I don t know the song until the song s over, basically.
11
SPEAKER_03
Right.
11
SPEAKER_05
But this was just the one I knew it was gonna get.
11
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, this is such a shoe-in for you.
11
SPEAKER_03
You probably watched this four times in the last two months.
11
SPEAKER_05
Exactly, exactly.
11
SPEAKER_04
Yeah, I feel this puzzle is like, if you love the movie, you know it.
11
SPEAKER_04
If you don t, then you re shit out of luck.
11
SPEAKER_04
All right, so here s clip number two.
11
SPEAKER_03
I just want to say to the listener who can t see Monica, she s using her left hand to push the clip and it s shocking how uncoordinated she is with her left hand.
11
SPEAKER_03
She s having the hardest time getting her finger just to the mouse pad.
11
SPEAKER_05
And I relate.
11
SPEAKER_03
I tried to write with my right hand the other day and it couldn t be done.
11
SPEAKER_03
So I m not casting any...
11
SPEAKER_05
Dax is left-handed, I think that you don t understand because you have to use your right hand in life because this is a right-handed world you live in.
11
SPEAKER_05
And lefties, like right-handers don t have to use their left hand almost ever.
11
SPEAKER_03
True.
11
SPEAKER_04
That s true.
11
SPEAKER_04
Okay, are we ready?
11
SPEAKER_04
Are you feeling some empathy for?
11
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_03
Nice.
11
SPEAKER_02
Everything I think and everything I do is wrong.
11
SPEAKER_02
I was wrong about Elton.
11
SPEAKER_02
I was wrong about Christian.
11
SPEAKER_02
Now Josh hated me.
11
SPEAKER_02
It all boiled down to one inevitable conclusion.
11
SPEAKER_03
I was just totally- Title drop.
11
SPEAKER_05
Oh, I love it.
11
SPEAKER_05
Do you know it?
11
SPEAKER_03
I feel like these are really on a platter for you.
11
SPEAKER_05
I don t know it.
11
SPEAKER_05
Clueless.
11
SPEAKER_03
Clueless.
11
SPEAKER_05
It is clueless.
11
SPEAKER_05
Yes.
11
SPEAKER_05
These are great.
11
SPEAKER_05
I love this game.
11
SPEAKER_03
Something does happen to my brain, though, when I see that you have it, and then I immediately go like, oh, I don t have it, she has it, and then I can t even think any longer.
11
SPEAKER_05
Mental games.
11
SPEAKER_03
Is that what it is?
11
SPEAKER_03
Yes.
11
SPEAKER_03
Yes.
11
SPEAKER_05
You need to get a little bit tougher mentally.
11
SPEAKER_03
I need to block you out during this is what I need to do.
11
SPEAKER_03
Yeah.
11
SPEAKER_03
But you re in my peripheral.
11
SPEAKER_03
Do we wanna be in separate booths?
11
SPEAKER_03
We re gonna call you back in 25.
11
SPEAKER_03
I m gonna patch in from Central LA, and she s gonna stay here.
11
SPEAKER_04
All right.
11
SPEAKER_04
Well, we have two more.
11
SPEAKER_04
Oh, by the way, I could have done, I looked at your IMDb list for any title drops.
11
SPEAKER_04
There was one, but it was too late.
11
SPEAKER_04
I couldn t get the clip in.
11
SPEAKER_04
But it was something along the line of, you re just jealous about my superior retailing ability.
11
SPEAKER_04
You ll never make
11
SPEAKER_04
Employee of the Month!
11
SPEAKER_03
I feel like baby mama has to have been said in Baby Mama as well, don t you think, Monica?
11
SPEAKER_05
Yeah, but not by you.
11
SPEAKER_03
Not by me, no, they wouldn t entrust me with the title drop.
11
SPEAKER_05
I actually, I wonder if it s in there.
11
SPEAKER_05
I can see them not.
11
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, they re so good.
11
SPEAKER_03
They re so good.
11
SPEAKER_04
But who knows?
11
SPEAKER_03
I will fact check that.
11
SPEAKER_04
All right, what about this, oh yeah, we have two more.
11
SPEAKER_03
Give Monica some time to get her hand up there.
11
SPEAKER_04
Give me 10 to 12 minutes.
11
SPEAKER_03
She just needs a little 10 minutes heads up.
11
SPEAKER_03
Tell her to start playing Clip 5 right now.
11
SPEAKER_05
Okay, we ready?
11
SPEAKER_04
All right, Clip 3, this is Clip 3.
11
SPEAKER_00
You felt it your entire life, that there s something wrong with the world.
11
SPEAKER_00
You don t know what it is, but it s there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad.
11
SPEAKER_00
It is this feeling that has brought you to me.
11
SPEAKER_00
Do you know what I m talking about?
11
SPEAKER_04
Matrix.
11
SPEAKER_04
Good job.
11
SPEAKER_04
I didn t have that.
11
SPEAKER_04
Well done.
11
SPEAKER_03
Well, we ve got it early on.
11
SPEAKER_03
Girl movie, now boy movie.
11
SPEAKER_05
No, Matrix is very gender nooch.
11
SPEAKER_05
I ve watched it many times.
11
SPEAKER_05
I just didn t know it well enough.
11
SPEAKER_00
It s a great movie.
11
SPEAKER_04
And by the way, this was the scene right before he offers him the blue or the red pill.
11
SPEAKER_04
The pill.
11
SPEAKER_04
I would have a hard time.
11
SPEAKER_04
I might take the blue pill, personally.
11
SPEAKER_04
Oh, wow.
11
SPEAKER_03
I should, because I ve got way too lucky of a life.
11
SPEAKER_03
I don t know why I would want to find out none of this is real.
11
SPEAKER_03
Although, if you ve listened to the show, you know that we are under a very firm belief that we re living in Monica s father s simulation.
11
SPEAKER_05
All of us, including you.
11
SPEAKER_03
Yeah, you re part of it.
11
SPEAKER_03
So I guess you owe Ashok a thank you as well, because for me, I love the role he s assigned me.
11
SPEAKER_04
Yes, thank you.
11
SPEAKER_04
Thank you, Monica s dad.
11
SPEAKER_04
I have some notes.
11
SPEAKER_04
I have some notes for him.
11
SPEAKER_04
But overall, it s not bad.
11
SPEAKER_04
Now this one, I do feel guilty because I know, I happen to know that this is a favorite of Monica s.
11
SPEAKER_04
I don t know whether, Dax, I think you like it too.
11
SPEAKER_03
So maybe Monica, just kind of hold your outbursts a little bit.
11
SPEAKER_05
I ll hold my water.
11
SPEAKER_04
Okay.
11
SPEAKER_01
Okay.
11
SPEAKER_04
All right.
11
SPEAKER_04
Play clip number four, please.
11
SPEAKER_01
You re a pack of vultures at the feast.
11
SPEAKER_04
Tidal drop.
11
SPEAKER_01
Beaks bloody.
11
SPEAKER_03
That s for you?
11
SPEAKER_01
I don t, what?
11
SPEAKER_04
Well, you did say on a show, maybe recent dish, that you love this movie.
11
SPEAKER_04
Let me play it again.
11
SPEAKER_04
Can I play it again?
11
SPEAKER_04
I m so glad you didn t get it immediately.
11
SPEAKER_03
Can we get a second?
11
SPEAKER_03
Is it breaking the rules to hear it twice?
11
SPEAKER_04
No, play it as often as you want.
11
SPEAKER_01
You re a pack of vultures at the feast.
11
SPEAKER_04
It s English right are we seeing some kind of a period piece or some kind of he s not English I mean well interesting the actor is English, but I believe the character is Southern I Will give you it is Daniel Craig is the one who s saying it I
11
SPEAKER_03
Oh, I got it.
11
SPEAKER_03
Yes, you love these movies.
11
SPEAKER_03
Oh, yes, the Ryan.
11
SPEAKER_04
Oh, oh.
12
SPEAKER_02
Oh my God, yes.
12
SPEAKER_00
Inheritance or?
12
SPEAKER_00
Knives out.
12
SPEAKER_00
Knives out.
12
SPEAKER_01
Knives out, that s it, exactly.
12
SPEAKER_01
Wow.
12
SPEAKER_00
Knives out, beaks bloody.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yes, he s definitely playing a Southern gentleman and he is English.
12
SPEAKER_02
I totally, that was hard.
12
SPEAKER_00
It was very hard because it sounded a little English and Southern.
12
SPEAKER_02
It sounded like it was gonna be from the 20s.
12
SPEAKER_02
It sounded like it was an old movie.
12
SPEAKER_00
A period piece.
12
SPEAKER_00
Period piece, period piece.
12
SPEAKER_01
Well, I loved that movie.
12
SPEAKER_01
I loved Glass Onion 2.
12
SPEAKER_01
Did you see that one?
12
SPEAKER_00
Loved.
12
SPEAKER_00
So we were three of four.
12
SPEAKER_00
Which is a strong C plus.
12
SPEAKER_02
We did get it with a little clue.
12
SPEAKER_01
We have a pretty big clue.
12
SPEAKER_01
I am glad, because otherwise it would have been like, you know, it was too easy.
12
SPEAKER_01
Right.
12
SPEAKER_01
Thank you for showing you re human.
12
SPEAKER_01
Oh, that was fun.
12
SPEAKER_01
This is so fun, AJ.
12
SPEAKER_00
It is, AJ.
12
SPEAKER_01
I loved having, you are amazing guests.
12
SPEAKER_01
Well, anytime you want, listen, if you want any puzzling on the Armchair Expert, you know I m happy to provide.
12
SPEAKER_01
We know where to go.
12
SPEAKER_01
There you go.
12
SPEAKER_00
Thank you.
12
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
12
SPEAKER_00
We may rudely accept that casual invitation, as they say.
12
SPEAKER_01
Are you kidding?
12
SPEAKER_01
I m honored.
12
SPEAKER_01
By the way, I did try to do an F1 puzzle and I failed.
12
SPEAKER_01
Maybe next time.
12
SPEAKER_01
All right, well, I hope you do better on these than I did.
12
SPEAKER_01
I feel good.
12
SPEAKER_01
I feel you will.
12
SPEAKER_01
I m nervous all of a sudden.
12
SPEAKER_01
Because this is a type of puzzle that we invented here at the Puzzler, in the Puzzler Laboratory.
12
SPEAKER_01
And we think of it as a rebus for your ears.
12
SPEAKER_01
So we call it sort of an earbus, trademark pending.
12
SPEAKER_01
So the way it works is I m going to say a word in a certain tone of voice or an accent, and if you combine the word and my manner of speaking, it s going to reveal the answer, which is a two-word phrase.
12
SPEAKER_01
So it s easier than it sounds.
12
SPEAKER_01
So if I said, for instance, if I said,
12
SPEAKER_01
Tide, that would be.
12
SPEAKER_01
Slow tide, high tide.
12
SPEAKER_01
High tide.
12
SPEAKER_02
Slow tide?
12
SPEAKER_01
Exactly, or rising tide.
12
SPEAKER_02
Oh, rising.
12
SPEAKER_01
Or low to high, but yes, high tide or rising tide.
12
SPEAKER_00
You re gonna hate us as guests, because we just, we can t help but go long, but I just want to say that one of the funniest moments.
12
SPEAKER_00
I was banned from doing this in a game we would play called, what was that game?
12
SPEAKER_00
categories or something where you re gonna try, there s like 15 words out on the board, and you re gonna say, okay, I m gonna say one word, and you re gonna be able to guess three of these clues.
12
SPEAKER_00
Code names.
12
SPEAKER_00
Code names.
12
SPEAKER_01
Oh, I love that game, yeah.
12
SPEAKER_00
And this was an outlawed clue that I, you ll remember it, because I said proctologist.
12
SPEAKER_02
Oh yeah, that was really bad.
12
SPEAKER_00
Because Australian was one of the things, and then like doctor was one, and then toilet or something.
12
SPEAKER_00
And everyone was really mad I used an Australian accent.
12
SPEAKER_01
But it s very similar.
12
SPEAKER_00
Cheater.
12
SPEAKER_01
There might be some bad accents.
12
SPEAKER_01
You ready for your first ear bus is banana.
12
SPEAKER_01
Banana.
12
SPEAKER_02
Do you know it?
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, but go ahead.
12
SPEAKER_02
Let s do it on three.
12
SPEAKER_01
One, two, three.
12
SPEAKER_02
Banana split.
12
SPEAKER_01
I love it, and I love the delivery.
12
SPEAKER_01
All right, well, you re a natural.
12
SPEAKER_01
You re two naturals.
12
SPEAKER_01
Ready?
12
SPEAKER_01
We got live-er.
12
SPEAKER_01
Live-er.
12
SPEAKER_01
I like they re looking up.
12
SPEAKER_01
That means they re thinking.
12
SPEAKER_01
Live-er.
12
SPEAKER_01
It s, just so you know, it s sort of in the genre of banana split.
12
SPEAKER_02
So it s like live pause-er, live brain-er.
12
SPEAKER_01
L-I-V-E-R, but I m pausing between live and er.
12
SPEAKER_01
What happens with live?
12
SPEAKER_00
Half-life?
12
SPEAKER_00
No.
12
SPEAKER_01
No, it s got the word liver in it.
12
SPEAKER_01
The second, it s something liver.
12
SPEAKER_00
Something liver.
12
SPEAKER_00
We got fatty liver, we got liver and onions.
12
SPEAKER_01
Chopped liver.
12
SPEAKER_01
Chopped liver.
12
SPEAKER_01
Chopped liver.
12
SPEAKER_01
Monica, high five.
12
SPEAKER_01
Nicely done.
12
SPEAKER_01
All right, you ready for more?
12
SPEAKER_01
You re on a roll.
12
SPEAKER_01
All right, scientist.
12
SPEAKER_01
Mad scientist.
12
SPEAKER_01
Look at that, no hesitation, no hesitation.
12
SPEAKER_01
Unbelievable.
12
SPEAKER_00
AJ, if these went on into infinity, we would sit here and do it.
12
SPEAKER_00
We would.
12
SPEAKER_00
This is like our favorite kind of entertainment.
12
SPEAKER_00
It s like the button, the drug button for a monkey.
12
SPEAKER_01
I got no plans.
12
SPEAKER_01
That s great.
12
SPEAKER_01
All right, well, what about this one?
12
SPEAKER_01
Example, example, example, example.
12
SPEAKER_01
It s a two word phrase.
12
SPEAKER_02
Quadruple example, four example.
12
SPEAKER_02
Four example.
12
SPEAKER_00
Ah, great job, Monica.
12
SPEAKER_00
You re on fire.
12
SPEAKER_00
Four example.
12
SPEAKER_00
She did it.
12
SPEAKER_00
Four example.
12
SPEAKER_00
Oh, sorry.
12
SPEAKER_00
No, it s great.
12
SPEAKER_00
We re playing it fast and loose with the spelling of four, but yeah.
12
SPEAKER_00
You re gonna get hung up on that.
12
SPEAKER_01
I loved that, because I loved you solved it as you said it.
12
SPEAKER_01
That was amazing.
12
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, that s always fun.
12
SPEAKER_01
All right, what about this one?
12
SPEAKER_01
Motion.
12
SPEAKER_00
Slow motion.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
12
SPEAKER_00
She had to look, she was trying to be kind.
12
SPEAKER_00
She already had it before I was saying.
12
SPEAKER_00
She had already had time to look at me to go like, go ahead.
12
SPEAKER_01
All right, we need only two more, only two more.
12
SPEAKER_00
As you re nodding your head too, so like if there s any effort to let me think I had it before, you blew that by nodding your head as you looked at me.
12
SPEAKER_00
Sorry, sorry.
12
SPEAKER_01
You are doing much better than I did with eight fours.
12
SPEAKER_01
Okay, ready?
12
SPEAKER_01
Sayers!
12
SPEAKER_00
Naysayers.
12
SPEAKER_02
Oh, good job.
12
SPEAKER_00
That was good, I didn t.
12
SPEAKER_00
And you weren t even condescendingly looking at me.
12
SPEAKER_00
Hey, don t get defensive over there.
12
SPEAKER_00
I m intimidated by your intelligence.
12
SPEAKER_00
It s a compliment to you that I m a... You re upset.
12
SPEAKER_01
I think you both are right in there.
12
SPEAKER_01
Well, this one, this is a little callback to something Dax said.
12
SPEAKER_01
Rules football, rules football.
12
SPEAKER_00
English rules football?
12
SPEAKER_01
Well that I have it.
12
SPEAKER_01
I m a terrible actor.
12
SPEAKER_01
So yeah, okay, so maybe is it Scottish?
12
SPEAKER_01
That s oh that was no Rules football mate might Australian rules football.
12
SPEAKER_01
Oh
12
SPEAKER_02
No.
12
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
12
SPEAKER_02
What does that even mean?
12
SPEAKER_02
I don t get it.
12
SPEAKER_00
Well, you re hearing it for the first time, which puts you at a deficit for sure.
12
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, what is that?
12
SPEAKER_00
I have heard that.
12
SPEAKER_00
I have no clue what it is.
12
SPEAKER_01
Oh, it s like a game.
12
SPEAKER_01
It s like sort of rugby mixed with football, Australian rules football.
12
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it s fun to watch.
12
SPEAKER_01
They don t wear helmets and they just like beat up on each other.
12
SPEAKER_01
Does everyone have cauliflower here?
12
SPEAKER_02
Well, if you have it, great.
12
SPEAKER_02
Great for you.
12
SPEAKER_00
Okay, yeah, I didn t mean to shame anyone.
12
SPEAKER_01
I didn t know about that, so that one might rule out.
12
SPEAKER_01
My apologies on the, that was a hard one because my accent was more like Lucky Charms leprechaun or something.
12
SPEAKER_01
I don t know what it was.
12
SPEAKER_01
All right, well, you did fantastic, even with the accent.
12
SPEAKER_01
So, thank you.
12
SPEAKER_01
As many of your fans know, and you have a lot of them, at the end of your show, Monica often does a fact-checking segment.
12
SPEAKER_01
Were you correct?
12
SPEAKER_01
We do.
12
SPEAKER_01
Yep.
12
SPEAKER_01
And you did it for my segment.
12
SPEAKER_01
Thank you.
12
SPEAKER_00
Do you remember if you erred in any way?
12
SPEAKER_01
I did, in the sense that I said I didn t know something, so you told me.
12
SPEAKER_01
Because the question was about turkeys and whether turkeys, do they come from Turkey?
12
SPEAKER_01
Why are they turkeys?
12
SPEAKER_01
Are they American?
12
SPEAKER_01
And Monica found out, yes, they are.
12
SPEAKER_01
They are native to America.
12
SPEAKER_01
And Turkey has no actual turkeys.
12
SPEAKER_00
It s a feather in the cap of all Americans.
12
SPEAKER_00
Turkey hails from here.
12
SPEAKER_00
And just so you know, 99.9% of the facts being corrected are ones I get wrong.
12
SPEAKER_00
So generally it s just to attack me and not the guest.
12
SPEAKER_02
But I m equal opportunity failure.
12
SPEAKER_02
So if you are gonna mess up, I am gonna call you out on it.
12
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, it s not gonna slide by.
12
SPEAKER_00
Not under her watch.
12
SPEAKER_02
That s right.
12
SPEAKER_01
I m ready to be fact-checked.
12
SPEAKER_01
And in fact, I may have messed up the fact-checking story about you fact-checking me, so we re gonna have to fact-check that.
12
SPEAKER_01
But in this game, I am going to tell you two facts about puzzles, about the history of puzzles, and you are gonna try to figure out which is true and which is fake.
12
SPEAKER_01
So one truth and one lie.
12
SPEAKER_01
Are you ready for your first set of potential truths?
12
SPEAKER_01
Yes All right.
12
SPEAKER_01
They re all about puzzles option one is the current fastest solving of a Rubik s Cube is 3.1 seconds Okay, that s fact one fact two is if you turn a Rubik s Cube randomly at the rate of one twist per second
13
SPEAKER_01
it will take 3.1 million years to solve on average.
13
SPEAKER_01
So the 3.1 seconds or 3.1 million years.
13
SPEAKER_00
This is a toughie.
13
SPEAKER_00
Now my instinct is to buy that 3.1 million years number because I have tried numerous times to solve one and I don t think if you gave me 3.1 million years, even spinning it intentionally, I wouldn t get it.
13
SPEAKER_00
And then also, have you seen these people do these, I mean, they re doing it with one hand, it s insane.
13
SPEAKER_00
Blindfolded.
13
SPEAKER_02
Yes, exactly, blindfolded, and I do think it s, the younger generation is really on top of mastering the Rubik s Cube.
13
SPEAKER_02
So I think the first one s true.
13
SPEAKER_00
You do.
13
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, and I think maybe the second one is just simply unknowable.
13
SPEAKER_02
True.
13
SPEAKER_00
Okay, our final answer is A is correct and 2 is potentially unknowable.
13
SPEAKER_01
You Know Your Rubik s Cube, 3.1 seconds by Max Park, done in 2021.
13
SPEAKER_01
Unbelievable.
13
SPEAKER_00
It sounds like a boy s name, Max.
13
SPEAKER_00
It sounds like we don t know the name, the gender.
13
SPEAKER_00
Increasingly.
13
SPEAKER_01
I mean, it s on YouTube if you want to see it.
13
SPEAKER_01
It s crazy.
13
SPEAKER_01
I wish I had the time.
13
SPEAKER_01
And by the way, I never met him, but I did for my book, Meet the Man Who Holds the Foot Record, because you can solve it with your feet.
13
SPEAKER_01
And that s about 16 seconds.
13
SPEAKER_00
16 seconds with the feet, that s a real thumb your nose at us simpletons that can t even do it with our hands.
13
SPEAKER_01
Was that a pun?
13
SPEAKER_01
Were you going with a pun or that was just?
13
SPEAKER_00
No, that would have been on accident.
13
SPEAKER_01
But by the way, if you did the random thing, it would take 111 billion years.
13
SPEAKER_01
No.
13
SPEAKER_01
Yeah, it s crazy.
13
SPEAKER_01
there are 43 quintillion possible combinations, which is just, that is, it s not unknowable, but unfathomable.
13
SPEAKER_01
Like you just can t.
13
SPEAKER_00
But also a great use of time, you know?
13
SPEAKER_00
There are anything worth dedicating billions of years of your life to.
13
SPEAKER_00
It s gotta be that.
13
SPEAKER_02
Are people who are solving it then, they know how to solve it, and then they re just working on the time?
13
SPEAKER_00
Like they know,
13
SPEAKER_02
There s a trick or a hack.
13
SPEAKER_02
There s a system.
13
SPEAKER_02
There s a system, yeah.
13
SPEAKER_00
Exactly.
13
SPEAKER_00
Yeah.
13
SPEAKER_00
Yeah, they re algorithms.
13
SPEAKER_00
It s like chess, right?
13
SPEAKER_00
They ve watched the many different permutations of moves so many times that they intuitively and immediately recognize the pattern and know what the response to that given pattern is.
13
SPEAKER_00
So they can probably glance at that cube and they go, oh, it s that pattern that needs to be spun right, left, to, you know, I imagine that s cognitively what s happening, yeah?
13
SPEAKER_01
That s exactly right.
13
SPEAKER_01
And that s why they can do a blindfolded, because they re allowed to see the cube before they put on the blindfold.
13
SPEAKER_01
Otherwise, that would be pretty impressive.
13
SPEAKER_00
Oh, good.
13
SPEAKER_00
I m glad you explained that, because I was like, how would someone do a blindfolded?
13
SPEAKER_00
That doesn t make any sense.
13
SPEAKER_00
The colors feel differently.
13
SPEAKER_00
Like, what are we talking about?
13
SPEAKER_01
Well, synesthesia.
13
SPEAKER_01
The yellow is a little rough.
13
SPEAKER_01
Synesthesia.
13
SPEAKER_01
All right.
13
SPEAKER_01
Are you ready for your next fact-checking challenge?
13
SPEAKER_01
Yes.
13
SPEAKER_01
All right.
13
SPEAKER_01
This is
13
SPEAKER_01
Why were readers of the Baltimore Sun furious about the April 26, 2020 puzzle page?
13
SPEAKER_01
Was it because A, the newspaper printed a crossword puzzle where the black squares were in the pattern of a satanic pentagram?
13
SPEAKER_01
Or B, the newspaper printed a spot the difference puzzle where the two images were identical.
13
SPEAKER_01
So they had to find the differences, but the newspaper accidentally printed the same image.
13
SPEAKER_01
So there were no differences.
13
SPEAKER_00
Well, I want to ask a question to you, I guess, as my partner.
13
SPEAKER_00
He said April 26.
13
SPEAKER_00
When is April Fool s Day?
13
SPEAKER_00
That s the first, right?
13
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, that s the first.
13
SPEAKER_00
So it s not like they would do the identical pictures as an April Fool s gag.
13
SPEAKER_00
We ve passed that by 25 days.
13
SPEAKER_02
But it was an accident.
13
SPEAKER_02
It could have been an accident, which is why it drove people insane.
13
SPEAKER_00
Do we know if it was an accident or intentional?
13
SPEAKER_00
Well, it doesn t matter.
13
SPEAKER_01
In the fake scenario, fake or real scenario, it was an accident.
13
SPEAKER_01
They did not.
13
SPEAKER_01
Right.
13
SPEAKER_01
I think it s the pentagram.
13
SPEAKER_02
You do?
13
SPEAKER_02
I do.
13
SPEAKER_02
Wait, and can you remind me where we are?
13
SPEAKER_01
Boston?
13
SPEAKER_01
Baltimore.
13
SPEAKER_01
The Baltimore Sunday newspaper.
13
SPEAKER_02
Baltimore.
13
SPEAKER_02
I think it s the identicals.
13
SPEAKER_00
You do.
13
SPEAKER_02
We re gonna have different.
13
SPEAKER_01
I like it.
13
SPEAKER_01
You promised me there would be arguments.
13
SPEAKER_00
Someone s gonna take the lead right now.
13
SPEAKER_00
Okay, well that s our final answers.
13
SPEAKER_00
I say Petrogram.
13
SPEAKER_01
Monica, you are the winner.
13
SPEAKER_02
Yay!
13
SPEAKER_02
Oh, he loves when I win.
13
SPEAKER_00
I do.
13
SPEAKER_00
No victory s worth you being in a good mood.
13
SPEAKER_00
Where is it?
13
SPEAKER_00
Enlisting their family members.
13
SPEAKER_02
Oh wow.
13
SPEAKER_01
It s heartbreaking.
13
SPEAKER_01
It is just heartbreaking to think about.
13
SPEAKER_00
They should lose their puzzling license over that.
13
SPEAKER_01
All right, we have one last fact checking for you.
13
SPEAKER_01
I m gonna give you two riddles.
13
SPEAKER_01
One of these two riddles is the first recorded riddle in history.
13
SPEAKER_01
And one is something I made up this morning.
13
SPEAKER_01
Okay, are you ready riddle a what gets fat without eating and pregnant without having sex and You can try to guess or I can give you the answer.
13
SPEAKER_01
That s not part of the actual fact-checking puzzle but what gets fat without eating and pregnant without having sex is a
13
SPEAKER_01
I will say both of these are Babylonian puzzles, so they re funnier in the Babylonian.
13
SPEAKER_00
And they like rice or something.
13
SPEAKER_02
Well, like what gives birth?
13
SPEAKER_00
Well, like rice gets fat without eating.
13
SPEAKER_00
You just put it in water, right?
13
SPEAKER_01
Water is good.
13
SPEAKER_01
Water is, I like water.
13
SPEAKER_02
So like the ocean, or like?
13
SPEAKER_01
Water is a cool.
13
SPEAKER_01
Water, but up in the air.
13
SPEAKER_01
You ve stumbled upon.
13
SPEAKER_02
Evaporation.
13
SPEAKER_01
Rain.
13
SPEAKER_01
Clouds.
13
SPEAKER_02
Rain.
13
SPEAKER_02
Cloud.
13
SPEAKER_00
Rain cloud.
13
SPEAKER_01
That s it.
13
SPEAKER_01
Rain cloud.
13
SPEAKER_01
Gets fat without eating, sure.
13
SPEAKER_01
It gets bigger and pregnant.
13
SPEAKER_01
I guess like the baby is the water, the rain.
13
SPEAKER_00
That s a little abstract.
13
SPEAKER_02
I m not on board.
13
SPEAKER_00
I don t feel bad for not eating because I still don t see.
13
SPEAKER_00
I don t see it.
13
SPEAKER_00
I ve never looked up in the sky and said like, holy crap, that cloud has twins.
13
SPEAKER_00
Look at the size of it, right?
13
SPEAKER_02
Yeah, and you never see one plopping out another cloud.
13
SPEAKER_00
Right.
13
SPEAKER_00
Good point, good point.
13
SPEAKER_00
No one s ever said it s raining babies either.
13
SPEAKER_00
Let s just add that.
13
SPEAKER_00
No one said that.
13
SPEAKER_01
That s interesting.
13
SPEAKER_01
All right, so you re skeptical of it, but maybe if you spoke Babylonian it would make more sense.
13
SPEAKER_01
All right, here s the other possible riddle.
13
SPEAKER_01
What is a crop that grows in all four seasons?
13
SPEAKER_01
A crop that grows in all four seasons.
13
SPEAKER_02
and it s a riddle so it can t, it s not just like corn.
13
SPEAKER_02
Like it s not like a real answer.
13
SPEAKER_00
Right.
13
SPEAKER_00
I don t know though, wasn t Clouds, was there an attempt at a real answer?
13
SPEAKER_00
Already I feel like I know.
13
SPEAKER_02
Me too.
13
SPEAKER_02
The first one is.
13
SPEAKER_00
Is his.
13
SPEAKER_02
No.
13
SPEAKER_02
I think AJ s.
13
SPEAKER_00
Oh he thinks we re thinking crops, early agriculture, civilization.
13
SPEAKER_02
I just think whatever this riddle is, whatever this answer is probably better.
13
SPEAKER_02
Should we just?
13
SPEAKER_00
Let s try to find out the answer.
13
SPEAKER_00
Should we try to find out or should you tell us?
13
SPEAKER_00
Let s work it for a minute, I got a job.
13
SPEAKER_00
Okay, what was it?
13
SPEAKER_02
A crop in all four seasons.
13
SPEAKER_01
What is a crop that grows in all four seasons?
13
SPEAKER_01
So yeah, you got it, it s something that grows.
13
SPEAKER_01
In all fours.
13
SPEAKER_01
But it s not like you said, it s not like corn, but it is something that grows.
13
SPEAKER_00
A crop of, like crop top, right?
13
SPEAKER_01
The top, that s interesting.
13
SPEAKER_02
Oh, hair.
13
SPEAKER_00
Ah, yeah, hair, hair, that s gotta be it, right?
13
SPEAKER_01
That s it?
13
SPEAKER_02
The first one is the first riddle.
13
SPEAKER_00
Okay, because it s so stupid.
13
SPEAKER_02
This one was a little bit clever, so I think AJ made it up.
13
SPEAKER_00
Okay, all right, I ll stick with you.
13
SPEAKER_01
You are right, and thank you for thinking I m more clever than Babylonians.
13
SPEAKER_02
You sure are.
13
SPEAKER_00
I m honored.
13
SPEAKER_02
You would never say that cloud thing.
13
SPEAKER_00
I mean, these folks, what would they think?
13
SPEAKER_00
I was just reading Hammurabi s Code this morning and I was equally flummoxed.
13
SPEAKER_00
It s no wonder this riddle didn t hold up.
13
SPEAKER_01
Yeah.
13
SPEAKER_01
Well, you did great.
13
SPEAKER_01
You busted me.
13
SPEAKER_01
I appreciate it.
13
SPEAKER_00
Let s be clear.
13
SPEAKER_00
Monica did great.
13
SPEAKER_00
She s three for three.
13
SPEAKER_00
I m two for three.
13
SPEAKER_01
Two for three.
13
SPEAKER_01
That s still a C. A C. Oh, yuck.
13
SPEAKER_00
That s really, really good.
13
SPEAKER_02
That s very Magna of you.
13
SPEAKER_01
Puzzlers, please don t forget to subscribe to the Puzzler Podcast and we will meet you here tomorrow for more puzzling puzzles that will puzzle you puzzlingly.