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Ep. 210 – Object Lessons, Ostentatious Origins, and the Arrogance of Hatred w/ Matt Phillp
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This week we’re pleased to welcome back writer and host of the Tell Me About Your Father podcast, Matt Phillp! In this episode we cover a broad range of topics like cringe youth group object lessons, the absurd difference between America’s self-concept and what it looks like from the outside, the symbolic importance of wheat in film, and the morality and necessity of the Oxford comma. It’s a fun conversation, and we hope you enjoy it. Follow Matt on Instagram, X, and Bluesky (@mattphillp), and check out Tell Me About Your Father wherever you listen to podcasts!
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Transcript
Symbolism of Wheat in Media
00:00:00
Speaker
I don't know if you remember the beginning of Gladiator, like he talks about death. If you find yourself running on a field of wheat, just keep running, you're already dead, it's fine. And then at the end, he's running through wheat. Wheat is this symbol of running through, you're free from the oppression of life or whatever. Exactly the same thing in Wicked. She runs through a field finally freed, to she she has all this potential in ahead of her alphabetized.
00:00:27
Speaker
And then at the beginning of gladiator two, he's literally holding wheat and he's like playing with wheat. It's all this wheat. Wheat is the thing. They all love wheat. Wheat is freedom. It's owned by big wheat. The wheat industry is what actually funded most of this. Frosted flakes, catalogs is just, it's harder to make that look right with corn. Yeah, it's like hitting you in the face. I can tell you that.
Introduction to Growing Up Christian Podcast
00:00:56
Speaker
yeah
00:01:15
Speaker
Hello and welcome to Growing Up Christian. I'm Casey. I'm Sam. And joining us for the second time today is our friend Matt Philp. How you doing Matt? I'm well, thank you for having me.
00:01:27
Speaker
I know now that your last name is Philp, too. I know. I i thought wondered if we were even going to address it. I just felt like so seen and when I saw it on the calendar invite, it was great. Yeah, it's you know, it's the mark of a good host, I think. Yeah, I think I've tried to up my game since last time we talked of pronunciation.
00:01:48
Speaker
Yeah, and reading also. Those are both great things to up your game on. So. Yeah. I didn't realize Rosetta Stone had a class for that. um Honestly, most of my practice has been from reading my children bedtime stories. That's my where I get most of my reading out loud practice. Really?
Humorous Parenting Techniques
00:02:05
Speaker
What sends them to sleep?
00:02:08
Speaker
Oh, melatonin mostly. Right. So you drug your kids and then you go, now let's read a story and act like it was the story. Great. Yeah. Yeah. That's the 21st century. Oh, do you call them nighttime vitamins in this house? Great. It's the 21st century version of like when like 1800s moms would like rub whiskey on their baby's gums to make them fall asleep. 18th century, my mother would do that. She'd just put the pacifier in wine and be like, off you go. Yeah, yeah when i worked at um when I worked at Liberty, ah the a lady that I worked with who was ah probably at that time in her 50s, she would mention that all the time. Oh, just put some put some whiskey on their gums, put it on their binky. you're like
00:02:56
Speaker
Yeah. All right. I guess I didn't realize we still did that. ah ah When you were a child, ah it explained some of her potential oddities. Yeah.
The Bridge to Puerto Rico Story
00:03:10
Speaker
She was convinced she took a boat. I mean, she drove from, you know, we this she was a funny lady. She had some ah some disabilities um and health complications.
00:03:24
Speaker
But we adored her. like My wife and I picked her up and brought her to work. um like We all had a rotating schedule. We would take her out to eat, take her to the movie. We adored this woman. Everyone I worked with, it was like these three other people, we just like at least once a month would bring her out to do something fun. And um she liked going out to like fast food restaurants and shit, and she couldn't drive. So we would we would always just spend time with her. But we also loved giving her a hard time.
00:03:51
Speaker
And the angriest she ever got at us was when she talked about taking going on a missions trip. And she said she took she flew to Florida and then drove down a long bridge to Puerto Rico. And we were like, no, you didn't. You definitely didn't do that. it she she's She gave us all like a 24 hour silent treatment when we just kept giving her shit for it. It was so funny. One of my fondest memories working at Liberty.
00:04:21
Speaker
Yeah. What a place. There's some geological problems for sure. We were like, we were bringing out maps and shit. We're like, where's the bridge, Judy? Where's the bridge? She's like, I know it was there. Like, oh, so good. Well, that's the problem with confronting people. It's like, do you reach the point where they have an existential break or do you help them? It's one or the other. It is. They double down on insanity or they just end up in like a loony bin. Yeah. It's like you have to plant the seed in front of them.
00:04:50
Speaker
And then just like you covered up with dirt and then you hope that it sprouts yeah like later on down the road yeah because they will, they will deny, deny, deny. It's that, or you have to go like full alien face hugger seed planting. And then that doesn't usually work out as well. Yeah. Well, it's a person by person thing. I personally think the issue of toddlers drinking is really overrated. I mean.
00:05:15
Speaker
I one time apparently walked around a bar and my parents were drinking with friends and I just like drank a bit out of everyone at the bar's glass and my parents got me out and went, what the hell is going on with him? And I think they was like, oh my God, is he drunk? I was like three or two or something. And I think everything worked out more or less fine. So it was a good experience.
00:05:38
Speaker
i I love that. What is that that? That's got to be common practice, uh, in Australia to take your three year olds to the pub. Well, back in like, whenever that was the early eighties. Yeah. I think, I think, yeah, that Australia is a lot more wild when you think about it, when you're not there, then you're
Australia's Drinking Culture
00:05:58
Speaker
much higher tolerance for drinking and driving. Yeah. Isn't it like there's no legal drinking age. If you drink it out of a, like a loafer.
00:06:06
Speaker
Yeah, sure. um Also, if you hang a bag that's a sheep's bladder from a tree and you fill it with any kind of nautical rum, that just counts as real. That's how the country works. That's how it all works. It's an unusual place. That wild and heat sheep bladder rum has got to be a little tangy.
00:06:28
Speaker
yeah well that's right and then afterwards you know how you can buy whiskey that's like made in like maple there maple syrup barrels it's the same kind of thing then you just like make a haggis out of it and it sort of has a different ambient flavor or something but websites none of this is true just yeah um i'm like i'm thinking uh Don't put ah new rum and old rum skins, I think is... Yeah, that's biblical. If we're gonna make it biblical. That's so biblical. You know what, you guys? Just know off the topic, you did an episode about Jonathan and David, which read like, it sounds like you're in church.
00:07:11
Speaker
And you tell this story, it's such a great episode. And I didn't really know the story of them. It's so like, it's the gayest. It's so it's like you for reading this and I think you read it like anyone would. And then I've looked it up on YouTube. Cause I'm like, what do people have to say about this? It's all like Christians go, it's not that it's not, they're not gay. Like it's all like
Jonathan and David's Relationship
00:07:34
Speaker
historians with Achilles and Patroclus, like Achilles literally,
00:07:39
Speaker
that, you know, the Trojans killed Patroclus. He got Paris, tied his feet, or whatever, whichever brother killed it, tied his body to the back of a chariot, dragged it around the city for three days, and then razed the city to the ground. What lovely friends. Like, no, there was more going on there. Everyone can see it. That was jilted lover behavior. Really? Like, come on. Jesus Christ. Anyway, I appreciate that episode, and I like the way that you I really liked the way that you approached it. I thought it was really thoughtful. I appreciate it. You liked it. Thank you. Yeah, I always liked that story. I think it's fun. i so I think watching Christians get uncomfortable when you talk about them being gay is so funny. like I mean, look, we can infer. people There were some differences i in in different times, but you just read it.
00:08:35
Speaker
And you go, that's pretty gay. You know yeah like we don't have you don't don't't overthink it. Don't try to explain it away. Just assume that they at least like did some hand stuff. Maybe they experimented. Yeah, desert hand stuff. yeah um But I mean, it's like it it was also just listing some of these scholars are like,
00:08:55
Speaker
I mean, there was absolutely no evidence of that. I mean, there was certainly no history evidence of this in history. And I'm like, oh, for Christ's sake, like, you just owned yourself there. Like, just, God, you people are exhausting. Of course, there are fucking gay people and trans people. Of course, ever just fuck off. Like, yeah, it's so boring with this exhausting tone deaf, shut out reality stuff. It's just like, but I watch it of course anyway. Right. Well, I think that's what made so many of us like start thinking like it was, it was like, it was evangelical Christians trying so hard to like run cover for their theology that you just start going like, this is it. It's just starting to feel like like no one,
00:09:48
Speaker
No one was maybe asking some of these, questions like I wasn't asking some of these questions and they're just like, David and Jonathan were not gay. And you're like, whoa, I wasn't even, where'd that come from? And then, oh, you just like, the amount of times you're like, there is, for for being absolutely zero evidence for something, they spend so much time talking about how no evidence it actually exists when you really look at it the right way. And that's what starts to make things fall apart a little bit. You should go, this is,
00:10:15
Speaker
if i If I tried to tell my parents I didn't look at porn this hard, they would know for a fact I looked at porn. Right. ah Like 101 lying is you gotta keep it inside and just be like, I didn't do it. There's zero evidence at all that I've ever looked at porn in my entire life. Check the computer history. There's zero evidence in the computer history. I know for a fact.
00:10:39
Speaker
yeah about cookies i'll teach you about cookies so that you can check and see that there are no cookies yeah but i know it's like yeah when you're like everything's hinging on that it's so it's so um It's so sad in a way. You kind of go, it's all right. You can take a breath. Your whole life doesn't have to fall apart just because there is a quite lovely gay love story in the Bible. Like it's fine. It's okay. I don't know. There's so many things like that in, you know, thinking back on like all the sermons you sat through and stuff where like,
00:11:20
Speaker
There's just like this this projection of certainty and absolutism about things that clearly like there's clearly questions
Predestination vs Free Will Debate
00:11:29
Speaker
about. you know i mean i like the The one that always resonates in my brain is you know about like the predestination versus free will arguments. you know that everybody Everybody ruined like three friendships you know in church like because of that.
00:11:48
Speaker
And like, no matter which side you're listening to, they have to spend a significant portion of their time explaining why these verses, which seem to contradict what they're saying, don't actually contradict it. If you look at the original Greek and this and that and the other, and it's like, guys, do we have to know for sure? Like, do we have to know for sure that this is absolutely like what it is? Or or can you leave a little room for just conjecture here because you're explaining away a lot of scripture inspired by God and perfect in every way and that doesn't contradict itself. Yeah. It's also the ideas. Some of the ideas are not actually that bad. Like I always think of, and you have to relax and be able to stand back and say, okay, this idea is cool. Like I always really liked the story of Jesus running into the,
00:12:46
Speaker
to the church and, or whatever that, and getting the money lenders out, you know, that thing where, yeah, it pulls them out. And I always thought of that as a metaphor for like how you balance, like in terms of creative process, like, you know, how do you balance the, the, the, what's driving you to write this thing or or make this thing or write this song or whatever versus how much you can get paid for it. And like, like,
00:13:13
Speaker
the church represents sort of the the most pure, unaffected version of that. And then you have these people that come in as the commerce and they're like, no, make it marketable, no, do whatever.
Artistic Integrity in Religion
00:13:23
Speaker
And it's like, that's like an ongoing question that one has. But watching somebody who is supposed to represent virtue coming and going to get the fuck out of here. I thought there's something kind of cool about that. There's moments for that. and And I was like, okay, that's a nice story. I think about that sometimes. But I mean, so much of it is it so, I don't know. I don't remember a goddamn sermon I listened to ever. Except for one, when the headmaster asked a bunch of people to sit in the audience and when he said, you know that thing where he goes, Jesus confronts the guy that's possessed but possessed and he goes,
00:14:01
Speaker
Who are you? And he goes, my name is Legion for We Are Many. He wanted us to all- Which is pretty badass. Let's be real. I know it is. You almost wanted Legion to win when you heard that. You're like, oh, fuck yeah. It is. It's a really kind of quite sobering darkness in that. And his theory was that he would get a bunch of insecure teenage boys to all stand up and randomly say, my name is Legion for We Are Many.
00:14:28
Speaker
he gave us five minutes notice and he's and i'm just like this is never going to happen but he said my name is legion for we are many and then he paused and nobody stood up nobody did his drama moment and that's the oh and where he just like was left hanging and i'm like that's the only so i remember oh except for the one with the the chaplain held up a cow's tongue and went the tongue is mightier than the sword or whatever so will shit and then he like Like an actual cow tongue? Yes. for an i love Dude, object lessons are hilarious in church. yeah They'll like just bring in any random thing and they hold it up and think that they accomplished something cool. Yeah, like you've really turned it on its head. And then the he said, this is enough to turn you off your lunch, isn't it? And my friend Sam goes, it's enough to turn me off Christianity, that's for sure. and like think All the gays in the back of the choir stalls are like,
00:15:26
Speaker
throwing out our drag one liners. But yeah, most of that. And then the terrible Christians that wanted to be prefects would do their they're like they're big virtue speeches. And then they put up the posters everywhere. like This was a story I was going to tell last time. It was so stupid. Christian groups would put up these signs. The first person to ever do this happened once. There was a picture of a lion that said, the lion is coming.
00:15:54
Speaker
No explanation, very mysterious. And everyone's like, what is that? And then it just happened to be some dumb Christian thing. And then... He gets us. Yeah. And then they just did the same marketing trick every week for the next like two years. And it was like, we know, we know what this is. We know. Are you familiar with the He Gets Us marketing campaign?
00:16:19
Speaker
No. All right. we We did do an episode on it and I really can't recall a lot of like where their funding comes from. But their big thing, we didn't talk a lot about it, but their big thing was what the Super Bowl a couple of years ago, they were just getting like a bunch of ridicule online for spending like millions and millions of dollars to do like an ad campaign during the Super Bowl. And they're like,
00:16:49
Speaker
It's all like he, Jesus, he gets us. And it was all like relatable things, trying to like humanize this idea and of Jesus and make it relevant. It's definitely backed by a like a more conservative group, but they're trying to like, it just kind of feels like they're like masquerading as an every man and trying to make it relevant. So people are like, oh, Jesus, the guy who like basically was homeless and wanted to get money, ah all this money out of like,
00:17:19
Speaker
money lending and shit out of church. ah You guys, for his sake, decide to spend millions and millions of dollars on ads during the Super Bowl. And they're they stay still. It's still weird because like I follow them on Instagram for the sake of ah content, obviously. And I don't really it's like it's hard to know what they're trying to really do. Like ah Jesus loves the people we hate.
00:17:47
Speaker
He gets us. Like, should we do the same? um Like, the its where is this? He gets us because he loves the people we hate. Yeah. If anything that demonstrates he doesn't get us. where say None of us do that. if it's right Wrong with you.
00:18:06
Speaker
they Jesus broke the rules. Jesus lived in a strict society. In his time, teachers refused to teach women. Many didn't interact with sick or disabled people. Jesus wasn't close to others. Jesus spent time with people who had leprosy and those who were blind and paralyzed, and possibly even gay.
00:18:26
Speaker
It's not that simply, it doesn't say that I made that part up. Um, he spoke with the Samaritan woman in public, someone who his people liken to dogs, his people, the Jews, by the way. So it was slight antisemitic, a ring through all of this. Um, Jesus empowered women. Mary Magdalene became one of his most influential students. We know of her today because Jesus treated her equally encouraged to serve.
00:18:51
Speaker
as a vital part of his mission. Jesus's legacy challenges us to create spaces where others feel a sense of belonging, no matter what they look like or where they come from. And you like, that's pretty like typical evangelical Jesus shit. Uh, it doesn't really get in the weeds. It doesn't like it does it like whatever organizations are backing this, whichever one's funded, it it's clear that they have a line in the sand where they like.
00:19:17
Speaker
oh I mean, well, uh, we, we still love you, but you know, you can't do excellent. Like we know the game, we know the game, but it's just like big. I still don't like, what does that point of that? Like, I don't know what the purpose of this organization is or what.
Criticism of the 'He Gets Us' Campaign
00:19:35
Speaker
I mean, obviously to some extent trying to like, yeah, it's just vague outreach, trying to make Jesus relevant, but I don't.
00:19:43
Speaker
normally what's weird about it is normally people do that with the intent of driving you towards a certain like direction like so come to our church or right there's no end it doesn't it's hard to tell the end game here is there like a contact section or something let's see they but yeah i guess no matter who you are where you're from or what you believe we invite you to discover the world's greatest love story the story of jesus ah gross and then you look at their shop and it's like ah their link tree kind of thing. Yeah, there's just nothing to it. like It doesn't point you to anything. like It's interesting. like they're not They're not selling something.
00:20:27
Speaker
ah That almost makes it dumber to me. They're not, yeah. Because they all are. like Just sell it. Right. and That's what makes it hard to buy. like It's not pointing you in a direction of... Like, oh, you're interested in this? Check out our church. Like, I don't, so I don't really know what, with all this money going into it, what the actual purpose is. It makes me go. Is this like I, um,
00:20:53
Speaker
It's just just like a ah place like to wash your money at this point. It's just a really expensive Jesus fish on the back of your like 97 Taurus. That's what it comes down to. I think it's actually both of those things. And I think it's, if it's, if it's both of those things shrewdly, okay. Cause at least it's a tax dodge, but it's also possibly as somebody who has worked with creative teams as a, as a writer, when you have like,
00:21:23
Speaker
three stakeholders who just like have differing opinions and you can never get them to agree but you have to get the thing over the line. You just end up with this terrible, terrible stuff that they've been paying you for and then you block it out of your mind and you don't put it in your portfolio. It sounds like that. It sounds like There was somebody going, we just need to bring them to Jesus. It doesn't matter about us. And it's like, that's not what a campaign is, dear. Like, you got to have a seat. yeah Like, just like, you need matt drawing yeah, you could just, to I don't know, do it or don't do it. Like, and maybe that's capitalism totally fucking my brain because I just go, you're going to put all this money into this thing and have no, like no knowledge of what your return on that investment is.
00:22:08
Speaker
That means you're doing something nefarious. Or martyrdom too. It could be. Yeah, that's true. Tax site washing martyrdom. yeah It's like a fair criticism though when you're using money that people probably donated for you to you to spread the gospel in some way or another. like The fact that you've got nothing to like measure your effectiveness, or how well it's doing, or what people are saying about it, or how many people are, I mean, at least the ones on the side of the road that are like, you know, God does exist, call 1-800-4-TRUTH. Like, at least you get a bunch of shut-ins and schizophrenics that call you every month. Like, you can say, ah, we got 800 calls last month. But is this the same as, you know how Christian Mingle, I did never work
00:22:59
Speaker
on anything to do with Christian mingle, but I know for a fact that than when they sat down with the agency, they went, our biggest problem is that Christians think that God will provide and they don't have to do anything. It's just wait for someone to be delivered to you, men and women, anything, because it's all just about God's will. So it's this kind of inertia, but justified by divine intervention. Their biggest problem was we need to go get out there and do the act, like meet the person. And that's actually what they say in the Christian mingle thing. It's like, sometimes we think God is gonna do this, but other times God wants us to go and date somebody. It's the same kind of thing. It's like, no, no, no, no, no, no. That would be vulgar. This is entirely selfless. Just read this Bible verse. That's all we want for you because that changed our lives. And it's like, I mean, you you could be being actively
00:23:52
Speaker
like awful. I don't know, maybe just good. Spend a half a million dollars on this useless billboard. That's fine. Doesn't affect me. Doesn't affect me. All of you are morons. That's fine. Doesn't matter. Yeah. Yeah. It's economic activity, if nothing else. ah capb that's That shows you how much like even this conversation shows us that capitalism's ruined our brains a little bit. Yes, it has. Yeah.
00:24:20
Speaker
Well, okay. I want to hear like tell me ah without, you don't have to get into a ton of detail if you don't want to, but you talk about doing like different like. Writing things for different organizations. I don't like when when you talk about what you do I guess I don't really get it but it does sound cool and it sounds like there's Maybe a part of a writer.
Matt Philp's Writing Career
00:24:39
Speaker
Yeah that's like nice It's just it's so is there like is it for a company or is it independent or and is there like a grind to always have to find that like the next that next so website called Stormfront and
00:24:55
Speaker
No, I work for like a big tech company. Okay. um And so like, but I've worked for agencies in court, you know, in house and stuff like that. And um that's what like my day job is copywriting. And then we do the podcast. and um And then I have magazine writing that I also do, which is invariably interviews and profiles with um strippers who live in Miami and then or like whatever like dna DNA magazine in Australia is one of the magazines I write for it there, this legacy gay mag that has is almost entirely in print, like there's some online content, and then they have this whole other online content thing. But there it's the magazine, it's like kind of a it's a legacy gay, one of the the the sort of three to four big gay magazines in the world. And so okay they they call me when they want to get a profile on some millionaire, OnlyFans stripper,
00:25:50
Speaker
who has 30 minutes for me. And so I sit on a Zoom call with them. And then I, it's one of them was like really difficult to get information out of, he gave me exactly 30 minutes and was evasive. So I had to do the Frank Sinatra has a cold thing where like, you know, that that story Gay Tillie's for Gay Tilliezy, I can't remember how to say his lesson for Rolling Stone to this like insane profile of Frank Sinatra, but Frank Sinatra would not allow him to be interviewed. He would not be interviewed. So they kept his people kept saying, oh, we have he has a cold. He can't talk to you. So he just interviewed like every single person around Frank Sinatra. And this portrait is iconic. And they've actually printed the notes as a separate booklet. And he's like written it out as a three act piece. And it's a diagram. It's insane. So that's what I think I had to do that. It's sort of fun. I mean, strippers are fascinating.
00:26:44
Speaker
important people culturally. All of these people are really cool. All the pornsters that I've ever interviewed in some are all like they're actual healer people. They help so much in society on this level that I don't think they get credit for. we have a There's a pornster that follows our ah Instagram page. Oh yeah. The small hands is his handle if everyone wants to go look him up.
00:27:08
Speaker
do I mean yeah we've had um Cody Sayer um porn star who I did a profile on for DNA and then came on our podcast he's such a sweetheart um he's also an artist he exhibited in Bushwick a couple of months ago and to see his work um yeah there's just something about there's something kind of I think quite divine if that's a thing about their ability to find a connection with people and to heal them I think there's something very, some of them it's like really profound and it's it's interesting. Some of them are like money hungry and it doesn't matter and they're empty, but like whatever. Yeah, it's been it's it's a really interesting gig. I don't always write about st strippers, but like, but i bet it is like a fun thing to do. So yeah, I don't know. Sometimes there's more cultural analysis and stuff, but um yeah, that kind of thing. So just like I'm a writer for hire basically.
00:28:08
Speaker
I've been working on a bunch of projects all at the same time. But it takes a long time. Sorry. Everything takes a long time. But I, yeah. So, well, OK. So, oh, oh, weird. Oh, because you know what? You know how this thing, you know, these things, these spit guard things from my performance, I couldn't fit it to the table. So I connected it to a chair that's. I see that. It just hit. Oh, right. It's right in the camera. It just hit me in the face.
00:28:37
Speaker
um I know that post-election, everybody's like, you guys covered it, I think, quite well. You were like, what happened? Casey, I think you particularly remember you listing out all the things, you as Recline, and then Ravi Gupta, who was on our podcast, who was a Obama staffer,
Young Men's Disenfranchisement
00:28:57
Speaker
did a great just, and I'm like, I got it.
00:29:00
Speaker
I got it. That's a good company to be in. All of you kind of said very similar things. I dealt with a pending election thinking I need to be actively involved in some kind of discourse here, thinking this would be okay. I didn't think the election would be okay. And you never thought you'd find yourself in gays for Trump like leader either, which is crazy. To be honest,
00:29:25
Speaker
I didn't rule it out. yeah whatever you mean if you If things weren't working out in your daylight, you're like, what what what grift could I do? Yeah. And I mean, you could have been a the charismatic leader of gays for Trump and totally set yourself up for the for our impending doom. They're all a bit gays for Trump are all like,
00:29:49
Speaker
Actually, I don't know what they kind of, I remember doing like an interview with a bunch of people who were like, yeah like log cabin Republicans, they're all a bit kind of, it's all kind of like, they don't want ah upset old aunt Sally, they have Stockholm syndrome. um You know, great, got it, whatever. Figure yourself out or don't, doesn't I don't know what to do. But I, but I, um I didn't, I pitched myself to the ABC, which is the Australian version of the BBC, to do like some correspondence stuff for them with a veteran journalist a broadcaster, Angela Katernes, who
00:30:28
Speaker
I'd done one spot with 17 years ago about Britney Spears' breakdown. And she's like, you're really great at this. I'm quitting this job tomorrow. So thanks for doing that. I'm like, great. So no opportunity to keep working with this iconic woman. 17 years later, I emailed her and I'm like, you want to do another one of these? And she's like, sure. And so I did instead of the election, um instead of like just going, OK, none, no more of this, I had to go into it hardcore.
00:30:56
Speaker
and really pull it apart. It was like the antithesis of what I really would have done naturally. But I ended up doing a thing on, you know, like disenfranchised, like angry young man and like how there's something also kind of infantile about how America particularly views its leaders and the way that in this election Trump was considered a father, a daddy,
00:31:21
Speaker
literally young, angry white boys were calling him daddy, just weirdly
Trump as a Father Figure
00:31:26
Speaker
homoerotic. And also there was that insane. I never heard that. You didn't see that. Oh my God. it was around that some long And then there's that crazy interview that Tucker Carlson does with him or the speech where he just goes on for 15 minutes describing Trump as your angry father.
00:31:46
Speaker
who is coming home and things are not the way he wants them to be and he's going to make this better and it's going to be worse for you than it is for him. Like describing an abusive father. Yeah, what a wild way to describe that.
00:31:59
Speaker
explicitly, explicitly. And he is like, the crowd is loving this, your dad's- Look at that comforting feeling you had when your dad came home and was angry and you were really scared. I'm going to go put a book in your pants. And Carmel is the mother. Anyway, so I did all of that and I was like, okay. But what I think struck me, I'm not even sure if this is a question you asked, but I think what struck me was just how weirdly infantile and strange America is.
00:32:29
Speaker
about its leaders and how did this occur? Did this come up for you guys? like um So much of what America thinks it is or considers itself to be is the result of the Revolutionary War where the scrappy colony threw off the shackles of monarch oppression and became a democratic republic, etc.
00:32:50
Speaker
And then they sent the next 200 X whatever years trying to find new Kings. That's what they've been doing. And they've now voted one in and there's this sort of odd deference, mindless monarchic deference to presidents and to leaders and to technocratic bro.
00:33:13
Speaker
What are they? What's the term technocratic? Brollogarks, that's the term. Dang, I like that. That's so good. like He must, he invented Tesla, which he did not, and is worth $50 billion. dollars He should be on the phone with Zelensky as an unelected official. like America does this. It's weird. It's the same as religion.
00:33:37
Speaker
But it is this reference back to we just really want a king to rule over us and the reason I'm bringing this up is because I thought of Sideshow Bob. Do you remember the episode of The Simpsons where Sideshow Bob rigs an election and then gets taken to court? Why have they done everything before? They have you done it. Everything before happens. Everything. They have done everything.
00:33:57
Speaker
He said that Kelsey Grammer, it's incredible to see and he rigs an election and he's of course the terrible mastermind that needs credit for it. And Bart and Lisa naturally are the child lawyers representing the town of Springfield in as a duo and they're Aaron Salkening him by prodding him.
00:34:16
Speaker
to be like, come on, tell us how you did it. How did you do it knowing that he'll explode? And then he does the speech and I recorded some of it because the my favorite bit of it was, can I play this for you? It's like 11 seconds long. Yeah. This is this is his line that I think is true about America. Your guilty conscience may force you to vote demographic, but deep down inside you secretly long for a cold hearted Republican to lower taxes, brutalize criminals and rule you like a king.
00:34:46
Speaker
It America. It is spot on. It's so right. it's It's funny because like they this idea of like they go, you know, the the right goes... ah oh Trump's really gonna like...
00:35:02
Speaker
like rule with an iron fist and bring us back to the way we like things. And we're gonna we're gonna like the they they describe him as a like, they're gonna push back the that, that leftist fascism, the democrats are the fascist and then you go ah like all we what's Whatever. I mean, to to some degree, there's a level of just like, ah in any politician, there's that elitist, we know what's best for you bullshit. I'm not, ah you know, particularly stoked with, ah well I wasn't stoked with any of our options, really. no But the irony is they go like,
00:35:46
Speaker
you know You know what, the best the best way to beat our, like their ah opinion of fascism is things that they don't like or agree with. And the best way to beat it is through fascism. And it in the way they describe it, like they'll literally describe but fascism, which is we don't need the rules. We could just do what we want. We're going to bring it back to the way things should be. And we're just going to do it. And you can't do shit about it. And then I feel like it's like you're you're just and then you go fascism and they go, no, we hate fascism. I go, you described fascism. Yeah, it's it's a bunch of things, but it's. Part of it is is the the like the gradual realization that like
00:36:30
Speaker
that the system is so utterly corrupted that it's hard to see how any of our like very complex, real problems get fixed through these like traditional means. you know That's a good point. No, keep going. Sorry. I didn't mean to cut you off. That's just a great point.
00:36:49
Speaker
I think, but I think you're like kind of pivoting back to like what you're, you know, tying it in with like the religious angle is that it's whether you're talking about sorting out your life or fixing your finances or, you know, writing the country after, you know, four years of whatever, like the same principle still applies. It's it is comforting to think that things are actually simple.
00:37:17
Speaker
right It's very comforting to think that like a 25% tariff will save your ah financial situation. yeah under eightness yeah I have a friend who he's ah he's overweight and he always talks about it, you know whatever, I'm overweight, who cares? But he always he's always talking about it and like he just kind of keeps It keeps getting worse and like he it clearly bothers him, but he's just not at a place where like he can be at all realistic about what's going to fix the issue for him, which is he did eat less and eat better. i mean That's what it's going to come down to. right so like One day I'm talking to him and he's like, well, I was thinking about doing this potato diet.
00:38:04
Speaker
like What what is it? I've heard so many diet pitches from this guy, you know, and he's like, well, you know, I mean, ah it's this diet where you you basically you only potatoes.
00:38:19
Speaker
You can have them kind of any way you want. You know, you're not supposed to put like butter on them and stuff, but like, you know, you can eat as much potato as you want, but basically that's it. You can only eat potato or i'm like you describing like starvation rations. You're like, I, I ate one potato today because I'm so fucking sick of potatoes that now I'm getting skinny because I just don't eat.
Bar Drinking Anecdote
00:38:42
Speaker
Yeah. Yeah. ah It's, it's simple to think that like the problems Like the very complex issues between like, you know, men and women who are, you know, drifting in k opposite political directions and stuff like now, right now, is it comes down to, you know, this, this nation's addicted to pornography. Yeah. It's just, it's so, it's so comforting to like, stamp
00:39:10
Speaker
one-word answers onto big complex problems, attempt to at least, hey, at least if we can't get our arms around this, we can at least find comfort in willfully misunderstanding it. But I think if you want to be, I think if you want to be a dictator, those, that characteristic is exactly what you want in a population. Like if you, if you look at Russia, i and by no means somebody who knows a lot about Russian history, but I think it's interesting to note that after the Zars were toppled, you had this class of peasants who were so used to being dehumanized in this medieval way. And Stalin just went, well, you're the proletariat, you're not peasants anymore, look at you, good goodness me, just give it another P name. And then totally exploit that that that credulity in people
00:40:06
Speaker
Like that's why it's funny when Christians are like religious people are like, Oh, well, like no atheist did anything bad. Like, and it's like a fucking tons of atheist did terrible bad things. Like, but they also use the structure of exploiting credulous people who don't have access to education and the kinds of things that they need to be functioning people because they're dehumanized by capitalism or whatever structure. And that and America seems to be.
00:40:36
Speaker
doing that where it's the same as like when Putin handed all the the oligarchs, look he was like, stay out of politics, and loot the country all you want. So it's like, put all these people in place, none of them have any experience. it's if You can always see him saying, just look, loot the country, you'll have all this power, never usurp me.
00:40:58
Speaker
a friend of mine was saying that um she doesn't think that Elon Musk will last very long because he'll outshine Trump just in terms of media attention and he'll get rid of him. He'll get rid of Elon Musk. And that's a great point. But it's sort of like that's the that's the Achilles heel of this administration. But I think the idea of sitting with um the difficulty of the the ambiguity of life is the big challenge and sitting with the fact that you don't know what happens to you after you die is like the thing that will never be resolved so it's just like kind of I don't know that's why I love origin stories you know movies that are about like Maleficent because it's like remember how she was evil for 50 years let's find out what she has to say and then you go oh wait I understand Maleficent now it's like these are the things that are doing the work to make people sit in ambiguity and
00:41:58
Speaker
and consider that people aren't all one thing or all the other. you know It's a bizarre problem that we seem to have.
Praise for Musical Wicked
00:42:07
Speaker
yeah Yeah. Unless you're Star Wars, then you might fuck that up. But i maybe maybe Wicked will do a better job. Wicked has done a better job. Thank you for taking that cue. um I was surprised to see that you guys hadn't seen it. Casey, you're particularly seeing as it's the fever dream history of your homeland. um Oh, my God. i That is true. I've heard a lot of people say they love it. It's incredible. It's a master. I mean, I'm a joke, you know, Broadway gay. So I'm like easy sell on this. But like Ravi Ravi Gupta was like 10 out of 10. Unbelievable. Like almost emotion free guy who takes mushrooms just to connect with his emotions because he's so good at systems like that's why he's a was a policy adviser in the White House.
00:42:58
Speaker
he went in he he was like oh my god this is a masterpiece i mean it is that's an origin story of the wicked witch of the west like we find out who she was and why she was this um and it's interesting to note also this is my big thesis right now gladiator two and wicked are basically the same movie they're about the same character the same heroes have the same missions they're from the same places they were pushed to the same places as it's it's gladiator 2 ironically would lose in a fight between wicked and gladiator 2 like if they did a Jake Paul Mike Tyson thing where it was wicked and gladiator 2 on Netflix in a ring wicked would
00:43:39
Speaker
actually beat Gladiator 2. Do we see Wicked or Gladiator's ass cheeks in a pre-fight interview? That's the only thing I care about. You see perilously, perilously few scenes of Paul Mezcal's ass in Gladiator 2. Bummer.
00:43:58
Speaker
and they have bummer and yeah you know i Anyway, it was like it was interesting because both of the characters Both of these movies are about bastards who, were like literal bastards, not like bastards, who were shunned, and then they come back to destroy the system that alien alienated them. And it's really about being an individual in the world and navigating your position in relation to a tyrannical establishment government. So living in America, negotiating religion, you know, like,
00:44:35
Speaker
And these are both out at the same time telling largely the same story. It's really, well, okay, not really. Wicked has it. It's only half the movie, but yeah, and it ends tragically, but it's still...
00:44:49
Speaker
I don't even know. that I know Gladiator 2 is a thing. I didn't. I mean, Gladiator. I don't know. Is it called Gladiator 2? Yeah, Gladiator 2. OK, so it's a sequel. I was like, at first I was like, is this a sequel or a reboot? Because it's actually the sequel. Yeah. In the world of reboots. But we also like to make sequels long past when the originals were made at this point. um Yeah, no, this is the next chapter. And they have these snippets from the other movie in it. ah The thing about Gladiator.
00:45:19
Speaker
As a young Christian lad, the first two R-rated movies I was allowed to see, like most young Christian lads, was The Patriot and Gladiator. okay If you're anywhere within your mid-30s and you are a boy, ah you probably had a similar experience.
00:45:38
Speaker
like that was those are like because ah It was just, uh, there's, uh, there was some violence, but there was no language like in either of those. You'd have to worry about swearing or sex in gladiator, the Patriot. And they told amazing stories. One about our country, the other about, uh, the mo I mean, gladiator was one of the most Christ-like figures of our time. Yes.
00:46:02
Speaker
And what's funny is it's just been her, basically. And day there are so many gay moments in that on purpose that they that they put in that are coded, you know, like, it it's funny. Well, they're like...
00:46:16
Speaker
There are kind of gay characters, there are gay giraffes in Gladiator. It's like a gay giraffe or GC. No, why did the guy that trains him in the first movie, he's like, you know, the first time you meet him, he's like this sort of Paul Lind. No, he's a Paul Lind. What is he? He's sort of like a Rex Harrison type.
Queer Giraffes in Gladiator
00:46:35
Speaker
But gay, or and he gets mad at someone who sold him queer giraffes, these two gay giraffes that weren't made. Totally forgave that. So he would be queer giraffes and then like grabs his balls and tries to rip them off. So it's like... Which is a very ah violently gay response, right? 100%. Dude, I don't remember that at all. That is... That's one of the only things I remember from the film. Actually, both of them use wheat in exactly the same way. I don't know if you remember the beginning of Gladiator, like he talks about death. If you find yourself running in a field of wheat, just keep running, you're already dead, it's fine. And then at the end, he's running through wheat. Wheat is this symbol of running through, you're free from the oppression of life or whatever. Exactly the same thing in Wicked. She runs through a field finally free, she has all this potential in ahead of her alphabetized.
00:47:31
Speaker
And then at the beginning of gladiator two, he's literally holding wheat and he's like playing with wheat. It's all this wheat. Wheat is the thing. They all love wheat. Wheat is freedom. It's owned by big wheat. Wheat, the wheat industry is what actually funded most of this. Frosted flakes, catalogs is just, it's harder to make that look right with corn. Yeah, it's like hitting you in the face. It yeah running through the hor sucks. yeah I can tell you that.
00:47:59
Speaker
ah no yeah You have corn coming out and everything like, holy shit, it's stuck everywhere. It is an interesting idea about origin stories though. Yeah. Because it makes you think about like, i you know,
00:48:16
Speaker
I can't, I'm struggling to think of any like positive origin story that I've listened to or watched in recent memory. But you know, I've listened to like 16 different versions of every serial killer's origin story.
00:48:33
Speaker
You know, and it's like, they're all kind of sensationalized, especially the TV versions are all these like sensationalized things, where really what they want to find is like, the first moment where they showed that they were evil, you know, or they showcase what they were it's inherently inherent in them, and they could never afford it. Right? Yeah, it's Jeffrey Dahmer with the jogger.
00:48:58
Speaker
You know, yes, that's right. I tried to watch that Ryan Murphy thing. I just, I was too much. I couldn't handle it after a while. Even about peters with this shirt off for most of it. I'm just like, ah this is so accurate and dark, but I struggled to get into anything serial killer, whether it's like true crime, documentary, ah reenactment media of any sorts. Like I don't, I have, I never have cared for that.
00:49:28
Speaker
that genre but I do think to your point Casey like the idea of origin story like when we get origin stories in films we go ah we usually first get the original we go this is the bad guy this is a good guy and it almost was like you could just maybe those tropes worked easier ah like that Disney Channel that Disney villain type shit where it's like, they're bad. They just want power. They want to rule everything for the sake of power and ruling everything. And they don't, there's no big deep dives. You don't like, there's no origin story for Jafar unless there is. And I just am not aware. I want there to be a Jafar one. And there is one from for There's one that's about to come out for him. I want the one I want is Ursula because I've heard like,
00:50:20
Speaker
cultural critics say that she's just a bitch. And I'm like, no, she fucking isn't. but She so is not. You know that Triton is this Aryan power mad freak who did some bullshit and blamed her for something. And she gets cast out and she's just enraged. And now she's like, reacting to her own version of things.
00:50:44
Speaker
like that is that Like, she's too hilarious and like, camp and divine, the drag queen, to be truly evil. She's an aww, she can't be.
00:50:57
Speaker
And it's like, but I was thinking about this too. I want an origin story for Satan for real. I want to know, do we have, is there an origin story for Satan? I know the one that Bible says, oh, beautiful thrown out of, cause one had to use it. And that's debatable that that has anything to do with like, that that I don't, I, I don't really, there's no real origin story. No, it's like, Oh, he was.
00:51:20
Speaker
an angel cast down. Is that in Revelation? I forget where that is. Is it in John? It's in something more apocalyptic, but it- One of the New Testament, I'm sure, yeah. Yeah. Pretty late in the game. Like the entire Hebrew Bible, you're not going to find any reference to that shit. A hundred percent, yeah. That's right. It's Jesus- It comes so late. yeah It comes so late, like almost in the, like Like almost in the second century BCE, I mean AD. From what I know, it's like the Jesus is when the devil and hell becomes a thing. So gentle Jesus, as Christophage and says, Meek and mild comes with the devil hell story. Do what I say or you go to hell. I'm being sad. He goes into hell as everyone's penance.
00:52:10
Speaker
So there's a hell there in the beginning. Yeah, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, I guess maybe you're maybe you're right. Maybe that's sort of when it is. But but I don't actually don't know. I'll have to look, I'll have to double check that after we're done here. Because I do, the idea of like Jesus, I think the idea of like Jesus going,
00:52:31
Speaker
to hell it was like kind of like a postscript thing was it um like ah when Jesus came on the scene my understanding is that ah through like Roman Hellen ization it had entered Jewish thought that maybe there's a devil of some sort like an antagonist to God in that That idea had been entered into theology, but within Jewish thought it was highly debated and there were plenty of of Jews and like rabbis, Jewish thinkers.
00:53:15
Speaker
who thought all that was nonsense. And that is kind of the tradition that continue. You're not gonna find it. I don't, as far as I've never met a Jew that is like, yeah, hell and Satan are. Yeah, I was gonna say, I feel like- It's not, it didn't carry on. That was Hellenization and that mostly grafted onto Christianity. Yeah. You do have Christians who say, who try to do like,
00:53:39
Speaker
They kind of do the evangelical thing. Here's the thing about progressive Christians, too. Let's shit on them for just a quick second, too, because... Take all the time you want. you they get a little annoying too with the well actually if you look at the like they're doing a lot of the same shit like they because progressive Christians are trying to make the Bible work for them on their terms as well as evangelical Christians in most situations and I find that to be annoying because you can't you could just be like yeah different authors said different things and had different opinions and you can just kind of like you could kind of
Progressive Christianity's Adaptation of the Bible
00:54:13
Speaker
deal with that on your own terms uh but the idea like they'll still they'll do things like
00:54:19
Speaker
Yeah, well, Jesus mentioned, you know, it gets translated hell, but it's Gehenna in a trash pit and this and that. And you go, that annoying thing is very like, it it's entirely possible that ah what we have written about what Jesus said, which was, you know, plenty of time after he died. So you have to account for the intent of the authors and their writing and their reason for writing about his life. And when you have four fairly different stories you get to go. Yeah, there's four, four people wrote fairly different stories all using this guy as their premise. So all of that considered it. It's very much within the well realm of reason that Jesus was just like, yeah, there is some sort of eternal damnation, or there is some sort of eternal ah eternity or eternal punishment or
00:55:14
Speaker
ah whether or not there was a way out of it who knows I don't I don't know all the thought around it I'm just saying progressive Christians do that annoying shit sometimes where they go ah we're gonna make the Bible work on our terms ah just as the evangelicals have done instead of just taking it on its own terms and agreeing with it or not or not agreeing yeah right Yeah, I don't know. I think it was, its so I mean, it always sort of seemed to me to be a fairly convenient tool used by, I guess, the Vatican. I don't know, but I'm not ah as much of a, I'm not a Bible scholar as you are. so i i would Don't use the word scholar with me. ah umm I'm ah um'm an armchair ah you know enthusiast, I suppose.
00:56:00
Speaker
um It is, uh, sorry. Uh, I had, I lost my train of thought because my, my neighbor is calling me nonstop. So he's got some problems. Yeah. It is fascinating how like, um, you know, there I think it seems like there's only in recent Like the last 10, 20 years, have you seen like Hollywood start to take on these like villain origin stories? And it's it's it's interesting as you like learn more, you know, whether it's history or whatever, how often you find that like, The villain that you've built up in your head had like pretty modest origins that, you know, I mean, you can, you can see where decisions were made that, that took them on the, on the path that they were and not necessarily like this is wrong, but I'm doing it anyways. right And it's funny. It's like, you see it even in nature. Like, um, I just, uh, have you ever seen the movie, the ghost in the darkness?
00:57:19
Speaker
So it's like, it came out when I was a kid, but it's about the, it's, it's got, uh, Val Kilmer and. Oh God, I can't remember his name, but anyways, it's about this guy, Colonel John Patterson, who was commissioned to build, uh, like a railroad bridge in Savo, which is like, uh, I think it's an area in Tanzania, Tanzania, Kenya. I'm not, not 100% sure.
00:57:48
Speaker
But basically like he gets down there to build this bridge and production comes to a halt because there's these two lions that are just killing like massive amounts of people. Like they're attacking the camp like on a nightly basis almost and they're dragging like.
00:58:04
Speaker
you know, the workers and stuff like out of a tent and over like this thorn fences and stuff that they built. And it's like a really fascinating story. It's all based on a true story book by this guy. They killed like 140 some people over the course of, you know, 10 or 12 months. But when all that to say, like,
00:58:28
Speaker
They finally like eventually corner these lions and they take one out and the other one they they take out after the fact. And like, usually when there's like a man eating lion, leopard, tiger, you name it. Like you find either they have an injury that prevented them from like hunting their, their natural game, their natural prey. They.
00:58:54
Speaker
had you know they're old and their teeth are worn down and they just can't grab prey like the like they used to you know or through no fault of their own they really have uh you know in war zones and stuff in places where big cats are prevalent there's a tendency for for like man eating lions leopards tigers to pop up because they They feed on dead bodies that are just kind of every, I mean, they're carrion eaters, you know, at the end of the day.
Nature's Influence on Origin Stories
00:59:25
Speaker
So like, they kind of develop a taste for, for human flesh. And it's, I don't know, it's just fascinating to think about how like, any of those situations you see, like, a person on a natural path, that is very relatable.
00:59:45
Speaker
And through like circumstances that sometimes aren't even yeah most of the time aren't even under their control, you see a series of decisions that leads them into you know into the role that you eventually know them for, which is you i mean Joseph Stalin. or ah Paul potter you name it. I mean it's like a lot of some of those people are like Just sociopaths like I think Saddam Hussein was this was it was a psychopath. I don't know what sorry I deeply I've never been clear on the difference in sociopath and psychopaths, but I think me neither I think that Saddam is like these people if you want to rise to that level sometimes you're a psychopath, you know, I Don't think I've ever seen a violent elephant do anything unreasonable. I something and it's upset, something is wrong with the world around it. Elephants are so fucking smart. There, you know, there's no main spirited elephant. There's an elephant that's had it. You're also taught that about sharks in Australia, because, you know, like how every animal will kill you there. Sharks, it's like you go in the water, you know, sometimes there are sharks around. Sharks are not hanging out trying to be jerks. They're really smart.
01:00:59
Speaker
like they don't have infinite energy either, so they're not gonna be like, I'm just gonna go out and see if I can rip some legs off some children. They're like, if they happen to be in this area for whatever reason, they're trying to get food, or if you were encroaching, it's like, it's not that hard to understand why these things happen. I think a lot of these revisiting the past in terms of origin stories like Disney is doing it, but also,
01:01:27
Speaker
You can, this, it's just like everywhere is also part of, I mean, I think it kind of is like part of me too. And I think it's part of black lives matter. I think it's trans trans visibility. It's like, it's kind of saying earlier in the and in the beginning, trans people have been around since humans have been around. You can go back and you can find the evidence for trans people as far back as there are people. If you don't want to see that, or you want to ignore it,
01:01:55
Speaker
for whatever reason, you can do that, but they've always been there. And so finding those stories is what we're doing now where we were reckoning with ourselves a bit. And I think that's sort of, that's like one place where culturally, I think we're on the right track. Like we are sort of disassembling what gender is.
Reevaluating Historical Narratives
01:02:21
Speaker
It's confusing for a lot of people, but everything's messy when you're read figuring stuff out. And that's like these movies are helping us do that in a strange way. um So yeah, that's, I kind of started to notice this like seven or eight years ago. I'm like, it's like, we're really looking at everything.
01:02:41
Speaker
And so do we need a Trump origin story? Is that what you're saying? i mean do I think we know what that is. I mean, I think he's an acolyte of Roy Cohn and he's also actually, you know what? Self-promote. Erin and Elizabeth, who I do tell me about your father, we did a fantastic episode on the father issues surrounding the presidential candidates. And if you want, to if you have the capacity to go back and want to engage in a podcast episode that talks about this before we knew that she would lose. They do a great job of looking at how he became kind of what he is. There's also that movie that came out but if even if you just go back and look at Roy Cohn and then Roy Cohn is an acolyte of Joseph McCarthy, what a surprise that's who we have. He has been this
01:03:35
Speaker
goon in American life for 50 years, biting his motherfucking time. And there's a great interview that an American comedian who went to England and is part of the sort of rata crowd like Kenneth Branagh group of celebrated British actors who are in their 70s now named Ruby Wax. American did an incredible series of the celebrity interviews in the 90s, deeply iconic. She is the Louis Theroux, British interviewer, um he kind of took her career because she's a woman and was too old and they they actually hashed that out at one point quite recently and he made all of her interviews, made the BBC release all of her interviews. Again, she does an incredible interview with Trump.
01:04:23
Speaker
where she goes to him, she's on the plane with him, she's in the car with him, she is um in the casino, she's following him around and he sometimes acknowledges her, sometimes he doesn't and she's she's so good at it. But she talks about this now, she revisits that interview and she's like, I look into his i looked into his eyes and I've never seen more hatred in anyone's eyes. like And it's a woman who has, she went to Imelda Marcos, she interviewed, you know, she's she's interviewed this these this series of interviews with these incredible people and she gets these people to just divulge. She's like, he was one of the toughest people that she, that looking into his eyes, she just saw.
01:05:07
Speaker
pure hatred. And I think if you looked at him, then you'd be like, he's a goon. But he had it. He was created by Roy Cohn, who was a horrifying man. And so was Joseph McCarthy. So it's all laid out. It was all laid out for us. Like a snowball effect. He's the cumulative result. Yeah, it's a legacy going back to the red scare. It's like, gross. It is interesting that like, can can you Can you really harbor a tremendous amount of hatred if you're not also harboring a tremendous amount of arrogance? i I don't know. Sure. Yeah. I mean, I think the problem is Trump's father was a fucking asshole and brutalized him. And then that's what he learned, who he was. so
01:06:04
Speaker
you know I don't know. I think the arrogance is this armor that you wear, I guess. I'm not sure, but yeah. It's it's like at it at its core. it's a
01:06:16
Speaker
it's ah i This is my right. I deserve this spot because I'm better. I'm better than you, I'm better than you, I'm better than you reporter asking me questions that I shouldn't have to answer. I'm ah better than ah so-and-so, you know, who interviewed somebody from my past that I don't like. I mean, it's like a I'm above this and it makes, and and it's like that is kind of the the base layer of the hatred. I mean, I think you could have that without having hatred.
01:06:49
Speaker
But I think it's a weird thing to have, like to be somebody who thinks you're better and then they know that they can't really be like explicit about that, I guess. I don't know, Trump kind of can. I guess that's his thing. He's our king now, our father king. See the explicit it's to him like it's interesting like I wonder if like I've constantly wondered and I think Bernie maybe was an example of you know explicit without vulgarity in the same sense where it's just like which I don't and typically even have a problem with vulgarity. It's weird when you hear it coming from a politician
01:07:31
Speaker
um because we're not primed for that, but I think maybe the left could use some of that at this point. Well, I think act um Beto O'Rourke was the one of the first people to say motherfucker. Like, I think he yelled it at someone who laughed. He was talking about gun violence. He goes, I don't know if you think this is funny motherfucker, but it's not funny to me. Winning moment for him. And also a moment in culture where, oh, now we have politicians that say motherfucker. OK, there we go.
01:07:59
Speaker
Yeah. And I think what's, I guess that's, you know, there's a, there's an abrasiveness, uh, that comes from Trump. I, I don't know. It's interesting to see like, uh,
01:08:11
Speaker
cause when I, I mentioned this a little bit ago, uh, even on this, so it's a little bit of a repeat, but, uh, like the, the idea that like Trump is kind of like, uh, a Rorschach test, uh, where you go like,
01:08:29
Speaker
Trump says a lot of things. and And you get the people who like him go, oh, he's not really gonna do that. And what he really means by this is that. And what like it and it's similar to like evangelical Christianity and the way you look at the Bible. and the way It's just like that's this idea of like if if this if this person or this book or this idea covers like this broad enough thing, you get to go,
01:08:55
Speaker
oh Well, they're look I they're not really gonna do that one thing that I don't like but I believe that they're gonna do the things that I do like and it really just isn't it exposes what what people want and think and hope for and um yes, it it doesn't it it gives them the ability to to ah Look to this person for what that really they're just placing hope of some sort on this on this idea of a person more than the person itself you know yeah but i think that's creating a monarch ultimately it's sort of saying here is this object that is symbolic of something that is more powerful than me that can exist for me in a lot of ways that can stand up for me that can represent me in situations that i don't have agency
01:09:49
Speaker
and like it's weird how that's what I guess I mean about like America the way that deifies its presidents and it has created a mythology about the founding fathers and you've got something like Amy Coney Barrett who treats the constitution as though it is a religious text.
America's Deification of Leaders
01:10:10
Speaker
It's like you have room for this sort of infallibility in leaders and you even look at them now as ex-presidents and they're still in this sort of elevated statesman class that I understand for an empire. Australia doesn't have that.
01:10:29
Speaker
It's interesting, I was thinking about that. They just don't. Maybe that's why you're not a world superpower. Maybe that's why. I don't want to be a superpower. I ran into, like, here's a, here's an Australian, here's the, do you know how you could never just like run into President Obama. He would not be at the supermarket. He just wouldn't be somewhere. He just is not where you are. You are not where he is. Right, right. Same with Bill Clinton, same with Hillary, same with Kamala probably.
01:10:56
Speaker
I have met two prime ministers just randomly because they just happened to be around. That's such a weird idea. I love that. I was at the opera twice. I'm not like into the opera so much, but I was happened to be there. So it's even more bizarre that the two times that I, rare times that I'd been, I met Paul Keating, who's the Australian version of Bill Clinton, basically very charismatic briefly. But the better one was at the Met in New York with Kevin Rudd, who's now He was the Prime Minister of 2007, I think, 2007 to 2012 or something like that. He's now the Australian Ambassador to the UN by himself at the Opera. I knew he was there with somebody who worked in government, not with him, could go up and say, oh, I work with so and so. And then Kevin Rudd at one point turns to me and goes, have we met? And I go, no, we haven't. And he goes, here's my card.
01:11:55
Speaker
And I'm like, great. And he gives me his card and it's got the Australian crest, Kevin Rudd, wildly accomplished man, 26 or whatever, prime minister of Australia, something, something at hotmail dot.com. That's his email address. And I'm like, and that's that's the Australian, that's the difference, you see, that's the primary difference between And I'm like, why didn't I just say, I don't know, where do you think we met? Like, to the fucking private sector. Like, why didn't I do, I didn't know I should have done better, but. That's incredible. It is true. We have like deified and celebrified, a celebrified award. Can be. Now it is. Our, our presidents. It's like, we're not, we're not even voting for like all of that. Like it's just, even when we're voting, we know we're voting for horseshit. We're voting for an idea that represents
01:12:54
Speaker
ideas I don't like ah I think back to like Hillary in old dawn you're just like okay where we know what we're voting for is trash we know we weren't this isn't really a democracy anymore given this like that's not them it's wild anything and it's just like to show up, to vote it feels distant, it feels like it's not even that consequential. like Everyone, ah it's so important to vote. You show up and you go, I'm voting for like these, these are this is these are the names I see on a ballot. like you You do it and you walk away and you go, I feel like I did nothing. I feel like it didn't matter.
01:13:37
Speaker
and And you'll never meet these people, you'll never see them. You don't believe any of them actually care about you as individuals. You believe all of them have vested interests that they're trying to protect, especially like an old, even an all like and oligarchy like ah Clinton's, you know, you're just like, What do you, I mean, you, you care about protecting your way of life and the world that you've created for yourselves more than you do about, you know, the middle class. That's, that that's kind of like the democratic lies. They pretend like they're for the middle, well the middle class doesn't exist anymore. It got eroded completely. So like you're either for like the lower.
01:14:16
Speaker
middle or like the upper at this point or you're for recreating a middle class and which I think is what Bernie was about but you just go like at the end of the day like we we all kind of know that this is pageantry and I'm not saying and it isn't without consequence and it means nothing because I look at the people that Trump is just like nominating constantly for positions of power and you go This, now we're now we're in like a fantasy land. None of this makes sense. I can't believe we're having these conversations. So so it's it's all wild. It's not like, I think we got the worst of both of the two options by far. um And it's kind of like what you were saying before where you're just like,
01:14:59
Speaker
ah uh what you know i'm having a hard time recalling it now but i'm connecting it to something you said before it's just like yeah this guy can you know oh i want this guy for this because it's gonna it's it's worth it for me ah like for trump like it's around like a mafia and it's it's like right i'll put something unqualified in this role so that also i know where the bodies are buried and then they'll Yeah, you compare the Russian oligarchy thing where it's just like, yeah, I'm going to appoint you based on your loyalty. Like I'm going to make, I'm going to make this work for you as long as you continue, as long as you don't oppose me in any way. Yeah. I mean, that's the sound Putin did it. That's, I mean, it's a really.
01:15:42
Speaker
it's a bizarre thing that that that the experience of going through an election is one that you're, what is presented to you is a huge emotional experience that you're meant to have and get on board with for two fucking years to the point where you're just exhausted by it. And it's like, I actually don't need you to be my mother. I don't need Carmilla to be my fucking mom a lot. Like but that is actually America. Like,
01:16:10
Speaker
And that is how, and it's not just, it's like, it's like, it's not even, it's not just politics, you know, it's like, why are the Kardashians aristocrats? Like Trump was like this back when I was a kid in California in school for a couple of years, I didn't know who Donald Trump was. And all the boys, he was a reference point when I was in fifth grade. And I was like,
01:16:35
Speaker
This country is bonkers. like I remember that it was so weird because in class abortion was brought up in fifth grade and the whole class just erupted in shouting. And I'm like, wait, what are we talking about? a Abortion. And I'm like, okay, I think I kind of know what you're talking about. Why do you guys have that opinion of abortion and Donald Trump?
01:16:59
Speaker
those are the like, he was the epitome of success for these kids my age. And it's sort of funny to me. It's not funny at all. Actually, it's distressing that in this election, abortion and Donald Trump are still two things that are defining what is of value and and what is important in American in the American mindset. It's just a few things there where Part of the reason that we're in this situation is because the donor class picks who runs and who and and they only are going to run people who are not going to challenge, like you said, their way of life. you know it's it's I really think it's crazy when you look back at at the fact that like um you know the primary process for the Democratic Party has is so ridiculous.
01:17:57
Speaker
that like you know we didn't get a primary this time because Biden was in denial about his ability to run. We didn't, you know, the primary last time, like nobody had Biden in the front until we were told over and over again that he was the best option. And they slowly kind of like whittled out all the side candidates and stuff like that. 2016, I mean, all the emails and stuff leaked where they, you know, they they acted, the DNC actively undermined Bernie Sanders, you know, the only candidate that had some grassroots. I mean, not the only one Hillary did too, but it's.
01:18:32
Speaker
that That group of people has made decisions on who we get to pretend to vote for and when the election rolls around. but they also like part of the reason that Kamala couldn't really run on anything meaningful is because of those people, you know, it's like all the, like the, the post-election dissections over like, why didn't she run, you know, on, on raising the minimum wage or, you know, this like anti price gouging thing that she started and then she laid off on and stuff. And it's like, well, the wealthy,
01:19:05
Speaker
Donor class push back on that messaging because they see it as a threat to them as Potentially problematic to to you know, their money making schemes and I think I think I think You're you're risking sounding somewhat conspiratorial and I and i understand that America's run by Corporations and the big money and it's this this this billionaires that do run that the run it and I but I don't think it's as simple as like ah there's a a group of people that are like I don't know like it's a it's a it's a little bit more there's a lot more sort of libidinal tied to this I think and also her specific kind of will I mean they they have to be blocking out a lot of reality and data frankly if they're not going she's not going on Joe Rogan like
01:19:58
Speaker
The reason the Republicans, and I actually think what's interesting is about Trump is that he's an he is an outlier. And if you think back to when I think Hillary was running, I was in Australia, I was talking to my stepfather about this. I'm like, who, because he's a Republican, American Republican. And I, he votes for, he voted for Trump, he's voted for Nixon, like everyone. And I said, who have your people got? You know, you got nothing. You got like Romney or whatever. And then he's like, yeah, I don't know. It's like kind of.
01:20:27
Speaker
It's kind of shitty, like we don't, I don't know who we've got. I don't know who we've got. He then went on to say, no, was Obama was a second term or something like that. He's like, well, we've had this little experiment has been interesting.
01:20:44
Speaker
And I'm like, what do you mean, what is an experiment? And he's like, well, the the Obama presidency. And I'm like, what do you mean it's an experiment? And he's like, yeah, it's a fun little experiment. And I'm like, so if we just think about what an experiment is, this when you have one control group and then when you have another group where you make one change and you see what the outcome is, if we're talking about this as an election, this election was pretty much run the same as every other election in American history, what could be the one variable in this election that was slightly different. It was the, could it be that the candidate was black? Like it, it's like you've, discoded this coded, this like racism that comes out and he's sitting there kind of languid about it. I'm like, you got nothing. And then Trump comes along with his own money and his showbiz and his, you don't, you don't, you're undervaluing me. You don't think I can do it. And that's the, he did take over and didn't give a fuck cause he had his own money and his own celebrity power that
01:21:44
Speaker
So I think that was the reason that he could operate is because he couldn't be controlled, really. Yeah. I mean, like the RNC establishment pushed back hard on him until the tide was too strong. They couldn't win on them that. And they all backed out. Paul Ryan disappeared. All the senior Republican, all the Empire people are backing out of this saying, don't elect him. He's a psychopath.
01:22:12
Speaker
and It's because part of it is because they're not relevant anymore. And Trump is actually somehow representative of this deep primal version of America that has been brewing since McCarthy. So, you know, I mean, forever, really, like.
01:22:29
Speaker
It's sort of always been like this. I don't know. This is sort of a shitty thing to kind of get to the final bit of our podcast. I do think the Casey's point though, when you think of like, like I think it's slightly less conspiratorial just based on like what Kamala's options were, right? We were.
01:22:55
Speaker
I'm not negating that point completely, by all means. No, no,
Trump's Decisive Policies
01:22:59
Speaker
no, no. Yeah. I mean, it's it's big corporate money, of course. That's the massive super pats. And just what you can even push back. Like, I don't know. I don't, you know, we we watched. We watched. OK, I'm I hate myself for doing this. I hate it so much. what I'm going to say, yeah, Casey's hard right now. ah I think if um who I'm thinking on the fly right now so everyone fight me please because I hate that I'm even going in this direction I think that if Trump wanted to do student debt relief and he was president he would have just fucking done it and it would have and then it would have made it so hard to like go back like that's what Trump does
01:23:40
Speaker
He goes, I'm going to fucking do this and I'm going to make it a nightmare. Um, just it, and it makes it so hard to walk back from and like anyone who wants to play by the rules is kind of fucked. Like you have to be a loophole party. You have to just, you have to fuck people and to get what you want and.
01:23:59
Speaker
I hate that I'm saying that because I think like, I think almost the election could have been bought if Kamala could have just really, or Biden could have pushed debt relief through. I think there's a lot of people who would have been like, yeah, you know what? He got this done and it really made a difference for me and he fought, but he goes, we're going to do this. And then it got immediately pushed back on and it got tied up in litigation for over a year.
01:24:23
Speaker
And that was a very meaningful thing towards people in their 30s and 20s voting. And I just think like, You just, you look at, I feel like not, ah it's hard to call it like the Democrats like rule followers because no one's following rules really. They're making them up as they go. But I think that they're tied to precedent a little bit more to the point where it just hobbles them where it's important. Instead of just being like, I said it and now it's done and it's up to you to pick up the fucking pieces.
01:24:57
Speaker
And I don't know. but Well, maybe you have different thoughts on that. But I do think that like, ah to some degree, like her ability to gain traction was just the weakness of the Democratic Party not being willing to just say,
01:25:16
Speaker
fuck precedent we're just we're doing this thing and then it's up to the next it's and then I'll let the next person who wins pick up because if if they if they've like freed people from their debts and then what It gets tied up in court and then Trump becomes president and then he has to try to put all that debt back on people. Like
The Oxford Comma Debate
01:25:41
Speaker
that's a huge that's a huge thing. And I don't know. ah I might be oversimplifying it, but I think I think that Trump would announce that he was doing that, drop the mic and then never go back and check up on how it's going. So you get some like goofy, like, ah you know,
01:26:01
Speaker
corrupted version of whatever it was you know that's' going to pull i'm going to pull troops out of syria and then like never follows up to see if the Pentagon officials are telling him the truth about troop numbers in Syria, and they basically shuffle the deck a little bit. That's a great point. I think you're right. I think I'm oversimplifying it. I think I just- I knew what you mean, though. The infuriating corrupted part is that it version never felt like the of whatever it was. left was willing to play any form of dirty. And that's all that the right has done for the last eight years.
01:26:37
Speaker
Well, they've also just played the game. And I think that the problem, this is the thing about like, well, what do we do now? One thing we can't do, I don't think, is sit here and point out every dumbass thing, you know every misspelling, like, on his tweet. It's just like, they do it on purpose, or they don't, like, who gives a fuck, just be better than that. Like, just, you can't,
01:27:02
Speaker
let Let it just be. They misspell words so that uptight liberals in New York will say, you didn't put the comma in the right place. She's illiterate. How did she get into it? It's like, oh, shut up. now you just com It works really well.
01:27:17
Speaker
and works Well, that's a different thing. The Oxford comma, like, get it together. It's important. Use a fucking Oxford comma. yeah I don't want anything to do with people who don't appreciate the Oxford comma. That's where I draw my line? Yeah, it just removes ambiguity for fuck's sake. Because
Family Dynamics and Personal Reflection
01:27:33
Speaker
if you're talking like, I want, I want a BLT, burgers and fries, and Yo, you got, the Oxford comma matters there so much. It does matter. Thank you. That's okay. So the Oxford comma is when you have a, a list of things, it's the comma before and yes. Okay. I'm in favor of that. Yeah. It's just super important. Cause like, if you ended with burgers and fries, you'd be fine. But it's like, I want a BLT burgers and fries and a milkshake. It would be, I want a BLT comma burgers and fries, comma and a milkshake. But if you don't have the Oxford comments,
01:28:11
Speaker
Insanity. It's chaos. You want the burger and fries in the milkshake? What the hell do you want? Oh my god. Burgers and fries and a milkshake. All together in one heuristic. The chaos of this government is nothing compared to the order of chaos that will occur at McDonald's without the Oxford comma.
01:28:30
Speaker
<unk>ve I've never believed in something more in my life. i could I honestly should have written in the Oxford comma for president. That was my mistake. You know, it's really annoying when you're a copywriter and like someone who has been a creative director before you, like 30% of their personality is that they hate the Oxford comma. Oh, you love run on sentences, you basic bitch. They just don't have any other personality.
01:28:51
Speaker
So then you're stuck with this fucking brand guideline. So every single document I write, I have to take them all out and all the people I work with will write things and it's always in there. I'm like, you got to take it out. The lawyers in Brand will stop us from doing this. It's like, don't worry. just like the president It's like the Trump administration just grit your teeth. Just get through it. I'm glad we finally got to what's important. Like the old school writing was like, you just put commas. Absolutely. and it were like Commas were basically like writing in um, the written version of that. Like my sentences are just commas. It's like every third word. People talk about how punctuation is
01:29:32
Speaker
Patriarchy. I hope they stop doing that. But it has been a thing it'ss funny because every male over 40 that I know is terrible with punctuation. Well, I guess it's kind of gay now. That's the thing. Punctuation is now over clear. Like there's nothing gayer than a semicolon. And that's the truth. The semicolon is the ebbler of grammar, honestly. yeah And you always get told not to use it. Like you don't need it there. And it's like, you sound like my uncle yeah so telling me not to use my hands in that way. fucking use it semico My uncle who was a professional wrestler on television in the seventies wearing spandex and he was the guy who had to lose. And then
Lies About Heritage and Crime Stories
01:30:20
Speaker
he went on to become a meat inspector. And I was the person who had all of the, I was the one he singled out for not being masculine enough. I'm like, give me a fucking break. ah Wait, a meat inspector? Yeah, that's exactly right. A professional wrestler turned meat inspector. That's...
01:30:37
Speaker
Honestly, the gayest thing you could have said tonight. A hundred percent. I know. And I only realized it after I left and he died. And I can't use that line on him, ever. I never got to say Meet Inspector in a funny way to him. That's the story of my life. I'm Mr. Meet Inspector. Yeah. That would have been so good. If you'd like your cigarette and go, tell me about being a Meet Inspector. As, you know,
01:31:07
Speaker
Throwing shade at me. ah How big are the meats you inspect? Yeah, I heard you give all the big ones a day He yeah, they had the stamp and then and then I think he had ties with the mafia Which I guess is sort of super macho, but whatever and That's that was that's the story of my life and having the line like after I need it and Like that's what the church told me. Like I always got the argument after I needed it. And I could never. It was like when people made fun of you in middle school and like two days later you're in your room, you're like, Oh my God, I just saw the best fucking retort. Yep. Yep. Never had it funny how like different parts of the country. did People lie about different things depending on where you're at in the country. Like, cause I remember when I was a little kid in Georgia,
01:31:59
Speaker
Everybody lied about being like partially Native American heritage. Like every pasty white kid. right yeah Yeah, every pasty white kid's like, I'm an eighth Cherokee.
01:32:12
Speaker
You're like, I don't even know. How would you even know that? Also, they don't realize the implication is that their great grandfather raped a Native American woman. But that's a besides the point. Sure. Yeah. right hu It's not part of the country. It's everybody lying about being attached to the mafia in some way. That's true. Being around Boston area. Yeah. Everyone had an uncle that found someone rolled up in a carpet in an abandoned warehouse. Yeah.
01:32:39
Speaker
That's right. Yeah, the yeah the Italian community. i totally I've had like ah friends peripherally like in nightlife that I've known that would imply that and I would be like, okay, show me your meanwhile the mafia is not that powerful anymore. But yeah, I don't know. The Australian cops now. Sorry. Australian organized crime is a bit more weird and wild. There's a there's a and a weird primal element to it, I think. what's How good is how good's your history on Australian ah organized crime? Because this could be another episode. I'm not entirely certain, but the one thing... Oh, well, okay. So my mom had a friend who was in the police force um in the early 80s. There was a lot of corruption in the early 80s.
01:33:29
Speaker
Famously so. Something about the early 80s in corruption. It does not discriminate between countries. 80s men just, there wasn't enough technology to track where they were going and stuff. and when they're already in like a wild bad land like Australia. that Detective Sergeant Roger Rogerson is an iconic Australian gangster policeman who, there's this whole um series about him called Blue Murder, which Richard Roxborough is in, the actor who did like, he's been on Broadway, he was in, milline riduge like celebrated Australian actor. He's in it, fantastic in it. And my mum's friend, what's his, the last name is Freeman, anyway, I can't remember.
01:34:13
Speaker
He had all this money all of a sudden and was asking an accountant friend of theirs, like, what do I do with like, I just want to, what do we do with like $40,000 in cash? And all of a sudden he was like moved down and moved aside. And there was a huge sting that just like erased it all in Sydney. And it was a paradigm shift for, for like cops in Sydney. The corruption was just erased, not erased, but just they really addressed it.
01:34:41
Speaker
And then when I was working for the Australian Chamber Orchestra years ago, the woman that I work with, her husband was like a notorious gangster type guy um who there was a series made about him too. And I had coffee with him once. And I didn't know that he was like, he owned all the nightclubs. He did all, it was like, I didn't know the full extent of his like gangsterness until I had coffee food with him once. Cause I was writing a story about how men use food and wine to seduce women for like an Australian men's magazine and she's like talk to my husband you know my baby daddy and like her ex-boyfriend and I was like all right talk to him he's like I don't want my name in this but I'll give you some people to talk to some chefs and stuff and then I went home my brother's a detective and I was like do you know anything about this guy John Abraham
01:35:33
Speaker
du Your life is already a movie. I talked to this mob guy, my brother's the detective. like Well my brother's like, what are you doing hanging out with him? His rap shit is longer than it's possible to see in a car computer when you're a cop. Do not hang out with this guy. And then there was a TV series made about him.
01:35:50
Speaker
So i that's all I know. That's all I really know about Australian organized crime. I'm sure my uncle was right in there with Roger Rogers at some point. Well, what do
Rough Childhoods in Australia
01:36:00
Speaker
dumb kids lie about in Australia? Like what's the junior high like? Actually, my dad's whatever.
01:36:08
Speaker
um One guy just literally lied about fucking one of my friends who was this girl. just And it was just so obvious. I mean, I guess go guys do that. Yeah, that's par for the course. She's like, I didn't. I got to play a poisonous something and survive. That's all Australian kids talk about. I don't know. I don't know like whether they... I'm not sure. I don't know what Australian boys are lying about. They're... Yeah.
01:36:38
Speaker
I guess, the you know, the extent to which their father doesn't beat their mother. I don't know. We talk about a lot more now. But um, yeah, I don't know, like, I can't remember. I think I said, boys were hard to hang out with their heart. Australian boys, when you're a kid are not easy to hang out with. Probably a little rough and tumble.
01:37:04
Speaker
Yeah, when you meet like straight boys in Australia that were nice as kids, they're really something, they're really precious people. um And I had so a couple of friends like that, like who were straight and that like kind of protected me a bit and stuff, but they were, yeah, they were mostly, there's a real ruffian element to it that was something I didn't experience in California as a kid. It was interesting.
01:37:33
Speaker
Yeah. They're complicated. Fascinating. Start my list. I want to go there so bad. Yeah. Australia would be cool. I do want to visit. ah There's so many... you I've resigned to the fact that I just get to say places I want to visit and that's enough for me. Great. Yeah. and Just keep it accessible.
01:37:54
Speaker
I mean, I have kids. I don't know what I mean. I can't afford, I can, you know, I want to move. I can barely afford that. ah And I don't mean like leave the kids move. Yes. I want to move out of my house. I just can't afford a one bedroom apartment on my own on a teacher's salary. Classic Massachusetts dad move. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm i'm striving for that deadbeat shit.
01:38:15
Speaker
um Yeah, good. But no, it's like you even just wanted to like relocate to a more a house that's more conducive to a family. and With children getting older, you're just like, it It's tough. yeah So the
Nostalgia for Old Family Cars
01:38:33
Speaker
idea of traveling is ah really just something I get to think about here and there and just squash down. But Australia is on the list of places I'd like to pretend to be able to visit someday. Sure.
01:38:47
Speaker
I think that America, when I was a kid, we drove around in a really old combi van in the summer for two weeks and just drive and slept in cop, like parking lots and stuff. It's sort of the best vacations, just like I ever had. I remember saying that. I could do that. I could do that with my kids. My kids would be like, yeah, that's sick.
01:39:08
Speaker
Well, like I have a van, you can just fold the seats down, throw in your mattress in the back. That would be dope. My wife would just probably murder us day two or three. Yeah. That's, you've got to, you've got to figure that out strategically. Yeah. I wrote a lot of miles in the back of a conversion van or a cargo van, not even a conversion van. So pre conversion van. Yeah. my My dad would set up yard, like, uh,
01:39:35
Speaker
lawn chairs in the back and my sister and I would sit back there and then we'd go. Then he'd slam on the brakes and see what happened. Yeah, it was potentially dangerous for sure, but but we got to go ah with him when he went somewhere to work for a week or whatever. there's all I feel like anyone our age definitely sat in the back of their friend's dad's work van on a toolbox at some point. Yep, absolutely. Yeah.
01:40:00
Speaker
I did that all the time when I was like 10. Oh, we're going to my friend's house. His dad was like a handyman, and he would just pick us up in like an old... Actually, that the van that he used to pick us up in became my second vehicle when I was a teenager. It was like a 1990 Dodge Caravan. My first vehicle was a 1989 Dodge Caravan. Light blue, wood panel siding. Gorgeous specimen. Gorgeous.
01:40:29
Speaker
um And then my second one was the 1990 all white. ah And my friend's dad would pick us up and we would literally, yeah, we'd do the sit on the toolbox move in the back seat. And that became my ah second car in high school. I thought you said he was a dandy man for ah to be a good minute. to you like Your father was a dandy?
01:40:56
Speaker
That's not what I expected to hear. It's weird to sit on his big pile of tap shoes and magic set.
01:41:05
Speaker
Honestly, like I, you know, it's like I had a generally a good childhood experiences, but the time that he was the most verbally abusive when I was when I couldn't do properly tie a bow tie. And the only time he ever hit me was when I used a clip on. Yeah. Well, and then you don't do it again. You know, serve right I learned. I mean, I learned.
01:41:26
Speaker
And people, you know, people don't understand that that's sometimes, that's how you get to be who you are. I can't see you wearing a clip on. No. No, I'm not. It's like I'm hitting you now so that other people don't hit you later. Right. I didn't want to get, yeah.
01:41:42
Speaker
That's actually what, just to bring this back to Tucker Carlson, he's so sexy. He's your dad. That was the actual message that he was putting out there when he was introducing Trump right at the end. He was like saying this like,
01:42:01
Speaker
I'm going to hit you now so that other people can't hit you later on. That was the actual core of his message and the audience was like, yeah, make me harder daddy throw me in my room. Like it's just, you go, okay, you know what? I thought I had an understanding of something. You guys, I don't know.
01:42:22
Speaker
Tucker Carlson's the, uh, he's an enigma in the worst way. He is. He's just such a phony because like, how much, how much do we have of him now? Just being like, this guy sucks. I hate him. He's the worst. And then he just is constantly still around promoting him. He keeps doubling down and no one's asking him to. knows worse His worst stuff is where he starts talking about how people are, like in this one situation, he's like,
01:42:50
Speaker
Oh, you know what's going on there? It's definitely demonic. There's something definitely demonic. Like literally, he's talking about demons. He talked about being attacked by a demon. It was like a month ago. He's like, I didn't have a wet dream. A demon jerked me off in my sleep, guys. It's not the same. He scratches on his back. His wife can attest. Yeah. Oh, okay. He's like, look, I look, I know you.
01:43:17
Speaker
You know, like you said, matt people were harder to track back then, not so much anymore. He's like, look, babe, I know where you saw my location, but the demon put my phone there and then came to scratch my back. Yeah.
Mocking Tucker Carlson
01:43:31
Speaker
And it jerked me off in the dark. And it definitely wasn't a hooker named Julia.
01:43:37
Speaker
so
01:43:40
Speaker
A hooker named Julio. I think we got our episode title. There we go. Jesus Christ. All my one-liners that I wrote. yeah ah
01:43:54
Speaker
oh bad Well, Matt, thanks for joining us again, man. I'm glad we were able to get back together. Yeah, me too. I appreciate it. Thanks so much. Yeah, it was a lot of fun. It was great talking. Once you do your deep dive in the Australian mob, we'll have you back, man. I will send you the titles of these two shows. Watch them truly. Watch them. They're really fantastically interesting stories. It's like amazing what they got away with. Yeah, I'm actually genuinely fascinated now because I
01:44:26
Speaker
there's mobs everywhere. You're just the most accustomed to the ones that in your country, right? Where you just hear the stories. Now I, uh, yeah, send those to us. I definitely want to check those out. Yeah. Blue motor. I'll send you the links. Yeah. All right. Got anything upcoming with, uh, tell me about your father. Um, I believe we have the daddy awards coming out at the end of the year, which we do every year.
01:44:50
Speaker
Um, things like, you know, the dead big dad award, like we, we, uh, we have like the biggest piece of shit award. And then there's like the Patrick Swayze award for infinite hotness, which is the final award that we give out. Everything's like kind of obviously linked to who's in the running. That's the thing. It's we're into liberation at this point. So, all right. Yeah. Who won last year for the, honest it was ah it's always like six people. who I think there are so well, they're not even necessarily dads. They're just like, deeply hot. It was like, joking booster. I
Podcast Awards Discussion
01:45:31
Speaker
think one of them maybe that was a year before that was the Iranian soccer team coach, who was like, what a hero that guy was truly. um Yeah, I can't god I can't remember.
01:45:45
Speaker
But it's the end named in honor of Patrick Swasey. There's a feudalism award where it's like who which which brand or organization that is basically just feudalism that is marketed and is also a cult.
01:46:04
Speaker
um It's like the worst influence on American culture. And that's usually the same six organizations, Amazon. mean slow I did buy a Yeti cooler this year. Did you? Yeah. Yeah. But I have no branding on the back of any of my vehicles. Well, that's, yeah, that's, that's something kind of sophisticated about that. I think not having branding on things. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, you can, it turns out you can, you can have a cooler and not tell people about it every time you talk.
01:46:35
Speaker
Yeah, so it's hard though. You have to try to not talk about it. Yeah, you got I know. I did just kind of violate my own principle, I guess. yeah It's okay. dang it's a so It's a safe place. It is. Maybe I'll just lean in and go full salt life.
01:46:52
Speaker
great
01:46:57
Speaker
I will post a link to tell me about your father in the episode description. you know what Actually, I just was going to say, actually, the most recent episode is really worth listening to. Erin, her stepfather, Terry, who made the best lasagna I've ever eaten, died um after a long battle with some Alzheimer's. And she wrote this absolutely breathtaking deeply uplifting eulogy for
Touching Eulogy Episode
01:47:25
Speaker
him and she included all these interview moments. She talked to him in the last few years of his life and it's that episode. It's only a short one. You just hear this eulogy and it does not matter if you don't know Terry or Aaron. It's just a magnificent piece of writing and it's it's just such an eloquent celebration of a person's life. It's you feel so good about it when you hear it. That's awesome. Yeah, that's the most recent one that went up the other day.
01:47:51
Speaker
So check that one out. That was, yeah, ah ah really touched by that one. That's great. Well, excellent. Well, thanks everybody for listening. We will see you next time.