Episode 1062 - Rachel Maddow
Marc:all right let's do this how are you what the fuckers what the fuck buddies what the fuck nicks what's happening it's mark maron this is my podcast wtf welcome to it well this is an exciting day really it's rachel maddow day yes
Marc:Rachel Maddow is here.
Marc:You know what's the weird thing is?
Marc:I know Rachel.
Marc:I don't know her great, but we go back.
Marc:I think some of you know that.
Marc:I mean, people who listened to Air America back in the day know that.
Marc:But we go back.
Marc:We were both at Air America together from the very beginning.
Marc:So there's a little history there.
Marc:And now...
Marc:Like I rely on her almost exclusively outside of print stuff.
Marc:At the end of the day, I watch Rachel.
Marc:It comforts me.
Marc:She puts things into context.
Marc:She helps me understand things.
Marc:She makes me not panic as much as I could be panicking.
Marc:And I respect and appreciate her.
Marc:And I need her.
Marc:So there's this very odd situation with Rachel because she came over here.
Marc:I swear to God, she's doing a book tour.
Marc:She's out here.
Marc:Well, she was out here.
Marc:It was just last week we did this, and she literally taped her show live in Burbank, drove over here like 25 minutes after she got off of my TV, she was in my house, like a half hour maybe, talking to me, and I just watched her show on television.
Marc:So it is about a week or – like it was last week, so there is some information in here that might have be dated already in terms of news.
Marc:But I think we had a very nice conversation, and she's got this new book that I skimmed.
Marc:I got the gist of.
Marc:I couldn't dive into it all, but I will.
Marc:I have a plan to do it.
Marc:It's called –
Marc:I swear I'm going to read it.
Marc:I swear it's on my homework.
Marc:It's on my homework list.
Marc:It's called Blowout.
Marc:OK, and it's about the Russian oil industry.
Marc:She's a great writer.
Marc:It reads very well.
Marc:I'm just trying to make excuses for me not finishing the book before I talk to her.
Marc:But that wasn't the conversation I wanted to have.
Marc:You know how this works.
Marc:So Rachel is here, and that is actually something to be excited about.
Marc:I was excited.
Marc:I was very nervous to talk to her.
Marc:Now let's get caught up with some other stuff.
Marc:The last few dates of my tour are fast approaching this Friday, October 18th.
Marc:I'll be at the James K. Polk Theater in Nashville, Saturday, October 19th at the Tabernacle in Atlanta, and Saturday, October 26th at the Masonic in San Francisco.
Marc:And of course, I am finishing everything
Marc:with the big finish, the big special taping at Red Cat Theater in L.A.
Marc:on October 30th, but that is very sold out.
Marc:But for tickets to all the other remaining dates, go to wtfpod.com slash tour.
Marc:I also wanted to mention that in San Francisco, I didn't do any posters.
Marc:I have not done posters in a while.
Marc:and I'm bringing some posters.
Marc:I'm bringing some posters to San Francisco.
Marc:An artist reached out to me.
Marc:She lives in Austin.
Marc:I met her.
Marc:Here's what happened.
Marc:So she wrote me an email about stuff, and I went and looked at her work, and I was like, what the fuck?
Marc:What is this?
Marc:It's like serious, autobiographical, raw as shit kind of comic art.
Marc:And she lives in Austin, Raquel Jack on Instagram, R-A-Q-U-E-L-L-E-J-A-C.
Marc:And I think she was a fan.
Marc:She wrote me an email.
Marc:And then when I was out there, I got her into the show and I met her.
Marc:And I knew she had to do the poster for San Francisco because I think her style lends itself to it.
Marc:She just comes from a tradition of it's very...
Marc:A lot of she does all kinds of stuff, but she's very painterly.
Marc:But her comic shit is hardcore and raw and real and fucking frenetic and colorful and disturbing.
Marc:And I'm like, this is fucking genius.
Marc:So I asked her to do a poster for San Francisco for me and she did it.
Marc:And it's at the printer now.
Marc:So I'm going to have about 100 of those in San Francisco.
Marc:They're going to be it's going to be an art print run and they're going to be about 40 bucks.
Marc:But I think they're four color, but it's going to be fucking it's it's something, man.
Marc:So that's exciting.
Marc:It's weird.
Marc:I think I'm almost more excited about the poster than I am about the show itself.
Marc:Is that wrong?
Marc:I just haven't done a poster in so long.
Marc:What else?
Marc:Oh, there's our friend John Hodgman, you know, John.
Marc:He has a book coming out tomorrow, October 15th.
Marc:It's called Medallion Status, and it's a sneaky examination of fame, identity and social status.
Marc:As John looks back on the past two decades of his life where he unexpectedly launched a career in showbiz.
Marc:And you can preorder that now or pick it up starting tomorrow wherever you get books.
Marc:So that's exciting.
Marc:Let's talk about life in general.
Marc:I've been at it.
Marc:And I got to be honest with you, folks.
Marc:You know, the last few shows were just great.
Marc:You know, I've been opening.
Marc:I've been using this opener, Mary Radzinski from Philly.
Marc:She opened for me in St.
Marc:Louis.
Marc:And then she opened for me one other place.
Marc:And then she lived in Philly.
Marc:So I had to do Philly at the Miriam.
Marc:theater and then I had her come up to DC with me and then do uh also do Boston and she's just a great opener for me she did a great job she's very funny uh you can check her out too in my in my plugging plugging my peers day Mary Radzinski R-A-D-Z-I-N-S-K-I great job she did very funny and so we went we did the three shows and as you know
Marc:I was supposed to tape the special in Boston, and that didn't happen, and I felt like I disappointed some people.
Marc:I had kind of a brain fuck about Boston because of that, because I had to do two shows, and that means I had to fill up the Schuber twice, piss off the Wilbur, and not shoot a special.
Marc:So there was a lot of things going on up there, and returning back to the place I started comedy, which is always sort of strange.
Marc:It's like going to the site of the abuse.
Marc:And so there is a little PTSD involved in that.
Marc:And it was just kind of fucking with my head.
Marc:And then the Kennedy Center, that was fucking with my head for a whole other bunch of different reasons.
Marc:It's huge.
Marc:Twenty four hundred, I think, seats.
Marc:And it's the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C.,
Marc:And I'm in the belly of the beast where just down the street, the monster is ruining everything.
Marc:And also pacing the halls, aggravated and fuming, figuring out a way to accelerate the end of the planet Earth for his own means so he can get off the hook.
Marc:I think the monster, the douchebag, President Douchebag, I think he thinks in some level that if he takes the world down with him, he won't have to pay the price for anything he's done.
Marc:If we all die at the same time as him, then everybody gets off the hook.
Marc:In some fucked up way, it's dark and cynical, but true.
Marc:Not exactly the way we all want to go, though, is it?
Marc:But anyways, I'm at the Kennedy Center and and then Philly.
Marc:I was psyched about Philly because I get a good sandwich in Philly and I've worked at the Miriam before.
Marc:So I did the show at the Miriam first and it was great.
Marc:Mary did a great job.
Marc:I got there that day.
Marc:I had the the roast pork.
Marc:with the Sharp Provolone Broccoli Rob at Denix, Tommy Denix.
Marc:And that's what you do there.
Marc:And that's what I did.
Marc:And then we did the show and it was great.
Marc:So then we took the train up to D.C.
Marc:and I was nervous, but I sold the fucking place out, folks.
Marc:I sold out the Kennedy Center.
Marc:And I'm doing heavy shit, man.
Marc:I don't think any of the stuff I'm doing is political.
Marc:I think it's observational.
Marc:Although I do talk about what's going on politically, and it's pretty heavy, some of it, but it's observational.
Marc:Because for me, observational means a rational, relatively objective person looking at what's going on, which is horrible.
Marc:But I also was able to transcend some stuff because the last time I played a hall that big, Carnegie was okay, but I do this thing where...
Marc:Like when I do shows in rooms that are over 1800 people, I feel a little dwarfed and sometimes I fall into myself and it can be very tenuous.
Marc:I can do a good show, but it's more intimate than it should.
Marc:I kind of lower the level of the venue of the hall to me.
Marc:whereas I should really rise to the occasion of the hall.
Marc:It's hard to tell either way, and there's something to be said about making someplace huge, incredibly intimate, which I'm going to do anyways, but to sort of plow through that weird insecurity of not being able to carry or hold on to over 2,000 people.
Marc:And it was a deep sort of insecurity.
Marc:I mean, I could do the shows.
Marc:I did Carnegie.
Marc:I did the Festival Hall.
Marc:I've done BAM.
Marc:I've done these big shows, and I do well,
Marc:But I never felt like I owned them properly.
Marc:And I got to be honest, folks, and I'm not tooting my own horn.
Marc:I'm not blowing smoke up my own ass or whatever it is.
Marc:But I rose to the fucking occasion at Kennedy Center.
Marc:It was a great set.
Marc:It matched the venue.
Marc:It was fully confident, fully present, room to riff, but a different vibe.
Marc:It was like a big breakthrough in a way, which I was very thrilled about.
Marc:And I was happy everybody came out who came out.
Marc:They witnessed something.
Marc:My mother came out.
Marc:My mother was there.
Marc:It's always interesting, doing a pretty crass joke about my mother.
Marc:But, you know, I believe she can take the hit.
Marc:And she did.
Marc:My mother likes to be talked about.
Marc:And I think generally, like, no matter how bad the joke is, the worst she'll say to me is, was that necessary?
Marc:Was that necessary?
Marc:Yes, it was.
Marc:But but Boston was a whole other ball of wax.
Marc:I was beating myself up about Boston.
Marc:But again, there was victory here.
Marc:Personal victory, folks.
Marc:Personal victory.
Marc:Yeah, I've been going back there and I've been doing shows there for years.
Marc:So this year I was going to shoot the special there.
Marc:And, you know, I've talked to you about this.
Marc:I booked the Schubert Theater because I didn't want to do it at the Wilbur, which is where a lot of the comedy is done in Boston.
Marc:That guy, Bill Blumenreich, he runs the Wilbur.
Marc:I've worked for him before.
Marc:And, you know, they want you to shoot there.
Marc:But I chose the Schubert because it would be different.
Marc:And I wanted to do a different looking special.
Marc:Then it turns out the Schubert, you know, couldn't couldn't accommodate what we wanted to do.
Marc:So I had I had to make an executive creative.
Marc:And I guess executive decision to not do it there.
Marc:And I didn't know where I was going to do it, but I was disappointed.
Marc:But there was nothing I could do because all these specials look the same.
Marc:And I wanted to at least have a different vibe.
Marc:You can't.
Marc:It's not like reinventing anything.
Marc:It's not rocket science shooting a special.
Marc:But those theaters all look the same.
Marc:And we lucked out.
Marc:It's going to be something interesting at Red Cat.
Marc:I'm excited about it.
Marc:But.
Marc:Despite that, so I'm heading in like I know from the get go, I've pissed off Bill.
Marc:I know from the get go, there's audience that were excited about a special and that's not happening.
Marc:I know I'm in.
Marc:I got to go to Boston and now no special taping.
Marc:I got to, you know, at least populate two shows at a I think the place seats like eighteen hundred.
Marc:There's just this weight of my past there.
Marc:And I've talked about this before and I thought I transcended it, but sometimes I don't.
Marc:I get to Boston and it just creeps up on me.
Marc:Just years, man.
Marc:I mean, I started my career there and I was just this aggravated, sensitive, neurotic, angry Jewish kid, 25 years old.
Marc:1988, I started working and I was running around the entire New England area in very compromised performing situations, trying to get through to people that were nothing like me.
Marc:There was nothing I could do to charm them.
Marc:I couldn't be myself.
Marc:But I was trying to get through the understand.
Marc:And that went on for years.
Marc:I mean, just seriously, just trying to get a laugh and dives all over the New England region, just being angry, bombing and just pushing ahead and getting fucked up.
Marc:Just just trying to get people so unlike me to like me and laugh.
Marc:And it was fucking traumatic most of the fucking time, just leveling.
Marc:I mean, the intensity of the anxiety and my blind determination to keep doing it at this point is really almost incomprehensible.
Marc:It's incomprehensible to me now.
Marc:So bottom line, the fact that on Saturday night I did two shows for people who came to see me, see me specifically in that city, people who know me, people who understand where I'm coming from and enjoy what I do was definitely special.
Marc:It was more special than taping a comedy special because I let go of something, man.
Marc:I let go of something.
Marc:It's over.
Marc:The PTSD from the beginning of my career in the trenches of New England, taking a beating, it's fucking over.
Marc:And you know what I did when I went there?
Marc:I spent some money.
Marc:I stayed at the Fairmount Copley Plaza Hotel when I was a freshman in college.
Marc:Once in a while, a few times a year, I would get all dressed up, put a tie on, drive in from fucking Milton, Massachusetts when I was at Curry College.
Marc:I think I might have even been underage.
Marc:I went to the Oak Room, I think it was, or the James Room.
Marc:The room is not the same, I don't think.
Marc:at the Copley Plaza.
Marc:It's an old luxury hotel built in the very early 1900s.
Marc:And a guy named Dave McKenna used to play piano there.
Marc:He was a real dude, a real jazz dude.
Marc:I remember being there one night and Zoot Sims came by after a gig and sat in.
Marc:And I didn't know much about jazz, but I knew I liked the vibe of the place.
Marc:And it was a special place to me.
Marc:And it seemed like a place that I would never get to, that I never would belong there.
Marc:I was just a dumb college kid dressing up, pretending.
Marc:But I never thought I would stay there.
Marc:It was just a different world.
Marc:And I fucking stayed there.
Marc:And it was beautiful.
Marc:I wasn't even there 12 hours, and it cost money, but it was beautiful.
Marc:There was some closure there, and there was some closure with the two shows in Boston.
Marc:They were great shows, and that's not nothing, folks.
Marc:It is not nothing.
Marc:Whoo, Rachel Maddow.
Marc:I think I've been saying her name wrong forever.
Marc:I say Maddow.
Marc:Rachel Maddow, but it's Maddow.
Marc:Like Shadow, Maddo.
Marc:Rachel Maddo.
Marc:I was so nervous and excited to talk to her.
Marc:We did it in the evening.
Marc:Because as I said earlier, she shot her show live over here in Burbank and came right over here.
Marc:She's on crutches.
Marc:She did a thing.
Marc:She hurt her ankle.
Marc:But we got her upstairs.
Marc:And we got on the mics.
Marc:We had a lovely chat.
Marc:Her newest book.
Marc:uh it's called blowout it came out last week and it's already a number one new york times bestseller if you haven't gotten one yet go get it wherever you get books because it's well written it's accessible and it's deep and you learn so here's here's me and rach talking this is exciting i'm really nervous
Marc:You're nervous.
Marc:I'm nervous.
Guest:I'm nervous.
Marc:I've been nervous all day.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Come on.
Marc:I mean, what?
Marc:You want to wear cans?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:All right.
Guest:Why am I nervous?
Guest:Why are you nervous?
Guest:I mean, yeah, specifically, why are you nervous?
Marc:Tell me about your nervousness.
Marc:I will.
Marc:Well, first of all, I watch and rely on you every night.
Marc:So even though we have a personal history, I can't believe you're sitting... There's some part of me... Like, I stopped my life to watch your show so I can get some context.
Marc:I'm about to cry.
Marc:So I can get context on the world.
Marc:Because I'm not... It's not that I'm not active, but no one makes sense of it like you do or like Brendan McDonald.
Marc:I'll call Brendan...
Marc:But as a resource and as a producer, like I can only bother him so much and I can't really text you.
Marc:So I'm watching your show and I'll text him.
Marc:I'm like one of those old middle-aged men who's sort of like, is this really a problem she's saying it is?
Marc:Like I'll text.
Marc:Like Brendan knows when I'm watching your show because I'm texting him like Trump does when he watches Fox and Friends to the country.
Marc:I'm texting Brendan.
Guest:Like this iterative point that Rachel keeps hammering away.
Guest:Is she just stuck on this, Brendan?
Guest:Right, exactly.
Guest:Or is this just really important?
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:Is it just her or is it this important?
Guest:What does Brendan usually, does he usually talk you down like, oh no, Matt was making too big a deal?
Marc:out of this no no he just like uh you know it's like i don't i still to this day even from when we worked at air america i don't know where you guys get your information it's a secret source and like you know i i look at my phone i've got i think i'm subscribed to all the things on my phone's news but then you guys hear things i'm like what why didn't i get that firsthand why am i not in the loop on this so it's usually that kind of stuff like is this really happening you know
Guest:The secret source is for me, I'll tell you.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:My secret source is always like the last three paragraphs of the article.
Guest:That's where the nobody ever gets to that part of the article.
Guest:There's always like one little extra fact they save for there.
Guest:It usually has like a little kicker element to it, like a little irony to it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And that's the thing that I'm like, I'm going to do the history of that dating back to the Peloponnesian Wars.
Guest:Right.
Marc:We're going to start there.
Marc:The portal is in the end.
Guest:Exactly.
Marc:So that's why I'm nervous because I know we have, it's hard for me to see you as just like the person that I used to see hanging around Air America because now, because like when I met you, I think you had a crew cut and you wore a baseball hat a lot.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You're a little heavier.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you were just always like sort of leaning over a lot of papers.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:I have a backpack full of paper that I brought with me to talk to you today.
Guest:If it would make you more comfortable for me to get into that thing.
Guest:I think I might even have a hat.
Marc:Oh, good.
Marc:Well, no, it wouldn't make me more comfortable.
Marc:It would give me that same feeling I got back then.
Marc:I'm like, should I be working more?
Marc:I just read a few things.
Marc:Isn't that enough?
Guest:But did I seem like the same?
Guest:I mean, not did my workout seem the same, but do I seem like the same person, personality-wise?
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:No, I think, well, you seem more confident and you would hope that would happen.
Guest:Is it interesting?
Guest:No, I don't feel more confident.
Guest:You don't?
Guest:No, but I don't know that I think about my confidence level.
Guest:Like, I don't think about myself as being on some sort of confidence arc.
Marc:Well, right.
Marc:I get it.
Marc:No, but I mean, I think what it was is that, well, I don't know when...
Marc:You decided what you before we get into this real quick, though.
Marc:So now you ended you came over here from doing the show.
Marc:And when you left, you just told me in my living room that the Turks are about to invade Syria.
Marc:So now you said that like it was happening.
Marc:I've got to go because Lawrence is here.
Marc:But we'll keep an eye on it now.
Marc:Do you do I keep an eye on it?
Marc:Because now I'm going to be keeping an eye on it.
Marc:I just want to make sure that you left us all hanging and now we're in this, like, is that happening and what's going to happen?
Guest:There is a chance that if there is, in fact, an invasion of Syria tonight, if the Turks and the Russians are going to invade Syria and overrun the Kurds, there's a chance, yes, that I have to go back to work.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:Like that happens every once in a while.
Guest:Like, you know, when Trump shot Tomahawk missiles, it's like I had to go back to work for that.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Sometimes things like that happen.
Guest:But mostly it just means like I worry about getting calls.
Marc:Yeah, I just I guess addressing the confidence thing is this.
Marc:I think you're so busy and so engaged in the narrative that you are the Maddow life.
Marc:I mean, why would you even think about like insecurity?
Marc:I mean, I know you talk about it a little bit that like you like when you talk about your book, you're sort of, you know, you have this.
Marc:Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marc:But I don't even know where that... You wrote a whole book, and where'd you find time to do that?
Marc:I can barely... I'm a mess.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Physically, I'm a mess.
Marc:And this book in particular, the two things you've done lately, the Bag Man podcast about Spiro Agnew, and this book about the global petrol nightmare...
Marc:blowout I mean were these reasons the reasons why you were compelled to write these things or create that podcast were they to find deeper explanations of things that you were already engaged because they seem sort of like they come out of nowhere the ideas for the book but these are things that you needed to know about well yeah make yourself feel better or something
Guest:Well, with Agnew, I kept doing little historical anecdotes about Agnew.
Guest:And every time I did them, I would find that what I assumed had happened was not actually the case.
Guest:And so I latched on to the Agnew story because I realized I didn't know much about it.
Guest:I started citing it in little ways.
Guest:And then I realized I was kind of not getting it wrong on TV, but getting it wrong in my assumptions and my research, which made me more interested in it.
Guest:And then when we got Trump and Pence, I was like, oh, dear, I think this might end up being really important, in part because there was so much discussion around the Russia investigation in particular as to whether or not Trump could be indicted and what it meant about whether he could be charged and all that stuff.
Guest:And that ended up being what blew up the Mueller report and stopped Mueller from concluding anything in his report.
Guest:And a lot of that stuff was adjudicated through the Spiro Agnew case that we've forgotten about.
Guest:That's gonzo.
Marc:I like how you talk about a we, that it's you and maybe a handful of 60, 70-year-old people.
Marc:We've all forgotten.
Marc:Everybody, where are the Agnew people?
Marc:Where are the Agnew people?
Marc:But no, a lot of us, I'm not saying that's bad, but a lot of us are learning that.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:For the first time.
Guest:But isn't it?
Guest:I mean, if you think about it, just in the abstract, everybody knows we talk about Richard Nixon 100 million times a week.
Guest:You know, if you average it out, Nixon's constant references, constant, constantly analogized to other things in the news that don't deserve it.
Guest:So the fact that his vice president was.
Guest:resigned in disgrace after pleading NOLO to a bunch of felonies for an active extortion scheme he was carrying out from the White House.
Guest:Like, you'd think that would be a more famous thing we remembered about Nixon, given how much we talk about Nixon and his crimes.
Guest:So it's just weird that that disappeared.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't know how people remember anything.
Marc:There's so much going on, really.
Marc:I mean, it is important.
Marc:And I think a lot of what you're doing that's helpful to me is at least finding some precedence for monsters.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Marc:You know, and also like what always amazes me is what small time grifters so many of them are.
Marc:But the weird thing about my relationship with your show is like I have like I get excited when I see Barbara McCabe, you know, like.
Marc:Barb!
Marc:Yeah, like Joyce Vance.
Marc:Oh, this will be good.
Marc:I'm at that point with it.
Marc:But so the blowout book, though, was it, you know, you're I'm not going to say obsession, but your investigation of the.
Marc:Mild obsession with the Russians.
Guest:I prefer to think of it as focus.
Marc:Focus.
Marc:But did you did you need was there something that you sought to bring it all together and you saw it in the Russian oil industry?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, yes, because what I didn't understand is why Russia, not why they attacked us.
Guest:Like I sort of got that there were reasons for them to tax, but I didn't get why they were so they so recklessly attacked.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Think about if Hillary Clinton had been elected president, which is what everybody thought was going to happen, including the Russians and including Trump.
Guest:They did not cover their tracks, barely at all, especially in the initial hack of the Democratic Party.
Guest:They let it be known that they were doing what they were doing.
Guest:They were obviously trying to undermine Clinton for governing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Trying to make it so that she'd have a harder time.
Marc:Assuming she would be president.
Guest:Assuming she was going to be president.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But Hillary Clinton was already a Russia hawk.
Guest:If she became president with Russia having done this to try to help her opponent.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, imagine what she could have unleashed on Russia as president.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And nevertheless, they still saw the risk and reward balance as being worth it to try to do this thing.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Which seemed crazy to me.
Guest:It also seemed crazy to me that all of the secret communications between the Russian government and the Trump campaign, all these things that they lied about that only got uncovered after the fact were all about sanctions.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And then I started to realize, well, maybe their desperation is linked to their sanctions needs.
Marc:Right.
Guest:And that really gets you to oil really fast.
Marc:So, yeah.
Marc:So that the economic near economic collapse of the country and would make them there a lot.
Marc:They don't give a shit.
Marc:They're just going to go for it because it's worth it.
Marc:Right.
Guest:Right.
Guest:When you when the stakes are that high, when you haven't I mean, they're in they're a country of 150 million people.
Guest:with an economy smaller than Italy's.
Guest:Italy is like 60 million people.
Guest:They've got an economy smaller than South Korea.
Guest:South Korea's 50 million people.
Guest:The reason they have such a crappy economy is because it's only got one thing in it, which is oil and gas, which happens all over the world.
Guest:Oil and gas is a bad thing to build your economy on.
Guest:And the only sort of way that Putin has to project power, given that he's so weak...
Guest:is by using oil and gas as a weapon.
Guest:And so you kind of put all those things together and you realize, oh, Western oil companies and American oil companies enabling that guy and keep propping them up and propping up that economy and propping up that system of how they're throwing their weight around in the world, that's bad.
Guest:And we as Americans could actually affect that because our laws...
Guest:govern essentially the Western oil majors because they all want to do business here or they're headquartered here.
Guest:So if we made our laws tougher on the oil and gas industry, we could stop them from doing a lot of the damage they do around the world.
Marc:But doesn't it seem to you that there's a lot of people in American at that level of wealth and power that want to unleash that Russian money badly?
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:It just feels to me that everything that's going on is like a lot of money up there that they just want to get rid of.
Marc:And we just need to tap it.
Guest:Well, I mean, the way that Putin screwed up the economic fortunes of his country.
Guest:I mean, Russia ought to be in much better shape than they are.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:I mean, I know that they went through the collapse of the Soviet Union and everything.
Guest:That was hard.
Guest:But they really did screw up in terms of trying to build their economy as a single entity, as a petrostate economy, rather than diversifying.
Guest:The reason they couldn't diversify is because in order to do that, you need, like, rule of law and judges who judge and, you know...
Guest:property rights.
Guest:And Putin did not want any of that.
Guest:And so instead, he just allowed this very gangster, poorly run oil industry to be everything.
Guest:And he steals a lot of the money from it from himself, and they throw their weight around.
Guest:And it's all these guys who are running these companies that are his judo buddies from when he was eight.
Guest:They're not even good at running their one terrible industry.
Guest:But he's created this kleptocracy where people get incredibly wealthy at his say-so and then they're expected to serve him.
Guest:And what all those people do is they take their money out of Russia and they launder it around the world.
Guest:And that makes countries like the UK and the real estate market in New York and Miami and all those sorts of places that are happy to do this money laundering, which is very remunerative, it makes them all corrupt and part of it.
Marc:So I had this fantasy, not a fantasy, but like sort of this idea that that Trump is going to once he gets pushed out or leaves office or if he ever leaves, he's going to seek immediately seek asylum in Russia.
Guest:The first time he took an overseas trip.
Guest:Remember, he went to Saudi Arabia.
Guest:That was his first trip.
Guest:I literally was like, I wonder if he's going to stop in Moscow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like he and Snowden could live together.
Marc:Well, I mean, it's possible, isn't it?
Marc:What if he has to live in exile?
Marc:Wouldn't that be an amazing end to this story?
Guest:Putin would give him like a crappy little apartment.
Guest:They'd be like, you're just staying here at first and we're moving you into a palais later.
Guest:But you just have to stay here first.
Guest:And then like a week later, it'd be like, Vlad, I'm still in this crappy tower block.
Guest:No, no, we're working on your palace.
Marc:He's going to punish him for life for not being president for life.
Marc:He failed.
Guest:Yeah, the worst thing in the world to be.
Guest:I mean, if you're a dictator, if you're like, I mean, Putin arguably is the richest man on earth.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:If you're a rich, kleptocratic freaking dictator, the worst thing that can happen to you is for you to be an ex-dictator.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Right?
Guest:Like, there's nowhere for you to live.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And you're not going to get to cash out all your bank accounts.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It's like the mob.
Marc:You know, everything gets seized.
Marc:Mm-hmm.
Marc:So, oh, it scares me.
Marc:Like, I feel like we're going down a scary path.
Guest:Right now, I feel like there's something happening right now with Russia trying to get what they think is theirs.
Guest:If Russia is part of this attack on the Kurds, the Kurds happen to sit on lots of very oil-rich territory.
Guest:If that's part of what's going on here, that's scary.
Guest:If undoing the attribution of the US government that Russia who attacked us in the 2016 election, if Bill Barr is undoing that right now...
Guest:That's important.
Guest:I mean, Trump just told Zelensky that he needs to do a deal with Putin on the Ukraine war and then he can come to the White House.
Guest:All of those things, all of those things are about Russia finally getting out of the grip of sanctions and getting its oil game on again.
Guest:And it all seems like it's happening right now, all of a sudden, simultaneously, really quick.
Guest:And I don't know why they're making this like...
Marc:this move on all fronts all at once super fast i mean it feels like maybe they think their time is running out in terms of getting what they need from the u.s the trump window is closing maybe i mean i don't know it just feels doesn't it seem like it's all happening at once everything seems like it's all happening at once every day yeah and then and right when you get a little sense of like uh something good's gonna happen you're like no it's it's fading yeah how's the good fading why can't it stay for a week
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:So were you always, was this always where you wanted to be?
Marc:No.
Marc:I mean, where'd you grow up?
Guest:I grew up in Castro Valley, California.
Guest:It's the intersection of I-580 and I-880.
Marc:Okay, so outside of San Francisco?
Guest:Yeah, like closer to Oakland.
Marc:Closer to Oakland.
Marc:Yeah, I lived up there for a little while.
Marc:There's some pretty parts up there, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah, not where I grew up.
Marc:So you were there the whole childhood?
Guest:Yeah, my parents still live in the house I grew up in.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And what were they into?
Marc:What were their jobs?
Guest:My mom is an immigrant from Canada.
Guest:She grew up in Newfoundland.
Guest:Do you have Canadian citizenship?
Guest:No, I don't.
Guest:I always wondered if I could get it.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:My mom's whole family is all still there.
Marc:I appreciate that.
Marc:That to me means that you really are not only an American hero, but you still have hope.
Guest:It would seem to me that- That I haven't fled to Toronto already?
Marc:Well, just checked.
Marc:If I got to go, will it be easy for me?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:So I respect that because as soon as he was elected, I called an immigration lawyer and you've got a Canadian mother and you didn't even look into it.
Marc:You're much more optimistic than I am.
Guest:Can I tell you though, like actually the sad part of that is to the extent that I have thought about it, like if I ever needed to go, like if something went terribly haywire, I wouldn't want to go to Canada because my mom's whole family was there and what if I got them in trouble?
Guest:Oh, right.
Guest:Like, what if I put them at risk by being this, you know, whatever international bad actor who showed up because of my family connections to them?
Guest:Like, I'd rather just go to like Estonia or something.
Marc:Right.
Marc:You're at a different level of visibility in terms of exile than me.
Marc:Like, I'd just be another scared Jew wanting to get out from under it.
Marc:You'd be a national political personality and pundit and intellect and they'd be after you.
Guest:Well, it just depends on if you were leaving because you were being chased or if you were leaving because you wanted to slink away.
Marc:I think that is the last bastion of this democracy is they'll give us a choice to leave, an aggressive choice.
Marc:Might be time to go.
Marc:It's all we're saying.
Marc:It's up to you.
Guest:Have you ever looked into four?
Exactly.
Marc:I would actually like to go to Ireland, but I'm going to stay.
Marc:I'm going to hang.
Marc:I'm willing.
Guest:Would you go to Ireland?
Guest:Is that what you're going to say?
Marc:I'd like to go to Ireland.
Marc:I have no reason.
Marc:There's nothing.
Marc:I'm a Jew, but there's something about Ireland that I love.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And there's something like when I have a fantasy, it's always like sitting out on some sort of cliff with some rocks and an aggressive sea and a lot of green around and just sort of like, this is good.
Guest:Is this what you imagine Ireland is like or have you seen this part of Ireland?
Marc:I've seen the lower part of it.
Marc:I've been there a few times, but I'm going back and I'm going to go up north.
Guest:Great.
Marc:I've seen pictures of that part of it.
Marc:But then I'm always like, what about day three?
Marc:What about week two?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I don't know.
Marc:So you're in the Castro Valley.
Marc:Your folks still live there.
Marc:And your mom's Canadian.
Guest:My mom's Canadian.
Guest:She emigrated to this country when she was early 20s.
Guest:Met my dad when he was in the Air Force.
Guest:He was captain in the Air Force.
Marc:How long was he in the Air Force for?
Guest:He was out before I was born.
Guest:So he was, I don't know, actually.
Guest:Like a couple years?
Guest:He was a captain.
Guest:Stateside or just in Canada?
Guest:Stateside, yeah.
Guest:So he was U.S.
Guest:Air Force.
Guest:My dad was born in New Jersey, grew up in Arizona and San Diego.
Marc:So you got Jersey in you.
Guest:A little, yeah.
Marc:I come from Jersey, yeah.
Guest:My girlfriend's from Perth Amboy.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Born under the outer bridge.
Marc:I know.
Marc:I know that sign.
Marc:I don't know if I've been to Perth Amboy, but it's down.
Marc:It's on the way to the shore, isn't it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Her dad ran or her grandpa ran a longshoreman's bar.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:First shift, like 6 a.m.
Guest:like round.
Marc:Oh, really?
Marc:The breakfast crew is here.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Yeah, raw eggs dropped in beer, that kind of thing, eggs on the table.
Guest:We went back there a few years ago to see what had become of her grandfather's bar, and it's now a restaurant.
Guest:I think it's a Dominican restaurant.
Guest:But this thing that Susan had always tried to describe to me that I'd never been able to imagine, I finally got to see in action in the new iteration of what her grandfather's bar would have been, which is that you walk in and there's the counter, which used to be the bar, and then the family home is
Guest:is adjacent and upstairs, but not an entire story.
Guest:And so from the bar, you can see the feet of the family in the residential part of the house.
Guest:You can see them walking around, but only up to the knee.
Guest:That's bizarre.
Guest:And so if you're like a kid going over to grandpa's bar to hang out after school or whatever, like- You see grandma's feet?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You can see the people who look into the bar from the floor?
Guest:Or you can crawl around and see all the dudes at the bar while they're- That's wild.
Guest:Isn't that crazy?
Marc:Does she remember that?
Guest:Yes, vividly.
Marc:Oh, so she got to have a relationship with her granddad and that whole thing.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Also, she likes the smell of beer.
Guest:Of course.
Guest:Lucky for me.
Marc:I hope that it's not to that point where you smell like beer most of the time.
Guest:Just some of the times.
Guest:Saturdays.
Marc:So, okay, so you're there, and what are you doing as a kid?
Marc:Because I have a hard time picturing Rachel Maddow as a child.
Marc:Were you always intense and focused?
Marc:Did the world weigh heavy on you?
Guest:It's so funny that you think of me as intense.
Guest:You think of me as intense now?
Yeah.
Marc:I watch you every night.
Guest:Well, yeah, there's a lot of words in the show.
Guest:It's kind of a fire hose.
Marc:No, no, I feel like you're light.
Marc:I don't find you to be... No, maybe intense was the wrong word.
Marc:Maybe focus is the right word.
Marc:I feel like... What's the vibe?
Marc:Your brain, whether you want it to or not, is always working on something.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Except for the beer time.
Marc:But you're able, you can compartmentalize that?
Guest:Yes, I do.
Guest:Actually, I'm pretty good at compartmentalizing, which is why I think I've been able to do it this long.
Guest:We're pretty good on my show and the whole staff of not working through the weekend.
Guest:If we don't have to be doing a show on the weekend, we don't trade new stuff.
Guest:You really kind of go, that's it.
Guest:That's it, which is good.
Guest:To a certain extent, that happens in the overnight hours too, although sometimes you have to break
Guest:that so but i think that we've got a pretty good like show culture in terms of compartmentalization yeah and i really like am sort of religious about it like i when i go home on friday night i it's like a three and a half hour car ride and i'm either driving or if i'm not driving i read the whole time and as soon as i walk in the house i put work away and i don't do anything else for the rest of the night or saturday or into sunday like phone off kind of shit yeah
Guest:And I don't fight it at all.
Guest:It just feels natural.
Guest:And I think that's good because if I don't do it, like this past weekend I didn't do it because I'm on this book tour thing.
Guest:And so I kind of got to stay on it.
Guest:And the way I'm doing the book tour events is that somebody's asking me questions and they're going to ask about the book, but they're also going to ask about news stuff.
Guest:So I felt like I really needed to know what was going on in the news.
Guest:And so I didn't turn my brain off at all over the course of this weekend.
Guest:And I think it made my Monday show really stupid.
Yeah.
Marc:I'm trying to remember if I watched it.
Guest:It didn't make an impression.
Guest:I mean, I think it was it was fine, but I it was much less sharp and incisive.
Marc:And because you didn't have a reset.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:All the all the points just blurred together.
Guest:And that's and tonight's show is actually a little bit like that, too.
Guest:Like I if I don't get turned off, then I can't turn it back on again.
Guest:And it just it's like a it's like an engine running too hot or something.
Marc:What are you doing when you're growing up?
Marc:What are your interests?
Guest:So I'm growing up in Castro Valley.
Guest:I have an older brother.
Guest:We're only four years apart, but we don't.
Guest:We're not close.
Guest:Is he still around?
Guest:He's still around.
Guest:He actually came to L.A.
Guest:this weekend to come see me do a book event, which was really nice.
Guest:We're actually getting closer now.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah, I'm 46.
Guest:He's 50.
Guest:And like for the first time in our whole lives, we're making friends.
Guest:No, he's a single guy.
Guest:He lives in San Francisco.
Guest:I think he's going to move to New York at some point.
Guest:But we've been chalk and cheese our whole lives.
Guest:And now, in my mid-40s and his late 40s and 50s, we're finally starting to talk to each other.
Guest:That's interesting.
Guest:Which is interesting.
Guest:It's been a weird thing in the past couple years.
Marc:What do you think?
Marc:Do you guys ever... Is it just sort of like you finally have sort of let go of something?
Marc:Or do you talk about why you didn't talk?
Guest:No, I don't think we're going to talk about why we didn't talk.
Guest:But I because I think at least I don't want to because I have let go.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, I think I was really holding on to all of this childish resentment stuff for a long time.
Guest:And eventually and I thought I was over it.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But I still couldn't deal with him.
Guest:And then eventually I just decided to actually be over it.
Guest:And it and it I mean, what's the connection between the head and the heart there?
Guest:You can tell yourself to let go of it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:All you want.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But if your sort of heart doesn't let go of it, you can't it doesn't change anything.
Guest:And I think finally my heart kind of let go of it.
Guest:And now, I mean, we're not best friends or whatever, but we do get along.
Marc:It's amazing when that happens in your heart.
Marc:I think it's more about an evolution, personal evolution and self-acceptance that enables you to do that.
Marc:Like, you know, why am I holding on to this?
Marc:I'm okay with myself.
Marc:We're old.
Marc:And it's like the same with parents.
Marc:Like, you know, what am I really going to get at holding on to this?
Marc:They are who they are.
Marc:And, you know, we're not going to last forever.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But why do you think it's about why do you think?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Why do you think self-acceptance is the gateway there?
Marc:Because I think that, you know, when you I think you have emotional expectations out of people who have either wronged you or for whatever your resentment may have been.
Marc:You think that somehow or another it's going to correct.
Marc:It may be made correct.
Marc:And sometimes it just never is.
Marc:And if you accept that and you accept that, you know, whatever it might have been.
Marc:is is either you know not relevant anymore or or not it it can't be made up you know it's childish to hold on to it the injury to me is healed yeah it's healed or it's just or as you get older you're like it doesn't even matter somehow sometimes i mean i don't know what happened but but i just find that there's a lot of things as i get older where i used to be so important and i don't give a shit and it's just yeah where's the time for that right yeah
Marc:And it's also like all the crying that's involved, you know, with letting go of stuff.
Marc:It's weird, you know, when, especially with family, because there's that moment where you're like, there's a release of this weird thing where this emotion when you decide to be like, all right, well, you know, we're older and, you know, and, you know, we're blood and, you know, it's, you know, I'm not expecting anything, but let's, you know, let's.
Marc:Let's be here now.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And we're family somehow.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, it can't work for everything, obviously, if things are really horrible.
Guest:Yeah, but when it does happen, it does feel like a remarkable thing.
Guest:I do think that you can't will yourself into it.
Guest:No way.
Guest:And I think that a lot of therapy is organized around the idea that you should understand the rationality of that and commit to doing it and decide to doing it.
Guest:And that's fine.
Guest:It gives you language to talk about it or whatever.
Guest:But it's not the same thing as being able to do it.
Guest:And that, I think, is actually a more, like, sort of, not necessarily spiritual, but, like, a much more, it's not an intellectual thing.
Marc:No.
Guest:Emotions and intellect are two different things.
Marc:Yeah, for sure.
Marc:And, like, you can, you know, cognitively act differently.
Marc:You can behave politely.
Marc:You can be nice.
Marc:You can act as if.
Marc:You can take contrary action.
Marc:And that's nice on a social level, and it may maintain...
Marc:But until your heart lets go or the forgiveness is there, I don't know.
Guest:I do think, though, that when you fake it, like you're describing, like making yourself behave the way that you don't feel, sometimes that can kind of show yourself a little bit of a path.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like this is what it would be like.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Step outside yourself a little bit like this interaction is not bad.
Guest:Right.
Guest:It could be like this all the time.
Guest:If I, you know, if I wasn't faking this, this would be nice.
Marc:Well, it gives you that space, even though it's fake to see them as, you know, people like, you know, to get out from under the whatever the the obstacle is.
Guest:Right.
Marc:You know, it forces you into the relationship.
Guest:I also just, I mean, honestly, I think it comes down to maturity at a certain level.
Guest:Yeah, of course.
Guest:And maybe that's what you're saying in terms of letting go of stuff for yourself first.
Guest:I mean, ultimately, just grow up and get over it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, not to be too airy-fairy about this, Mark.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And it's nice if your heart can go along with that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you get along with your folks.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I get along with my folks great.
Guest:I didn't, I mean, as an adult, like as I came out when I was right after I got to college.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And they had a hard time with me coming out.
Guest:And then soon after I came out, my brother came out too.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:So they had two gay kids.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So that wasn't awesome.
Guest:And so there was some rocky time there.
Guest:But we made up, and they're amazing now.
Guest:And actually, they get along better with Susan than they do with me.
Guest:So there's a real, like, it's good.
Guest:I feel very blessed in terms of my family.
Marc:That's wild.
Marc:I mean, on some level, they kind of, it makes it special to have two gay kids.
Guest:I'm not sure that's the word they would use.
Yeah.
Guest:But special's a word.
Guest:I mean, I think they like us both and I think we're fine.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I think they got it.
Guest:They must have felt like they hit the opposite lottery at the moment.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But now everybody's relaxing into it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And you have a good role in your dad.
Marc:What's he what did he do after the Air Force thing?
Guest:He worked for the water company.
Guest:So he worked for the water company in the East Bay, which is called East Bay Municipal Utility District.
Guest:And he became like a real authority on the ways that local places in California fight for water with each other.
Marc:So what inspired you?
Marc:So when you were in high school, what were you doing?
Marc:Were you like a jock?
Guest:I did sports and I don't know.
Guest:I mean, I was kind of, you know, a jerk.
Marc:A jerk?
Guest:I think I was a jerk.
Marc:Really?
Guest:I mean, I don't know.
Marc:You were cocky?
Guest:No, I think I was just self-obsessed.
Marc:Right?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Did you feel uncomfortable?
Guest:Not more than anybody else, I think.
Guest:I think I had a pretty normal childhood and upbringing.
Marc:I was self-obsessed, and I am still self-obsessed, but in high school, I never felt like I fit in anymore.
Marc:But I think when you have sports, at least you got that.
Guest:It's a thing to do, and it takes up a lot of time.
Guest:And there's people.
Marc:You learn group dynamics.
Marc:You can be with other people to play a game.
Marc:You know, I didn't have that.
Marc:At a specified time, that ends.
Marc:And then you have to go do a different thing.
Guest:That's very helpful.
Guest:It's very helpful.
Marc:And you always did good in school?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Why is that?
Guest:I think the secret to getting good grades in school for me was reading comprehension.
Guest:I think that was the thing that I was actually good at.
Marc:But you must have been somewhat of a, like you wanted, I don't know, at some point I knew I wasn't going to get straight A's, but you must have been one of those people that's like, you're going to ace this shit, right?
Yeah.
Guest:I definitely got good grades.
Guest:I mean, I didn't get uniformly good grades, but I got good grades.
Guest:But I do think that I'm not great at any one thing in school.
Guest:I think the one thing that I really can do is reading comprehension.
Guest:And weirdly, I think that applies to almost everything because that helps you take tests because it makes you read the question better than other people who don't.
Marc:What are you bad at?
Math?
Guest:You know what I'm terrible at is dates, which is weird because I have such an interest in history.
Guest:I can't remember.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:I sort of know Susan's birthday, but barely.
Guest:I don't know either of my parents' birthdays.
Guest:I don't know my anniversary.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:And historical dates, I can remember years because I can put them in context of stories.
Marc:So dates.
Guest:But I can't remember.
Guest:If you asked me the year of an important historical event, I can't tell you unless I work it out in a contextual way.
Marc:Well, I think like because the reason I'm like curious is that like I think when we were working together, there was a sort of like a kind of a narrative around you.
Marc:You know, like, you know, we were all kind of there in the middle of the night.
Marc:I was doing the morning show and you were like in the beginning.
Marc:Well, we can get there, America, in a minute.
Marc:But the like it's like she's a Rhodes Scholar.
Marc:And I'm like, I don't even know what that is, but I've heard of it.
Marc:And it means that you're really smart and special.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What is that even?
Marc:Like, I'm still not even sure what a Rhodes Scholar is, but I knew you were one of them.
Marc:And I would just see you in your baseball hat standing over papers going, it's a Rhodes Scholar.
Marc:That's what they do.
Marc:Look at them work.
Guest:And then you learned that David Vitter is also a Rhodes Scholar.
Guest:And Bobby Jindal.
Marc:Chris Christopherson.
Guest:Chris Christopherson, indeed.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:But when you decided to go to college, you went to Stanford, right?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:To study what?
Marc:I did public policy.
Marc:So what inspired you out of high school to start getting involved in that?
Guest:So that has a story.
Guest:I was a year early in school because I skipped first grade.
Guest:And so I was 17 when I graduated from high school.
Guest:You tested out of first grade?
Guest:I was tall.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:I think it was an anti-bullying initiative for the short kids.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And so I was a year young and I started to come out to myself and figure out that I was gay when I was 16.
Guest:And so my last year in high school was a little different because I was starting to figure out something else about myself.
Guest:And I kind of stopped doing sports and I had a choice.
Guest:I'd been recruited by a couple of schools to go to school on athletic scholarship.
Marc:Did you have to go through like, you know, the secret dating and all that kind of like thing?
Marc:No, not really.
Marc:No.
Guest:No, because I started to come out to myself after I graduated from high school.
Guest:Then I got to college and I was like, yes, I'm definitely gay.
Guest:And then I came out right away.
Guest:Being in the closet was not going to work for me.
Guest:Look at me.
Marc:I didn't want to say anything.
Yeah.
Guest:People always talk about that like, oh, you're the first gay person to be, you know, to win this thing or to be hired to do this thing.
Guest:I'm like, yeah, there were other gay people before me.
Guest:You just couldn't tell that they were gay because look at me.
Guest:I'm just the first one you know about.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I was so I came out and this was I graduated from high school in 1990.
Guest:And so this was like really the apex of the AIDS epidemic.
Guest:And I grew up in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Guest:And it was a you know, it was a really, really tough time in terms of people not that much older than me dying.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And so I am coming out decided pretty early on that I felt like, well, if I'm going to be part of this community, like my community is going through something and I want to try to be helpful.
Guest:And so I became an AIDS activist pretty quickly upon coming out and so started doing stuff with, I worked in an AIDS hospice in Oakland when I was 17 and I did a bunch of AIDS awareness and AIDS activism stuff on campus and then I joined ACT UP and I was an ACT UP kid.
Guest:All of that made me... That's why I did public policy, because I was like, I'm working on a problem that is a public policy problem, and I want to be better at making these arguments.
Guest:So I did public policy with a concentration in healthcare, because we were working on the healthcare industry to try to get cures made.
Guest:And then I did... I think what I actually wanted to major in, had I not had this kind of utilitarian attitude toward it, was philosophy.
Guest:Yeah.
Yeah.
Guest:And so instead of doing that because I didn't have the money or the time to do a double major, I did an honors program in ethics, which is like a mini philosophy degree.
Guest:And that for me was really helpful because I felt like it made me a better arguer, which is, again, a utilitarian thing I wanted to cultivate because I was an activist and trying to learn how to make good arguments to change this thing that I was trying to fix.
Marc:And then you say that you graduated with a degree in public policy.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And did it help you?
Marc:Were you able to apply it?
Guest:Yeah, it did.
Guest:I mean, I did.
Guest:Public policy is an interdisciplinary thing at Stanford.
Guest:And so I did.
Guest:You have a choice about sort of which you can take it in a more poli sci direction or you can take it in a more quantitative direction.
Guest:And I did tons of statistics.
Guest:Mm hmm.
Guest:And that ends up helping both in reading comprehension and figuring stuff out in assessing people's arguments about numbers and also in sort of credibly talking about quantitative stuff that helps.
Marc:Right.
Marc:And also knowing that, you know, what was happening politically was that, you know, an entire community was being, you know.
Marc:abandoned on a policy level, right?
Marc:And so you had to have the weapons or at least the ability to push back and call bullshit and fight the fight.
Guest:And I felt like, first of all, I'm a lesbian, I'm not a gay man, so I'm not at the same kind of risk.
Guest:Also, I am young coming into this in terms of the people who are most people, the people who are dying are just slightly older than me.
Guest:And I've got access to this incredible educational resource.
Guest:How can I use all of those privileges as opportunities to make me more effective?
Guest:Right.
Guest:And that was the it was like this really utile thing in terms of the way that I approached that.
Marc:So it wasn't even a political incentive.
Marc:It was a social incentive.
Marc:It was like you weren't like I'm going into politics.
Marc:You were like, how do we get help for these people right now through the system that we have right now?
Guest:And what I have access to right now, how can I use it to best set me up to do the most to do the most help to do the most good?
Marc:And did that start to define you politically?
Marc:I mean, were you defined politically before that?
Guest:I don't you know, I don't I didn't really have politics.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And I've never really been all that.
Guest:I know this is going to sound weird, but I've never really been all that motivated by electoral politics.
Guest:Like I definitely had issues and stuff that I cared about.
Guest:And I got really good at the California legislature because I worked on California AIDS policy for a long time.
Guest:And I ended up getting sort of focusing on HIV in prisons.
Guest:Mm hmm.
Guest:Because I felt like that was weirdly a very winnable thing.
Guest:I felt like it was low hanging fruit where we actually could get stuff changed and it would make a difference for a bunch of people with HIV.
Guest:So I got really good at understanding policy around prison stuff.
Guest:And health care.
Guest:And health care.
Guest:And that it all helped.
Guest:And that was my politics.
Guest:That was the kind of stuff that I worked on.
Marc:And oddly, it's not, you know, people would sort of frame that, I guess, because you're you as progressive.
Marc:But it's really just it's basic human rights stuff.
Guest:It was problem solving.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And just health care for sick people.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, one of the things I worked on was a hospice bill.
Guest:The former mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigoso, when he was in the California state legislature, one of the things that I worked on was getting him to sponsor a bill so that people who were dying of AIDS in prison would be released into the hospital where the hospice system agreed to...
Guest:provide secure facilities so that even though these were prisoners who had not yet served out their terms, if they were going to die, they could die outside prison in a palliative care environment that the hospices promised would be secure.
Marc:And they did that.
Guest:And they did that.
Marc:Wow.
Guest:And that is, you know, it's a small piece of this.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But is that liberal?
Guest:Like, I don't know.
Guest:I mean, it's a, and is it electoral politics?
Guest:No.
Guest:No.
Guest:You know, it is, you know, eventually down the line, you want there to be somebody like an assemblyman Villaraigosa there who's inclined to help you on something like this.
Marc:Right.
Guest:But it was really about getting the getting stuff fixed.
Marc:And how does how does a road scholarship work?
Marc:How does the next phase?
Marc:Did you was there any time between undergrad and grad?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:So I was living in San Francisco.
Guest:I was doing act up stuff and I was working at the AIDS legal referral panel, which is a legal services organization for people with AIDS.
Marc:Where in San Francisco were you living?
Guest:I was living in the Mission.
Marc:Oh yeah, me too.
Marc:I lived there for a year and a half.
Guest:Really?
Guest:What street?
Marc:I was on Guerrero.
Marc:South NS, my 22nd.
Marc:Oh, nice.
Marc:Got it.
Marc:It was a little heavy back then.
Guest:I was just going to say, that was a little... It was like 93?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:That's around my time, yeah.
Marc:San Francisco's weird.
Marc:It's very weird.
Marc:I don't know what's happening there.
Guest:I was just there this weekend and I was like, I don't recognize anything.
Marc:But I never knew what was holding that city together.
Marc:I didn't understand the power structure, how it was laid out.
Marc:It always felt very chaotic and electric to me.
Marc:And still, if you get off of that BART station at Mission and 16th, it's still like, what the fuck is happening on this corner?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And Mission of 24th, too.
Guest:I mean, it's the same thing.
Guest:It's crazy.
Guest:Yeah, and it's always been like that.
Guest:But growing up in the Bay Area, to me, that was the city.
Guest:It was the only place I could imagine living as an adult and the only place I wanted to be cool enough to live.
Guest:It's a pretty cool city, really.
Guest:There are a few places in America that feel like city-states, that feel like, yes, technically, this is an American place, but this is its own place.
Guest:It is.
Guest:And San Francisco was one of those.
Guest:I think part of it, part of the magic of San Francisco is the vistas.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because of the hilly nature of the city and the architecture.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like everywhere you turn, it's like, this can't be a real thing that I'm looking at.
Guest:This is a real vista.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's wild.
Guest:And it gives you a feeling.
Guest:It gives you a sort of, I don't know, bigger than yourself feeling about that city.
Guest:It's cinematic.
Guest:You can see yourself in a movie every second that you're walking through that city.
Marc:And also so much of it is built on individualism.
Guest:Mm-hmm.
Marc:The nature that this is a safe haven for all types of people trying to define themselves, whether it's the gay community or the hippies or whatever, the prospectors.
Marc:It was just always based on a sort of rugged kind of weirdness.
Marc:And it really, you can feel it always.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And now that it's so rich with all the tech stuff, it feels, I don't know.
Marc:Are they erasing it?
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:It just feels different.
Guest:I mean, A, the housing costs are insane, and so no regular people can live there anymore.
Marc:Well, New York feels the same way.
Marc:It feels different.
Marc:Something's been robbed or moved.
Guest:New York is big enough that as some things change and become homogenized and pureed, other things descend and become ungentrified and stuff moves around.
Guest:I mean, San Francisco is so compact that as it's being sort of suffused with gazillionaires—
Guest:It is turning into something that feels a little bit more like a theme park.
Guest:It just doesn't seem like it does.
Guest:Some things don't work.
Marc:And I never know where do the people go that they push out?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I mean, do you know?
Marc:Elsewhere.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, there's- Here, they're on the streets.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:It's terrible.
Guest:So I don't know.
Guest:I always thought that I'd be a Californian.
Guest:I always thought that I'd live long term in California.
Guest:And now I can't imagine.
Guest:I work in New York, but Susan and I live in rural Western Massachusetts.
Guest:And it's very clear to me that's why I will live the rest of my life.
Marc:Oh, it's beautiful.
Marc:By Springfield?
Marc:Not by North Adams?
Guest:Yeah, not far from Springfield.
Guest:Sort of between Springfield and North Adams.
Guest:The hill towns of Western Mass.
Marc:Yeah, yeah.
Marc:It's pretty out there.
Marc:It's gorgeous.
Marc:And they've got that amazing museum there now.
Marc:I will live there forever.
Guest:What is it?
Guest:Mass Mocha.
Guest:I will live there forever.
Marc:Yeah, it's great.
Marc:And there's good people.
Marc:And you have space.
Guest:It's where the animals live is how I think of it.
Marc:All right, so you do this in between Stanford and wherever.
Marc:You're working at the resource center.
Guest:What is AIDS?
Marc:AIDS Legal Referral Panel.
Marc:And then when do you do the Oxford thing?
Guest:So Stanford asks me to apply for a Rhodes Scholarship.
Guest:And I was like, eh.
Guest:Okay.
Guest:And I didn't really think that much about it.
Marc:Why did they ask you?
Marc:Because you like honors?
Guest:I had good grades and I guess they thought that... I mean, it's a prestige thing for the school that they want their graduates to win these scholarships.
Guest:They want to deliver somebody?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:And so I think they have a program that they, I don't know, put your resume through or whatever.
Guest:I had left Stanford a little bit early.
Guest:I had a lot of debt and I had enough credits to get out.
Guest:And so I left after three and a half years.
Guest:And so I had already...
Guest:I had already been gone for a while when they asked me to apply.
Guest:And I was like, well, I don't have any plans to go to grad school.
Guest:I don't have any money.
Guest:And I don't know what I'm going to do next.
Guest:So somebody's asking me to do a thing.
Guest:Okay, I will.
Guest:And I ended up winning, which was a real surprise to me.
Marc:And you studied?
Guest:Political science.
Guest:I was admitted to the master's degree and I did the master's program for one day and then I applied for a transfer to the doctoral program, which is a much easier way to get into the doctoral program than just applying to it directly.
Marc:What does that get you?
Marc:You're a doctor?
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:And the master's would have been what?
Guest:You'd have to call me master.
Marc:Seems like doctor's better.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:So in transferring into the doctoral program from the master's program is like no sweat.
Guest:But just directly applying to the doctoral program, having not done a master's, I never would have got in.
Marc:Right.
Guest:So it was a little trick.
Marc:So you got the doctorate in political science.
Guest:Politics is what they call it, but it's political science.
Marc:Was there any life changing mentors or teachers there that, you know, kind of did your brain change there?
Guest:I left Oxford and moved to London for most of the time that I was there.
Guest:So I was, I mean, the AIDS epidemic was still what it was at the time.
Guest:Protease inhibitors were really the big breakthrough in terms of treatment.
Guest:And that wasn't until 1996.
Guest:And so I was doing my doctoral degree before then.
Guest:And I really felt like I was lost in Oxford.
Guest:And so I moved to London and I joined an AIDS treatment organization there and started doing activist work again.
Guest:And then did that alongside my thesis, which was on the AIDS movement.
Marc:So now how do you get from there after you do all this work to like when I when I got the gig.
Marc:So I guess it's still the late 90s.
Marc:But how do you get to radio?
Guest:So I ran out of money in London, and I had not yet finished my doctoral dissertation because I was spending all my time doing activism stuff.
Guest:Were you having fun at all?
Guest:I was.
Guest:Can you have fun?
Guest:I had an active social life once upon a time.
Guest:I did.
Guest:But you're like, you know how to-
Marc:Look, I'm not good at it, but you seem pretty good at it.
Marc:When you talk about it, you seem to know how to have fun.
Marc:I'm just asking.
Guest:I did have fun.
Guest:I did once have fun.
Marc:You seem to still have fun.
Marc:I hear you talk about it occasionally.
Marc:You fish.
Yeah.
Guest:I fall down.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:That's fun.
Guest:What is that?
Marc:Did you tell people, do people know that you're hobbling about?
Guest:Three months on crutches.
Guest:Did you say that on the show?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I've talked about it a little bit.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was stepping from a thing down onto a thing, just stepping down and I missed the step.
Guest:Oh.
Guest:And I tore two ligaments on the outside of my ankle.
Guest:And then I flipped back the other way and rolled it the other way and tore the big ligament on the inside of the ankle.
Guest:And when that one tore, it ripped off a piece of the bone.
Guest:So I broke it and sprained it at the same time.
Guest:And because the ligaments on both sides are torn, totally torn, it won't stabilize.
Guest:Usually when you tear ligaments, it's only on one side of the joint.
Marc:Did you have to get surgery?
Guest:No.
Guest:I mean, I went and saw a surgeon, but he was like, it's just going to take a long time to heal.
Marc:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I think by the end of this month, I'll be off crutches.
Marc:All right.
Marc:I hope.
Marc:All right.
Marc:So you broke.
Marc:You leave London.
Guest:I broke.
Guest:I leave London.
Guest:I move back to the United States.
Guest:And I really want to get my dissertation done because I am never going to go to school again.
Guest:And I've put in all this work on the doctorate and I'm not going to leave without getting the freaking degree.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so I was like, I need to prioritize.
Guest:I need to just go somewhere where I will be miserable.
Guest:Right.
Guest:The only way I can get out is by finishing.
Guest:And so my dad's best friend from the Air Force was a Republican lawyer in Southern California.
Guest:And he said that I could work out of a broom closet in his law office.
Guest:I was like, that'd be miserable.
Guest:That's good.
Guest:Or I had friends who had moved to Western Massachusetts and opened up a gay B&B.
Yeah.
Guest:And I was like, that sounds like hell on earth.
Guest:New England, in the winter, they were raising dogs.
Guest:I had no interest in animals whatsoever.
Guest:Part of the country I had no interest in whatsoever.
Guest:And a B&B, so like hospitality, not a specialty.
Guest:So I was like, that actually sounds like real hell.
Guest:I'll do that.
Marc:And I thought it would be.
Marc:So you're going to go to a place that is warm and sociable and just lock yourself away and be miserable?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I was like, I want to be someplace that has nothing to offer me.
Guest:So the only way out will be finishing.
Guest:And I've now lived there for 20 years and I have a dog and I'm super happy and I love winter.
Guest:Are your folks Republicans?
Guest:No, they're not.
Guest:They were more conservative when I was growing up.
Guest:Right now, they're to the left of me, especially my dad.
Marc:My dad is like- To the left of you.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:What does that look like?
Marc:Who are we talking?
Marc:Bernie left further?
Guest:I don't know who they'll- They're very practical when they talk about the Democratic primary.
Guest:They're all about who can beat Trump.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Were you brought up with religion and stuff?
Guest:Yeah, Catholic.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:My mom is from a very Catholic family.
Guest:She has sisters who are nuns and stuff.
Guest:And my dad, Jewish family, but never practicing and really like ashamed of it.
Guest:And then like Christian science and weird stuff.
Guest:And so he didn't really have anything going on.
Guest:And then he converted to Catholicism when I was eight.
Guest:Wow.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I grew up Catholic.
Marc:With hell.
Marc:You grew up with hell?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Well, that wasn't like in the house.
Guest:No.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Who knows where it is?
I don't know.
Marc:You know, I don't know if this is it.
Marc:I don't know if we're all in it.
Marc:But but so but were you like from a young age?
Marc:Did you have that fear where all those ideas planted in you?
Marc:Did you have to remove them at some point?
Marc:Did you think that maybe you would remain religious?
Marc:Did you struggle with that?
Guest:I left.
Guest:I stopped paying attention to religion at a time when I became super obsessed with myself.
Guest:Right.
Guest:So I think when was that?
Guest:Well, like I think we're talking about like high school and coming out and all that stuff like I became I was so obsessed with myself and so full of myself.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:that I stopped thinking about the constraints of the world in a way that included religion.
Guest:And I didn't come back to it for a long time.
Guest:But I never really fought it or was tortured by it, at least as far as I remember.
Guest:My memory writes over every six months or so, so I don't know.
Guest:But you came back to it?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I consider myself religious now.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Catholic-y?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Huh.
Guest:I know.
Guest:I doubt the Catholic Church is happy about it, but too bad they're stuck with me.
Marc:They've got enough problems, and I'm sure you're the least of them.
Guest:When you have those kinds of problems, though, I'm exactly the kind of problem you want to focus on.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Exactly.
Marc:Because I don't have that thing that needs to find the God thing.
Marc:Where do you find comfort?
Marc:Were you in a darkness place?
Guest:No, I find prayer to be helpful in my own life.
Marc:Yeah, I mean, I can understand that.
Marc:I've prayed before, but I don't know what I'm praying to, but I think that the act of it is something.
Guest:The act of stopping your other mental, I mean, I very rarely pray out loud.
Guest:I'm always just praying in my head.
Guest:And the act of stopping what your brain is otherwise going to do to do a deliberate thing, which is based around giving thanks, I think is both a reset
Guest:in a way that's like a psychic pause.
Guest:But I also think it helps you get your head on straight.
Guest:And it helps, it makes me not a better person, but it makes me more the person that I want to be.
Marc:So it's primary around gratitude?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:It's around gratitude and sort of humility and acknowledging things that I'm doing wrong.
Marc:I think that if you hit your knees and do it, that humility of that, no matter what you believe in.
Marc:If you say, I'm going to humble myself, those are well-worn psychic channels.
Guest:Yes, exactly.
Guest:And it works, honestly.
Guest:Prayer is a daily part of my life, and it has made my life better and made me a happier person and made me more effective at the things I want to do.
Marc:Have you been unhappy?
Guest:I have depression, so that's a different thing than unhappiness, but I... I think I, like for your whole life?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Well, since I was like 10.
Marc:Really?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:How does that manifest in your day-to-day?
Guest:Well, you know about depression.
Marc:I know, but is it like, do you get the heavy heart dread type or nothing...
Guest:My depression is cyclical and so it's not every day.
Guest:And so what happens is I get it for a throw of a few days every few weeks.
Guest:Oh, yeah.
Guest:And when it happens, I sort of lose the will to live.
Guest:Right, right, right.
Guest:Nothing has any meaning.
Marc:But do you get the other side too?
Marc:Do you get a manic few days occasionally?
Guest:Less than I used to.
Guest:I used to have a pretty even balance of mania and depression.
Guest:And now I have very little mania.
Guest:It's like one sixth of what it used to be.
Marc:I don't have real mania mania because my old man kind of has that.
Marc:But there's a few days sometimes where I'm just sort of like, wow.
Marc:But not like, I'm going to buy things.
Marc:It's just sort of like, I feel great.
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Maybe inappropriately great.
Guest:Maybe I haven't done anything to deserve feeling this much energy.
Guest:Is this what joy is?
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I love that.
Guest:I mean, I still love it.
Guest:Again, I can't predict it.
Guest:I can't recognize that's what it is when it's happening.
Guest:But I wouldn't give that up.
Marc:No.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But so you never medicated?
Guest:No.
Marc:No.
Marc:Just doing a little prayer and managing the depression.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I found.
Marc:Riding it out.
Guest:There are things that are good for me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So exercise is good for me.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Susan can see it like a light switch.
Guest:In your eyes.
Guest:So I can't tell.
Guest:I mean, even after living with it for 36 years.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I still can't tell when I'm depressed because part of depression is not being able to have emotional consciousness.
Marc:Because you believe it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You're like, oh, it's over.
Guest:It's over.
Guest:Anytime I've ever felt joy, I was misled.
Guest:Yeah, yeah.
Guest:It's like, you just lose the ability to see that.
Guest:But having a partner... Yeah.
Guest:Who can tell me that's what's going on.
Guest:Even if I can't emotionally process it, like I can hear it and it can, it can remind me to like, make sure you exercise, make sure you sleep, make sure you don't do anything dumb, that kind of stuff.
Marc:Right.
Marc:Well that, yeah, because it's a vibe.
Marc:I mean, like if someone loves you and you've been with someone a long time, you can just see it in their eyes, like right away.
Marc:You're like, okay.
Guest:That's what this is, honey.
Guest:Who are you?
Guest:Yeah, exactly.
Guest:You don't love me.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:I know that one.
Marc:You don't.
Marc:I understand.
Guest:You think you love me.
Guest:It's nice of you to say.
Guest:But who could love me?
Guest:Basically, basically.
Marc:The worst.
Marc:But I feel it.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But I've actually it's good that it comes and goes because I've talked to people out of loving me.
Marc:You know, if you really commit.
Yeah.
Marc:You could sell it, man.
Guest:Especially if you're a good arguer.
Guest:You can put together a good argument.
Marc:You don't even know me, how horrible dark I am.
Guest:It's terrible.
Guest:Remember that nice thing I once said to you?
Guest:I didn't mean that.
Marc:I didn't mean that.
Marc:It was trying to be apologetic.
Guest:It was one of my evil tricks because I'm evil.
Marc:I know.
Marc:Worthless.
Marc:It's dark.
Marc:Okay, so you're up there, and I don't understand how you get to radio.
Guest:So I'm taking odd jobs while I am trying to finish my doctoral dissertation while I'm living in Western Massachusetts in the winter with the dogs.
Marc:Are you just like the wet blanket of the place?
Marc:Are you the buzz killer?
Guest:I'm the handyman.
Guest:Oh, but I don't know how to fix anything.
Guest:So I ended up needing to like find things to do to make money.
Guest:I applied to work at a video store and I didn't get the job.
Guest:And then I became a delivery person, but I had a car with electrical problems, and you know those are intermittent, so that was hard.
Marc:And it's cold, too.
Guest:It's cold.
Guest:And I did not know how to drive in snow, so that was bad.
Guest:Then I got hired with another handyman job, and I broke the plumbing at the place that I was.
Guest:I installed a pressure sprayer on a faucet backwards, and so it blew up the faucet.
Marc:You had no idea how to do it?
Marc:No idea.
Marc:I've done that.
Marc:I tried to be a gardener for one summer in Boston when I was drinking a lot.
Marc:And I removed and I removed all this woman's myrtle.
Marc:I thought they were weeds.
Marc:Like I got halfway all her ground cover.
Marc:I just ripped out.
Marc:She's like, what'd you do?
Marc:And I'm like, doesn't it look clean now?
Marc:Yeah, but that's supposed to be there.
Marc:I'm like, I don't know.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:But look, dirt.
Guest:Look what I found.
Marc:There was dirt underneath me.
Guest:That's kind of, I mean, I ended up doing landscaping as one of my terrible jobs.
Guest:There was this woman who knew the people who had hired me to be the handyman who I blew up their faucet.
Guest:They had a friend who had just bought a house in the country and it had been a house that had been rented and had been kind of a mess and had like lots of, it had like
Guest:thorn bushes in the yard and broken windows and crayon on the wall board and stuff.
Guest:She was fixing it up.
Guest:And so she said that she needed like a high school boy type laborer to come in and not do anything that had any skills, but like to dig up tree stumps and to haul away thorny things.
Guest:I was like, I'm your guy.
Guest:And so that was one of my odd jobs.
Guest:And I showed up at that lady's house to go do that work.
Guest:And that was Susan.
Guest:And it was love at first sight.
Guest:And that's how we met.
Marc:That's crazy.
Guest:It was amazing.
Guest:It was great.
Marc:Oh, and everything changed.
Guest:And everything changed.
Guest:My whole life changed.
Guest:And then one of the other jobs that I subsequently got was as the news girl on a morning zoo radio show.
Marc:You'd never done radio?
Guest:Never.
Marc:And you had no real desire to be a news girl?
Guest:No.
Guest:News girl, no.
Marc:So was this a morning zoo situation?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:Dave in the Morning, Dave Brunel on 100.9 WRNX, which is now a country station in Holyoke, Massachusetts.
Guest:Really?
Guest:Yes.
Guest:So you were real radio.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:We were like, you know, DJs.
Marc:Yeah, I know.
Guest:The guy who was the board op, his name was Paul Scarpino.
Guest:We called him Pino.
Marc:Yeah, right.
Guest:Dave in the morning.
Guest:He never used his last name.
Guest:He was just Dave in the morning, Mr. in the morning.
Guest:And I was the news girl.
Marc:So you were kind of like, I used to do a joke about it.
Marc:There's the main guy, there's the laughing guy, and then there's the shocked woman.
Guest:That's me.
Guest:I was the shocked woman.
Guest:I was Robin.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:There's one guy going, and the other guy going...
Marc:And the woman going, yell, fellas.
Guest:That was 1,000% accurate.
Guest:That was exactly it.
Guest:I loved it.
Marc:I loved it, yeah.
Marc:It was fun getting up, right?
Marc:Like a good morning crew was pretty exciting.
Guest:The hours sort of sucked.
Guest:And I had a long drive, actually, to it in the winter driving and the whole thing.
Guest:But actually getting to rip and read AP copy and mark it up myself and change news stuff and then talk with the guys about the news, I just loved it.
Guest:and that was it yeah it just like that was the beginning of your broadcasting life and then i did that for a year and then i went back to oxford to do my i'd finished my dissertation went back to oxford did my oral exams got my phd from morning zoo to oxford uh two weeks later was 9 11 and after 9 11 the a lot of the radio stations um stopped playing music and started doing just like all talk and information stuff because very sober time yeah
Guest:And I volunteered at a station in Northampton.
Guest:I said, can I come in and do live shifts?
Guest:Like, can I do fill-in shifts?
Guest:And they said, yes.
Guest:And that quickly turned into me getting the morning show myself there, which was The Big Breakfast with Rachel Maddow on 93.9 The River.
Guest:And I did that until Air America was founded.
Guest:And then I had a friend who knew Liz Winstead because he had been her favorite bartender.
Guest:And I got him to give Liz my reel.
Guest:And Liz said she wanted to hire me, Liz and Shelley Lewis.
Right.
Marc:I just saw Shelly.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Did you?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I love Shelly.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:And they hired me to come to Air America to be the news girl on the Liz Winstead, Chuck D morning show.
Marc:But in the morning show that you had, the big, what was it called?
Marc:The Big Breakfast.
Marc:The Big Breakfast.
Marc:Were you doing, what was it, two, three hours?
Guest:Three or four, I think.
Marc:Three or four hours of just you?
Guest:No, just music.
Guest:I was DJing.
Marc:Oh, you weren't doing commentary.
Marc:You were just.
Guest:No, I was doing news and interviews and commentary and like little PSAs and stunts and stuff like that.
Guest:But all, you know, regular morning shows.
Guest:So playing music too.
Marc:Oh.
Guest:Giving away tickets to the Miles Davis show.
Marc:Uh-huh.
Marc:But not politics really.
Guest:Not really.
Marc:Isn't that wild?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, I didn't, I had this whole other life at the time where I was still being an AIDS activist.
Guest:Sure.
Guest:And I was still doing all, I mean, I was like trying to desegregate the HIV units in Alabama and Mississippi prisons, but then also like giving away concert tickets in the median during the eight minute, you know, fish song.
Guest:Yeah, of course.
Guest:Live radio is great.
Guest:It's wonderful.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:And then, OK, so you get drafted into Air America, which is were you excited about that or did you see it as sort of like I'm just a news person?
Guest:Oh, no.
Guest:I was like, I can't believe this exists.
Guest:I can't believe I get to be even a little part of it.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I told everybody in the sort of activist world.
Guest:When I got hired at Air America, I was like, I don't know if this is going to work out, either the entity or me.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But I'm going to go try this for six months.
Guest:And so I'm going to put everything that I'm doing on hold, give all my projects to other people.
Guest:I'll probably be back in six months.
Guest:Go ahead.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And then it, you know, turned one thing into another.
Guest:And eventually I got my own show.
Guest:Well, Unfiltered got canceled.
Marc:Well, I remember, like, you know, because we were all there.
Marc:I remember there was this weird, like, I'm hung up on this thing that happened between us that it wasn't bad.
Hmm.
Marc:I was living in this apartment there, an old apartment I had, my wife at that time was in LA, I was going kind of crazy, and I decided I was gonna try to make, do you remember Angelica Kitchen?
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:I was trying to figure out how to make that cornbread that they make there.
Marc:I remember I found all these recipes, and I made this very dense, really horrible cornbread, and I brought it into Air America.
Marc:And for some reason, I decided, because I think I went to one lesbian-run vegan restaurant, that lesbians really like cornbread, dense cornbread.
Marc:So I was like, Rachel has to try this.
Marc:And I was just so dead set on you trying this recipe I made once and it wasn't that good.
Marc:And you eventually were like, everyone's saying I have to do this.
Marc:And you were very nice about it and you tried it and you're like, okay.
Guest:Did you tell me that I needed to do it or did you tell other people to tell me?
Guest:Like you actually brought other people's pressure to brand?
Marc:No, it was very important that you tried this horrible cornbread I made.
Guest:Did you think it was good at the time?
Marc:I thought it was something, but I just, I needed someone, I needed a lesbian to sign off on it for some reason.
Guest:Well, I don't remember your cornbread, so it didn't scar me.
Guest:So if you would take my affirmation now, even if it didn't work then.
Marc:It wasn't that great.
Marc:But I felt embarrassed about it.
Marc:I think it's like I found it embarrassing.
Marc:Cornbread.
Guest:I mean, I think when I think about like lesbian stereotypical foods are like things that straight men might misunderstand about what lesbians want to eat.
Marc:It was like a vegan thing.
Marc:It was like, you know, had a lot of stuff.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It was completely.
Guest:See, I would have guessed like eggplant.
Guest:Like, oh, lesbians must love eggplant.
Marc:No, I had an idea about a way of life that was something I made up based on one experience at a health food restaurant.
Marc:And I thought that's how I'll connect with Rachel and her crew cut.
Guest:Rachel.
Guest:Her crew cut and stooping over a large pile of papers.
Marc:But I remember you went from news person, but you were barely a news radio.
Marc:You became a co-host of Unfiltered pretty quickly, right?
Marc:Yep.
Marc:They integrated you right in.
Marc:Yep.
Marc:And then like we were me and Riley were in the morning.
Marc:I guess you were there because what happened?
Marc:Did Flanders bail or something?
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:She ended up doing her own.
Guest:They thought it was going to be Laura Flanders and Chuck D and Ms.
Guest:Winstead.
Guest:I think this is how it went.
Guest:And then Laura decided she was going to do her own thing instead.
Guest:And so then I stayed on as the news girl, but they kind of augmented my role so that I would have this bigger role with them.
Marc:Right, and then everything went down.
Marc:We were in the morning, and you guys came after us, and then Danny Goldberg came in and disrupted everything, fired us.
Marc:Then you had a one-hour show from 5 to 6, and then Mark Riley came on for two hours, and then they moved you, and then you had two hours after Riley, or you guys split a block.
Guest:Oh, no, I would sometimes do, I would fill in for somebody else after that.
Marc:Right, right.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But my regular gig was that 5 a.m.
Guest:gig.
Guest:And then they did just kind of ping me around.
Marc:And that's when you like, you know, we used to see you like, I guess we weren't quite fired yet when you first got that or something because you'd be up all night.
Guest:Yeah.
Marc:You would do five hours of prep.
Guest:Yes.
Marc:Oh, and you were just all these different piles.
Guest:But I did no callers, no guests.
Guest:It was just me talking scripted for an hour.
Marc:And that's what broke you, really.
Marc:I mean, no, I mean, that's how you got your big break.
Marc:I mean, the one thing that Danny Goldberg did right, and I badmouth him all the time because I can't stand him for what he did to us.
Marc:But, like, he knew you were great and everybody knew you were great.
Marc:But he really championed you to a point, didn't he?
Yeah.
Guest:I write over, like I said, I write over my bodega camera.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:I honestly don't.
Guest:I mean, I started doing that 5 a.m.
Guest:show.
Guest:I loved that.
Guest:It was killing me in terms of the hours.
Guest:But at the same time, remember, then I got the gig on Tucker Carlson's show on MSNBC.
Ugh.
Guest:They were in Secaucus.
Guest:And so his show was live at 11 p.m.
Guest:And so I would go do that.
Guest:I'd wake up in the morning, which was at night, and then I would go to Secaucus, do that show with Tucker Carlson for an hour, and then come back, start working on my show in the car, and then work overnight from midnight to 5 a.m., do my show from 5 to 6, and then I'd go to a bar.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I had a really weird, really weird set of hours.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:But also I had this foot, this foot newly planted in the TV world.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And Tucker with weirdly with Tucker.
Guest:And then I started getting, you know, he's awful, right?
Guest:He wasn't awful to work with.
Guest:Oh, okay.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, it was nice to his staff.
Guest:I remember there was something weird that happened with the staff where somebody behaved inappropriately toward one of his producers, and he totally stood up for her and shamed and horrified the person who had behaved badly and really was stand up.
Marc:So that was your foothold?
Marc:That's how you got into TV?
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so because of that, what was going on at Air America and we were I mean, it was such chaos.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And the move and with the move from over by the Empire State Building into Chelsea and, you know, all everything was so original studios was so uncomfortable.
Marc:It was like we had like almost colonized a black station.
Guest:WLIV, that's right.
Marc:And it just never felt on the level.
Marc:It was weird.
Guest:A lot of that stuff was weird.
Guest:But all of those transitions, I just, again, and I may be wrong about some of this because I don't have a great memory for these things, but my experience of it now, looking back at it, is that I kept a lot of the stuff going on in Air America kind of at a distance, kind of at a remove, because I was doing my own thing.
Guest:It was crazy hours.
Guest:It was really hard to focus on anything that happened during the day.
Guest:It's the middle of the night.
Marc:sleep all day long and then i had this other work to do and so i was just doing that and then ultimately i ended up transitioning more into tv and now like like the way you're diplomatic about like tucker carlson carlson it's like kids like you know you guys are all on tv i get all that but at this point where things are so strained i mean is it still possible for you just to look at them as like well it's just the other side and they're doing their trip and i'm doing my trip i mean i don't watch them no i know i don't either but i know they're there
Guest:I can hear him under the door.
Marc:But you don't get involved with being angry or that.
Guest:I mean, to the extent that we are competitors, it's based in ratings numbers that come out at the same time every day that we can all see.
Guest:Right.
Guest:But it's not like I do anything to try to compete with Tucker or with Hannity or Chris Cuomo or anything.
Guest:It's just we're all doing our things sort of parallel alongside each other.
Marc:And you cite them without malice at times.
Guest:Tonight I cited Fox News.
Guest:I noticed that.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Like they had this story first.
Guest:And here's what they said about it.
Guest:You were mad.
Guest:No, I mean, I'm not to credit them.
Marc:No, I know you got to do what you got to do.
Marc:So like now all these skills, like I think that's what in terms of like not getting involved with what was going on in America.
Marc:I felt that way, too, because we were doing six to nine and then you're out, you know, but but all the skills you learned and that you employ.
Marc:I mean, you're one of the great teasers.
Marc:And that's like a radio thing.
Marc:I mean, I know it's a TV thing also, but were you aware of picking up all these particular skills?
Guest:I was schooled at the church of Dave in the morning.
Guest:I know how to hold you until after the commercial.
Guest:When we come back, we're going to be taking the fifth caller.
Guest:You'll never believe what we're giving away.
Guest:Get ready to dial now.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:It all gets planted, right?
Marc:And you know that moment where you're like, how long we got?
Marc:Six minutes.
Marc:Oh, I'm going to go eat.
Ha ha ha ha!
Guest:Right.
Guest:Exactly.
Guest:Right.
Guest:Also, you know what?
Guest:I need to set up a dentist appointment.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:So I'm going to get on the phone now because I'm sure.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That stuff.
Guest:You know, the thing that I miss from live radio is I had a soundboard.
Guest:Did you guys have a soundboard that you could actually fire or was all the sound stuff fired from the control room?
Marc:No, there was one there.
Marc:I never used it much.
Marc:Like, you know, Randy Rhodes used a 360.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:No, I think I still have one I stole from Air America.
Marc:I think I have the 360.
Guest:I love the 360.
Marc:Well, you can put clips on there and everything.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Because I mounted all this stuff on there, you know, like we're burning
Marc:daylight like okay we're like yeah yeah like it was a couple of those i love that stuff like i want those not only on tv like i want those in my life i want like a little keychain version of that you can do it with your phone i think yeah so all right i guess we got to kind of come in for landing here when you come to los angeles where do you stay in hollywood do you have hollywood friends
Guest:I just stay wherever anybody will put me.
Guest:Oh, really?
Guest:I just stay in a hotel.
Marc:Oh, okay.
Marc:Yeah.
Guest:No, weirdly, I'm from the Northern California, Southern California rivalry that Southern California doesn't know about.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Like, I grew up with a whole chip on my shoulder about L.A., and then I found out that everybody from L.A.
Guest:thinks San Francisco's nice.
Marc:Oh, yeah.
Guest:I thought it was a mutual rivalry.
Guest:It's not at all.
Marc:No one in L.A.
Marc:is really happy.
Marc:You know, we don't know why we're here.
Marc:We think we have to be here.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I don't know.
Guest:People seem all right.
Marc:So now let's talk just to close up.
Marc:Now, it seems to me that outside of when things get tragic, that you're, I don't know if you're optimistic, but you kind of stay diligently on top of kind of revealing what's going on, contextualizing what's happening in all its horror.
Marc:But you rarely seem completely freaked out.
Guest:Hmm.
Guest:That's acting.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:OK.
Marc:You know, I can tell usually when I'm watching you like, oh, God, this isn't going to be good.
Marc:Look at her face.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:But do you do you believe in your mind or in your heart that the system will correct?
Marc:I mean, or is that just a waste of time for you?
Guest:I mean, I don't know.
Guest:That's a very hard question.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:I mean, there are two things that I have a hard time with.
Guest:One is that I just get emotional on TV.
Guest:Like, it's often for positive things as much as it is for negative things.
Guest:Like, I cry at the national anthem.
Guest:Like, it always happens.
Guest:Like, I just have that thing.
Guest:And so sometimes what you're seeing on TV is me just having...
Marc:And the good moment.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:Yanukovych's snipers are shooting protesters and all this stuff.
Guest:And this guy stands up and he's wearing a surgical mask and a plastic helmet.
Guest:And he starts saying, we will never be slaves.
Guest:We will be free.
Guest:And Ukraine will be in Europe.
Guest:And every time that I read it, even at these book events, I just... And it's not because of something terrible.
Guest:It's because I'm moved by what he says.
Guest:And that happens to me all the time.
Guest:But in terms of the big stuff...
Guest:in terms of where we're going, we're a country that had a civil war.
Guest:We are a country that put an attorney general in prison for 17 months, not that long ago.
Guest:We are a country that went through an impeachment in the 90s.
Guest:We are a country who's been through a lot of these things, and I think that
Guest:This president is uniquely angled against the things that we most need to make us an ongoing democratic concern.
Guest:And so that is a very acute problem.
Guest:But I also have to believe that we're resilient given what we've been through before.
Marc:Okay.
Guest:What do you think?
Marc:Well, I just like in terms of how I'm exploring it with comedy is that it just feels to me that with the disconnect and with the sort of the amount of information flying around in everyone's hand in every given moment, I think, sadly, if enough people are just OK, you know, things will go on as they are.
Marc:I'm actually doing a bit about how, you know, if Trump doesn't leave and actually I'm going to paraphrase, it says, well, it's authoritarian now in this.
Marc:Like initially, most of us would be like, you can't fucking do that.
Marc:But three days go by.
Marc:Like, no, I guess it's that's.
Marc:But but but the scarier part of the bit for me is like six months down the line is that, you know, the number of Americans that will be like, you know, I'm not really feeling it.
Marc:You know, I thought it sounded scary, but it's not really affecting me.
Marc:I didn't even have to change my cable provider.
Marc:Yeah.
Marc:You know, like, yeah, there's that element of how we live that there's such a disconnect between, you know, civic duty or even, you know, civic education or government or how the government works for us with smart people, you know, that that, you know, I'm scared that it'll just creep up on.
Marc:Mm hmm.
Marc:And that the information that a lot of people, no one's getting the same information anymore.
Marc:And everything's sort of cherry picked or there's a bubble here or a bubble there.
Marc:There's no unified sort of information unless something horrible happens.
Marc:And even that gets spun.
Marc:So I just think that it's all of a sudden we're going to, even though you know what's happening or I know what's happening, that we're going to wake up and a lot of these things are going to be gone.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And it will have happened and we're still here and we then need to be making decisions about what to do.
Marc:Right.
Guest:It's not like, I mean, you know, people say this about particularly difficult transitions in history.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:That when you look back on it, it's clear when the light switch flipped.
Guest:But when you were living through it, it wasn't clear when you were supposed to actually stop living your life the way you were in order to sacrifice to save your country.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:You can't see those things when you're in it in the same way that we like to believe we would when we look back on it.
Guest:I'm trying to read as much fiction as I can about these types of democratic transitions.
Guest:Just to be able to try to imagine it better.
Guest:Reading fiction written contemporaneously to other democratic losses and democratic transitions.
Marc:There's a lot in the book, too, about how these economic structures around
Guest:oil you know create strongmen situations yes they prop up autocratic dictatorships but also they take good government and turn it into crappy government yeah with by capturing it and co-opting it and the good news in the book is that i tell a story about what happens in oklahoma where oklahoma still deep red not turning blue not having a revolution nevertheless stands up and is like you know what
Guest:I know we're totally dependent on the oil and gas industry, and they've completely come into control of our state government.
Guest:But we need to keep our schools open five days a week instead of four.
Guest:Right.
Guest:And they need to pay taxes, and we need to stop having them induce earthquakes.
Right.
Guest:And the people of Oklahoma stood up and made those things happen despite all the efforts of the oil and gas industry to stop that from happening.
Guest:You can actually rein in the forces that are hurting you.
Marc:Right.
Guest:You just have to work at it.
Guest:You actually have to commit to do something.
Marc:And there's never been so many that have been so shamelessly trying to get away with everything they can than right now.
Marc:This guy is just a portal to the worst sort of like exploiters and greed monsters.
Marc:Right.
Guest:But he's also a wuss.
Marc:A complete wuss.
Guest:And whenever any Republican stands up to him on anything, he immediately caves.
Guest:Yeah.
Guest:And so that gives the Republicans incredible power and it gives constituents of Republicans incredible responsibility to get them to stand up.
Guest:And they pick their battles.
Guest:You know what I mean?
Guest:Like they pick weird things on which they're going to stand up to him about when they let everything else slide.
Marc:Turks and Syria.
Marc:But we don't know what happens.
Marc:We can check our phone now.
Guest:I've got to get my eyes on it.
Guest:All right.
Marc:Well, it was great talking to you.
Guest:Mark, I miss you.
Guest:I miss you, too.
Marc:It's nice to see you, man.
Marc:Nice to see you.
Marc:There you have it.
Marc:Did you get to know her a little bit?
Marc:Did you know that stuff?
Marc:I love Rachel, and I was thrilled that she came by.
Marc:The book is Blowout, came out last week.
Marc:You can get it wherever you get books.
Marc:And don't forget, when you hear cage-free eggs, that means the hen still only gets about one square foot of space.
Marc:At Vital Farms, all the hens are pasture-raised with at least 108 square feet per hen and outdoor access all year round.
Marc:Vital Farms, pasture-raised, bullshit-free.
Marc:Look for them in the black carton at the grocery store and visit vitalfarms.com slash coupon for special discounts.
Marc:All right, and now I'm going to try to play guitar with my thumb Okay, I'm going to play guitar with my thumb.
Marc:I'm going to thumb pick The guitar because I want to feel it so it might be a little it might be a little janky.
Marc:Is that the word?
Marc:Oh
Thank you.
Marc:Boomer lives!