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Well, hello there, and Happy Christmas Eve.

That's when this episode is dropping.

I am recording on Tuesday, est of us, right, so it's Grievance Day actually when I'm actually recording this, but you'll be hearing it for the informal start of the Christmas holiday season with Christmas Eve.

So I appreciate it.

I'm Chuck Todd another episode of the Chuck Podcast.

If I hadn't said that, get that away, I appreciate it.

It's been I have had a blast these last eight months.

We got started, I believe on April second was our first episode, and this has been just such a joy.

So I appreciate it.

And you know, I've scratched itches that I've always wanted to scratch in a semi public form, including all of the various sports updates that I enjoyed doing.

So let me give you a rundown of this episode, a little bit of reaction of some headlines over the last forty eight hours.

I want to get to a little bit on Epstein, a little bit on the CBS Mets with sixty Minutes, but a sort of larger view of sort of taking a step back and what has changed in our politics and what actually hasn't changed in the last year, and I want to go through that a little bit.

My interview is with somebody who I just really enjoy talking with, Mike Pesca.

He is the just List former Slate.

Many of you are probably listeners.

He is somebody that has I really have appreciated how he's tried to attack news of the day, current events.

He has really tried to attack these stories from the outside looking in, from a more detached way, and we dig into the future of journalism, we dig into what's going on at CBS, though we our conversation happened before this specific incident was sixty minutes, just to let you know, and then we spend a lot of time on the on what is this sort of uncomfortable moment we're in in the gamification of everything, right, particularly sports and the prediction markets, and where this is headed.

So in general, I think it's a great conversation.

By the way, if you don't subscribe to the Just List, you should.

It's a lot of fun.

Even the free version is a lot of fun.

He's really good at sort of finding those stories that you're not going to get in the headline newsletters that you subscribe to from a news site.

Right, it's that next story that you're like back in the old days for us old guys here, it was when you actually read a full newspaper and you let it.

Oh, I never would have sought that headline out, but I'm glad I read the story.

That is what I think Mike's true gift is when it comes to informing informing folks on that.

I will do some questions, we will have more mail bag that you guys have just a lot of fun and smart questions.

And then I'm going to do a little twist on my little sports page here a little bit which is frankly trying to help you have the conversation during the holidays with the person that you don't want to talk about current events with.

But you figure, I got to be a little smarter about sports, so you can have fun little storylines where you can just ask a question, let other people talk.

But if it's a way to sort of you know, how to change a conversation, how to look more fluent in a sports conversation that maybe you don't want to remember, we're going to be We're gonna have some tremendous I mean, there's nothing I love more than these next two weeks because on a random Tuesday afternoon, you flip on ESPN and there's a bowl game.

So this is the part.

As much as these meaningless bowl games are becoming more meaningless, all the time when you're at home with relatives and you need that distraction of noise in your gatherings.

There's nothing like throwing a football game on.

So even these bad Netflix games that the NFL for Netflix, right, they'd like to swap those out or get a refund for these, right since they barely had any playoff teams eventually in their matchups.

But so that's how I will orchestrate that sports update.

But let me just kick off a little bit with this mess that is sixty Minutesry Weiss and the controversy around it.

For me, this is a welcome to welcome to the NFL moment for Barry Weiss.

Look, she is not the first news executive brought in to run a television network who has no clue how television works.

And I say this not trying to take a shot at her being snarky, but this is her inexperience as a newsleader sort of to me shown through here from what we know, first of all, not understanding sort of the intricacies of what it takes to put together a television piece.

I thought it was fascinating.

There was a little bit of new snobbery, which is something that I used to have until I got into the TV business.

But one of her critiques of the piece was that all of this was reported in the New York Times, as if if the New York Times reported it, you shouldn't bother sharing it with the rest of the world.

Maybe the whole point of why she started the free press, right, the whole point of you know, it's sort of we're trying to broaden the aperture of news consumption in a news consumption in America, right, not narrow it down.

So, yes, New York Times readers might have known this story, what about everybody else?

No offense to New York Times readers.

I'm one of them.

I'm a subscriber.

But it's a very narrow set of Americans.

It's a it's an influential set of Americans.

The New York Times has influence, and there is a reminder that when The New York Times reports something, eventually other news organizations are going to do with their own version of the story and making a putting a vision.

Putting a story that appeared in the New York Times, but putting giving visual elements to it can be sometimes more powerful than the original story itself, so that critique really struck me as her not understanding what her mission actually is at a news division.

Right, is you there to broadly inform everybody that is there, or are you there to make an assumption that people already know certain things?

And that to me is a bit of a yellow flag on her news instincts.

Now, she may have just said that as part of an email that she knew to go public.

Obviously, what doesn't look good for her on this is the fact that she missed four screenings of this piece and then weighed in very late, basically less than forty eight hours than when the piece was going to air.

So it rings of Oh, she got a whole bunch of complaints from people inside the administration, and there were a few complaints that she thought ran pretty true, like hey, they didn't have a voice in the piece, or they didn't have this.

And I think she's right that it could use a voice.

It certainly would improve the piece.

But when you come in that late in the process, it certainly looks like you've let outsiders manipulate the process, whether or not that's true, and it's her timing now, So I think a few things here.

Let's take her at face value.

I don't think she wants to be seen as a political pawn.

Okay, so I have some of you may have a very snarky view of her that she just wants to be an apparatic.

I don't believe that.

I believe she thinks she can do this better.

What I do believe is she does not understand how the television network works.

She may very well want to change how network television works and how news gathering works.

I think God bless her.

Okay, I've certainly had my share of inexperience.

I dealt with my share of inexperienced news executives.

The ones that came in and experienced, who wanted to who were good, actually spent time trying to get to know parts of the news division that they knew themselves they wanted to get rid of.

But you actually have to try to work and figure out how they were.

The bad news executives that I dealt with, and I had quite a few of them, I would say about half figured it out the right way and half figured it out the wrong.

About half of them came in thinking they already knew how to do this, and they were going to come and they were there to break eggs, and they weren't going to bother worrying about institutional norms, etc.

But you're going to get pushback, right, You're going to get resistance when you have a lot of particularly at a broadcast news network where there's a lot of really smart, talented people who frankly probably would be more qualified to run the news division, but they're on air personalities, and you know, they're not just to be treated like actors in a sitcom.

And there's sort of two types of news executives I came across.

There was the news executive that assumed people that were on air just read the reporting of other people's work, and then there were those that actually respected the fact that the people that could narrate a story could also work a story behind the scenes as well.

And so this rings of somebody who just didn't fully understand how the system worked.

Now, this is where you can't you have to you cannot discount the outside atmosphere that was developing over the last month.

You had President Trump twice complain about sixty minutes pieces that he didn't like, and he said the new owners haven't made a difference.

It was in some ways when he said nice things about the Netflix bid to acquire Warner Brothers.

It was almost implied he didn't.

He's mad at the Ellisons anyway, type of mindset.

So you have the fact that he's already complained about two specific pieces, the Marjorie Taylor Green one from a couple weeks ago being the most prominent.

Then you have the situation where the Ellisons are desperate to see if they can get their hands on all of Warner Brothers.

They're trying to up their bid.

They're trying to make their access to government approval for their bid as a sweetener to the Warner Brothers shareholders in order to say, hey, look, Netflix is going to have a harder time with this.

Well, in order for that to happen, they've got to appease this administration.

So, whether this stuff is having an impact or not, there is a perception that it is going to and there's certainly that perception could turn into questions that come from Democrats in Congress.

The point is, a smart leader tries to get ahead of this somebody who and I have no doubt that Barry Wis is a smart person here, but she just how do you not you know, there's really only one program that CBS News is going to be judged on as far as anybody is concerned, right, critics of CBS News, supporters of CBS News, critics of the President, supporters of the President.

It's sixty minutes, So how are you not more involved in understanding every piece that they're working on.

So to weigh in as late as she did to kill the peace just screams of outside interference and the fact that she didn't see that coming.

Either maybe she did see that coming and she had no choice in the matter, or she didn't see that coming and she was a bit unprepared for the situation, which would tell me that's a bit naive.

Look, there's a few things that you that I think are going to be fair questions to raise.

Can she run CBS News and the free press at the same time?

Is is she over?

I mean, CBS News is not a large operation compared to NBC News, CBS News and a lot a large operation compared to ABC News.

It's it's a much smaller operation, So, you know, so to me, not being able to be on top of what they're producing.

They don't have a twenty four hour news channel.

Yes, they have a CBS Digital But her not being on top of this, you have to ask, is she distracted by other stuff?

Why hasn't she figuring this out?

Why hasn't Why didn't she know what was happening inside these stories quickly and know the rhythm of it.

So I think it exposes Look, I think there's a there's plenty that we don't know, but she is.

You know, she's now in a really rough position.

She's lost the trust of the journalists at the single most important institution inside of CBS News in that's sixty minutes.

Anything they do now is going to be seen through a political lens, no matter what that they're appeasing one sided.

They're in the worst of all worlds now, And you know, I go back to to this simple inexperience, and that's what this screams up.

Look, I could there's a there's another part of me that's could easily be celebrating this moment.

Once again, corporate owned, corporate owned media is going to let you down.

I did not think this was the case, but this is now the case in the Trump era, where these parent companies do not care whether their journalistic institutions have credibility with the whitest swath of Americans or not, that they only want to cater to one side politically, and they want to be a part of essentially influencing the country rather than reflecting and reporting on the country.

So yeah, there's a part of me that would love to sit here and gloat and just say, look, this is yet another reason you're going to have some skepticism of this corporate media structure that we've seen.

I will be honest with you, I'm skeptical.

I'm mostly impressed with Washington Post reporting.

I'm very skeptical of its editorial page.

It feels like it's been it is not an honest editorial page, that it is essentially manipulated with a point of view that the owner that somebody wants to appease in owner or a piece somebody.

You now are going to have skepticism about what CBS News does.

I already know that there.

We've already seen Disney do what it did with the George Stephanopolis situation, calling into question their support of ABC News.

We've seen what Comcast did with MSNBC, trying to spin it out and get rid of it and separating it out from NBC.

You can look at that through the prism of their just looking to appease and playcate the current administration.

So we are in a situation where all of these stories have added to the public's distrust.

And it's frustrating to me because I many people look at me and still see me as a quote member of so called mainstream media.

I promise you I I tried really hard.

I spoke out when I thought it was necessary.

So I know that moment that Sharon I'll Foncie.

You know, you make that decision.

It's not an easy decision because you're never you know, her career is never going to be the same at CBS.

You know, we'll see does she out last Barry Weiss or does Berry Weis's outlast her on that front.

I have no idea what her contract situation is or anything like that, But ultimately, executives don't like to be shown up by their employees, and so eventually that's you know, but at the end of the day, you feel the need to stick up for the journalists and the organization.

And this is what makes when you're a publicly traded company owning a journalist, journalistic institution.

You have a choice to make, right are you going to stand by?

Journalism is not meant to be popular.

I always say this, journalists are not meant to be if you are doing this to be popular.

And this is why this whole, in this whole algorithmic driven nature of our news consumption really bothers me because it it it it's fuses popularity with news consumption, which is a huge mistake for journalism.

If you're doing your journalism based on what you think is going to be popular, you're not going to do good journalism because you're going to be constantly worried about what an audience thinks, either an audience of one, whether in the case of the White House, or a larger audience in the case if you're a partisan news channel MS NOW or Fox News, where you don't want to quote alienate your viewers and alienate that the audience that you have.

I think this is a huge concern with YouTube influences.

I think it's a huge concern with some substackers where you have essentially audience capture on this front.

So, if you're going to be in the journalistic space and you want to be a journalist, grow a thick skin and don't worry about being popular or not.

Over time and honest, straightforward, no bullshit talking journalists is going is going to accumulate trust.

Trust is more important than popularity.

That I promise you trust is more important popular.

So at the end of the day, that's what I think about.

I'd rather I'd rather tell you honest information that make you feel good when I don't think what you want to hear to feel good is actually accurate, you know, do I want to present it in such a way where it's easy to consume, where it isn't doesn't feel like your own personal points of view are being attacked when you're hearing information that runs counter to your beliefs.

Yes, I think there are better ways to present information.

I think there are more detached ways to present information.

I think one of the things that we collectively didn't do well and we let hey, look, Donald Trump can make anybody emotionally.

You know, go Jesus, you know that.

But you got to do your best sometimes to check yourself and try to detach yourself from certain things.

Right, if you really want to be a referee like journalists, where you're just calling it like you see it, pure in something and at the end of the day, that's what I'm doing here.

So that's why I'm saying it.

In some ways, if you're in the independent space, you know nothing like the self destruction of more corporate owned media like CBS News as being helpful to the cause.

But I will tell you this, there's a reason why independent media is growing the way it is growing because I think you have corporations that don't care about their news divisions anymore, and at the end of the day, they will use them if it helps them for their business, and they will discard them the second they become they interfere with their business.

And look, I get it.

They have a fetishare responsibility their shareholders, not to you.

The American public ultimately independent own journalistic operations.

I do think have more more concern about the public as a whole than any donor any subscriber, any shareholder.

And so in that sense, yesterday was just another bad day for legacy media and another good day for the rise of independent media.

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Speaking of the obsession of independent media, I would say the Epstein files are certainly falling into that category.

And look, we're seeing, as I outlined to you a couple of days ago, you know, none of us should be shocked that the Justice Department front loaded all things Bill Clinton on day one and are going to release whatever it is that might be damning to Donald Trump much closer to Christmas.

Okay, but look, everybody's still pouring through it.

This is you know, I have my you know, I don't think.

I don't think this is going to somehow change minds and what people believe regarding Epstein.

But I do think it What it has done to create division inside the Trump coalition certainly makes it extraordinarily politically relevant.

But the fact that on Tuesday, on Festivus Day, the airing of the Grievance Day.

The Justice Department put out the following statement after they released Another Earth, and I'm just going to read it to you as a whole, because the fact that the Department of Justice put out this statement is both laughable and notable.

Here it is the Department of Justice is officially released nearly thirty thousand more pages of documents related to Jeffrey Epstein.

Some of these documents contain untrue and cessationalist claims made against President Trump that were submitted to the FBI right before the twenty twenty election.

To be clear that the claims are unfounded and false, and if they had a shred of credibility, they certainly would have been weaponized against President Trump already.

Nevertheless, out of our commitment to the law and transparency, the DOJ is releasing these documents with the legally required protections for Epstein's victims.

The year began with a huge opportunity for Trump on this front.

Excuse me, no, that was one other line that I had written for myself.

So there you have it.

The Department of Justice put out a statement that sounded like it came from Trump's defense attorney.

Oh wait, Trump's former defense attorney, is it the Department of Justice as a deputy attorney general.

The point is there's a lot of today.

The release on Tuesday is a reminder that there's a lot more damaging allegations and inn window and so we say unresolved what would you call them?

Sort of unclear rationales for why Donald Trump spent so much time with Jeffrey Epstein on his plane and things like this, and the various accusations that came with him.

But it's interesting because think about this.

In theory, everything in that's been released should fall under Hey, some of these documents contain untrue, in cessationalist claims.

It made against President Clinton, some of them made against Alan Dershowitz, against Prince Right.

Not every allegation made against any of these folks, not all of them have been proven.

But it's notable that they only single out Donald Trump, which tells you it was a statement for an audience of one.

But in some ways the note itself actually perhaps and maybe this was by design, and maybe I'm naive on this one, but actually the statement oddly says, Okay, today's the day you're going to see a lot more Trump stuff, and it's not going to be a great day for Donald Trump.

But I do think this is one of those stories that is more of an obsession with people that are obsessed with this story, and it's hard to imagine it's going to change the larger narrative, but clearly it rattles Donald Trump.

And that brings me to before I get to the conversation with Mike Pesco, where we sort of talk about a lot of things that I've already mentioned now, future of journalism, independent media versus corporate owned media, things like that, it sort of step back a little bit and think about how the year began and think about the opportunity, and it goes back to, you know, and why I think this has been such a disastrous year politically for Donald Trump and the Republicans because it began with such an opportunity.

He came into office within some ways, more of a mandate than he had gotten in his first election in twenty sixteen.

He had extraordin there was an extraordinarily unpopular president he was following.

That's a big difference in twenty sixteen, right, Barack Obama was a popular president personally in some way, probably you know, he left with a pretty high job rating and a pretty high personal rating.

This case, right, he's following a president with a pretty low job rating in a pretty low personal rating, you know, the way Biden laughed really ugly.

Just a terrible last six months being pushed out of his of office, just looking weak.

And then of course the return of Donald Trump.

In some ways he his fingerprints are as much on Trump's ability to get back here than any other.

So the point was Trump came in with a huge opportunity, sort of like Ronald Reagan in nineteen eighty.

You know, people just found the Jimmy Carter presidency unpopular.

They were ready to turn the page.

So the opportunity for a honeymoon was big.

And if you look at sort of frankly, I think Joe Biden had the same opportunity.

And it is interesting to me that Donald Trump's second term and Joe Biden's one term in the first year of their presidency pretty much much are mirror images of each other.

They both had sort of one issue that sort of quickly severed whatever mild hope voters, at least swing voters had that the presidency could be somewhat successful right with Joe Biden, it was the Afghanistan withdrawal, and for Donald Trump, it was Liberation Day.

And there's no doubt Liberation Day was sort of the first hit and he never recovered from Liberation Day because the economy didn't really the economy just kept getting sort of uneven and those that were not doing well continued to not doing well.

Those that were doing well could continue to do well thanks to the superinvestments of AI.

So the opportunity Trump had at the start of his term versus he where he is now, I think you should and at this point it becomes it becomes hard to recover without sort of an outsized event to sort of change the narrative.

Right.

And when I say outside event, you know, to me, it's it's outside even the broad brushes of what you might be predicting, right, it's just something you know, out of the ordinary.

The way the pandemic hit that it was not on anybody's BINGO card, and it ended up exposing Trump's inability to be a leader in a moment of crisis, and that, you know, it's it is why I think he lost that first reelection.

So I think when you look at sort of the big picture here, he really he had an opportunity.

He had an opportunity to solidify his imprint on the conservative movement.

He had a chance to sort of keep Democrats sort of fraying.

He could have done some things that could have potentially splintered the Democratic coalition.

A good leader would have actually looked for Democrats, you know, he had very small majorities, and he'd have tried to find some Democratic allies more as an attempt to try to splinter the party, you sort of break people off to try to work with him, And he chose not to do any of that right.

Instead, he came in a lot of retribution.

It's clear that that was much more front and center for him.

The pardons, the naming everything after himself, the bulldozing.

I mean, in that sense, he's he's made it really hard.

He's made it really hard to look at this as anything other than through the prism of his own narcissism.

And the irony is that had he been sort of a leader with a vision, had he cared about sort of building a Republican party that could last beyond his years, he would have i think, governed a lot differently.

In the first six months.

How they you know, he was so anxious.

And maybe this has to do with him feeling that he waited too long to do things in the first term, and maybe it's mortality getting to him and he's afraid that, you know, he doesn't have a full four years.

I don't know what it is, but how he's gone about this where he's obsessed with quickly putting his name on things, quickly being able to get notoriety, desperate for a Nobel Peace Prize, desperate to see his name associated with some sort of legacy thing like putting.

You know, right now people are up in arms about the renaming of the Kennedy Center after him.

Remember he did this with the US Institute of Peace, a institute that he defunded and tried to get rid of, but instead slapped his name on it so that he could have the words peace and Donald Trump in the same sentence.

So when you look at this year in total, when you look at him with a job rating in the very low forties, rating on the economy in the load to mid thirties, it is a reminder that Donald Trump did not win the twenty twenty four election.

Kamala Harris and Joe Biden lost the twenty twenty four election, just like Joe Biden made the mistake of believing he won in twenty twenty when that was not the case.

Donald Trump lost in twenty twenty, just like Hillary Clinton lost in twenty sixteen.

All Right, obviously, what do I mean by that?

Well, the voters knew who they didn't want as president, and the voters were willing to roll the dice with an unknown or roll the dice with what they thought was a known quantity the second time.

Right the first time, Hey, let's disrupt things.

We kind of know what a Hillary Clinton presidency is going to look like.

We have no idea what a Trump president's going to look like.

And we're kind of in a cranky, grumpy mood.

This economy kind of sucks.

I wish it were better.

I don't like this.

I don't like that.

I certainly don't want to return to some sort of Clinton status quo.

Okay, so you understood that.

Then incomes, you know, the pandemic happens.

You're like, oh my god, we're in a moment of crisis.

This guy can't make the trains run on time.

And it was just like, can you just give me a functional bureaucrat.

Joe Biden thirty plus years experience, seemed like that functional Democrat to just make sure we can get some COVID shots, make sure we can, you know, keep our allies our allies, and go from there.

And now we see that that was the case.

So I do think when you see the political standing of the president, you see where Democrats look like a resurgent party, because remember, this is a party that's still very unpopular.

This is a party where swing voters don't really trust Democratic leaders, don't really trust even some democratic stances, particularly on some social issues, but they don't like the party in power, right, they don't like what they have, And so we have been voting, I would argue since to nine.

Right, the last time we voted for a president was Barack Obama in twenty oh eight.

Everything else has been more of a vote against type of election.

Twenty ten a vote against sort of Democrats expanding the size of governments.

Right, the Tea Party surge got fired up that wing of the party, Republicans win the House, but it was a vote against, right, it was a vote against the Democrats.

Twenty twelve many ways was not an easy re election for Barack Obama when you looked at the state of the economy, well, they did a successful job saying, oh, yeah, you're not gonna want met Romney's economy.

You're not gonna want met Romney deciding these policies.

You're going to be better off with Barack Obama policies than you will Bet Romney policies.

And they painted him as an outsourcer, as a guy in the pocket of China, and that played well in the Midwest.

It's also the last time Democrats were able to carry Iowa, Ohio, in addition to Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin.

Not a small deal.

But again, I look at twenty twelve, not necessarily as a vote for but really when you look at how he carried those Midwestern states, he was not promoting himself.

They were attack ads against Mettroney twenty fourteen, Another vote against election twenty sixteen, Another vote against election twenty eighteen, another vote against election right twenty twenty another vote against election twenty twenty two is the weird one where it was mostly an electorate that wanted to put a check on Biden, but you had an awful sort of slate of Republican candidates that minimize the gains that they should have made.

And now it gave some false hope to Joe Biden.

You had a Biden white House that totally misinterpreted what happened in twenty twenty two and fully not appreciating that that was just a case of really bad, really bad Republican primary outcomes.

It wasn't as if the country was saying no, no, no, no, we want more Biden cow Bell.

That was not what twenty twenty two was about.

And of course now we know twenty twenty four was a vote against elections.

So here we are again after one year of Trump, where he had an opportunity and I would argue he had a you know, he you know, no honeymoon periods very long anymore in American politics.

The war information ecosystem works.

But he had a good three months and Liberation Day in April just destroyed any hope he had.

And he's been he's not really recovered from that moment.

You know, even the good economic news that he gets, like the recent news about the GDP over the summer, when you look at the details, you realize, oh, most Americans aren't benefiting from that expanded GDP.

It is really about the investments in AI.

So look, it certainly sets up what appears to be another vote again election, which we could, you know, argue, now this will be we're going to hit what is nearly twenty years of this, right, our eighteenth year sort of our let's see here ten twelve, fourteen, sixteen, eighteen, twenty, twenty two, twenty four be our ninth straight national election where basically the voters that decide who wins or loses not about the two bases, but those of us that live in the messy middle.

You're going essentially to the polls with a vote against rather than something to vote for, and that our collective I understand some of you saying no, no, no, no, I always vote for an individual candidate.

Yeah, but it's binary choice.

Right, Ultimately we have a binary choice, and that we're having our ninth straight election where we're we've been living in this a generation of a political recession.

And you know, I would argue this, You know I can make the case this goes back at least through even in two thousand, right, we were starting to see the first pieces of this.

So look, I want to spend a little bit of Next week, I'll have a I'm gonna have a podcast.

We're gonna do another We're going to two this week with also a special edition.

I'm gonna you know, if it's if you haven't heard it, it's new to you, as I used to say an NBC.

But I'm gonna re up the Jasmine Crockett interview I did a few months ago, with a little bit of a little bit of a Texas introduction to it later this week.

But next week I'll have another new episode and we'll do a little bit of sort of where the two parties are going.

But I think, just briefly, what we're watching I touched on it before.

I do think we're seeing Trump's coalition.

As I've said for the last three or four months, it is the coalition is cracking.

The cracks are showing.

Now they're not just cracks anymore, right, They're chasms in some cases.

I think you're going to see more of this.

I think what we saw in Heritage, this is sort of this is going to show itself up more in twenty eight than it is in twenty six.

I mean sure, I think you'll see some hints of this divide inside the right in the Texas Senate primary.

You'll see some of this perhaps in the Georgia Senate primary, but for the most part, Republicans have avoided They're going to avoid some messy primaries.

So most of this infighting is going to continue to take place online, continue to take place in podcasts, and really start to ramp up as the presidential candidates of twenty eight start to start to rise, whether it's Cruise Pants Paul, all three of them very much sort of coming at the mega coalition in different ways, each wanting a piece of it, but very critical to some parts of it.

Right, and how that can continues to splinter, I think is going to be an animating force inside the Republican Party for the next easily for the next two years.

And I do think you see that the online MAGA world, right, this world of Eric Kirk, Meghan Kelly, Ben Shapiro.

You know some of you that listen to this podcast, maybe you know these names are familiar.

You may see him online.

It strikes me as this is, as I said in an earlier podcast, that this is the rights version of the groups.

Right.

You have democratic politicians who were afraid to sort of connect with voters in the middle because they didn't want to alienate certain groups.

I think it's pretty clear the Biden White House in the first two years totally mismanaged the border, put restraints on Ali Mayorcis and dhs from being able to do their job the way they did it.

May Orcus did with Jay Johnson during the second Trump second Obama term because they didn't want to offend the groups when the voters, you know, were the ones that were making this this quote unquote, not the groups, right.

Well, I think now you're seeing something similar happen in magaworld where they're where you have Republicans seem to be more concerned about what's being said online, who's saying it online, appeasing some online activists, rather than actually talking to the voters.

And I think that they are detaching themselves from the mainstream of political debate by being so consumed about what's being said at a turning Point convention or what's being said on a Megan Kelly podcast or any of this stuff.

And like how the I think the Democrats got consumed with appeasing progressive groups and social justice groups at the expense of alienating swing voters in the suburbs and the excerps.

I think you're seeing the same thing start to take place on the right.

But make no mistake, the Democrats also, there's a chance they're having their own tea party moment.

And you know, the twenty ten midterms for Republicans were a huge success on the House side of things, but they came up shortened Senate races because of their own infighting.

They had primary challenges.

They had sort of this tea party surge which sort of was sort of Maga before we were calling it.

Maga was challenging the establishment wing of the Republican Party, and it upset you know, you had the which nominee.

You know, at one point, you had the bad nominee in Indiana.

You had the bad nominee in Nevada against Harry Reid.

Right, you had all those things both in the ten cycle and the twelve cycle, which held them back.

You can't help but wonder if the Democrats are going through the same thing that they have.

You know, the quote, is there a liberal tea party moment happening?

Right?

It's a little cliche to say it that way, but there's definitely something.

There's something happening here, right the establishment of the Democratic Party doesn't have a lot of credit, credibility with Democratic voters right now, doesn't have a lot of credibility with Democratic donors right now, and that's leading to what appears to be some terrible primaries that are probably going to nominate less electable nominees, whether it's Texas Senate, Michigan Senate, Main Senate.

Those would be catastrophic, right and you could see Democrats end up in a similar scenario situation that Republicans were in twenty ten.

They went a ton of seats in the House and actually come up short in the Senate.

You know, they only win, you know, only they come up one or two seats short from winning the majority, just like Senate Republicans did in twenty ten.

So, you know, it's interesting.

Twenty twenty four, you know, sort of ended with a divided Democratic Party and a more united Republican Party than we'd seen since the beginning of the Trump era.

Twenty twenty five ends still with a divided Democratic Party, though with a unifying force that is Trump for the midterms, but the divisions are still pretty pretty out.

But you now have a pretty divided Republican Party and that is what we're dealing with as we kick off for twenty twenty six.

There's actually a bunch of the other small things I wanted to get to here, but you know what, I've gone forty minutes here.

It's Christmas Eve, and as I'm sure some of you want to get back to your family, others of you are out for that walk, taking a few minutes with yourself, going when is Chuck going to get to his college football up date?

Well, let's get to the Mike Pesca interview and then we'll talk some sports on letters.

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So joining me now with frankly without a I'm not going to sit here and say we have a specific reason we're talking other than I like to talk to smart, interesting people, and Mike Pescott is smart.

You'll just decide how interesting he is.

But he seems to be interesting enough.

I kid in that many of you may be listeners to his podcast, maybe subscribers to his newsletter to things that I am so with that, mister Pesca, who I blew it?

I thought I was thinking fish is your last name, and you're like, no, it's Italian for peaches, right.

That's why the GISTs Production Company is peachfish productions because the peach is literally Italian.

Yeah.

Many Spanish verb forms of two.

Fish are the fish.

So yeah, you know what, you know, two things I wouldn't want to eat together.

I think that probably a good chefish marmally glad.

But you would have to make the peach.

You'd have to make it more like mango and like create a salsa.

I guess you could say you could probably create a peach salsa that's on your fish taco.

It's a challenge, right, It would definitely be something that would break most contestants on cooking shows.

Yeah, so first of all, I appreciate you.

You seem to be always make content, so I appreciate that you're helping me make content.

How how many how many side hustles do you have?

And what do you what do you say you do these days for a little bit.

Sometimes you have so many side hustles that you say is they're a real hustle.

I've been doing the Gist for twelve years, almost twelve years.

The longest running news and analysis podcast, and that is daily.

It's actually six days a week.

That's what I used to say about Meet the Press, the longest running television show You're Longest that's documentable.

With podcasts, there is a little bit of wiggle room because no one's taking account in the beginning.

And the fastest growing podcast in the in the two two two zero seven zip code.

I don't know about you, but anyway.

Wow, you know, the bragging chock is a little it's a little bit unbecoming, is what I'm saying here.

Yes, so I do that, and then I have the sub stack, which is every day we have THEI just list, which are a bunch of stories I maybe can't get to on the gist.

And then I do a written piece on When's day and I'm taking over.

I can't announce it, but I'm taking over a new podcast where maybe maybe you'll be on asking people how to refurbish your second floor.

Let's just say that, Well, all right, well I have refurbished the second floor.

I need to clean up my second floor.

How do I accomplish my exercise refurbishing sweep of all of that?

What if I thought of one theme I wanted to speak with you about.

It is the fact that you know, it's interesting I sort of began my calendar year getting started in this world of independent media.

Going on your podcast early you were sort of very, very gracious with that.

But it's been quite a year in media in general, especially legacy media, and sort of like, if you think about where we began and where we ended, is the information ecosystem at the end of twenty twenty five worse or better than at the start of twenty twenty five?

Okay, just twenty twenty five.

I say it's potentially better, maybe because so much of the degradation is baked in and priced in, and it's not getting worse and we've been habituated to it.

But a couple of the big trends, one that is often decried by my left leaning friends is what's happening with CBS and Barry Weiss and full disclosure, I've written a couple pieces for the Free Press.

The way I look at that is two things.

I know that people will slam Barry Weiss for that.

They say bringing more of a right leaning sensibility to CBS, to which I say, there are three broadcast networks and five all news networks or quasi news networks with significant budgets.

I'm not counting OAAN and the like, although News Nation does some nice things, and four of them.

If we're being fair, before Barry took control, we're somewhere in the center to left leaning.

So I know, as you know NBC, the NBC, NBC very much tried not to be but of course MSNBC was left leaning to be honest, and CNN will I think they tacked more to the center, Fox being right leaning.

But what I'm saying is just in terms of if you take away everyone's strong feelings about politics, if you're just looking at them as businesses, and four businesses on the block were selling ice cream and kind of not doing that great, and one business on the block was selling cotton candy and doing quite well.

Wouldn't some combo cotton candy ice cream business maybe be the smart play.

So this is all I'm saying.

If you want to call Barry right wood or center right, she would call it.

She really tries to say she's trying to keep it between the forty yard lines.

It seems like a smart enough repositioning.

And to that, I'd add, if you were to hire a person and to do this, why not hire the only person who's built the truly successful media business from scratch in the last five years?

There's a case that Ben Smith of Semaphore is doing something similar.

I think on smaller scales, even big Barry White's critics like Oliver Darcy, I think, is making a million dollars with his substack, And there are some substacked successes, but Barry's the biggest success.

So add that up a little bit differentiation in the news business and a track record of success.

I'm more interested than concerned.

Let's say I think she could do good things.

I don't know, what do you think?

Yeah, I've not I am all four.

I am sort of rooting for the disruption, right, you know, I've seen and I benefited from a disruptor coming into NBC, a woman by the name of Debora Turnas, who I still find to be one of the best network executives I ever worked with, because she wasn't afraid, she wasn't afraid to break things, and look, it got her the BBC job.

And then of course she had a fall on her sword for something that happened below her.

But that's also says something about her, meaning like she sort of she gets it.

Okay, that's on me.

You know, I'm the buck stops with me, So I'm all for seeing disruption, because I've seen network executives that just try to placate the bosses right don't succeed.

And so my only question of her decision was you left the Times because you didn't like working for the Salzburgers.

Are you sure you wanted to give up your independence to work for the Elesons?

Right?

Like that that would be and that's like, to me, the biggest It's funny.

I also think this has been a turning point for the collective media, meaning that you're starting to see the audience feel more comfortable in the independent spaces.

You're seeing more people feel more comfortable trying to launch in the independent space.

And you know, I'm pessimistic that any of the legacy media companies can be They have good brands, and they can certainly tweak shows and use their resources, you know.

Specific I just don't know if any of the legacy news divisions are ever going to be what they were right, because there's no money in it, right, there's no financial incentive.

It is really it's just about whether you know, in the case of the Ellison's, like, here'd be my fear if I were Berry, if Wes Moore is the next president of the United States, do the Ellison's care about the news division anymore, right, you know, because Wes Moore isn't like on top of them, you know, helping them with other business deals.

And in order to get those business deals, they've got to placate the president with certain things with the media business, with the new side of things, right, and that would be something which is does all of the you know, right now I'm getting what if I'm Barry, I'm getting some running room, I get to do a special on Saturday nights, and which is the lowest, you know, the lowest rated portion of network television, which is why a lot of times you will see town halls and special news presentations either on Friday evenings or Saturday evenings.

Yes, because literally those are the two nights that they can't sell ads.

For or counter program with a Charlie Brown special from twenty years.

Ago, exactly exactly.

So that would be my concern whether there is really an interest in allowing CBS to stay disruptive CBS News beyond sort of what feels like performance art for the man in the Oval office.

So yeah, a couple points, did Barry and I've never talked to her about the Sulzburgers per se or ae.

Did she defect?

She defected from The New York Times.

Was it a Salzburger thing?

The way I analyze what happened.

I don't know.

I mean, that's my point, but you are the Salzburgers.

Do care about that opinion page.

I think at a time which was the height of the New York Times being sort of redefined away from the idea of objectivity, it had gotten out of control and out of the hands of a Salzburger.

And you probably read I don't know how many out.

Of the hands of Dean Bckay.

I mean, who was trying.

He couldn't manage his own You know, you had basically a revolt.

I believe you let the And this to me has been something I've been obsessed with, which is be careful of the audience you build, because you may become captive of your audience subscribers.

I think at a certain point Nicole Hannah Jones was more important in the New York Times than Dean Buckay.

And she's done great work.

But this is a bad situation.

You know, these are we know from sports, when the star becomes more important than the coach who you defer to.

My point with the Salzburgers is I see a lot of evidence that he specifically was uncomfortable with where his newspaper had gone, and he wrote a large piece in the Columbia Journalism Review, which is only going to be read by journalists, but it was a signal we are getting back to the idea of objectivity.

He knew he couldn't use the word objectivity.

It's a really interesting essay.

He even said that word is so toxic among so many people in news, which I think is really interesting and alarming that I'm not even going to try to defend the word objectivity.

We just believe in independence journalism.

And then he goes on to define independent journalism as objectivity or something like objectivity.

So that's point one.

I think that where The New York Times is now is a place that is a bit more aligned with maybe Barrywise's worldview.

The other thing I'd say about the Ellisons is, you're right if Wes Moore, if someone calm and soothing or at least just not don.

Just sort of like less a little boring, Let's be honest, right, Andy Bisheer and I say this though, you know that sounds like a big criticizing.

It may be that America wants boring come twenty twenty nine.

So you're saying not Gavin Newsome, Like Gavin might be a lightning rod.

I would, I would be surprised if we go from big personality the big personality.

Yeah, I actually think you know, usually what we do as a country, if you think about it, when we elect a new president and we will be electing a new one in twenty eight, we usually elect somebody who has more of a character trait that the previous one is missing.

Right after that week got Pope, a skinny pope.

All that's sort of mindset, Like I go through it right.

H.

W.

Bush was kind of detached.

Bill Clinton was fiel your pain, right.

Bill Clinton was a bit of a party animal.

George W.

Bush was the reformed alcoholic that wasn't going to you know, stray.

George Bush saw everything in black and white.

Barack Obama was nothing but gray area nuanced, right, you know.

So we do have this tendency, and so that's why I am I would.

You know, this is not personal to Gavin Newsom.

I'm bearish on his chances to be the next president more out of character and temperament, sort of comparisons to Trump.

Well, do we want another big personality that's constantly a where the world revolves around the personality rather than the country as a whole.

Good analysis, as always, this is what we expect from you.

But my point was was this, if people I know you don't think this, I assume you don't.

If people took your analysis about if it's Wes Moore, do they become unengaged?

It is not the case that, especially David Allison, who has more hands on control of the newsroom, is MAGA.

Is even against MAGA.

I'm not a Republican conservative.

He gave one hundred million dollars to the Joe Biden Fund.

So it is not if people hear that and say, oh, unless the unless CBS is allowed to run an ideological newsroom, he's going to become uninvolved.

That's not the case, and that's not what you're saying.

It's just if things calm down and politics aren't the way to get people's attention or for him to make money.

Because a politician donald Trump will be so involved in our regulatory schemes, he might get less involved but it's not because that he's ideologically committed.

No, I think it's more of that, And I've never thought I think, you know, I don't think Silicon Valley is ideologically aligned with Trump.

I think they are just seeing it as the fastest way to get from A to B.

Yeah.

I think many in Silicon Valley are, if not ideologically aligned with things like tariffs, were extremely upset with DEI and wokeism, and also thought that there were elements of the Biden regulatory scheme that were challenging what they were trying to do to improve society.

And I'll give you a shorter version of that.

Biden did allow the bureaucrats to play a role.

Trump will allow you to shortcut in getting around regulatory issues.

Yes, but of course it's just had not because of some well thought.

Out planned No, it's transactions.

And that's my point, right, is to go back to the original point.

Will Barry have a budget in twenty nine?

If the Ellisons decide, hey, they don't need to placate a president with the news division anymore, we'll spend our lobbying dollars another way, Essentially, it's sort of like it's almost as if the news division is part of your lobbying budget, right, And if you're Frankly, if you're Disney, if you're Comcast and your paramount skuidant, you kind of are operating that way.

And the other thing to say is that this is all fascinating to us in some portion of your audience.

But with the CBS news viewers, we're talking about five percent of them America.

Well, and we're also talking about generationally only one demographic group.

I mean, have you seen the average age of the cable newsviewer.

It's not seventy They died three years ago.

And the other thing with CBS, well, they have these amazing properties, these legacy properties.

Sixty minutes.

I love sixty minutes, but I'm not convinced that sixty minutes.

The reason that they're so popular is because of who they are and their attention to detail and their story selection.

But I think it all comes down to there after football of it comes down, By the way, do you know what they never do?

They never They never saved their best stuff for the spring.

No, okay, which, by the way, you know, it's like, why do you what do they ask?

Is it?

Is it the Bonnie and Clyde.

Why do you rob banks?

That's where the money is.

It's like, you know, why do you why do you save your stories for the faults where the audience is right.

It's where it's right after ball, So of course you do.

Yeah, but i'd look at do I think.

I will say this about CBS if you think about it, they have between Sunday Morning and sixty minutes, they have two of the more interesting brands that have a chance to survive even if the network doesn't.

Yeah, distinct brands, brands that mean something.

And not only will people be sad that they go, but if you took them and put them somewhere else, it's very clear.

Their DNA is so unique that you could have a turnkey operation.

We know, I think sixty minutes, I think, and so I have this, We're about to see.

The next big shake up in the way people consume information is going to come at the local TV affiliate level, right where you have the So we have this mega merger coming up between Tegna and Next Star, and what that is going to create is a lot of overlap in a lot of their markets, and you're going to have these duopolies that are going to start popping up, and you already see him.

My hometown of Miami is now the largest market in the country with the duopoly.

The person that owns the you Know channel, the Fox affiliate, also owns now the ABC affiliate.

But he's only gonna have one news division, right, and there isn't going to be local news for the ABC affiliate.

It really is just sort of a digital channel that will just you know, provide the ABC programming, which for most people in South Florida is football.

But what you're going to have is I actually think we're about three or four years away from what I call ala carte, where everything becomes a la carte, where you might have a local affiliate say you know what we want.

We want Savannah Guthrie in the morning.

We want I want the Tony diacoppole in the evening.

I want Meet the Press on Sunday, but I want CBS Sunday Morning.

Right, It's good.

I have a feeling we're going in the same way we're watching this with with people in our space here in the end dependance space starting to license their content on a Pluto or on a Netflix or on Amazon.

I think we're about to see the same thing explode in the local TV Atfilly Market, which means we're going to find out, you know, how big of a brand is Good Morning of America, Good Morning America?

How big a brand?

I think Today's show's pretty big.

You know what about the Sunday morning programming right where the brands will matter more than the network itself that they appear.

Yeah, and the reason is this is how the consumer, the under seventy three average age consumer, programs their own news already.

They you know, my kids don't know what a network is or what a channel is.

The channel numbers meaningless to my kids.

I have an eighteen year old and a twenty one year old.

They don't know the numbers any They know.

News for that's it.

Yeah, I just I get PV and there aren't numbers assigned, So news for is just I mean, they could have called themselves news Purple.

It doesn't.

Yeah.

So yeah, it is all changing.

And we haven't even talked out print.

We haven't even talked about what we really need, which is investigative journalism and journalism with a lot of teeth, and journalism that can stand up to pressure.

And I think that their pro publica does a great job.

Some of the nonprofits want to do a good job, but I think and I think there is a certain amount of appetite for it.

But what the great newspapers, especially newspapers, used to be able to do was fund these efforts from their advertising, from their car advertising, from especially their want ads and their classifieds.

And that's all done.

So not only do you have these, you know, all these city councils not being covered.

You just don't have the great investigation that the Indianapolis Star or the Kansas City Star or the Sacramento Bee was going to do as a matter of course, because that's what you did.

And we don't even know what the price of having all that lost is.

And maybe it's just local and maybe it doesn't get above the you know, land commissioner for Albuquerque, but it's a big loss.

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I guess I'm like, A, I'm optimistic because B I want to try to build something that scales that because I think that's a gap in the market.

I completely agree.

And you know, what I worry about is that some journalism can be done independently in solo.

You and I are proven this, But there are some things I could I would love to do, but I need more resources.

I need literally more physical human beings.

I don't care how many Geminis or chat Gypts you're going to give me.

They all can't walk the street, right, They can't do the door knocking that you sometimes need in an investigative journalism.

And I think that this this is what you know, My hope is that we'll start to see new consortiums, you know, after the sort of you know, if you look at the history of UPI, which was a wire service before the AP existed, and AP was a different type of wire service they really were.

They started off as attempts to try to allow local news organizations to share resources and share material.

It was in some ways, hey, oh that might be of use to our readers too.

You know, we can trade off and if you figure out how to ban these folks together that maybe they can start working together on collaborative investigative pieces.

Right.

Pro Publica does this a little bit, Well, they'll team up with a with a news organization.

Notice is doing this with some small independent locals.

They're being the Washington Bureau.

I do you like what that?

I do too?

Oh my gosh, I just had two of their founders on, two of their young folks on, because for me, Mike Notice is suddenly the only news organization based in Washington, d C.

That covers Washington, d C.

The Washington Post might as well be called the Post.

They have decided to no longer as in former former right they knew longer need to be.

They have gotten rid of everything that made them Washington right, even the food critic there, you know, their their sports page has never been smaller and less impactful, and that was so vital.

The Post and the Boston Globe, just the two great regional sports pages, launched so many stars.

And now they just and even before that the style section, which was such a great section and oh no it wasn't about styles.

Yeah.

It really frustrates me because it feels as if Bezos said, I want to be the Wall Street Journal And you're like, well, we already have one, and they're better at it than you.

Guys, I think you said I want to be Reason magazine.

I mean, he's stole their.

Entire Can I can I get I have one?

You know, we were talking about different editorial pages.

Here's something I wish Jeff Bezos had thought of, and I wish mister Salzburger would think of.

Why does an editor?

Why do you have to have one?

Who set the rule to say you only are allowed to have one?

Why not?

You know, Look, we live in a world where partisanship is in stereo.

Do I wish we didn't?

Maybe I'd wish we didn't, But you know what, two hundred of our two hundred and fifty years we have lived this way.

Our media has been partisan much longer than it has been nonpartisan.

Okay, we had a brief window between World War two and nine to eleven where we had basically a media that attempted to not affiliate with a party.

But before that and frankly after, it's actually been par for the course that media sort of identified with a movement.

This is why the papers are called the Rochester Democrat, This free right.

I try.

It's sort of one of these things that I tell journalism schools all the time.

Hey, guys, this is not new right.

The Waterbury Republican, the Arkansas Democrat is at the Tayle Assi Democrat.

You brought up Rochester is another one.

What's wrong with having two editorial pages?

Wouldn't it been great?

Wouldn't it be great if the New York Times had, you know, basically had a conservative editorial essentially section and a liberal editorial section and frankly allowed them to be side by side.

Yeah.

Back in the nineties, the Atlanta Journal Constitution when they had to do their joint operating agreement on Sundays, printed one news newspaper and their editorial page on the left was the Atlanta Constitution and on the right was the Atlanta Journal.

Yeah.

And I lived in Atlanta then and it the greatest.

Tell you it covered Dixie like to do.

But how great is that?

Like?

Why is that?

Why is that not?

Like?

That's the world I lived in.

My father was a conservative who always wanted to know what the liberals were saying, so he subscribed to National Review and New Republic all right.

He thought the nation was too far of the left, but he was in the New Republic.

It was like, that's aw Gores.

It was like I remember him saying, yeah, the guy is a big algore guy.

And you know, you know back in the day Marty parts and you had.

But the point was he wanted both sides of an argument.

He wanted to hear both sides of the argument.

I don't know why newspapers decided they only should have one voice.

That's how I was raised.

My dad was a social studies teacher, the consummate social studies teacher.

When I got into news, he said, let me subscribe you to I swear the two magazines that I got from the age of twelve to eighteen, where the National Review in the New Republic.

I mean, those were trailblazing magazines then, and I learned the latter from them.

I think one of the reasons it doesn't work is that what you just said, audience capture, and that the audience you and I want that.

And if you poll people, they would say they want that, but.

I say they want it, yeah, but they don't.

I think I feel dedicated news consumers are they Some are news consumers, many are ideology consumers.

Many are tell me the world, give me reflection of the world as I see it, consumers, And I don't know this is overly harsh a criticism, But what if The New York Times did a liberal or conservative editorial page.

I'm sure someone listening to this would say they tried it.

And then James Bennett got fired based on publishing the Tom Cotton op ed.

I think that, yeah, that's an ideal.

I don't know that we'll ever regain that time.

No or not.

But the reason I'm disappointed in Bezos in this is that if he had actually applied the lessons he learned from building Amazon the Everything Store, imagine imagine if he behaved as if I want to build the Everything information store.

Yes, but he wants to maximize profit with Amazon, and the post is a different consideration.

Well, he bought a trophy.

I thought he wanted to help the business, and it turns out he just wanted a trophy.

And then suddenly it wasn't cool to own the trophy, and he was like, oh shit, I either think he's here to the trophy or do I now just use it for my own benefit.

And that's why he's using it as he uses his contract to do a biopic of Milania Trump.

He uses it for lobbying.

Although when he bought the trophy, I remember, I think it was a two hundred and fifty million dollar purchase.

Was that the price?

I remember the Jacksonville Jaguars went for I think three seventy five, and I remember thinking, what are we doing with society that the Jaguars are worth only one hundred and twenty five million more?

Now, the Jaguars, like every NFL franchise, is probably worth a billion in the post, could be sold for parts.

I keep Meghan.

I remember there's only thirty two trophies available in the NFL, right, even the least valuable trophies, probably a five billion dollar trophy now.

Yeah, yeah, five billion.

Yeah.

So let's talk about AI, because you know, I bet I can vacillate.

I am.

I am a long term AI optimist, meaning I'm betting on human beings that we're not We're a species that has survived quite a bit over a million years and we're not going to let robots replace us.

So I am, but I am mindful that the transition is going to be quite painful, and I do think that increasingly.

The next three years are going to be about fear of AI displacement, even though again I think, you know, we'll, we'll probably.

My guess is the fear is a little too soon.

Like anything, it's probably coming sooner than we should actually be fearing it.

But that's how I try to comfort myself and how I remain optimistic in the long run about AI, even though this is going to be extraordinarily disruptive in the moment.

Where's your head on this?

There was just a pull out that showed a huge decline in optimism or even excitement about AI.

They expect, I mean, the vast majority of people expect AI to harm human abilities by twenty thirty five.

Do you blame them thinking that?

By the way, no, given what social media, given what the tech companies did to us with social media.

Right people.

And also science fiction and our storytelling plays a role, and so there's I'd say the ratio of dystopian to utopian science fiction is something like one hundred to one.

It's more easy to tell stories about destruction, although Star Trek is utopian science fiction.

So you know, our mind goes to threats.

The reason that we are here as the people who've evolved over a million years is because we understand threats, right.

We evolve from the people who were best position to understand the threats and flee the sabertooth tiger, whereas our would be ancestors who were like, no big deal, they got eaten.

They didn't get to reproduce that.

All that said, there are three camps with AI.

The accelerationists who say, bring it on, it's going to change humanity.

A lot of them have money involved, right.

The doomers, who some prominent people who could have made a lot of money with AI, give it a twenty percent chance of killing us all one day.

There are a couple prominent people give it a ninety eight percent chance.

Then in between, and this is a phrase invented by my friend Andy Mills, who just made a good podcast, great podcast about this called the Last Invention the Scouts.

And this is where I am, which is pay attention, don't be afraid, be very afraid, but understand the transformative power of this.

When Sam Aaltman testified, maybe you remember in twenty twenty three, he was greeted, he shocked the Senate Commerce Committee because he said, yes, please regulate me and this was a message that they wanted to hear.

That was a message I wanted to hear.

It was refreshing and unusual for a captain of industry to ask for regulation.

Cut to two years later, the big concern is China, and he said, well, I don't know about all this regulation.

We've got to beat China.

So what changed?

Was it just China?

Was it Samman?

In both cases trying to play cat or meet Congress where it was.

I'm definitely not a doomer.

I think it can be totally transformative, especially when it reaches what's called artificial general intelligence.

This is the computers teaching themselves and accelerating and accelerating.

But man, do we need more visibility into how it works?

And I'll add this, they don't even know how it works.

The people who program AI, who invented AI will tell you, Ye, it's kind of a black box and we can't exactly pick it apart and tell you why it did that, not just beforehand, but even afterwards.

And that is legitimately.

Scary, No, it is, especially when we realize that also we're I mean, we've not had the correct generation matched with the technological regulatory demands that we've had.

Right when the Internet first came along, we had a whole bunch of people that were very analogue right by the time social media.

Came at, saying the Internet was a system of tubes.

Right, and then you go to you know, as we go to social media, you have people that are still trying to figure out how to use email with their Aol dot com.

You know, they're still figuring out text.

By the time we've got an AI, you have people that are still just now getting comfortable with the iPhone premise.

Right.

So that's that's what's scary, is that the people we elect to be the watchers may not are probably not qualified to know what to watch for.

Yeah, even if adds to the concern.

Right, and even if they were, I mean, some of these people have backgrounds in the extractive industries.

They don't seem too keen on regulating them.

There is a Congress doesn't seem keen on being Congress.

You know, even Nancy Mace is writing op ads what is Congress for?

They've willingly abdicated their regulative responsibilities.

One of the things though, that gives me pause.

I have great hope for it, and I always think even with the Internet, I'm more in favor of it than opposed.

I owe my life to the idea of podcasting.

Otherwise, you know, I wouldn't be able to get my voice outside wherever a radio tower would take me.

Maybe satellites would exist.

But I look at the history of big innovations, and there's always the doomer.

There's always the person who's an expert, who gets a lot of attention, because, like I said, our minds go towards, well, what's the worst thing that can happen.

And at one point it was this guy named King Hubbert who predicted peak oil.

And he was an expert.

He worked for Shell.

He had many people with their colorful charts written in you know, nineteen nineties fonts, We're gonna run out of oil.

That was a big concern.

I think cuts it Today.

A lot of environmentalists would say, thank god, we're going to run out of oil.

But we're not going to run out of oil.

Shell gets invented, fracking gets invented.

Paul Erlik, who is the most frequent guest on Johnny Carson, wrote the population bomb.

It seems lausible, we're going to outstrip our means of production.

So throughout history, Greta Tuneberg, throughout history, there have always been these doomers.

It's a long tradition of dumers.

I'm not even talking about, you know, the people who said that the hell Bop commet was going to So.

I guess Jeffrey Hinton would be the AI doomer in this case, right, isn't he the inventor who says, be weary?

Right if there s a twenty percent chance?

But there are for every hint in there is one hundred people.

Many of them have their fortunes tied to AI.

But I'll tell you something else I learned from Andy series, The Last Invention.

Many of the people working in the companies are not doomers, but they're really worried, and they say to themselves.

Maybe they don't say I'm a genius, they're geniuses.

They're good at this, and they're involved in the work with the knowledge that if it goes wrong, it could go very very wrong in a way that goes way beyond, you know, replacing menial labor and not having some substitute for that, it could I'm not saying death of yourn, but maybe they are.

So there are a lot of people within the industry who don't want the industry just to go off the rails.

I don't know, Maybe you can make an analogy.

I don't know the people who work in bioweapons research.

I would assume a lot of them think the same thing, and every once in a while bad stuff happens there too.

There's one phenomenon that I'm fascinated by that is taking place sort of simultaneously as we're having this sort of race towards AI, and that is it is the one issue that unites left and right, which is should we get this technology out of the schools?

Yeah?

I had a woman on from an organization that she founded called Mama Mothers Against Media Addiction, And it's not just about, you know, getting rid of phones and classrooms.

It's also about should we stop hanging out iPads and laptops in schools?

Right?

Like?

Do we?

You know?

And boy, I'm pretty torn on this, yes, because on the one hand, I think we should evolve with technology.

On the other hand, I understand the concerns and fears, and there's no doubt there's plenty of study on screen time and what that's done.

But does fear of screen time in the social media aspect, mean you should toss away all technology you know in the classroom, and that's where that's where I get concerned.

But what I find fascinating is that we have a collective fear of what our kids, of how our kids learn, and we're actually it seems like it's the one place where we think we can try and do something about it where there's almost like the least amount of political combat over too.

Yeah, And I would remember, I remember the big issue was the digital divide, the fear that not enough people would have technology.

And now we're going the other way.

We're like, no, no, no, we don't want it in the classroom.

It's terrible.

So where I come down is just because there is junk food doesn't mean there shouldn't be culinary schools.

Just because there are bad Just because there is pornography doesn't mean we shouldn't teach art or figure drawing in school or even knew drawing on the college level.

So I definitely think that this is where the world is today.

You have to there's always been panics about technology.

I don't know if this is a panic.

There are legitimate concerns, right the corruption of the Innocent was congressional hearings about comic books.

I do think that video games or Tipper Gore in the music industry, I'm an have to remember when Twisted Sister with something that our parents thought was warping the minds of people like myself.

Sure Dee Snyder testifying on Capitol Hill in his Twisted Sister Regelia did not wear a suit.

Yeah we did.

I also remember Blackie Lawless from a group called WASP, and I can't even quote on a podcast what his big songs were.

But yes, so this is a perennial.

These are the tools that we use.

I think a flat out ban would not serve our children well, especially as we compete against China in Singapore.

But you know, we saw another version of this where the answer is never just take off the guard rails and trust in technology.

With the legalization of sports gambling, it has been a disaster.

You went to the place I wanted to go because I want to go to prediction markets here And what CNN and call She are doing, which I think is I say this.

I love gambling, Mike, I love football gambling.

I have also my own biases about what you should be allowed to gamble on and what you're not allowed to gamble on.

For instance, I don't gamble on player props.

You know why because I don't feel like it's an honest market because at the end of the day, you're relying on one person versus a team sport.

Like I don't like to bet on individual sports.

I don't bet on tennis.

I don't bet on golf because again, one person.

You know, it's it is known that tennis players just take an acceptance, you know, take an appearance fee and bail.

Right, That is just sort of how it works.

And it's like it's like betting on the NBA what players are sitting out.

You know, that's no You know, I enjoy betting on a team sport when I know there's maximum effort and I know that it's really going to be about somewhat of a game of chance but also a game of strategy.

But you're right, keep going, it's interesting, Bourn you out.

I mean, look at the NBA gambling scandal, Look at the baseball gambling scandal.

Where why is this offered?

Why are you allowed to bet on the first pitch?

Yeah, an e manual class, say can throw the ball directly into the dirt and think he's going to get away from with something.

And think about this, right, these guys, some of them, Let's say you come from a community that didn't have a lot of money.

You don't have enough to throw money around to them, but you want to throw them a bone, all right.

You know, I see how these individual players rationalize it.

I'm just trying to help on my pials.

I want to help them make a couple of bucks.

This is something I can do for them, No harm, no foul, Right, that's I really think that's the rationalization.

And yeah, the idea was that the gigantic salaries played to paid to these players would protect or indemnify them from ever being tempted.

However, at the same time people were making these arguments and believing it, they weren't just self motivating.

Yeah, we also know about the gigantic rates of bankruptcy among professional athletes.

They don't always take care of their money so well, so you have guys like Johntay Porter in the NBA who apparently owed a lot of money to a lot of people, and so all he has to do is claim an injury, take himself out of a game, and then everyone who bet the unders, which for the audience, I'm sure you know, it's if you think he's going to get less than four rebounds or less than three assists or whatever the statistic is.

If you fake an injury, you're definitely going to get less than that.

He has been thrown out of basketball.

Terry Rogier is another one who's on the hook.

There's the separate gambling scandal with this is so fascinating.

The mafia and and some coaches and poka gigs that can be read with essentially X ray vision.

But yeah, the prop bets, now, I think that the form of let's just get rid of these silly little prop bets that we're not making that much money on that is that's the deminimus that they have to do.

The real problem with sports gambling or gambling on the phones isn't even sports gambling or gambling on games where a lot of millionaires have a stake.

There are you can still gamble college games where even though kids are paid the nil money, it's not that much.

And there are a lot of very very low level Division one games that were clearly thrown a couple of years ago, and some enforcement though not criminals been brought against players on I think Mississippi Valley State and some other schools.

The huge problem there's been a lot of good reporting on this is the online casinos on phones and this is we maybe you and I focus on sports gambling.

This is just sad and should never been allowed.

And you have home Healthcare AIDS losing fifteen thousand dollars because they're constantly betting slot machines.

And if you look at the amount of revenue that the states have taken in sports, some of them didn't make good deals with the sports companies.

And by the way, a lot of these sites maybe not Fan Duel and DraftKings, but a lot of these other sites are not making anywhere near the money.

And they thought they would on sports gambling.

But if you look at the casino gambling, it's just a roundabout means of addiction.

Now on Calshi, we thought we were talking about the prop bets.

What about this prop bet?

I have my calshilp app open.

I don't know if you can see it.

Who will be the first member of Trump's cabinet to leave?

Now?

My update is since that Vanity Fair piece came out, rocket Yeah, but.

Then you know, well, it's what's funny about the prediction markets.

It's like, look, I am, I'm trying to keep an open mind about the prediction markets.

We used to call the prediction markets the stock market, but I'll set that aside here a minute.

Like I would argue that that kind of served as the prediction markets at least when it came to nonsports events, right, certain stocks went up or down based on oh, the economy.

Economic numbers are based on oh, like remember when when ozepic first took off.

Suddenly what didn't freedom lays stock collapse or something like, you know, oh, no, nobody's gonna nobody's gonna eat snacks anymore.

Snacking is dead, you know, or good luck with Edmans, like that's a brand that might disappear with everybody taking zempic.

But it's the it's it's the fact that CNN signed to deal with cal Shei like incorporating Like is it what does this fact tell you about Susie wilds Now being at the top of this prediction market.

Is it just a whole bunch of people wanting to react to something that happened in the news, or is there somebody with insider information right now during I will, I will confess.

So I made my first Calshy trade the morning of the college football playoff show.

I'm a University of Miami guy, and I was curious to see if things were going to leak the way the Pope, not the Pope, the Nobel Peace Prize leaked, and all of a sudden, the prediction market spiked for Machado, and you're like, oh, what's that about.

Somebody must know something right here was somebody that didn't have any other reason to spike it.

So I was curious to see, and I was watching, and I literally did it to see if it would leak.

Now it turned out it didn't leak.

Miami's number was fluctuating up and down somewhere between.

It got as low as six, got as high as thirty eight, But it was in the range of what was what would you would expect if people didn't know the outcome, okay where they were trying to project, rather than there wasn't anything.

But that's why I did it.

I didn't do it because I thought I did it because I thought somebody might know the answer.

I didn't do it because I thought crowdsourcing was going to tell me what the answer.

Was, right, I do it because I like to bet eleven dollars on the Jets while they're losing, to give myself somebody enjoyment of the game.

My average bed is like six dollars, so you don't have to worry about me.

But the same thing happened with the Time Person of the Year whenever it's a non random outcome, and who will make the college football playoffs.

But that's a well guarded outcome, the sort of outcome that someone would get fired if at Leaf they leaked in I don't know if Vanity Fair or Time magazine, but if you were a copy editor at Vanity Fair and you knew about this market, you knew this Susie Wild piece, don't you.

Buy Susie wildstock yesterday?

Right?

Yeah?

And then you sell it now?

Yeah?

Right right, That's what you're doing is that's insider trading.

And that's where, ultimately, I don't know how you can guarantee, you know, other than are we going to have apply insider trading rules to copy editors now in the same way we apply insider trading rules to people that work it, say it JB.

Moore thing, can you articulate a difference?

I can't.

That's my point.

Market with material information that the PO.

Do we have enough to do.

We have enough regulators to keep track of all this.

Yeah.

To me, the big concern this is a concern.

You articulated a concern.

The other big concern is when you look at sports coverage and now that all the sport although ESPN has gotten out of it, most of the networks are in bed with this or.

That they didn't get out of it.

They just read they just did their deal with DraftKings.

Right, it's shake got out of it in terms of it's not ESPN bets.

Sure, but they're doing it's no, I mean, you know, they're just they just took a bigger check from DraftKings.

Right.

So now it really affects the coverage.

And maybe you can make the case that CNN could just take some hail Mary's to borrow football term and it's not like their coverage will affect ratings on the downside that much.

But it does affect the coverage, and it gears the coverage towards the relatively few people who really care about this stuff.

And even if you do care about sports gambling in general?

Do you really care in the start of the fourth quarter when they flash what fan Duel says, the Knicks all.

My gods winning It Just really I find that's so annoying.

Do you know why I watched?

In fact, this gets it to my frustration with the college football playoff, with the idea of the subjective committee, where you're like, hey, give me what the statistically best teams are.

When I'm like, I've said this to various people who are sports fans, and I'll ask you the question, min do you watch sports to see the most probable outcomes happen?

Or do you watch it enjoy sports because every once in a while there's an improbable result and you're like, wow.

My son will tell you why is he a college football fan?

Because the first college football memory he has was from watching my wife and I go crazy over the kick six the Auburn Alabama game where he kicks a few where it attempts the field goal and the guy runs it back to when the You're like, oh my god, I've never seen a game end like that.

Unbelievable.

Alabama was the better football team.

Alabama always is the better football team.

Nine times out of ten, Alabama wins that game.

So why do we bother playing the games?

Because we're kind of we're kind of curious to see if the improbable happens, which is why when they do stupid things like lee Florida State out a couple of years ago, you're like, you're actually taking away the opportunity for a sports movie.

Which, Oh, by the way, what do we love.

We love a good sports movie.

We love a grandpa that takes a snap in an NFL game.

That's pretty interesting.

I kind of want to see that.

Right, like Mule the kicks a field goal?

Hey, I know that movie.

I know exactly the one you're talking about.

The god I forget was what the name of it was?

The Donkey.

It was not Gladys the kicking Mule.

It was yeah, it'll hit me someone.

That's a don Knots, Right, wasn't like coach don Knots.

Yeah, and he made a sound like whoosh every time he kicked.

Oh what do you think of James Madison and Tulane both in the college football playoff but not Notre Dame.

So I'm of two minds, right, I want the center and I know this is what and I this is where I wish college football had a commissioner, because I think the conferences, nobody that leads a conference or an athletic director has the best interests of the entire game in mind.

Right, there is no what's best for college football.

It is great for college football.

If there's an opportunity for a Cinderella, we want to.

You know, it was great to see George Mason make that run to the final four, right, that was really cool.

It was awesome when Butler got to the end the final of the NCAA tournament, Right, that was something we were curious about.

That was great.

And yet we also want to see Kentucky in North Carolina or Kentucky and Duke because that's awesome too.

So I get the need for that.

I do think people don't realize and the coverage of college football is terrible.

The reason they had to do that is they were preventing a lawsuit from the other conferences from basically, you know, they can't legally keep these other They had to give a pathway to prevent a lawsuit from all these group of five conferences.

Who would have said that the big four schools in ESPN were essentially violating you know, violate.

We're a monopoly, right, violating antitrust.

So that's why it exists.

And they had to put the rules in wrote the rules the way they did it, that was a lawyer telling them, well, you need to at least give the group of five conferences a chance that hey, if your champion is in the top five of all champions, right then then you can say no, no, no, we're not blocking them out of it.

I'd personally like to see a group of five playoff, like you take the four top group of five conferences and they play, you know, they play a little mini tournament and the winner gets to come in.

It's actually how the NIT and the NCAA used to work way back in the fifties.

There's one school that has that has won both the n T and the NCAA in the same year.

Do you know the name?

City College of New York.

I knew you would know.

It's so very interesting.

You're one of the few guests I could have that would be like, he knows more minutia than I do, and it's you do you know their nickname?

The Cooney nickname?

I do not think.

I think they were the Beavers.

But I'm going to check that.

So here's where I disagree.

Your analysis was right.

You set the stage, you laid the predictor correctly.

I don't think you want both James Madison and tu Lane in.

By the way, you don't want one.

Yeah, my son's a freshman at Tulane.

I was never a college football fan.

I got so into them this year.

He stormed the field.

It's fun.

Oh, my son's a freshman at SMU.

I was at the goddamn Miami SMU game where he did what storm the field?

So yes, my son stormed the field on a Miami game.

I do I do think the analogy between you want George Mason or Butler to make it.

Those schools were legitimately better, and not only does the record show they could hold their own against the power schools.

You know in the final where I was there was covering a f endpr the best player in that Duke Butler game was Gordon Hayward of Butler.

So that is not the case with Tulane and James Madison.

Those schools, I don't know.

Maybe tou Lane is a chance.

Tulane is I would look at least Tulane played a couple of power for schools, right, They played Duke and they played Old Miss right, Like you know, they're put it this way, when the ACC breaks up, they're going to become a member of whatever's left of the ACC.

Yeah, they're the next, They're the next.

They're sort of next in line, right, Tulane and Memphis are probably in ut San Antonio or probably the next three schools to get the call up into the Power for if there's room.

For more road runners.

So yes, well I can.

Oh, oh absolutely.

I don't think people between UTSA and USF by South Florida being the other one.

These are schools that basically have been created by the population booms of those two states over the last thirty years.

Where these are commuter schools and now they're just substantials in state universities.

TSA B Tulane quite handily this year.

So I can't confirm.

The City College of New York's are the Beavers.

Their mascot is Benny the Beaver.

And I will also give you this, do you know what other prominent though Division three school is nicknamed the Beavers?

Division one would be Oregon State State, right which Division three And I'll give you a hint.

The reason they're the beavers is that the beaver is nature's engineer.

The beaver is nature's engineer.

Interesting is it?

Mit, that's excellent work?

Correct?

Okay?

Mit?

Beavers?

That is that feels like that feels like an idea they came up with, Hey, what's a good reason for us to have beavers?

That isn't what we what everybody's going to assume?

What could we what could we actually?

What can we say that would be plausibly an explanation?

You know?

I mean and when they when they face the Presbyterian blue hose.

H all right, let me so prediction markets are you?

Do you think they will be legal?

Or do you think we will when we have a sober up moment on sports gambling that the prediction markets are in trouble too.

They shouldn't be legal.

I don't mean normatively, I mean according to the law there.

Their reason for not being the reason for being legal is something other than entertainment.

Is that they try to make the case that they're like more like a commodities market.

Uh, there is no viig so that's something in their favor.

But I don't know who's playing what commodity, or what business is benefiting from the existence of a prediction market.

Maybe you could say, if you're the if you're the sports bar in Kansas City and you bet against the Chiefs to make the playoffs because you know it's going to impact business in January, and that's a hedge.

But that is so far fetched.

So as I look at the law, it doesn't seem that they have a better case to not be regulated than any traditional sports books.

And it's not the big isn't the big or the you know, cut and percent isn't the big reason there?

You know, let me get you out of here on the following.

It's sort of a historical fact that I'm curious if you'll turn into a prediction.

Ever since the end of the pandemic, I've had a different view of prohibition because you now realize how did prohibitions start.

You know, it always had a small group of people arguing to ban alcohol.

Right that you watch the TV show guilded Ay, Right, Cynthia Nixon's character is actually holding meetings, right, the Temperance movement and all that stuff, But we don't actually do it until just after the nineteen seventeen and eighteen pandemic, which tells me that like pandemics sort of make us do crazy things, right, we sort of we go to our extremes, we do certain things, and within a decade we decide, WHOA, this was a bad idea.

Whether it's gambling, whether it's the legalization of marijuana.

What's something that we've been letting happen right that we'll look back on and say in twenty five years and say, yeah, we ended that.

After a decade experiment, we realized that's not good for society.

We sobered up.

Is it sports gambling, is it marijuana?

Is it something else?

Yeah?

I think the casino gambling there's just so little justification for it, and it's creating more victims that states have to take care of.

So sports gambling, I don't know.

I'm not willing to make that prediction, but I think being able to since only a few states allow it, you know, bang slot machines on your phones, I do think that will end.

I think another one is I think there's going to be massive regulation of the nil business because it's not a business and it doesn't help anyone everyone.

You know, there are obviously a few people taking advantage of it, but they do.

Why do big time college sports exist.

It's it's the fan experience, right, It's not the student athletes.

It's so schools can make money because the fans enjoy watching them.

And I think it is getting in the way of the fan experience to some extent, so there's going to be major reformation there.

I would also say that there's no reason just to pay kids for nil with their ability to go on Instagram, get hundreds of thousands of followers and just sell their advertising.

Maybe.

I've also always thought that puppy mills should be illegal, but that's not in the that that didn't happen recently.

I see that trend maybe coming.

But you know, prohibition was a big progressive movement, wasn't it.

It was said to be a leap forward, and all the suffragists and all the people who were associated with the progressive causes were most in favor of it, and it turned out to be a mistake.

So in that way, you know, marijuana legalization or whatever the extremely flawed rollout was, it reminds me of it.

Though I don't see us going back.

I mean, I see I don't think it's.

So on marijuana because we're not having there isn't you know it is It turns out that you know, it isn't any more or less addictive than alcohol.

And it might be arguments that's slightly less addictive in alcohol.

What's not been true and you've die.

You know, we don't know yet that it really has.

What benefits there are there may be seems like almost none.

It seems like there may be of killing benefits.

I could see that, you know.

Payment half people like maybe your rope is higher.

Well, I will say this, I've had two people in my life with MS and they swear by it.

They swear by.

It, but is there nothing else that they would There's nothing else that that allows them to Everything else makes them too loopy or makes them too sick.

Right Like, for whatever reason, weed is the right amount of it actually helps them with an appetite right when they need, and at the same time still doesn't totally fog up their brain.

It's this fine line, right.

I know, if you take too much weed, it can fog up your brain.

But some of the the you know, the painkillers you're getting from the from the pharmaceutical cover.

But I think the argument to the medical marijuana argument wasn't that the people with glaucoma or ms were lying.

It was that every and claim to have back pain in order to qualify for medical arijuana.

And so eventually the states just said let's just legalize marijuana.

But they didn't do it in the right way, and the rollout was done so inexactly.

And this is where execution comes into effect, and this is where our state capacity.

You know, what the abundance agenda and what Dunkleman wrote about about why nothing works, like for all our arguments about this should or shouldn't be done, and what are the normative changes, whatever you decide, doing it well is as important as just doing it.

So there's a way to legalize marijuana where it works well.

And I think there's probably a way to get some version of the prediction markets work that help more people than they hurt.

I just I'm skeptical that our government is capable of that way in twenty twenty five.

Well, here's the problem, right we I've always said, you know, I think being libertarian is in the DNA of Americans.

Right, It's sort of like no, no, no, no.

The whole point of this country was no, no, no, We want to we want to decide for ourselves what religion we do, and we want to decide for ourselves and all this stuff.

But unfortunately when we make it, we're making a libertarian We're sort of following through a libertarian idea about, Hey, you smoke what you want to smoke, or you take what you want to take.

But you do need a highly regulated delivery system, right in order to fulfill this libertarian demand, right, And that's I think the problem is that that's probably they just run into each other.

Right.

Our DNA is like a live and let live to a point, but you kind of need a highly structured system in order to deliver this problem, or at least somewhat structured.

And the libertarians I know would not say they're against liquor licenses.

They're just against liquor licenses that are given via corruption, are suppressed, or are given maybe even to anyone.

You know.

Libertarians are always will also admit that their arguments well I don't know they'll always admit it, but the honest ones will say, our arguments do tend to fall apart when it comes to kids.

Mike, I always enjoyed my conversations with you.

Are you still you still read hard copies of things or are you all digital?

I mean I could reach for like my it's all it's all New Yorker in print and New York Times in print, and yes.

Yes, because I miss remembering where I read something, and when I read everything on digital, when I read everything on the same machinery, it doesn't matter whether I'm reading The Atlantic, the Times, the Post, the gristlit it doesn't matter, right, it all looks the same.

And I miss the being able to differentiate visually where I read stuff.

So yeah, I was curious if I remember where on the page I read things, And that's like really important.

And I keep some of these books behind me because I have to get to them and I will be doing the interviews.

But a lot of them are I don't know if they're cherished.

They just gave me a lot of information.

And even though I say abstractly, I suppose I could try to find it on the kindle version, I can't.

I definitely could find it in the physical version.

Yeah.

No, I wonder if prints has been more resilient than I think many book publishers thought.

And I'm wondering if there's something there on local news that maybe that maybe there's a way to bring print back selectively, even in the local level.

Yeah, well, I know Tablet has a print play that's going pretty well for them.

It's it's maybe like vinyl with among the music offficionados.

Well, we're starting to see.

But I read something where said it's pretty it does pretty well for the record companies they're vinyl divisions.

Well, especially when you're charging forty dollars an album.

I don't know if you Bespoke, Yeah, bought one of these newly new this new way that hey, get a Taylor Swift album for your daughter on vinyl, you know, and it's like fifty bucks even at Target.

Anyway, Mike, enjoy the holidays you too.

Do you travel or do you host?

I do a little of each.

I think I usually take my vacation two weeks later to beat all the crowds.

But as always, as always, Chuck, thank you for having me and go Beavers.

Go be If you learned anything, it's the fact that the only person that knows more minutia, particularly sports mandusia, than myself, it's you, mister Pesca Cooney lifts.

Go Beavers.

Thanks problem well, I always enjoy my conversations with Mike.

I hope you do too.

And again check out the gist.

It's say it is one of those it does not it's a great news that it does not waste your time.

It is just a it is a great it's sort of you know, it is that the second set I had lines that you that sort of make you a little bit smarter at that holiday party, a little bit smarter at that cocktail party, et cetera.

That little extra nugget that not every news junkie seems to know.

Mister fishy peachy guy uh does a good job with that.

I always loved my conversations with Mike.

It is notable, by the way, before I get to Q and A and I know, I spent the first part of this monologue telling you about Trump's future and all this stuff.

There was some breaking news while I was taping my monologue that I missed, and he put out the following tweet, and he was very excited.

I was.

I was taping before the CBS airs the Kennedy Center, excuse me, the Trump Kennedy Center honors.

Right, I'm sure we'll hear plenty of jokes and in fact, Trump tweeted the following on Tuesday, on Festivus Day before Christmas Eve.

The Trump Kennedy Center Honors is what he called it.

The Trump Kennedy Center Honors will be broadcast tonight on CBS in stream on Paramount Plus ten at at apm Eastern.

At the request of the board and just about everybody else in America, I am hosting the event.

Tell me what you think of my master of ceremony that's in quotes abilities if really good, would you like me to leave the presidency in order to make hosting a full time job.

We will be honoring true greats in the history of entertainments of Wester Sloan, Michael Crawford, Kiss, George Strait, and Gloria Gainer.

So is this the soft launch for Trump's resignation strategy from the president?

You didn't get to kick me out.

I left on my own terms.

You know, here's the irony.

Donald Trump as dinner party host, Donald Trump as sort of the roast master, if you will, to take the place during those old Comedy Central rows, that's kind of what America wanted out of Donald.

I don't think.

I think now it's fair to say most of a recond did we really want this guy as president or did we just want this guy to be sort of not even necessarily the MC of the Center Ring, of the three Ring circus.

We just kind of wanted to tune into him every once in a while because he was kind of amusing, and he was kind of strange, and he was kind of outlandish and sort of all of those things.

And a little bit of Donald Trump was amusing, and a lot of Donald Trump is exhausting.

Right, So we know he's not totally serious about this, but you know, in his own weird way, he probably realizes even his haters are going to say, yes, please go be a host, go leave the presidency of be a host, and then he will take that and say, people loved all of my hosting.

Anyway, all right, let's get to some questions, ask Chuck, And by the way, next week I'm going to do I'm gonna do as forty minutes of questions.

I'm going to tackle that much of my mail bag to try to clear it out from the year.

But in the meantime, let's slip in a few.

All right, first question, it comes from Michael Dallas, Texas.

Help you found some good barbecue in College Station.

When you're in Dallas for the Cotton bowlt checkup barbecue spotch Hutchins and PKM Lodge.

I did do.

PKM Lodge and it is great.

That is great.

It is hard to find bad barbecue in Dallas.

I'm sure it exists, but even the bad barbecue places are good compared to almost any other city outside of Texas.

So but PKM Lodge, I had forgotten the name of it.

Thank you for reminument.

Then he asks this.

This twenty twenty eight gets closer by the day.

As of late December twenty twenty five, what wing of the party do you do you believe the Republican Party will lean towards?

Will it embrace someone from the Romney Bush era I e.

Rubio, or will it be a Trump air apparent I advance have a hold over the voter.

Keep up the good content.

Thanks Michael, Dallas, Texas.

I think if you look look take the law, I just look at.

Let's just look at sort of post World War two history of two term presidents.

Right, Eisenhower's vice president was the Republican nominee in sixty you have lbj's vice president, Hubert Humphrey was the Democratic nominee in sixty eight.

Ronald Reagan's vice president was the nominee in nineteen eighty eight.

Now, the one time where the party literally went further away from the outgoing sitting president is arguably John McCain inaight from George W.

Bush.

Right, there was nobody really running as the Bush air parent.

Now, McCain was the guy that finished second to Bush in two thousand, so in some ways was following the traditional Republican pattern of who finished second get this nomination the next time.

We saw it with Bob Dole after Bush, we saw it with Bush after Reagan, We saw it with Reagan after Ford.

You get my drift.

But you could argue that the nomination of McCain was a way of Republican primary voters going no, no, no, we're looking for something different too.

We want to we want to turn the page on on Bush.

I don't think with the with as much as I think that there is a an appetite for it within a good chunk of the Republican Party.

Right, We've seen, you know, the move Mike Pence, pretty bold move Mike Pence made to to sort of stake his claim and I think what I still think those I still think Mike pen sees himself as a person who can bridge the old Romney Bush wing of the party with the new Trump Maga wing of the party.

I still think Penn sees himself is a better bridge to that then say a Marco Rubio.

But the most likely result is Trump's air.

Trump's VP is the nominee, right it is.

It is very hard to deny a sitting vice president nomination.

Hubert Humphrey wasn't denied at al Gore wasn't denied at Kamala Harrison her own odd way, wasn't denied at George H.

W.

Bush wasn't tonight.

It doesn't mean they don't have to work for it.

They got a Walter Mondale even as an ex VP, right, it gets it.

It is just very difficult.

They When you think about how state parties are sort of filled with loyalists, you know you're going to have, you know, it's not like you know, look who runs the state Republican parties right now.

There's not many people from the Romney Bush wing of the party sort of in charge anymore anywhere.

So I don't know where you would get a base of support to actually win a majority of Republican primary voters to pull this off, you'd need it, you know, McCain pulled it off because there really wasn't a consolidated conservative to stop him.

I mean, had Romney, had Romney been a more trusted conservative in OA, right, and he just wasn't yet he was the guy still four years frankly, only two years removed from from romney Care, only two years removed from flipping on the abortion issue as he left the Massachusetts governorship, So he wasn't.

He couldn't consolidate conservatives completely.

So there the sort of the social conservatives were splintered, the sort of more Bush Ryan wing of the party was kind of splintered, and it gave a room for McCain.

Look, it's possible, right, but the more probable outcome is that you know, Vance gets it, and you know, look, you I'd rather be the Democrats than Vance, But every nomination's worth having because the Democrats could end up nominating someone who's less selectable than Jade Vance's.

But I think Vance is it's interesting that what he did over the weekend in his decision not to you know, he he will not condemn hateful rhetoric on the right.

He goes out of his way to appease or apologize.

If somebody on the left says something hateful, they should be ostracized from their job from society.

When some of the are right does it, Oh, they're just kids.

Nobody should be judged by one thing they do.

He is really and this is why I think he's going to be somebody who appears to spend too much time online and not enough time in the real world.

This is a guy that needs to touch Republican grass roots, not just Republican internet grasstops.

So I'm skeptical of him, but he has to be considered the heavy favorite, and he already has some institutional advantages that others are just not going to have, and frankly having turning point as an organization which right now will certainly be a financial juggernaut.

We'll see how influential it can remain if it is as influential in two years as it feels like it could be now.

But he's already beginning there.

It's hard to see another wing of the party winning in twenty eight now.

If Vance does not win the presidency in twenty eight.

Then the twenty thirty midterms are going to be something else.

Then you're going to have they may look what we're watching with the Democrats right now in twenty six, which is we're getting a preview of the fight in twenty eight between essentially fight or unite.

You know what kind of Democratic party should Democratic nominee?

Should they have a fighter or somebody that's going to try to bring the country together or a united Right now, the grassroots of the Democratic Party wants a fighter, right and I think that you'll have some of those same Well, you'll have some of this same sort of intra party fighting and thirty, especially at fans loses all right.

Next question comes from Travis and see, hey Chuck, hope you're enjoying the holiday season.

I really say I had a vivid dream where I dropped a college class only to run into you as the professor.

You gave me a urt time and it stuck with me.

Oh good, Look, I will share the celibates.

It's called how Washington Works, so I'll give you an idea of what.

So basically, it's the class called how Washington Works.

I have two assignments.

You know that everybody that it participates in this class has a full time job, all right, so we meet once a week.

This is a special USC program.

I highly recommend it.

Essentially, instead of spending a semester abroad at USC, you spend a semester in DC.

You get a full time job, you work nine to five, and then at six o'clock you have a class Monday through Thursday.

I am the Thursday class, right, I am the last class before the start of their weekend.

Though they do have to work Friday, usually on Fridays.

So I say that, and I'm I am.

I am mindful that this is They're there too, They're there to learn.

I am not beating them up over assignments, though I do make them.

There are two assignments, a midterm and a final that I do expect them to do.

But essentially what I do is I have a variety of speakers.

You know, I've I've had John Kasick, I've had Mark Short, I've had Brendan Buck on the Republican side, Jake lett Turner, I've had Jeff Science.

I've had near a Tandent, I've had Debbie Dingle.

So I try to have a good balance of I try to I want to have a couple of lobbyists, including those that lobby from the right, uh for the excuse me, from industry and those that lobby from activist groups so people can get an understanding how both types of lobbying work.

Again, I view the classes.

Actually the intent is how Washington works.

And my joke is doesn't work for everybody.

It's always working for somebody, and yes, this year it's going to change and how it works.

And then I you know, the assignment I do.

I do this.

Last time, I offered a choice of books to read during the midterm that I think best, and in fact I posted some of those books.

But I think that best sort of helped explain why we're in the political moment we're in.

So, you know, had I've assigned the McKay Coppin's book on Romney and sort of that campaign from twenty twelve and sort of Romney's view of sort of how the party went from his wing of the party to the Maga wing of the party.

I think it's an incredibly insightful book on that front.

The Wolves of k Street by Brodi and Luke Mullins, their brothers, their investigative reporters I think it's the currently the new best sort of guide to how lobbying in Washington works these days?

Where have all the Democrats gone?

Which is a roy to share a book about sort of how the Democratic coalition shifted from the Obama era to what it is today.

All of it is designed so that I think these are books that best explain how we're in the situation that the current political electorate is in.

I am not I do actually stay away from assigning books that how to quote make it better.

I want people to understand where we are and then their final exam is their way of making one thing work better.

What's a way to if there's something in Washington doesn't work right?

How would you change it?

Is it through the power of Congress?

Is it through the power of the executive?

Is it through outside influence?

Is it through small d democratic reforms?

So it's a it's a mix of guest speakers who have had real world experience, because everybody that's in this class is somebody that is animated about public service.

That's a little bit different than the average person.

I would say, in my two years of teaching this class, half of them want to run for office.

Someday, and so I want to give them speakers that have done it themselves the ups.

I mean, John Kisa came in in here and said, don't run for office in your twenties, which is exactly what John Kaisack did.

He basically admitted that for the first thirty first ten years of his political career he did not have enough life experience to be a good public servant.

And he said, I didn't know that then.

You know, thirty five forty years later, you know that now.

It just the tyranny of wisdom of the middle aged.

We all realized once we hit our fifties and sixties all the mistakes we made in our twenties and thirties, and we're desperate to convince others in their twenties and thirties not to make these mistakes.

And most of you never listen.

We are at peak wisdom in our fifties and sixties, which is why probably all of our presidents should be in their fifties and sixties, and we shouldn't let anybody seventy plus be president.

Is that that's my age cutoff on there, because I do think peak wisdom is somewhere in your fifties and sixties, and perhaps I say that out of necessity since I'm in my mid fifties.

But that is and.

Discussing the current events.

I always spend about It's a three hour class, so iways spend about the first twenty or thirty minutes just discussing what happened that week and sort of.

I also explained the new cycle a little bit.

But they take a separate media class.

Mine is very much more of how the institutions within Washington worse with a little bit of the influence of the press.

But they have a separate class on that that is fully devoted, fully devoted to that.

So I hope that gave you an idea of what class with me.

So come on over to USC Dornsife.

It's anybody is eligible for this class if you take, if you get involved in this DC program.

So there you go.

All right, next question, I think I'm going to make this the last question because I went long on that other one.

I'm going to do three more.

These are all good because I can be quick.

All right.

First one comes from Dan Pinehurst, North Carolina.

Ah, I did a Pinehurst Boys trip once.

I loved it.

I loved it we did three courses.

It was amazing.

I don't think i've golf since then, but it was awesome.

Pinehurst, what a great place, Lieutenant Colonel retired Lieutenant Colonel Dan lucky you that Pinehurst golf courses are your backyard, and he goes, hey, I really enjoyed your take on how we mismanaged the end of history after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Made me wonder how my things have played out differently At Bush forty wanted one a second term with the administration's strong national security team and less political pressure to catch in the peace dividend.

Could a Marshall Plan style approach for Russia and Eastern Europe have worked better than the short term thinking we saw the nighties.

Thanks for all the great programming, and go Clemson this weekend.

Yeah, it's a it's a good matchup on paper.

You're like, boy, that would would be a better game, right, I think it's Clemson Penn State'd be better if it were game one of the year and my recalibrated schedule of making all the bowl games happen actually as as preseason game one of the following season.

You know, that's an interesting one.

If on George H.

W.

Bush.

I think you're right.

I think it would have been a very foreign policy heavy second term where Bill Clinton won on domestic issues, so he'd make it all that so it you know, in some ways though I don't think you know, remember Clinton kept a lot he kept calling Pal's national security advisor no excuse me as chairman of the Joint Chiefs my mistake there, and and in some ways, even though he had democratic you know, players from the foreign policy community, they were really of the Cold War uniparty, if you will, right Warren Christopher, I would argue, was that Tony Lake and then later Sandy Berger On the national security side, I would argue, was that Al Gore as a vice president?

Remember he was basically the Washington hand for for the inexperienced Arkansas in Bill Clinton.

So, I you know, I don't want to I don't know if our foreign policy would have changed all that much, but I do agree with you the emphasis might have been different.

There may have been a more methodical approach that Bush and Baker would have had.

I mean, essentially, what you're saying is, what if Jim Baker had been running things here right in helping democracy in the Eastern Europe.

Maybe it's not a it's it's an interesting what if that I'd like to put a little more of my own efforts into.

I need to familiar I need to go back.

And there's a great Jim Baker memoir not a memoir, excuse me, a biography that was written by my friends Peter Baker and Susan Glasser.

It had some cooperation from Baker.

It is a really look I think Jim Baker's Jim Baker and Leon Panetta are probably the two great equally the greatest Republican and greatest Democratic public servants that weren't the best politicians, right.

I think Baker ran and lost a state ag race in Texas.

Leon Panetta obviously was a member of Congress, wanted to run for governor, never could find a way to do it.

But boy, they.

Were really good at they they they were They had a politician's I with a with sort of CEO capabilities, kind of like Cheney, you know, I meaning they knew how not all all politicians want to run an institution, know how to actually have employees.

You get the sense of Panetta and or did, and this is why they were sort of the super staffers of their era, one one on the D side, one on the R side.

But I I almost needed would want to go back and reread the Baker books, both his and then the one he cooperated with with Glassner uh And and Peter Baker.

No relation by the way to sort of answer that question fully, But but there's no doubt they're needed.

We we we.

It is clear we rushed through the democratization of the former Soviet republics and and really screwed and it was really divving up industry, is ended up creating the oligarchs.

And in that sense, I think you could say we had a hand in creating the oligarchy that now essentially runs too much of the of of Russia and much of and many of the former Soviet republics on that front.

So great question.

Next one today comes from Gavin Brady.

Loved your deep dive and how post World War One decision still shape global politics today.

Such an overlook part of history, the way Western powers redrew borders in the Middle East continues to have serious repercussions, yet it's barely discussed.

You've talked a lot about media decline, but how do we address the erosion of historical education and understanding it feels essential for making sense of modern challenges.

Gavin Brady, Brisbane, Australia.

This is my frustration, right we look, I imagine you know Australia, world history is certainly taught through the prism of Australia, just like world history is taught through the prism of America in American schools, etc.

But I think we do there's no doubt we have done a poor We don't teach, We don't think about creating historical curriculums through the prism of today's issues.

Right.

So if you were to create a curriculum on history, and I almost wonder if there's a class to be made which is current of the history of current events.

Okay, I need to come up with a better class of that.

But so that Okay, the Middle East is in the news, let's teach history of the Middle East to understand that, right, And it seems like a simple thing to do.

Here's the context and we go.

But that's really what's missing in our curriculum.

We probably would be in this and I think this is what's look the politicizing of of of education curriculums, particularly in Middle schools and high schools is a real problem when everybody wants their point of view reinforced in how history is taught rather than just getting getting people more knowledgeable.

I mean, when you look at how many times we've been drawn into a hot conflict in the Middle East, and how little in high school we spend in history classes teaching how World War One created this mess and the fall of the Ottoman it seems to be kind of messed up when we you know, today sixteen and seventeen year olds may end up fighting a war in the Middle East, may end up fighting a war in China.

What do we teach about Taiwan?

What do we teach about the rise of communist China?

You know, we're tero you want to talk about you know, I complain about our lack of of how we just gloss over World War One and just teach it through the prison of World War two?

What kind of thing about your own For those of you ask yourself how well you feel like you were educated about China?

Say pre mao, okay, and even then, you know, we we do a little bit of mao, right, But it's really quickly there's a Nixon goes to China, YadA, YadA, YadA.

We kind of kind of fight China a little bit during the Korean War, there's some normalization with then Chao Ping, YadA, YadA, YadA.

Then there's the Olympics, and you know, we don't really teach the history of China and Asia in general.

And yet I could argue the twenty first you know, if the twentieth century was all about sort of the re it was all about sort of the I guess you could call it the the de empiring of Europe.

Right, Europe was sort of nothing but a series of sort of of empires trying to control it in some form or another, and the twentieth century was sort of an attempt to put an end to that, right, And it's sort of and it did.

I think the twenty first century is going to be all about sort of reshaping the power structures in Asia.

And yet our education system does very little in making sure we're fairly informed about the history of Asian civilizations, of Asian governments of China in particular.

So yeah, we need to we need to think about our history.

Curriculums should be tied to active current events, you know, sort of within a ten year period in order, because frankly, if students, I know, I got more animated about something, if I learned something and then I saw something related to it in the paper or you related to it in the current events, it actually sunk in more.

So it would just be better teaching.

Look, the best teachers figure this out, you know.

I remember having a great government teacher who was who did this really well?

But the best teachers figure figure that out.

All right, last question, uh for for today before I get to my uh my sports viewing guide slash conversation starters for you, per your suggestion, I watched Death by Lightning.

I enjoyed it, but found it too short, so I read the book.

I kept rolling my eyes at how often it mentioned national unity around Garfield.

Made me sad to realize I can't imagine that kind of unity today.

Was the country really that united in grief and anger over its assas nation?

Or did the author take some license loving the podcast?

So just a reminder there are other sports besides college football and baseball, Melanie, I hear you, and I've got plenty of baseball takes.

They're coming.

This is just the heart of college football season, trust me.

Pictures and catchers report, what do we add like less than ten weeks?

So I'm there, right, pictures and catchers are I think we're like eight weeks away.

I got you, Melanie, don't worry, So can I can I recommend another book that I think would because I you know, do I think there was definitely real unity around Garfield because think about this?

Okay, what I think?

What?

What the what?

The movie did a terrible with the mini series terrible.

I'm too strong.

I just I was glad it was done, and it's so disappointed in the execution, okay, because I thought it was short.

It gave short shrift to too many things.

But there were two aspects to the story that the death by lightning, as the mini series just never really did a good job of showcasing.

One was the fact that he gets shot, he lives for months.

So that's why there was this sort of national think about it.

Okay, there was this was what's the latest on the president?

You know, is he running the country or not?

Like, how does it?

So there was it did become a national obsession.

And while he's still alive, we have the trial of Gauteau, and the trial was the first trial of the century that everybody paid attention to and in d C.

Just to get a ticket to attend the trial was like a was a big deal in society.

People wanted to be able to say, oh, I was at the Guitou trial today, I saw him go.

Crazy again today.

I don't think it captured sort of that aspect of it.

So it I think in the book and sort of destiny of the Republic, which is what Death by Lightning's based on.

Technically, this other Garfield book is called Dark Horse, written by a Senate staffer some twenty five years ago, but very you know, I like the more detail it goes into the Republican convention, gives you a lot more on that, which is a political junkie.

I just love and I do always want to remind people, you know, the mythology that just anybody could become the nominee at a convention is the Garfield story.

And it was sort of because it happened once it became the myth that sort of made political conventions.

We've all dreamed of a convention taking over the process, when only time that happened was in the eighteen eighty Chicago Republican Convention.

So I think the book does a good job of that, but I do think the series gave short shrift to the fact that this was a that he was alive for months and it was due to poor medical treatment that he died.

Right.

The bullet didn't kill him, poor medical treatment killed them.

Uh.

And then the second thing was the the the circus, that was the Goodeau trial itself, and I think it didn't necessarily capture that what what the public was feeling.

But there's a reason Chester Arthur flips.

There's a reason Chester Arthur right.

And oh, by the way, the public blamed Arthur at first as part of you know, sort of this this that that this was all due to Roscoe Conkling and all of that.

So yeah, let's just say that I am That's why I was disappointed it because I think two of the more fascinating parts of it.

Look at they did an okay job at the convention, and they allowed that process to play out.

I want to I got I'm obsessed with I'm going to end with this here.

I'm obsessed with Purvis.

And so during my during this long car trip I just took last week, I listen to a whole bunch of sort of companion.

Pluribis podcasts, not some with the official podcast, but but some on our friends.

The Ringer love those guys.

The watch their enthusiasm is a lot of fun.

And what Vince Gilligan is known for is showing you methodical process.

Right Like if you watch Pluribus, every time she calls the phone spoiler lo Art and she's calling, you know, the hive mind for stuff in the show, you have to hear the entire message tape, recorded message play over and over.

Right.

He wants to show that process.

He doesn't give you short shrift, he doesn't speed through it.

He wants you to absorb the process of living.

Having every time they have a conversation, she has to listen to that recording over and over again.

And you have to do it too.

I think what Death by Lightning didn't do is it was so rushed in trying to put everything that should have been an eight to ten episode mini series into four episodes.

Because the folks that I don't know this, but I'm going to have an educated guest, folks at Netflix didn't think Garfield was going to be that interesting to people, that he was not a known character.

Guiteau was not a known assassin all of those things.

So they said, let's do this it as an experiment.

It did well, and it shows it could have done eight, not four.

But they took eight to ten episodes of content and shoved it into four, and they rushed things.

They didn't show the process, show me the trial, show more of the medical care, show more of the convention.

That's what Vince Gilligan would have done with the content, and that's not what was done here.

All right, let me get to a little bit of my weekend, of my week ahead.

In college football, we have no college football playf I will be I will be uploading two more at least three more drops before we get to the MIAMU Ohouse Gate game on December thirty first, so I will have a lot more to say about that game, I am.

What's funny is that, you know, we fans, we never forget the slights against teams.

We play like you know, Catholics versus Convicts.

When it comes to Notre Dame, we'll shoot that happened in nineteen eighty eight.

That's over thirty years ago, right, almost forty years ago.

Now on that front, I brought up the Penn State game.

I think that you know, my frustration back during that national title game, Well, that happened in nineteen eighty six, okay, and now we have Miami winning eleven games this year.

It's the first time that's happened since before my daughter was born.

And she's one years old, so you know this, you know, so my bitterness about Ohio State feels very recent.

My bitterness about the Big twelve official who threw the unnecessary flag that handed Jim Tressel the controversial national title that year.

Terry Porter is a name I'll never forget.

I'm sorry, mister Porter.

If you're a listener, you're you're you're probably tired of us Miami fans harassing you by name.

Let's just say be glad that that that the the bad flag didn't happen in the social media era, and that that had happened back in January of two thousand and three.

So, you know, Miami Ohio State is a quote unquote rivalry just lives in the minds of Miami fans twenty five years ago who were alive back then.

It is not with today's Miami fans even you know, I have to explain it to my daughter, you show it.

Okay, that's why it's not you know, it's not inherent on that front.

So but needless to say, I'll have some interesting I'll have more to say about that game.

But look, we're there are a few things that I actually wanted to bring up in the sports world that are off the field that I think are worth having a conversation about.

First of all, are we suddenly moving?

You know?

One of the things in sports stadium developments was we've always go back and forth we go, and you can sort of see it in the landscape if you go to older major metropolitan areas.

Right.

So, when I first moved to Washington, all of the basketball games and hockey games were played in the suburbs.

It was called the Capital Center.

It was in Landover, Maryland.

And back then you had arenas in suburban locations because there was this movement out of the cities and the rise of the suburbs.

So sports owners thought they wanted to be where the people lived at night, not necessarily where the people worked in the day.

Well, then, of course, another generation happens, and then there's a movement to bring all of the arenas and football stadiums back into cities, right, And we had this movement in the nineties and in the aughts where everything was being brought back into the cities.

Well, in Washington, we're still trying to bring a stadium back into the cities.

But if you've noticed, we are kind of in a period now where there is as much movement out of cities again as there is in sports stadiums coming into the cities.

The first of this was Atlanta, where they decided they don't play in Atlanta anymore.

They play in Cobb County, right, They left the city of Atlanta, and it's weird.

It bums me that baseball is there, But it turns out it was the right business decision.

They did this based on where are the majority of their fan base, and they decided it was Cobb County and it worked.

You've got certainly Dallas, all right, You've got the hockey and basketball are in downtown Dallas, but the baseball and football are in the suburbs.

And they continue to be in the suburbs.

But then again, the sort of the Dallas metroplex.

Is there a suburb anymore or is it just a series of cities.

Arlington is growing like crazy, Frisco and Denton is growing like crazy.

So it may be that those are forward looking things, but it is notable to me if the Chiefs made the decision to leave Kansas City, Missouri, and they're going to go to Kansas City, Kansas, which means I don't know how many of their fans are going to do that, but I'm guessing they got a better deal from Kansas to develop in Kansas than in Kansas City, Missouri.

You've got the Chicago Bears threatening to move to another state and to pull what the Washington then Redskins now commanders did by moving from the district to the suburbs.

Now they want to go back to the district because that's where their fans wanted them to be.

Meanwhile, the Bears, who have this incredible set up Soldier Field, in some ways is in the perfect location in a city on the lake.

I think it should be a tremendous home field advantage.

Obviously, they want more luxury boxes, they want to make more money out of these things.

But now they're talking about moving into Indiana to northwest Indiana.

Is this really a good idea?

Do you really want all.

Of this there?

This is a case where I bring this up because I think the NFL as a league does not get involved enough in these stadium decisions.

Right.

The most egregious thing that they let happen that I still think is a stain on the NFL is letting the Chargers leave San Diego.

I mean, we now have a zombie franchise in LA.

There is nobody that cares about the Chargers in LA.

Unfortunately, I wish there were more.

Know there's a handful of fans.

Don't get me wrong, you all five LA Chargers fans.

My apologies, but the San Diego fan base was tremendous.

All right.

You had an owner that had no trust with the community, and you have a community that didn't believe in taxpayer funding the stadiums.

Okay, well, then the NFL should have stepped in.

What's in the best interest of the NFL keeping their fan base in San Diego, not diluting this mess in LA.

But instead, what did they really want?

Well, they wanted to help an owner who couldn't afford a stadium he was building in so far and he wanted a second tenant in order to be able to have this magnificent stadium.

So the NFL prioritized having this incredible stadium.

God love it so fi.

It's a beautiful stadium.

It's a great, you know, host stadium for Super Bowls, for National title games, for Taylor Swift concerts, you name it.

But without the guarantee of a second tenant, it was going to make it really hard for the owner to make that work.

And so and so the NFL prioritized sort of an owner's needs over what was in the best interests of the fans.

And I be really careful here, NFL letting the If the Bears end up moving to Indiana, I would argue the move out of the Washington to Maryland was a mistake and that was a Jack Cank Cook.

Can't blame that one on Dan Schneider, all right, that was a Jack can Cook situation that turned out to be a bad business decision.

Not just a bad fan decision, but bad fan decisions are bad business decisions.

And in this case, I think the NFL needs to be smarter.

Look, I know the only way owners can make money outside of the socialistic enterprise that is the National Football League, where you sort of have a salary cap and use all the shared revenue et cetera.

Right that the only the differentiator for individual owners are the luxury boxes, are the season tickets, is the stadium experience, is parking, is concessions, et cetera.

And I get that, but at the end of the day, the owners to me are not you know, these are not small businessmen.

These are not the many of them are not the best in price when it comes to business decisions, and they're not always looking out for the interest of the NFL or the interests of the NFL fan base, and the league I think needs to get more involved in these stadium decisions because these are NFL facilities as well as team facilities.

And considering you are a socialistic enterprise, this is not a free market system.

It just isn't.

Don't pretend it is every once in a while when it comes to stadium development.

And I do think the NFL, you know, needs to preserve you know, it's it's kind of embarrassing that the New York teams don't play in New York.

I think it would be embarrassing that the Chicago team didn't play in Chicago.

And is it going to matter?

Maybe in the grand scheme of things, maybe it doesn't matter in the grand scheme of things, but you sort of tear away at the fabric and at the culture of a town, and so you know, whether it's you know, making sure that Kansas City move isn't going to alienate a big chunk of the fan base, making sure the Bears going to Gary, Indiana isn't going to alienate the fan base, making sure that you don't abandon and basically lose out on a bunch of fans in San Diego that should still be its own fan.

I mean, you have the Chargers are having a tremendous season and no one cares right and you know, look, you barely can get Angelino's to care that much about the Rams.

But at least the Rams have some sort of identity and history in LA.

And I do think I've got friends in LA whose kids have adopted the Rams.

You have not seen the same adoption of the Chargers.

Look, the Clippers shouldn't be in LA sharing a market with the Lakers.

They should also probably be in San Diego, and the Chargers shouldn't be in that market because you realize the Chargers are the third team in that market.

The Rams are one the raiders in Las Vegas are two because of their old ties to Los Angeles when they're good.

USC is three, and then you finally get to the LA Chargers.

But that is something that needs to go in there very quickly.

Your weekend guide to viewing and conversations you want to have to change to look like you're on top of things in the sports world.

One thing you can mock and make fun of is how Netflix did a terrible job of guessing which games would be relevant and which ones which ones weren't.

So other than gamblers, there really is no reason to watch The Christmas games are Chris get Cowboys Commanders totally meaningless Commanders.

Maybe with a third string quarterback, we won't even have Tyler Hennike Heinike to root for or enjoy.

Lions Vikings.

Lions need a lot of help.

They got to win two games and hope the Packers lose two games on that front.

In Broncos Chiefs, Broncos are playing for a piece of the one seed and they should annihilate the Chiefs given the Chiefs are now going to be on a third string quarterback on this front, So you know what that means.

It means and I can't believe I'm saying this, but the Christmas Day NBA games are more watchable than the Christmas Day NFL games.

Look, the NFL tried to basically bully the NBA, and it really did ruin NBA last year the NBA Christmas Day games last year.

But guess what karma is a you know what, and the NFL thought, we're putting.

On the Cowboys and Patrick.

Mahomes, We're going to be great.

Whoops, not so much, right, not so fast.

So instead you get what I think is that I'll give you three games all.

Look, the five games are good, but I would argue three stand apart, and you could say four of the five are worth watching, but they're even an opening game Cavs Nicks.

I love watching Jalen Brunson play basketball, and if you haven't seen him play this year, this isn't a waste your time.

But the best game is the one, hopefully that starts before you eat your Christmas dinner, and that is Spurs Thunder Wemby Baby, the best team in the league against the best player in the league or the most unstoppable player in the league.

I don't know if he's the best yet, but my God when it is just he does things you don't see other ordinary human beings do.

He's the alien, right, He's the one of one, whatever you want to call it, it is amazing.

Go watch some Wemby if you haven't been a fan of the NBA.

Watch this is the future Oklahoma City as a team and Wemby as an individual.

This is the future of basketball being played on heights.

We've never seen the game played.

Go watch it.

The next game Mavericks Warriors.

You get to see a little bit of Cooper Flag.

This dude is for real, a lot of fun to watch.

Plus you get Steph Curry, so you get old and new, young and old Steph Curry, I think technically old enough to beat Cooper Flag's father, that's the age difference between the two.

But it was like, you know, getting to watch the brief period.

We got to watch the overlap between Kobe and Lebron.

You get to see this overlap between Cooper Flag and Steph Curry.

Rockets Lakers.

Hey, it's Luca versus the All Star team that is the Rockets with Kevin Durant and all these new young players that are absolutely worth watching on that front, and then the nightcap is Nuggets Timberwolves, and there's nobody that there are two people I really enjoy watching play basketball these days.

One is Victor one Banyama and the other is NICOLEA.

Jokic and Nuggets timber Buls And and I'm a I'm a I've got a soft spot for Anthony Edwards.

So I think this is a day and I'm normally you don't hear me as a big proponent of regular season NBA, but good for the NBA, this is a great showcase.

The NFL blew it thought they were showcasing some of their some of their best teams and some of their most marketable teams, and it imploded in their face.

They get that.

As far as bowls over the next few days that are worth you disrupting things, take a look at the Cal Hawaii game.

Hawaii's been sneaky good this year.

It's not gonna look good for the ACC, but this will be a semi home game for Hawaii.

That'll be a fascinating fun day after Christmas.

I'm gonna be honest, none of the games are worth watching.

There's no if you're saying I've got to watch college football the day after Christmas on the twin six.

You're either an alum of Central Michigan in Northwestern that's the noon game.

You're an alum of Minnesota New Mexico, although watching New Mexico beat Minnesota would be a lot of fun seeing the Big Ten lose to a team like New Mexico.

And then there's you know, the Fighting pit Bulls aka FIU in its first Bowl game in a while, playing the football program that was created by a former University MIMI head coach, Larry Coker ut San Antonio.

But let's be honest, none of those are worth it.

I will say this.

The Saturday games are a lot of fun.

You've got Penn State Clemson would be a lot more fun as a meaningful game, but still not a bad game that's going to be played in Yankee Stadium.

You've got Georgia Tech BYU.

This should be Notre Dame BYU, but we're going to get Notre Dame BYU is a series which, by the way, what a great series.

The Mormons versus the Catholics, Right, that'll be a lot of fun.

Sorry, USC that you guys are afraid of your playing nine Big Ten games and you don't want to play note name every year.

God bless you.

But you know what, BYU Notited Dame feels like a pretty good series.

But b WHYU Georgia Tech isn't a bad second place?

And I think both teams will care never bet on the grown ass men of BYU.

Remember they're all in their early twenties because they've all done their missions, so you don't have the misspent youth if you will.

And then the other game that I mildly interested in is whoever's suiting up for LSU playing the Houston Cougars.

Houston's a school that I have a feeling is only going to become more of a player in college athletics.

They already are in college basketball.

There's real money down there at that campus.

There's real enthusiasm, it's a growing alumni base.

I just have a feeling Houston has a chance to be to be interesting there.

So there's your weekend guide, a little bit of a few little nuggets to have fun conversations with about sports, to make it look like you have an athletic subscription.

But be careful trying to use some of these games as an excuse to to avoid relatives, because honestly, there's the NBA is really the only thing that's worth worth saying.

Hey, let's set let's let's set the snacks down a minute, let's check this out.

So enjoy, enjoy your holiday.

Like I said, I will have one more feed drop this week.

It's sort of a repackage of an interview I do with Jasmine Crockett.

But I do have some new information at the top of that, so it is worth your time there.

And with that I will I'll see you next week after the Christmas holidays.

I hope you have a safe, happy and healthy long Legion