Chuck Klosterman: The NFL Explains More About America Than You Think

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That's when you see it, that purple pay button that has all of your information saved, making checking out as simple as a simple tap of your screen. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world, from household names like all birds and skims to brands just getting started. Shopify is your commerce expert with world-class expertise in everything from managing inventory to international shipping to processing returns and beyond. And what if I get stuck? Shopify is always around to share advice with their award-winning 24-7 customer support. See less cards go abandoned and more sales go with Shopify and their shop pay button. Sign up for your $1 a month trial today at Shopify.co.uk slash stoic. Go to Shopify.co.uk slash stoic. That's Shopify.co.uk slash stoic. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast. Designed to help bring those four key stoic virtues, courage, discipline, justice, and wisdom into the real world. Hey, it's Ryan. Welcome to another episode of the Daily Stoic Podcast. One of the craziest experiences in my life happened in Phoenix. This would have been either 2019 or maybe February 2020. I don't remember exactly, but I got invited to do a talk at the NFL owners meeting. So that's 32 billionaires, 32 head coaches, 32 GMs, and then all their families. I did this 10 minute talk on stoic philosophy. It was actually sponsored by Ted. Like the NFL had Ted put on miniature Ted talks at the NFL owners meeting. It was surreal. And it was actually funny. I was talking to Roger Dell, who is the commissioner of the NFL. And he was like, I was huge mark. It's really a fan, which was just a surreal little experience. And I was thinking about this because I'm heading out to Phoenix at the end of this month. I'm going to be doing a talk that you can come to and grab those tickets at DailyStoicWive.com. But no, I was thinking about this because my son is playing football now. He plays flag football down in West Lake. And we've been seeing like parents who are like hardcore football parents, like not hardcore, hardcore Texas football. But but certainly like the most animated sports parents that I've seen. And football is just a crazy game. It is nuts. I mean, I love it. I love watching it. I've been to a number of NFL games. I love writing about it. I'm thinking about it. It's probably my favorite sport. Like football isn't just a sport in America. It's like part of the culture. The famous example is like of the 100 most watched television events in the last year, like 90 plus of them were football. I mean, the president is talking about who's performing at the Super Bowl halftime show. And in the last election cycle, it was a major death now that the president didn't feel up to doing a Super Bowl interview. Right? I think that kind of tells you everything you know. They were like, oh, if you can't do an interview at the Super Bowl, he can't be president. So that intersection between football and culture, life, myth, story, declassionals like the best writer in the world at that is the author of sex drugs and coca-puffs. But what if we're wrong, which is a book I love, the 90s, which is a book I love. And then his latest book, football, he's written for the New York Times on Washington Post in GQ and Esquire and ESPN. He's also founder of Grantland, one of the greatest journalism websites of all time. So when I found out one of my favorite writers was writing a book about one of my favorite sports, I was pumped and I was very excited to see if Chuck Kosterman wanted to come back on the podcast. I'm very excited to bring you this interview here during the Super Bowl week. In this episode, Chuck and I are talking about football, talking about AI, talking about shared cultural experiences, what the future generations will misunderstand about this moment in time right now. You can follow Chuck on Twitter at C. Kosterman and definitely check out his new book, football. If you want to listen to his other interview on the podcast, I'll link to that in today's show notes. And I hope to see you in Phoenix at the end of the month. If you're the owner of an NFL team, you probably don't need to come. But everyone else, very much welcome. I'll see you at dailystokelife.com I think about this thing that you wrote all the time. I think we even talked about it last time, but it's one of my favorite insights of yours. It pertains to football, but it explains, I think life generally, you were writing a piece about the Cleveland Browns. You were there in the offseason and you're walking around the facility. And as it happened, I think you were profiling Michael Embardi, who actually introduced all my books to professional football. He was there. He was the organization at the time. I was there because they had said, we will allow you to see, watch the draft, our drafting experience, which did not happen. But that was what the promise was of me showing up. Yeah, but what I took out of the piece, which was not the main subject of it, but it was just one of those little insights, which is what I think long-form journalism is best at as these little sort of a size. In anyways, you catch the whole Browns organization basically watching ESPN to see what is happening. Like, these are the experts of what they do. And they're just watching football, television journalism, like the rest of us. And we like to think that there's something more going on behind the scenes, whether it's like in politics or sports or entertainment or whatever. And then you realize like they're kind of just like the rest of us. And I mean, obviously today it would be them scrolling Twitter or their Instagram feed. But you're just like, you want to think the experts have some super exclusive intelligence that they're getting. And then they're kind of just doing the same as the rest of us. Well, I mean, you either sort of imagine that they have some sort of separate elite version of this kind of dialogue or discourse. But you certainly don't think that they are using what I think most people think of is like just kind of like the lowest form of discourse. Like the most consumer-oriented, you know, almost like the creation of narratives and all these things, you know, that we sort of see, like when I watch talking head stuff on ESPN, guys talking in a round table or on Fox, I know that they're talking about, you know, real things and they have insight in their former players and experts. But I see it more as an entertained vehicle. But this exists to basically get us from game to game, out of fill up this time. It was a little strange to see these guys to make what to make it drastic. And they're watching these things intently. Now, part of me wonders, are they watching it intently with some aesthetic distance? Like are they actually watching it for the things about it that are wrong, true? But I got to say it didn't seem like it. Like they would sort of nod their heads at the parts you're supposed to nod the head at. It was like, it was, you know, it was a surprising thing to make, you know. Yeah, it's like you wouldn't want a hedge fund manager just watching CNBC all day because you would think that that's late already. Like you would expect the news maker to be getting their information from somewhere other than the news. Because typically in life, if the media is covering something you really understand, you know, a situation happening in your hometown or maybe a story about you or whatever, you know, it's almost always wrong to some. And that's not even a criticism that just kind of the imperfection of the thing that if somebody is trying to explain a technical matter to a real technician, it's going to always seem flawed. And that's what I thought would have been the case with like the GM of an NFL football team. And if they were watching the NFL network, you know, discuss some offensive linemen from Tennessee or whatever, they would not be going like, well, this is something I gotta care about. This is, I would think they'd be like, couple of these guys just don't get it. Like that thing they're saying about leverage that's fake. Like we know that that's just fake or whatever. Maybe not, you know, maybe not maybe there is, maybe there is less of a cousin between the bottom of society, the top society that we think, at least intellectually and ideologically, maybe that there's actually, you know, a sense of the living that's totally mediated culture. Maybe that is what sort of connects the top and the bottom. I don't know. There's a phrase for that. It's honestly something more people should understand. I think it's called the gal amnesia effect. I think Michael Lewis coined it. But you have a decent definition of it in the book. You said, anytime I read an article about a subject I legitimately understand, the article has been at least partially wrong, a reaction that's become increasingly pervasive. Every national story about a localized conflict will seem earnest to the local population. It depicts any entry level exposition about a technical problem will seem imprecise to genuine tacticians. And then the amnesia effect is the part where then when we read or watch something about something we don't understand, we defer to what we've just been told as if as if the area we have expertise is the exception and not the rule to the insufficient coverage or the tendency towards inaccuracy. Well, and I think everyone who thinks that they have something to offer whatever that skill is, they kind of see it that the value is the uniqueness of it. It's coming from them that's specific to them. But as soon as then they're kind of confronted with this kind of consensus collective view, there's a little anxiety that maybe that in order to have my unique idea get across, I first got to show that I understand, you know, what the parameters of the discourse is. Like I have to show that like I understand what everybody else thinks in order to somehow enter my new thing, you know, it's probably not a bad sort of impulse because I mean, if you jump right in with like sort of the counterintuitive idea, I think it leaves some audience, you know, to think like, well, this person doesn't need we understand what the playing field is. It's like they're making up a new game or whatever. I definitely see this with AI. Anytime I ask AI a question about something I do know quite a bit about and I'm like asking it to find something that I just don't want to spend the time getting the specifics on or whatever. Anytime I kind of know the answer it's supposed to give me, I'm always very disappointed with the quality of the answer. I get bit by a jellyfish and I'm like, what should I do? I'm like, well, it says I should do this. So that's obviously what I'm going to do. You know, I'm incredibly deferential when it's well outside my area of expertise and I'm just desperate for any kind of confident answer. But if I were to ask it like what the best restaurant in Austin is, I'd be like, this thing doesn't know what the fuck it's talking about. What do you make of the synchophantic nature of AI that this sort of built in tendency it has to always begin with some kind of compliment to sort of insert this idea that your question is especially, you know, yeah, attention. Well, like, now do you think that this is part of the that the creators of AI were like, well, this is this is actually what people want. They want to feel as though they're being helped by someone who is subservient that will give them less fear that it's not like a hell situation where it's like, you know, that this is a situation where, oh, look at this, this, this AI system is behaving as though it's lucky to be talking to me. Or am I actually personifying it too much? Like, why do you think that is it's normal nature? No, I do find that annoying and weird and I think revealing about what you're sort of average human wants. I also find it strange where when it's wrong and you're like, hey, that's obviously wrong. What about this or that? And then the quickness with which it goes, oh, you're absolutely right here. And so like, there's something not just annoying about its overconfidence in giving you incorrect or insufficient or bullshit answers, but the obsequiousness and the immediacy and the spinelessness with which it will change its mind and over and over and over again until you go, okay, that's good. That's what I wanted. There's something revealing about that too where it knows that what you want to do is feel right more than you want it to give you what is right. And the speed complicate to too though, because like, let's say you had a personal assistant and you had them, you wanted you needed them to look up a bunch of information about state capital. So yeah. And you're going through the information they gave you by hand and you notice that they got something wrong about, you know, they Carson City they didn't say was the capital of Nevada and you told them this. They would be like, oh, you're absolutely right. I know this was my job to do this and I made this mistake. It's almost like the AI is doing that instantaneously, right? Like they're finding out that they're wrong, thinking about it, feeling, I don't know, ashamed about it and coming. It is bizarre. Although I wonder, like, are we the only generation of people who are going to have this dissidence? In the same way that like, really people are age are the only people who are obsessed with the difference between the pre-internet world and the posting in that world. They were constantly saying like, oh, you just have to go to a travel agent or whatever if you want, you know, now you don't have to like people older than us don't really see that, you know, like, elderly people, they maybe never really use the internet in a practical functional everyday way. People younger than us is like, oh, we're the only age kind of, like basically if you're 40 now up to maybe 60, like that's the only window of time where you've fully experienced both paradigms. When I was watching the wild card games this weekend, there's this Microsoft AI commercial where the guys like the running back or whatever runs by really fast and then he goes, oh, and he starts like typing in queries to chat GBT or whatever to narrow down, they're ranked them by this and then do this and then do this. And like what strikes me about it is just no one would do that because no one would trust a thing that like imagine if Excel, Excel does all sorts of calculations for you, right? And if Microsoft Excel was just wrong, like 10 to 15% of the time and you're like, when you just added all these cells up incorrectly and you're like, that's wrong. And then Excel was just like, oops, yeah, you're right. Let me do it correct this time, right? Like the air rate that we're willing to accept with chat GBT is like, or any of the AIs is so enormous to me. It strikes me as like this crazy thing that no one's talking about. Like we're like, hey, it's amazing. You can do this stuff, but also it's like preposterously laughably wrong, a significant percentage of the time. And you don't know what that time is, but by the way, you should lay off your staff and replace it with this thing. Well, it is interesting. I do think about the early days of Wikipedia. Yeah. Well, when I was in a newspaper, the idea in those days, if you would use Wikipedia at all, as any kind of source, it would have been like, you're fired for that. Now it actually seems probably more secure than most sources. But is that just because everything else has gotten worse? Well, that's part of it. Certainly. But also, I think over time, sort of these things that are all kind of user-generator, whatever they are going to improve. I mean, it's very interesting. Okay, so I'm sure you're familiar with this. This anthropic lawsuit about books. Yeah, I was just filling out the thing the other day because my agent was like, no, no, I can't do it for you. You have to do it. And now I'm like, I have to fill it out like 20 times. Well, let me just, well, actually, you don't. Okay, and I'll say, this is how I know. Okay, so I hear about this second hand. I didn't know anything about this. For people who don't have any any what this is, anthropic, which I believe is the search engine. I think that people call Clawed. I don't use this one. But so it turns out there's like this class action scene. And you can you can opt into it or you can opt out of it. And what initially I thought was if you opted into it, admit you were giving them access to your books. As it turns out, they've taken them all already. That's all in the machine. So if you have any works that were used by anthropic, if you fill out this form, I believe you get like, it's like $3,100 per work. And then you get half and you're published. You're just half. Yes. So, you know, I like you. I had a lot of books on there, right? So the actual amount of money was not right and significant. Okay. So I'm like, I'm going to do this. I'm going to opt into it. But it was very difficult to do with all these things. Until I asked chat GPT how to do it. And it made it incredibly easy. It did a lot of the things for me. I mean, it was the first time that I ever used one of these things in a way that was actually practical. And I do, you know, in every other situation I've ever been in professionally, what like to me, chat GPT is good for like, you put a sentence in and go like, is it grammatically correct? It's good for stuff like that. But this was the first time it actually gave me how to like take all of the works and they get into one file and present it all at once. Yeah. And then it's checked it all for me. And it said it can look up to see if to make sure it was received. It was like, so this thing that I'm technically suing, right? I'm suing the idea of this system, which is already taken all of my work. I was out of the barn or everyone you want to see it. And they it's out. So it's like, well, you get this little money now. And away I was almost like, well, what happens if I, I guess if you don't opt in the only upside is you, there could be a lawsuit that you could opt into later. They say the settlement will never be this big. I don't know. It's a, it was, it's a strange deal. It really like, it was a real collision that like of modernity. Like this thing that everybody sort of said was going to happen. All of a sudden it was like, it already happened. It already happened. You know, it's like, as soon as I have to start filling out like complex forms, I start to immediately go, wait, how much am I getting paid for this because I might just not do it. Well, yeah, because then suddenly you're weighing it against time, right? Yes. Like, is the amount of time this is going to take worth where I'm going to get back? Like, you notice what I get back, you know, yes. And then what are the chances that I'll actually get it back at all? And then I start to start making excuses. And I was like, you know what, this seems like a task I should give to someone else. And so now that I know I can give it to chat you be tea. That's a, that's nice to know. 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And I'm reading this sort of exhibit about it and I didn't know how big chariot racing was in the ancient world that like chariot racing was like after the sort of rise and fall of the gladiatorial games chariot racing becomes sort of the main sport of the of the Roman Empire. And I'm reading about this event this is like in 500 AD or something. There's a chariot racing and basically the chariot racers get it's like red and green and blue and the different colors are basically associated with different political factions. And apparently there's a there's like a chariot race during the reign of Justinian that goes sideways and maybe there's allegations of cheating. I forget what it is exactly but like this riot breaks out and like 30 or 40,000 people are killed in a riot during a chariot race in the center of what was then the Roman Empire. And I remember just thinking like okay yeah this would be like if if the different divisions in in the NFL became associated with Republican or Democrat or libertarian or whatever and then during the Super Bowl or riot breaks out and the end of the story is the emperor is almost forced to abdicate because like his chariot faction loses and then he tries to intervene. And so there is something about like whatever the dominant sport is in a period of time that that just becomes absorbed into culture and into the entire sort of political and social system of a country. And it is weird that football has become that you sort of marvel at that at the book that like you wouldn't think it would be football and somehow it is football. Well I mean football has done this in a way that's also so clear. I mean it is it's not really a debatable thing. There's no argument in the United States over what sport is most reflective of society or most popular of all these things like we understand it. Football is an interesting thing because you know it starts in the 19th century and sort of evolves on its own for about 70 or 80 years and then intersects with sort of the rise of television and that is really what makes this happen. In terms of the sort of the metaphorical and symbolic significance it takes on. The things about society it absorbs, the things about society it reflects. And that is chance right? You obviously can't start a sport before the invention of a medium and think like it one day it might work for it. I don't think the inventors of television saw this is a perfect vessel for football. I think they thought that about boxing and horse racing and things like that. You know baseball. But to me now and big reason I want them to do this book is I think if you're thinking about the United States from you know the last half of the 20th century and you're trying to understand it through another thing through an outside idea like football is probably the best source for that. I don't know if that will be true going into the 21st century. But I think that for the last half of the 20th century like football was and is this like sort of like kind of reflective profound thing. It's a found in kind of an underrated way. Like it is just a sport. It is a form of entertainment. It is kind of just a distraction. And yet there is I think a deepness to why it became you know so central to not just like you know American popularity but like American identity specifically certain regions of the country where football is I mean I'm almost inarguably the most important extension of culture in those places. Yeah it's like the only monoculture left. You make a point in there that I didn't think about which is like it makes sense that soccer is the most popular sport in the world because anyone can play soccer anywhere and you can play it in in a bunch of different conditions that are all close to you know what you would see or experience like watching it professionally or watching it on television or whatever. And then you're like the very small number of people that play football American football versus how popular it is. That feels like it says something like it is weird that the supposedly democratic country has as its game and its sort of iconic sport. A fundamentally elitist game in the sense that not that many people play it. Maybe not elitist but exclusionary. For sure. Yes. Yes. And I mean there are many things about this that seem to contradict what what you would expect if say you were some alien you know thinking about what America wants to think about itself. Okay. The fact that no team sport is so dictated and is so controlled by the things outside of the field itself. You know the play coming from the press box down to the sideline sent in by a messenger. You gotta look at the Byzantine code on your wristbands you know it's like it's the most controlled thing. One of the you know the popular ideas I mentioned this often I mentioned the book like this this essay that the art critic David Hickey once wrote about basketball was that the larger idea was that any rules or sort of bylaws of a sport should try to liberate the players. Well that's what we care about right we care about the people on the field so we want to give them the maximum amount of freedom kind of creative expression. Football does the opposite. Football is not made for the individual it is made for the collective. It is made in this higher articles you know stratified thing where what you're seeing is never accidental. It is the most corporate sport not just in terms of the extension of how it works in actual business. The construction of the game has many sort of similarities to any kind of highly controlled system is is built and I think that it kind of shows that this is what people want like we want freedom for ourselves. Yeah we want control for the rest of the world like we want to feel like we have agency but we're more comfortable I think seeing others act without it. Yeah no and you're point about like what are what are we going to think about what football says about us 50 years from now 100 years from now just like what do we think about what the the various sort of cultural obsessions about the Romans and the Greeks says about them like I think I was in Greece this summer and one of the things that I I find so interesting is like the Greeks had a bunch of different running sports but all of their running events none of them involved them going around in a circle like they had straight sprints and then their distance ones involved like running to a line and then running back it was this like sort of you would do these multiple stadium length wind sprints basically and I don't know what it says but it says something interesting that they weren't just like the the track is circular because they would do charity events but people wouldn't run in a circle what does that say it's just weird you know there's just endlessly fascinating revealing little quirks that you learn about a society when you study what it watches but here's the deal when we talk about something like that as a retro spectrific like we're looking back we do exactly what you just did it's like what does it mean it must mean something right yeah and the only meaning that we can apply are typically meanings that would exist in the present tense yeah like it had just never occurred to them this they had a very linear way of thinking that they somehow they believe the curves you know the curves of the track created some kind of you know mystical advantage like you know we always have to see what was the reason for this and the fact of the matter is there probably was a reason for it there probably maybe even a real kind of practical explanation but that's not how we want to think about it because we think of it as history and history want to have meaning that's a big part of like sort of I guess kind of the conceit of this book which is that I know that there is going to be a time in the future when football is not the last remedy of the model culture it's not the center of like how American entertainment and you know and recreation operates it's going to be something that is either I don't think the probably I don't think it'll be gone in a totality but it will be this niche thing this minor thing and then people are going to try to explain why and I am I'm not sure exactly what that description will be but I think it will be wrong and I suspect it will be pejorative because that's usually how we work we look at something in the past that failed and we're like well it failed because it had a problem and that problem was in Demick to the world it comes from so I wanted to do a book that was like okay so you read you know obviously it's it's kind of a kind of a gimmick because I'm trying to sell this book to people who are alive I'm doing this podcast right I'm not doing this podcast for people who have not yet been born I do not expect people to listen to this podcast in a hundred years and then find this book sure but I do like to think about time in this way where like how can I reflect what the present actually is like for people who will have no way to access it like whatever we think about Roman gladiators you know it's the ton of knowledge about the mechanics of how it worked and all that but I don't think it's possible for people in this day and age to truly understand what it really felt like or what the motive was or what people wanted or how it was view like we assume it was viewed in some way like the way we view football I guess I can understand that relationship but I bet it wasn't that way you know I always kind of almost concerned I don't concern this their own word I guess obsessed with this idea of like I want things to be remembered the way they actually were not the way we can project the present onto them it is interesting though like we we assume when there is a monoculture that it is in fact an actual monoculture and that there wasn't a divergence of opinions at the time right like so so we go okay the Romans really liked gladiatorial games they obviously thought it was okay to know send criminals and whomever in there to fight and die and and how grotesque and violence this is violent this is and then I think it's really interesting you know there's this essay that Sennaka writes where he's not talking about this at all and then suddenly he kind of goes into this tangent and he's like why are we doing this it's so violent and horrible like who likes this you know and you go like oh yes some people thought it was dumb then too right and so there we always assume that everyone was on the same page and certainly they they weren't oh absolutely yes and you know but what I'm saying is the people who are critics of football now in a future world those people I think are going to be seen as the guideposts because the thing failed right right and it will seem like oh well you know they're saying it's it's barbaric and it was this it was a blood sport or whatever that must have been what it was but you know you should bring up just kind of casually like lots of interesting things like we mentioned the monoculture right yeah okay so what's something that's a a thing a lot of people who study or follow TV know they know that the last episode of mash was the most watch show in history and that will never happen again that is now absolutely impossible that is show could have that many people watching one episode all at the same time and yet what were people saying at the time it was saying the monoculture was over because cable television had come into play and suddenly it was possible to get you know the New York Times in Seattle the world was becoming this sort of already these things before the internet exists we're kind of using these terms you see you'll go back and find things where like people use terms like means and like and like you know at the global village and all that stuff so this thing that we now understand to be the apex of the monoculture I have a 53 million people in whatever it was watching this episode of you know a Korean war sitcom or whatever at the time they already believed the thing that we say about it now was over that the monoculture to them had been you know the 50s that was a monoculture you know right with the 20s yeah it's it's so weird realizing that there was a present moment at every moment in history like I just went down this this weird rabbit hole like did you know there was another Winston Churchill like in the late 1800s early 1900s there was an American writer a novelist named Winston Churchill who was so famous like in 1901 he had like the best-selling book in America he was so famous that Winston Churchill went by Winston Spencer Churchill for most like people don't even know Winston Churchill the statesman supported himself as a writer and there's all these like there's this great book called the No More Champagne where it's like basically a biography of Churchill as a writer and as a guy who spent more money than he had and there's all these like things about him complaining about his agent and his publisher and it's fascinating but but like Churchill went by Winston Spencer Churchill so people wouldn't confuse him with Winston Churchill the author who is selling millions and millions of books and not all and he's just totally forgotten like just nobody knows that he exists even though he sold millions and millions of books and if you had asked people in 1906 you know are people going to remember who Winston Churchill was they'd be like yeah he's a great novelist the idea that we would remember him as the guy that saved the world of western civilization as a statesman from a different country would have been like utterly incomprehensible are you a big Churchill guy you know about him yeah because there's one thing I've always wondered about him I'll tell this anecdote maybe maybe you're familiar with it I had heard that so you know in those in his era is that we're talking with political era you know everybody smokes right yeah everyone was smoking so he would remove all the ash trays from the room and he had figured out a way to sort of not need to ash his cigarette as much and eventually someone else would ask him for an ash tray and he felt this gave him a tactical advantage what was the advantage like what would be that what would that advantage be like like that I don't want to ask you for an ash tray yes and that was and he saw this is sort of like that it was almost like who blinked first or something I've always wondered I've heard that story more than once but I've never had an explanation as to what the advantage would be but I don't really doubt it right obviously you know what he was doing you know I mean this is the guy who is drunk all the time and yet saved the world or whatever you know I was like he's an amazing person it's weird I've read a lot of Churchill and I've never heard that story or if I have I skipped over it not thinking much about it you know the other weird one you hear all the time is like they go like do you know how much shit there was on the streets of New York City and like the horse era you know like I heard that one again the other day Chicago especially they out there Chicago because they they culture called with the city of horses yeah yeah there's just like manure everywhere because there's so many horses and then one day it's just gone but that's one that it happened in my lifetime obviously not as much but but just like the idea there was smoking ashes everywhere all the time and then just like that it disappears and then every once in a while you're in a casino where they let you smoke and you just go I can't imagine what the world was like when it was like this all the time I remember on it we went on a trip as a kid we were in Arkansas and we stopped it like a sizzler or something and it was still there was a smoking section and a non smoking section and that's the last one that I remember being like oh this is horrible it is amazing how something can change and it's almost like that period just disappeared like there were ash trays in hospital waiting rooms yes like you could smoke in the hospital you could smoke in the hospital and it was it's you know Sam Gwen at SC Gwain he wrote Empire the Summer Moon he wrote that book the perfect pass about the invention of the forward pass and football okay he's an amazing writer she wrote this book called Empire of the Air about like the Hindenburg it's about like blimps you know but they're not called blimps I'm forgetting what I how to pronounce the actual word but anyways he's talking about this one famous one that that goes down like the Hindenburg and there's this whole section in the book about there were smoking rooms on those blimps those blimps filled with highly yes there was a sealed smoking room on those blimps and like it's not just like oh this this used to be a thing and we forgot about it but it's like no no there used to be like legalized insanity just like everyone was collectively insane about something and then we've just pretended that it didn't didn't happen well I mean although like I this has come up in a few other podcasts if you heard this story about you know the San Francisco 49ers have seemingly many more injuries and every other team over the last five years and not people are wondering is it because of their practice site is located next to this like electromagnetic site or whatever it's like it's right next you you look it up there's me is it possible in some future world or like do you realize that like people didn't even realize that having like an electrical plant near people was it but yeah at the same time here in the present like it would be weird you'd really be a marginalized person if you were like I refused to come within one mile of a you know of a power plant or a transformer or something but if it suddenly became obvious that that was like the main factor for a whole laundry list of problems then we'd be like people were so crazy it's like smoking a cigarette on a zeppelin or whatever you know but it's not it's not because we don't have that understanding now we're always trying to do this we're always trying to put the understanding of the world we have now onto the past I mean I'm not blaming people for doing it I do it all the time it's just it's but it it's crazy it's you know well they bring the smoking thing back to sports it is crazy when you watch those you look at those videos or you you see photos of like athletes smoking during half time yes smoking in the locker room because that one isn't it's not like oh you shouldn't smoke because you know you might get cancer many years from now like they were coughing like like smoking is something where like the smoker tangibly daily feels the consequences to doing the thing no one would feel that more directly than an athlete doing a sport with lots of cardio in it and yet there they are things get sort of built into your brain and they don't really change like I'm looking at you you're wearing this New Orleans Saints jacket you know so when I think of the New Orleans Saints part of me still reverts back to my first exposure to them which was the year I really got into football cards and the Saints went one in 15 so my natural impulse my natural inclination when I think of the Saints is to think of like part of me says like well that's like the worst that's like the worst franchise surely nothing they want super bowl since then everything has changed there are if someone were to say if I were asked to be to rank that you know all every franchise in the NFL historically the greatest of the worst they would not be at the bottom for sure but there's a part of my brain that sees that like I guess without we say like the lizard part or ever and I'm like oh yeah they had archie manning and nothing else they had Chuck Muncie but he wasn't good yet because he didn't go to the chargers I still think of the first undisclosed I add to the Saints you know well I my first one is I remember I got a book out of my school library and there was a picture on the front of that kicker whose name I'm forgetting who who didn't have the front of his foot yeah he broke the NFL record with half a foot yes yeah and and I just was like what is this this is insanity like how do I not know about this and that that's what took me down the the rabbit hole yeah it's strange you know in a way he only had half a foot but it was a huge advantage I know because they they allowed him to wear a shoe that has steel plate where the toes would be so he was actually like hammering the ball with almost a literal hammer with his foot you know so it's always that's always a weird thing because that for many years was I think believe it was a 63 yard field goal that was this no longer the record but it was for a long time it was I certainly in into the 90s I think maybe a guy from Denver tied at that point but there was always that you know it was always sort of like a profile encourage you're like you know like this I would half a foot is the kick the longest field goal and it's like well yes also you did have the advantage of kicking the steel but you know it's a well I almost told that story in my book the obstacle is the way and it's not like the the record now is like 10 yards further it's not that much further I think yeah I think yeah it's I think it's it's not that much I mean there is probably a limit to what a kick could be you know yes and but in regardless it still is an obstacle I mean yes he had this advantage of this shoe that was specially designed for a guy with half a foot but that also meant at some point in his life he had half a foot and he was like I'm gonna pursue field goal kicking yeah that is an amazing thing right I recall the last time we talked we talked a lot about iron maiden like you're of course yes you're right I think yes so would you like black Sabbath as well yeah sure you know I love black Sabbath and the classic story about black Sabbath were one of the many ones is on the last day of working in the factory before we became a full-time member of a band Tony Ion he's working in the factory and the tips of his fingers are all cut off you know and I was left hand he's he is plays left hand until it's his right hand that has no finger tips you know and you can't it would seem to be the end of this right like his mother made him go to work even though he was quitting he's like he got to finish her last day and he's like I'm a musician you like go your last day thing comes down you know cuts off his fingertips he's kind of you know obviously depressed and and believes it is over and someone brings him a record and plays the record form and I won't remember the name of the artist somebody else listening to this will know the guy plays the record and Tony Ion he's like oh okay this is a guy's a pretty good guitar player thanks you know that's like not the greatest time for me to hear this and the guy goes okay the guy on this record has one arm he only has one arm and then Tony Ion was like if this guy can play this with one arm like I can figure out a way to you know you know he starts so he starts you know burning wax to cover his fingertips so you can press down on the strings and eventually they just he just builds up the calses and the reason blacks have a sound is different than every other band who's tried to copy them it's probably this the fact that the guy playing the guitar just not have fingertips but there's another part of this which is like there's a guy who pursued playing guitar and became a virtuoso with one arm what motivates a person to do that it's like yeah you would think that if you like if I lost my arm I wouldn't give up right I wouldn't give up my life like I wouldn't be like I want to do something but I don't think I would pick a job or a vocation seems so specifically geared toward the two-armed guy we know McDonald's always had a joke about that about this but the portrayal is the thriller from Australia who had those like ski things you know and and nor McDonald was against this guy and people are like a wide because you believe he murdered his wife which was always in the news and he was like no no it's that you shouldn't be a sprinter if he if he doesn't have I mean that you know it should be like you should have to be a bikehead you're whatever to be a sprinter you know I know he's joking of course but there is something funny about that the idea that like I'm gonna try to do something that seems so geared against the natural peculiarities of my body you know well it's also weird that like we as a society like your point about like okay he has a steel plate in a shoe and that might give him this small you know statistical advantage in one sense and then our our sense of fairness is so binary and obviously you could you could connect this to a bunch of other debates that we have as a society but we get obsessed over whether there is objectively one bit of advantage here and totally tune out or refuse to consider all the other disadvantages that person had and then we're like see it's it's not fair they should be excluded right like we're we're like profoundly obsessed with you know whether Pistorias his legs give him this slight advantage and not considering like okay but but 99% of the population when they were born without legs or whether they lost their legs or whatever would have just not pursued this sport at all this guy's obviously coming from an enormous disadvantage in the fact that he's even he's even being considered as an enormous you know triumph like certainly the game is not rigged in this guy's favor even if these blades are giving him a slight advantage on the on the field yeah like do you remember like Jim Abbott the pitcher yeah you know so this is a guy who only one arm you know so he he would tuck his glove underneath his kind of his stump or whatever pitched with one hand then jam is handed to the glove and then he would field with it if he the ball came down you would then kind of pop the ball up and throw it at first base yeah now this is so he was an amazing story when I was a kid that would be like I feel like he get a weekly reader or whatever and it's like look at this guy he's a one arm pitcher you know you know he had a few seasons at the end of his career that were really a business that in all likelihood if he if he had been a normal pitcher maybe he would have been you're relegated to triple A or double A or something and he wasn't but it's odd because you know I say that and yet those were still some of the most amazing and stories and successes anyway good at like he's pitching with one arm it would be like like somebody asked me who like my favorite drummers are and I would be like oh hey John Bonham and you know it's like but like I should probably say the guy from Jeff Leopard yes one arm right like he literally can't do drum fills it can't if it's impossible but yet you know so but I don't think I don't think of him in that way I don't think of it as a elite drummer even though the thing he's done is the most amazing thing a drummer probably has ever done to be a one arm drummer and a band of that magnitude a hard rock band where drumming is really important granted there was all this technology to help him and all this but still if you're selling online or out of a storefront full time or a side hustle you know it's a challenge people got to find you you got to wait for them to walk in well today's sponsor what not flips that on what not you go live and sell directly to people in real time they see what you got they ask questions and they buy and you know what they keep coming back what not is the largest dedicated live shopping platform whether it's 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extra 10 percent off your order that's P-E-S-T-I-E dot com slash dog for an extra 10 percent off so you mentioned baseball and that it made me think of something when I was reading the intro of the book because you're talking about like sort of who the book was for and you're sort of setting it up that that maybe you weren't doing yourself any favors by by writing it for this group versus that group I wonder if there's something revealing about football in that there's a lot of great baseball books there aren't that many football books is there something about football that like it's such a televised sport that we don't we don't read about it but what or maybe that's just baseball's sort of was the dominant game in the era when books were more popular but I I guess there's the blind side or yeah I mean there's a cliche about this there's a cliche about sports books which is that the best books are like a disproportionate to the size of the ball so it's like like golf yeah a lot of a lot of writing about golf okay baseball a lot of writing about baseball tennis is net you know football less actually now basketball has sort of changed this that there's that that the sort of the the meaning of basketball in part because it has like such an ability to discuss things like you know race and these things basketball has become almost like easy symbolism or easy allegory but I'll say like my publisher did not want me to do a football book like straight up said like football books don't sell I think the thinking being that you know people who love football don't necessarily want to read about it and people who sort of have like a I know ideological or intellectual issue with football aren't interested in the sport itself so it's like hard to find this middle ground you know but this is the book I wanted to do so it's like I'm always surprised when I talk to other writers and they tell me and this happens a lot I bet you've had this experience with people that they tell you that they're agent or they're publishing house kind of convinced them not to do a book they wanted to do yeah that they'd say like well it's not commercial or it's like they're like that has been tried before and it's failed and it's like you cannot think that way I mean it's like of course like because you have to work a you know for a book you work on it for a year and then it takes another year before it comes out so in a way you're like kind of living with this thing for two years like it has to be something you want to do even if nobody else wants it I mean that is the most important thing it's got to be something you want to do you know yeah no no I mean I think there's two separate issues there I just think it's it's like there's something about how television centric football is that it's not lost on me that it's it's not a literary sport either but baseball which is kind of boring to watch on TV and great to watch in person is somehow the more literary of the sports but so is boxing that's true yes right it's like the thing about football the thing you're mentioning is something I hadn't really thought about I mean I've thought a lot about obviously this book about football's relationship with television I didn't think about this though the idea that by being so married to television and that you know one of the things like it can be aphorisms I guess using this book is that like you know football is a completely mediated event even when there's no media involved but now the experience of watching a football game live with no cameras is still understood by the consumer as it would be seen on television it is possible that because you know this this kind of interlocking idea of this entertainment medium in this game just sort of became the same thing and so dominant that you know that the 100 most popular broadcasts in the year 20 23 like 93 or NFL games and then three or four more were college football games I mean that's just a crazy statistic it would make no sense in any other society there's just nothing like this right maybe that does overwrite the possibility to write about it yeah like in a sense it's like in the same way it's you know it's like a if you're doing you know film criticism you're usually talking about the ideas and you're still also talking about the plot of the film but you don't want to talk about the plot of the film too much for two reasons one you don't want to give it away but also it doesn't really work and a description of a story will either of a film particularly because it's only like two hours is either going to say in like weirdly rudimentary or too complicated to really get like the visual part of film is a hard thing to write about only the best film writers are really good at it football I guess in the same way because of the visual experience of television is so pervasive and dominant in the mind of every consumer it is difficult to describe like describing a football play and I do it a few times in this book always seems awkward well there's too many characters there's two like boxing baseball obviously has a decent amount of guys on the field but but the action is is so distributed in in football it's very hard to describe and it almost goes against our natural instincts like I thought it was revealing there was an interview it might have been on their podcast where where Taylor Swift was talking about how she thought that the Kelsey brothers had faced off against each other like she didn't it didn't occur to her that they weren't would have never been on the field at the same time and and you're like oh yeah because that's not how you would design it if you were thinking about designing it for being like like the idea that the best players are not like that the two leaders of the teams are not on the field at the same time is not how you would guess the biggest game in America is is designed there are so many things about football that if you described to someone who had no idea about it it would seem not just confusing but like almost straight up bad like it you like this thing like you said like you could say like okay so the best player in the league might not touch the ball the entire season it would be very easy for that to happen okay the fact and I just just talked about it in the book but you know it's like so like the Wall Street Journal in 2011 did this kind of study where they found that in a three-hour broadcast of an NFL game there are 11 minutes of action and this is often described as like it's used by people who are trying to convince you that football is not interesting or whatever yeah and as it turns out I think 11 minutes within a three-hour window is actually perfect but enough pitch meeting it would make no sense yes like if I if I was saying like hey I came up with this new board game takes about three hours to play however you only make 11 moves during the game most of the time you know I was like nobody would be like up you'd be like you know like like risk without moves or whatever you know I'm sure yeah and they actually do some riffing on it on that on that Nate Bergette SNL skit the George Washington one where it's like okay it's it's football but you don't use your feet so oh so there's no kicking what whether some kicking and then it's like and it's kind of worth this many points and then sometimes it's worth this many the only thing more confusing than American football is Australian football and I I had the experience I went to one of their games and they were explaining it to me and I was like what are you talking about this is like you took the most complicated and nonsensical game and you made it much more complicated and nonsensical is kind of perfect but it was weird to be like a foreigner watching a football game and going oh and this is this is what people who are not Americans think when you talk to them about the Dallas Cowboys or whatever yeah I think another sport is cricket yes like when the first time like someone tells you like a little cricket game it might take two days it might take two days it is like why why would you think two days like what's going what's happening it's like well it's not much is actually happening but it you know it seems very confusing but in some ways that is the charm of these things I mean what I think that like I sometimes you know it's like in the book bright lights big city you know it's just nobody thinks about anymore but there's almost no other good novels in the second person okay in that sense Jay Maccorderney kind of ruined it for us right no one can do a second person novel now even all these years later if I wrote a novel in the second person Jay Maccorderney we mentioned every single you know so like he was like he's that that alone is the brilliance of that movie he's like doing this but there's a scene in the book where the guy walks into a bar and like he asks you there's a sports I can't read what the sport is even but it might be like hockey because he says like what quarter is it the guys like it's the second period yeah and it is because this character knows nothing about sports and he says like my whole life I've been cut out of the world's largest fraternity and I do sometimes think about but I mean this is kind of a gender thing like of guys who don't follow sports at all I can't imagine what it must be like to go to a lot of the functions like I go to as a father like if we go to some event some school event and it's some you know the kids are doing whatever they're doing the wives are usually talking and the guys are talking and the likelihood that we are talking about our kids or sports is about 98% yes Aaron like I think there was a time when people would have talked about politics but that's very touchy now yes but very nervous about that now I live in the Pacific Northwest which is one of the weird things about this is people don't like to talk about their jobs like I when I was in New York if someone started talking to you like you met him first thing to ask is what do you do here they might be like what kind of mountain bike to your own or some fucking yeah because there's a chance you might not have a job right yeah well yes well also this I'll hear there's this I say this is crazy now this is something that before I moved here I would have said that sounds positive but now it seems crazy this real emphasis on do not let your job define you in any way never give the sense that what you do is something you know it's like well actually what I do is my identity but regardless what I'm saying is for these dads right we're sitting around talking about sports and now gambling that also always comes up there's always some people just hanging out there and and in my mind I think oh they're kind of quiet maybe they're shy but then another part of me is like they just don't care about Auburn and Alabama like they must think we're insane sitting here talking about whether or not the line on an Alabama Auburn game is too high that it's like oh it's eight and a half you've got to take them you know they deserve it you know I don't even gamble I don't gamble but I'm constantly talking to God is about betting lines in football because it is just part of being a middle-aged dude now definitely discuss you know and and luckily my entire life prepared me to do that because I've been thinking about football constantly for 45 years there's so funny I've been trying to get my kids to like football since basically they were born and it's not work I have two boys and they just came home from school one day this year and they're they like football because some kid at school likes the Eagles and now now they like football and it was before bed you know a couple weeks ago and my son was like can I watch my iPad before bed and I'm like no you know you don't do that it's time to go to bed he's like can I watch something on your phone no and he's like hey wait isn't it Monday can I watch the Monday night football and I go yeah and so I go and I get the laptop from watching it a little bit and then it goes I just figured it out and I go what and he's like football is an excuse to watch TV and I'm like you got it dude you figured it out you crack the code like that's what it is it's it's just a thing to watch on TV I mean saying this makes me sound like I'm 90 but this thing you described I think was also a key to kind of the all-encompassing nature of football during the last half of the 20th century which was that you know you know when I grew up and a lot of people like me most people like me there was one television in the house there's a living room and you know it was usually was controlled by your parents often your dad and if there was ever a football game on that's what was we were watching like there it didn't it had no and then you know what the teams or the investment there was nothing that we were going to watch instead of football if it was on so like I'm the seventh kid in my family even my sisters who don't care about football really at all they understand the culture and the kind of mechanics of football much better than like most people I meet now just because it was this shared sort of experience if your son had if you've been raising your son in the 80s those first three steps of can I watch the iPad or can I look at that one to bin there you'd be like can I stay up yeah well okay how we're close cell is on yeah so any any would you just sit there and watch it you know I do think that part of you know you always hear these stories now that are just completely and they're probably exaggerated but they're mystifying to me in some ways where people are like I can't go home at Thanksgiving I politically disagree with my parents and my uncles or whatever like I can't do that like I'm cutting my family off or whatever and or people who would be like I feel very isolated it's like I don't really have a social you see these statistics where it's like men averaging less than one friend to prepare you know like all these agonement of male loneliness I too wonder how much of that is a manifestation of the end of the completely shared monoculture of the living room where there used to be stuff that we all watch the same shows it's just that if you're if you're watching anything this is what you're watching and now that would never be the case there are many situations where me my wife and our two kids are all watching separate things simultaneously you know saying it's hard to get your kids to watch football you know I think every guy kind of like a person maybe who likes football kind of wishes that their kid did too it's this very difficult sport to get your kid into because it doesn't have a natural kind of engagement there's so many rules you know sometimes I'm watching the red zone and my son comes down and it's like I don't know if he understands it's like it's going from game game because he's never thought of these things yeah and I'm totally comfortable with my kid not caring about football not playing football I in no way whatever want to enforce the things that I like under my kids I just think that's the worst thing you do but I always think to myself you know there was a period in my life in my 20s when I didn't really have anything to talk to my dad about you know but we did still talk about like who was Notre Dame recruiting you know did the North Dakota State bison win the previous weekend it really did allow us to sort of have the surrogate relationship until I got old enough to recognize it's like oh man my dad's going to die and this is these are important you know it's like things changed I hate the idea that like that there could be a period where that's harder to find with my kids like maybe it'll be film or maybe music it'll be something else I'm not going to let this happen and football's not the only way but man that was an easy way to have it happen you know I had an expert level knowledge of football when I was like nine or ten because I would read and memorize every statistic in the sporting news I would watch the NFL today I would watch the anytime there were everything in sports illustrate if it was about a sport I liked I read I consumed every aspect of this so even as a nine-year-old kid I remember you know like older people at our house relatives or whatever and I could talk to them about these games in a way that you know that they think I think they thought was cute but it was also completely normal it was like two adults talking it was the only adult conversation I was having in a way and that's just it's hard to do that like magic to gather it you know it's like it's hard to do that you know yeah yeah you and you'll talk to a kid about football in a way that you wouldn't talk to them about politics or something there's an equal equality under the game kind of thing like what you'll you'll allow to have opinions about it as a nine-year-old in the way that you're not about other monoculture things and it's like I mean it really is like a simulation or a simulator I mean it's like the stakes are lower yeah and the same what you're talking about the same things you would be talking about like if you're talking about oh you know oh oh you know should Mike Tomlin be forced out or whatever or like you know it's is there some kind of you know stylistic problem with Lamar Jackson or whatever these are in many ways like kind of complex new asked things yes but in sports you don't the nuance can sort of be not ignored but it can be the underlying part of it the top part is just the conversation you know in politics that is that it's harder to do I mean it happens in politics if you're talking about what's going on politically and some ways you're talking about these fundamental ideas like about you know what is democracy really does you know what is fascism really we're all these you know but it's you're right it's it's harder you know and it's less interesting to them yeah no no it was mad I mean I'm so glad it it happened and now it's like now we have something to watch and sort of that's not you know brain rot on YouTube so I'll take it yeah now it's weird because some people hear that and they think that they just that you meant oh YouTube rots your brain there actually is this thing called Italian brain rot maybe every parent knows that but like you know it's like anybody who doesn't they hear that term and they're like oh it's just like that must be the term they use now to describe like kind of useless frivolous information no it's actually these creatures with Italian names that do nothing I mean that and you know as the whole I just find this stuff really you think like the whole six seven and all these things they all so much of like kid culture now is based in a kind of absurdism yeah that I do think is reflective of something more than just kids are weird you know because there's always been aspects of that kids have always been into kind of absurd things I mean people will be like oh yeah they used to have pet rocks or whatever but this is different where it seems as though the absurdism is the complete meaning of it no anything that's because the kids are contributing to the culture for the first time like in the sense like it feel I feel like what kids used to be into even relatively recently you know it's like hey kids like Paw Patrol because presented between these choices of shows they seem to like Paw Patrol more than these other shows now they're like the kids are actually talking to each other or have much more control over the the remote and the the kids are it's not just a one way relationship like the kids are driving the memes in a way that they weren't before oh well I think you're right about that for sure there also like these ideas are allowed to sort of flourish in these silos of youth where you know if say in the past or whatever it's like if if I'm watching I know facts of life or whatever and for some reason Tudy and Natalie are always going six seven six seven yeah like I could see like someone older than the house being like this is stupid but we're gonna change to Magnum or whatever like you know like if they were not we're not gonna whereas now they're able to like like the whole thing with the Minecraft movies a great example of this where it's like people were seemingly surprised that these kids were going to this Minecraft movie and like there were all these innocuous things that made them just go ballistic but it's like they were able to build that world in private and then suddenly it spills into the world at large and it's just confusing and you know young people have always been confusing to old people but but what also was interesting is that we're also now expecting to understand this more than our parents or grandparents were yes like you know the very first book I wrote for the rock city I talk about this sort of I like one time how is like my dad was at the kitchen table my old family and he was talking about our neighbor's cabinet okay our neighbor had many different breeds of catty and some herfers he had some dairy cattle he had like other weird he had like no one did this right and my dad was was talking about seeing this this small herd of like disparate cattle and he was like what a motley crew that is or whatever and everybody in my on the table starts chuckling laughing haha they're all looking at me at my dad's like you know whoa what you know now some people would hear that story I think and be like oh see that's sad it was like this thing that I loved as a sixth grader or whatever you know my dad had like you I didn't feel that way I was like this proves my dad has never been in my bedroom yeah because I had I had a motley crew butter sticker over my bed I had a motley crew post I had I was like he obviously had never snooped in my room we never looked around like I felt really it was almost a secure thing to be it was like it showed that he had absolutely no now crannum on the seventh kid so my dad was a lot older than the typical father now it's almost impossible to imagine that happening like I mentioned magic the gathering like I'd never played that game in my life until my kid got into it now I play it most days so now I have this and I have this understanding of the game and all these things like and what's good about it the problem with it it's just real interesting because you know they always say as a parent you can't be a friend you need to be a parent but the way modern parenting works it's very difficult not to be friends because you're sharing all these things my kids like to listen to the top 40 station so I know all those songs like that wasn't how it was for me or anyone I knew going up I didn't know one person who was like oh yeah I'm gonna go see docket with my mom like they would never happen that would have never happened yeah yeah it's weird it's also weird like I wouldn't like when I was a kid Pokemon was not cool right and it's weird that it's not just it wasn't cool it was for losers and now it's for everyone it's weird like it's weird that it's still around let alone it doesn't have any uncool or cool fact it's just a thing because you're not a loser for liking Pokemon lots of people like Pokemon but it's weird for me when my kids are taught I have to I have to remember like oh I don't need to remember what I used to think about Pokemon we can just talk about Pokemon I mean Dungeons and Dragons is a great example of this the fact that like so when my kid got into Dungeons and Dragons I was like well this is kind of interesting he must be sort of in that part of the yes part of the social group that's not what it is it's like it doesn't seem to have even a relationship to gender anymore or or the idea that if you play sports you wouldn't play Dungeons and Dragons that is gone in a weird small like this happens in a big way in like the world we live in but also in a small world I guess with children which is that inevitably the counter culture always becomes the culture in a weird way for you growing up Pokemon was your kid version of the counter culture it was for people who did not like the other things kids liked who felt alienated by the normal things right so they got into that that happens music this happens in film this happens in literature it's always this way that the thing that is marginalized if it touches people in a deep way those are the people seemingly who enforce the ideas about culture later because it means something different to them they're getting involved in something like this is why like the vast majority in the 90s and early 2000s of music critics and rock critics had all come from a punk background I was completely out like seen is very odd that I did not that that that all the people I work with it spin and do with the other magazines at the village voice they were all fundamentally people who had been into punk rock and then they so they were they they were the underground culture and now they dominate sort of the over culture that that's just how it seems to work and and and it does in some ways sort of detract from the meaning of anything that's commercially successful because in all likelihood like the idea of like what Taylor Swift right now sort of creates musically it is so popular it nothing has really been that popular since Michael Jackson it may not though have sort of the influence that logic would dictate like logically that should be by far the most influential music of the future and it probably will not be in the same way that Michael Jackson's thriller while having influence is not as influential as some of the things around it that seemed significantly less significant at the time I actually thought of you the other day did you have you seen this documentary it's on YouTube it's like a 20-minute thing it's by that that comedian Rob Sheer I think that's who did it I'm embarrassed if I'm saying this name wrong anyways it's called Taylor Swift dads and he just interviews different dads that are waiting in the parking lot at so if I stayed him while their daughters are inside watching Taylor Swift and it's like it's a very lovely sweet little like 20-minute YouTube video and it talks about a lot of the things that we're talking about like some of the dads are like I have no idea what's happening I don't even know I am here and then other ones they know all of it and they're really supportive and then there's some dads it's like they couldn't afford tickets so they're just sitting outside listening with their daughters in the parking lot to what mostly struck me about it having watched a bunch of sort of documentaries about music from you know the 60s and 70s and 80s is like there used to be a lot of that there were lots of bands doing stadium tours there were lots of bands obviously Taylor Swift is singular but there would have been lots of things that people used to line up for when they would come out at the record store at midnight or whatever and that's gone well here's what this might not that might not be totally true I know I know it feels that way for sure but I am consistently surprised to find to hear about some artist and I'm like they play two nights at Madison Square Garden sure they played the Hollywood Bowl it's like you know but the thing is because we have stripped away that record store part yeah we've there's no longer MTV and radio doesn't exist in the same way and everything is you don't see sort of the the outsize part of it that leads you to believe will of course when they tour it's going to be a big deal what has happened now in music is that the only way to make money is to it right so like you know a band like you know geese or something I remember a couple months ago I I can't remember the name of the band is now but they had sold out them like four nights at the ballroom in New York and they have no record yeah like there's already this following of it that's sort of I think built online or whatever and so it is it feels it definitely feels like we have lost that the idea of like oh you know bluish or cult is playing you know in anaheim or whatever and it's a soul you know they're they're tourists sold out even though bluish or cult of the time is maybe the 14th most popular hard rock band or whatever they're still that big right that that it doesn't feel like that happens now not everything is like a mystery to anybody who's outside of the world yeah like you know the thing you say about Taylor Swift is it is what I have found with my kids is that they love it if I have knowledge about what they're into what they dislike it if I have opinions like they like that I know like who chapel ron is and I know her backstory and I know her songs but if I was like in a way you know if I if anytime I start actually giving you an opinion about what I think about this it's like that's and they start using the cringe now is the word they use it's like they appreciate viability to keep up and be informed about this they do not appreciate any actual idea I've about it well I think that's because knowledge signifies interest in something that they're interested in yes and opinions implies judgment and so they want the first part and not the last part even if the opinion is positive they're like men and no no I just want I just want you to recognize this is important to me I don't actually care what it means to you yes yeah totally no this is this has been awesome well I thought the book was fascinating and I always love reading everything you do so I'm glad we got to chat again well I appreciate you have me on thanks so much for listening if you could rate this podcast and leave a review on iTunes that would mean so much to us and it would really help the show we appreciate it and I'll see you next episode you