"Ronan Farrow"

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Speaker 3 Hey, Will, good to see you. I'm glad to see your mustache is still alive.
That's right. You still got the mustache gift.
Yeah, what do you guys think?

Speaker 4 Is that spirit gum keeping that on, or is it just.

Speaker 3 Yeah, what is it with people that have mustaches that they're two halves? That they don't, they don't like yourself. You can't grow a full mustache across the full lip.

Speaker 3 You know who is cursed with that, too? Clark Gable. look him up oh boy welcome to smartless smart

Speaker 3 less

Speaker 3 smart

Speaker 3 less

Speaker 3 smart

Speaker 3 less

Speaker 3 so will

Speaker 3 while you've been out of town Sean has discovered Invisalign. Oh, I know.
And

Speaker 3 he's just popped it in his head. Why do you need it for a podcast, guy?

Speaker 4 I have to wear it 20 hours a day. And

Speaker 4 I just had it in before we started.

Speaker 3 This be one of the hours that you don't. Yeah.
We get four hours without it.

Speaker 4 No, it does better to keep it in as much as I can.

Speaker 3 Much better for who?

Speaker 4 It's just, I was just wanting to.

Speaker 3 For the listener.

Speaker 4 My teeth are going like crazy.

Speaker 3 No, but they're actually not. Your teeth are totally fine.
And I think you've fallen into the trap of

Speaker 3 sort of vanity,

Speaker 3 health?

Speaker 3 Well, I don't know.

Speaker 4 My teeth are going crooked.

Speaker 3 They're not.

Speaker 4 Yeah, this one is over.

Speaker 3 No, they're not. They were always crooked.

Speaker 3 Why don't you just allow one little

Speaker 3 flipper, one little fang, like everyone else, has one that's a little askew and just be less than perfect. I got this one down.
They are.

Speaker 3 They're pretty like screwy.

Speaker 4 I'm just getting older and I want to get ahead of it. Because they started going crazy.

Speaker 3 Hey, what about yesterday, Will, you know, Sean and I were having a meeting with Amanda at a very nice restaurant with a very respectable person you've heard about. I've heard about, yeah.
And

Speaker 3 an old Snaggletooth pops out his

Speaker 3 headgear

Speaker 3 at the table into his little dish or the snap dish that he keeps in his pocket.

Speaker 4 You can't eat with it on.

Speaker 3 Abel does the same thing. But why don't you go to the bathroom and take that out? And so Jason is having

Speaker 3 to suck the saliva out of it before he puts it in the tray. And, you know, we've got a guest.
Yeah, no, I know.

Speaker 3 I know.

Speaker 4 Look,

Speaker 4 I'm just struggling to get through every day.

Speaker 3 How do you sound? How is it?

Speaker 3 I had a lisp. How's your, huh? I had a lisp.
I said to Sean the other day, I said to Sean, are you getting invisible because you wanted to lisp just in case people didn't know you were gay?

Speaker 3 What do you?

Speaker 3 What do you?

Speaker 3 It's called the gay tray.

Speaker 3 None of this goes in the show. None of this goes in the show.
Yes, but it has to go.

Speaker 3 If you're looking to pull a question mark off your profile, try gay tray.

Speaker 3 A question.

Speaker 3 A question mark.

Speaker 3 A gay tray. Well,

Speaker 3 yeah, I had a little bit of a list before.

Speaker 4 Now it's worse.

Speaker 2 I'm getting through it. I'm getting through it.

Speaker 3 Okay, well, if you hit a couple of

Speaker 3 but i did just have a couple passes in this in this interview we're gonna ask you to pull it out i don't like my chair okay

Speaker 3 let's pause the interview guys you guys stay where you are keep talking i don't like my chair okay we will

Speaker 3 um okay gosh that's so much better what kind of chair did you get just one that wasn't it was on wheels and i'm on a hardware floor so it was like sliding all over the place are you okay are you okay you just need a sandbag get a shot bag in there for you i don't know man i should um all right are you guys have we caught up?

Speaker 3 We really haven't caught up that much.

Speaker 3 We've got a high-level guest waiting. And Will, Will's, listener, Will's in Atlanta.
I haven't seen him for a couple of weeks. I know.
My heart hurts. Thank you.

Speaker 3 I've seen Sean. Thank you so much.
I'm coming home really soon. When are you coming home? When do you come home?

Speaker 3 I'm going to be home Tuesday.

Speaker 4 Did you sleep? Yesterday we had a couple of people.

Speaker 3 I did. I talked to Sean last night.
I was so wrecked. Have you ever heard me that tired before, Sean?

Speaker 4 No, not in my whole life.

Speaker 3 And I just got, I was about to go to bed and Sean called. I can't believe it.

Speaker 3 Maybe there's some kind of an emergency with the Invisalign and I should pick this up. And maybe,

Speaker 3 maybe he choked on it. I got stuck.

Speaker 3 Yeah, he thought it was like one of those sort of glass noodles or something that he got from, and then he had a chinchin special. Yeah.

Speaker 3 And so, and so I picked up, and then he was telling me about the dinner because obviously I couldn't be at the dinner with you guys. It was concerning stuff that we do together.
And

Speaker 3 I just was like, uh-huh, uh-huh. And he goes, oh my God, you're,

Speaker 3 and I literally just go,

Speaker 3 Can I call you tomorrow? I go, yeah, we know. Why did you even pick up?

Speaker 3 I realized I don't miss you that much. And let's get to our guest.

Speaker 3 Guys, put all your dumb away and smarten up. Our guest today is a bright fella, and he has opened our eyes to quite a bit over the past few years.
He's a graduate of Yale Law School.

Speaker 3 He's a member of the New York Bar. He has a PhD in political science from Oxford University, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar.

Speaker 3 And he served as a State Department official in Afghanistan and Pakistan. What have you two done? Same.
Went to the gym.

Speaker 3 He has spent the last decade or two doing some of the most important investigative journalism in our country, both in print and through his production company.

Speaker 3 His recent and most high-profile work has revealed many interesting and shocking facts about some of the most famous power figures in our country, like Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Les Moonves, and of course, Harvey Weinstein.

Speaker 3 Folks, please welcome Ronan Farrow. Whoa.
Wait a minute. Ronan Farrow.
Let's tighten up.

Speaker 3 This is amazing.

Speaker 4 Ronan, Ronan came to the show this summer.

Speaker 3 Did he? Good night, Oscar. He was so good.

Speaker 2 I did. I saw Good Night Oscar.
It was amazing. I mean,

Speaker 2 you can really tingle the ivories. Well, Angie.

Speaker 3 You should see him play piano.

Speaker 3 Ronan, did you go backstage and compliment Sean? Yes. No, he.

Speaker 4 Very nice. And I gushed over you as I will today.
Just a huge fan.

Speaker 3 Well, the family.

Speaker 3 You're a sophisticated fan. I'm a fan of all three of you.
Thank you, Ronan. And also you.

Speaker 3 Thank you for saying it. Even if it's not true, we appreciate it.

Speaker 2 No, it's very true. Also, by the way,

Speaker 2 the gravelly baritone from you, I was like, you know, stifling saying something. It was so turned on when you just said it on a relationship.

Speaker 3 Yeah, no, I'm talking about it.

Speaker 2 No,

Speaker 3 I've talked about it. I think he's talking about me.

Speaker 3 Ronan, you've got a pretty,

Speaker 3 Ronan, you've got a voiceover quality voice. Have you ever done any?

Speaker 3 Do I?

Speaker 2 I love hearing that because

Speaker 2 I like very lightly dabble in anime and video game voice acting.

Speaker 3 Oh, really? Is that true? Yeah.

Speaker 2 Just because more that I'm a nerd than anything else, you know, like I did, I think I play a character called Mitsubishi Man, who has like three lines in one Miyazaki movie.

Speaker 3 Realistic dubs, man. It's a guy who will fix your catalytic converter with no questions asked.

Speaker 3 Where are your air conditioner? No, you are, as I said, you're a sophisticated New Yorker that frequents the arts. Can you confirm for me this thing where if you go see a play

Speaker 3 and you

Speaker 3 have a recognizable name, you are obligated to go backstage and

Speaker 3 introduce yourself.

Speaker 3 Well, I just, I need to. I'm with you.
I'm through.

Speaker 3 If you don't go backstage,

Speaker 3 regardless of whether you know anyone in the cast,

Speaker 3 if if you're somewhat known, if you don't go backstage, they know about it and they think you hated the show. And so you kind of have to go back and say, say, hi, I'm famous.

Speaker 3 You're going to have to love the show.

Speaker 3 Let him answer.

Speaker 2 I love this runner through the different episodes of this show.

Speaker 2 It's one of the bits of commentary I love with you on your interactions with other famous people and the ways in which those are great or not great.

Speaker 2 But it sounds like mostly you sort of do a little theater of it's not all great, but then all the points you make are about how great it is.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Jason, well, you should also know that he's also trying to gauge where he, because he's been famous since he was really young.

Speaker 3 So he's looking back at his life and he's like, How many times have I been? How many times have I been rude?

Speaker 3 So that's,

Speaker 3 I think that's part of it.

Speaker 2 Well, the truth is, I think about this a lot. Like, because I also had this crucible of tabloid bullshit around me, you know, as a kid.
And then, and then I did work that, you know, got me even more.

Speaker 3 What happened?

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 yeah, so I think about it a lot. And the particular kind of work I do where it's an occupational hazard to piss people off who then either like go to go to jail

Speaker 2 or like or get fired or something and then they have nothing but time and money to like to come after me. Right.

Speaker 2 There's a real genuine mix of good and bad in the kind of.

Speaker 3 Well, I want to get into that, but quickly, end this silly question of mine. Like, just like, I just find it like, hey, you're famous.
I'm famous. That's why I'm backstage.

Speaker 3 But is that true? Is that an acceptable thing in New York culture just to go back simply because you're all so famous?

Speaker 2 It does seem to always happen.

Speaker 2 And I think there is a bit of a sense of obligation, right, that you almost experience.

Speaker 2 If you know someone in the show or like peripherally are connected to them, then it feels like a little bit of no misery.

Speaker 3 That's the rule. Yeah.
Thank you for your indulgence. Now, let's get to what you were talking about because that was deeper in my question lineup here, but let's get right to it about, you know,

Speaker 3 your incredible investigative journalism has yielded some unhappy folks on the other side, I would imagine.

Speaker 3 So how do you how do you sort of gird your, you know, get yourself ready for the possible blowback? Like,

Speaker 3 I mean, all the way up to and including, do you have 24-hour a day security? Or is that something that you ever had to consider?

Speaker 2 I don't. I mean, I almost, I hesitate to say it to create opening for people, but I, you know, I've been followed around and staked out and had to like not be in my apartment or

Speaker 2 move actually in one case. Crazy.

Speaker 2 The weirdest physical surveillance coming after me thing was

Speaker 2 not even the getting followed around, but when I did some reporting that ultimately was at the heart of the first of those Trump indictments

Speaker 2 about the hush payments during the election,

Speaker 2 it involved his relationship. Yeah, exactly.
The catching and killing of stories on his behalf by the National Enquirer. Yeah, right.
And

Speaker 2 the Inquirer,

Speaker 2 which was led by some very vindictive people, and in some ways was a sort of blackmail or blackmail adjacent business model that they had come up with.

Speaker 3 Like, like

Speaker 2 there were people seducing me.

Speaker 3 They like they published my sexts with someone.

Speaker 2 So you can imagine the trust issues forever.

Speaker 3 But they've been very good about surveillance and

Speaker 3 I put in quotes, research for years and years and years. That's sort of their model, right? So they had a bunch of people.

Speaker 2 Yeah, and I got all these messages from celebrities who have been brutalized by them

Speaker 2 and endured similar things saying, like, God, thank you for writing about this.

Speaker 2 But despite all of that, I haven't gone to the place of getting around the clock security.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I don't even know how I would make that work economically. And the truth is, I don't want to overstate the case.
Like, I'm very conscious with the work I've done in different parts of the world.

Speaker 2 I actually did a a film with two wonderful filmmakers, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady,

Speaker 2 that was just up for an Emmy. Bravo to them.
I can take very little credit because they did everything on the creative end, but following journalists under threat through the pandemic. Yeah.

Speaker 2 So, seeing a lot of those stories of people whose lives are in jeopardy all the time, I'm very conscious of the fact that this is a much lower-grade thing.

Speaker 2 I experienced him in a country with good rule of law

Speaker 2 and it's psychologically taxing. But the actual sort of getting followed around height of

Speaker 2 threats to physical safety, I feel is something that ebbs and flows. And I've been okay without heavy security.

Speaker 3 Right. But you're talking about endangered, right? I mean, this was

Speaker 3 about the sort of

Speaker 3 the encroachment kind of on press freedoms.

Speaker 3 And do you feel like maybe this is kind of the start of that possible encroachment here by leaning on folks like you that are that are uncovering necessary truths that we all need to know about,

Speaker 3 but they're trying to keep that stuff down by intimidating journalists.

Speaker 3 Is that a creeping problem in this country?

Speaker 2 Well, I certainly agree with the idea that it is a creeping problem, broadly speaking, whether I'm representative of that or not.

Speaker 2 And I think it's something we need to talk about more because

Speaker 2 it's not just journalism that's at stake. It's a sign of encroaching fascism, right? This is not a new thing in history.

Speaker 2 It's one of the tactics that gets deployed, this characterization of the press as an enemy of the people that we saw during the Trump administration. That is a tale as old as time.

Speaker 2 That's sort of the first thing to try to separate the public from the facts and reduce accountability so that people can pursue

Speaker 2 power unjustly. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Yeah. It feels like the first play in the playbook is to muddy the waters.
And if you can do that, and then

Speaker 3 you can,

Speaker 3 then people just don't know what to believe. So they can't.
It's a free-for-all. Right.
It's a free-for-all. So you can't, forget reading about the truth.

Speaker 3 You can't discern between the, because you can't trust any of it, right? And that's what they want. And if you can, and if you can build that level of distrust, then you're winning.

Speaker 3 It'll never win. It'll never win.

Speaker 2 And of course, the press is imperfect,

Speaker 2 and sometimes its own worst enemy. I mean, I've done a lot of writing about the brokenness of media institutions and the suppression of important stories and stuff.
And I've experienced some of that.

Speaker 2 I occupy an odd place in this discourse because I've been on all sides of it because it's hard for people, I think, to absorb this as

Speaker 2 a truth.

Speaker 2 The skepticism about the existence of journalists that aren't motivated by partisan citizenship is very extreme right now. So when I do a story about

Speaker 2 you know, that adversely affects a Democrat and then a story that adversely affects a Republican, it's like each of those constituencies affected doesn't see the other piece of what I'm doing.

Speaker 2 So I'll get moments where like Tucker Carlson is doing a like a really flattering monologue about how I'm like heroic for exposing some Democrat.

Speaker 2 I never agreed to do that show to be clear

Speaker 2 as a matter of principle.

Speaker 2 But like it was an odd strange bedfellows thing that the right was very into some of this reporting when it suited them. But then I'd do reporting that was unflattering to a Republican.

Speaker 2 And I'd get the opposite. I'd get all this like blowback and reputational smears and stuff.

Speaker 2 So yeah,

Speaker 2 it's a time I'm very disillusioned with in terms of the challenges that we're talking about.

Speaker 4 Do you see a fix? I know it's such a general question, but do you see a fix to this issue about how people now absorb the news that they get? Obviously, it's again a topic that's a tale

Speaker 4 is everybody's fed what they want to read and what they want to absorb and digest. How do you break through to get the truth out to everybody all at once? Is there a person? Is there an outlet?

Speaker 4 Is there a thing? Is there a future where all of us will get all the same facts at the same time?

Speaker 3 It's really hard. I don't think I'm sorry to interrupt, but Sean, you're starting to sound like Jason.
I know.

Speaker 3 Jason always wants answers.

Speaker 3 I want answers. You've had such an effect.
He's spreading. Isn't there an absolute truth that we can then just refer to? Can we fix this? I really like that aspect of this show.
And it's very easy.

Speaker 2 There is whether you guys want to cop to it or not. There's an idealism in these conversations that you have.

Speaker 3 For sure. We're sure blissfully ignorant.
Yeah, we're simple folks.

Speaker 3 Sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. Sorry.
I just wanted to point that out.

Speaker 2 I don't think there's an easy answer to this. I don't think we're going back to the Walter Cronkite monoculture.

Speaker 2 And I don't think we're going back to the same kind of trust in institutions.

Speaker 2 There is a lot of things that feed into this. The declining trust in institutions is in all sectors.
It's particularly acute with media,

Speaker 2 but it is a general trend line. Technology obviously changes this in an irreversible way.

Speaker 2 Particularly, the kind of the greedy algorithms that have come to understand that extremism and misinformation sells better, generates more clicks.

Speaker 2 And experts on radicalization talk about this a lot: that the way those algorithms work is like if you get someone, like I did all this work

Speaker 2 unmasking people in security camera footage

Speaker 2 during the January 6th rioting

Speaker 2 you know and the siege of the capital

Speaker 2 and there was a sort of there was a crowdsourced movement

Speaker 3 can you not they were just tourists thrown in

Speaker 3 anyone

Speaker 3 did you not see any of the footage it's clear as day they're walking through touring

Speaker 2 anyway yeah that's it that's what my story said actually like these lovely tourists um sure the the the crowd was like scrubbing through these videos frame by frame, like using facial recognition and trying all sorts of ways to find these people.

Speaker 2 And I was able to identify a few collaborating with those people who were doing that crowdsource movement at a time when they were on the run and had not surrendered themselves to the FBI, but there were wanted posters and stuff.

Speaker 2 And it was, I highlight that context partly because you wouldn't think they would be confessional at a moment like that, but they all were.

Speaker 2 And the through line, obviously each case was different, was definitely this phenomenon we're talking about.

Speaker 2 Like, you know, it's the Pennsylvania mom who has eight kids and she gets on Facebook and it's showing her extremist stuff and they happen to grab someone like that who's already mad at mask mandates and then they just get fed more and more content of escalating issues.

Speaker 3 Why a ballist than they got her?

Speaker 2 Yeah, and it's the, I don't mean to put sole blame on that, but it's a definite factor and it goes to the point that you're making, that everyone is sort of in their own bubble consuming things that they agree with, and it encourages them to dig in more deeply rather than do the thing we should all be doing, obviously, which is to be open-minded to the facts wherever they may lead.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 3 We'll be right back.

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Speaker 3 And now, back to the show.

Speaker 3 I'd like to get into our guest a little bit here about where one gets the amount of intelligence you've managed to pack inside your head there.

Speaker 3 Now, was there a lot of

Speaker 3 wait? Did you eat a lot of wheat germ as a kid? Was there like carrots or was diet? I just, I don't know.

Speaker 2 If you feed your kid enough wheat germ, they will get a Pulitzer Prize.

Speaker 3 That's what I've heard. Okay, confirmed.
It's in the box. Yeah.

Speaker 3 What do you eat to become a Rhodes Scholar? Because I was. Well, that's wheat germ and carrots, I'm thinking.

Speaker 2 I'm almost tempted, by the way, when I get some variation on this question to say something truly insane. Like, you know, I just eat the Joe Rogan thing.
Like, Joe is right.

Speaker 2 I eat six tins of sardines every day.

Speaker 3 That's the thing. Is that what you're cold plunged?

Speaker 3 And then you cold plunge. You cold your plunge.
Yeah, that's it. The cold plunge.
Does he really swear by sardines?

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah. There was a little news item before recently where he apparently thought he was getting poisoned because he was like getting too much mercury from the sardines.

Speaker 3 Sure. I think about sardines and I get bloated.
No, they're

Speaker 3 very good. They're really good.

Speaker 2 And they are very healthy and moderate.

Speaker 3 There's a lot of sodium blood.

Speaker 2 They're not predator fish. They're petitive.

Speaker 3 They're full of salt in my face can't be.

Speaker 2 So That's always safer in terms of the contaminants.

Speaker 3 Now,

Speaker 3 I feel good. I want to do what you're doing.

Speaker 3 I appreciate you. No, slimming this interview.
He doesn't. No.

Speaker 3 Quiet, Will.

Speaker 3 So you skipped a few grades. Quiet.
You skipped a few grades in school. You entered college at a very young age.
I want to know how

Speaker 3 your that sort of educational experience.

Speaker 3 Yeah, a few grades.

Speaker 3 What was it? It was seven.

Speaker 2 It was seven grades. I did a Doogie Hauser thing.

Speaker 3 No, you did not. No, no, no.

Speaker 2 That's why I'm so maladjusted, guys.

Speaker 3 No, no, there's only 12 grades before college. You skipped seven of those?

Speaker 2 I skipped seven of them. Yeah, I went to college at 11.

Speaker 4 Are you serious?

Speaker 3 Holy shit.

Speaker 3 Wait a second. Wait, Ronan, you went to Yale at 11?

Speaker 2 No, I went to Bard for undergrad at 11. I got into Yale a lot at

Speaker 2 15, 16. I actually took a little time then to do, I

Speaker 3 did some UNICEF work.

Speaker 2 I was like a youth spokesperson in a a couple of African people.

Speaker 3 I mean, I'm really proud of my children, but a little less now. Hey, this is the first time.
Hey, Ronan asked these guys what the last book they read was. Yeah.
Oh,

Speaker 2 are we avid readers here or no?

Speaker 3 Well, it's a smart group. Joe Sawyer.
I enjoyed Tom Sawyer a lot.

Speaker 3 Does that count? Let's go and go in there. Tuckleberry Finn.

Speaker 3 John, what about you?

Speaker 4 What, the last book I read?

Speaker 3 Last book.

Speaker 4 Pamphlets Don't Count. The Giving Tree.
I don't know.

Speaker 3 This guy's writing books. Ronan,

Speaker 3 when was your last book that you wrote?

Speaker 2 Catch and Kill 2019. I think I have the next one that's going to be a book, though.

Speaker 2 Yeah. I'm doing this sort of

Speaker 3 trans media

Speaker 3 program. We like to make news on this.

Speaker 2 No, no, no. I can never get into specifics on

Speaker 2 investigative topics that haven't hatched yet because

Speaker 2 I always further to the point of like people can be skeptical or not, but I am genuinely led by what's the biggest but also most interesting interesting and hopefully humanistic story.

Speaker 2 Like, how can I ferret out the intricacies of the characters involved and be compassionate in the portrayal of even the bad people and so forth?

Speaker 2 And it's not about politics.

Speaker 2 And part of that being led by the facts and making sure that those are the kinds of stories that I do and the way that I do them is I have to be willing to like throw them in the trash if they don't pan out.

Speaker 2 I've done six months of work on a really giant political story that I didn't think was wrong factually, but I it felt like it wasn't

Speaker 2 the misconduct being alleged wasn't serious enough, and the

Speaker 2 way the facts came together wasn't bulletproof. We're fine with hearsay.

Speaker 3 If you want to just let us know, just the rumors.

Speaker 2 Yeah, yeah, I'll just give you, I'll give you the gossip.

Speaker 2 So I can't talk about specifics, but yeah, I'm doing this like transmedia approach in a lot of cases where I'll do a print story for The New Yorker, and then either during or after some combination, do it as a podcast or an HBO series.

Speaker 2 My documentary business is at HBO,

Speaker 2 which has been interesting because I think, you know, I grew up with

Speaker 2 a love of film and I got my start as a TV news anchor. And I do love being able to tell the stories in different ways.

Speaker 3 But what is it? One of my questions, I think Sean was saying, he was going to ask you this too.

Speaker 3 How do you pick? And I'm sure you've answered this a million times. I apologize.
But

Speaker 3 what guides your picking of

Speaker 3 stuff to investigate?

Speaker 2 It's

Speaker 2 a matrix of different factors. I think you want to

Speaker 2 will it potentially do some good in the world? Not in an activist way where it's not an op-ed when I'm doing this particular kind of relatively clinical investigative work,

Speaker 3 but you do want to find some social relevance in it.

Speaker 2 Yeah,

Speaker 2 you want to pick the stories where

Speaker 2 something potentially could change, not necessarily because you're proposing a specific change, but because those are the exciting, meaningful stories a lot of the time that cause people to sit up and take notice.

Speaker 2 And then

Speaker 2 you are looking at not just the strengths of the facts and constantly assessing as the facts come in, okay, is this like a slam dunk story on the journalistic side? But also,

Speaker 2 especially as you move between those different formats, is it

Speaker 2 a narrative arc that people can relate to and understand emotionally? Are there people involved that are

Speaker 2 rich, complicated characters that people will potentially connect to?

Speaker 3 Talk to us about

Speaker 3 the thing that really drew you to public service in government and how that changed or didn't change, meaning is it the same thing that drew you into journalism?

Speaker 3 Was it a sense of altruism that then transferred into something different? Or

Speaker 3 did you find the same draw in both?

Speaker 2 Well, it's like probably for most of us to some extent or other, there's a mix of altruism and belief in public service and caring about other people and

Speaker 2 narcissism and ego and wanting to be successful. And that led to most of these decisions you're asking about.

Speaker 2 I was very fortunate to grow up with my mom, who is a big fan of yours, Jason, by the way.

Speaker 3 I was a big fan of hers. I was so lucky to go.
She really liked you. Yeah, like her a lot.

Speaker 2 I hope you guys get to work together again. I'm trying to

Speaker 2 encourage her to work together.

Speaker 3 This was actually a film for the Weinstein company called The X with Zach Brath and Amanda Pete and Charles Groden and Mia. Oh, yeah.

Speaker 3 I played an asshole in a wheelchair. Wait, wasn't Amy? Was Amy in that? What's that?

Speaker 3 I think Amy was it there. Yeah, and Arminson.
What was it called? It was called The X.

Speaker 2 It was actually, if I recall, from the deepest recesses of my mind, it was a script at the time titled Fast Track, and it was like a workplace comedy.

Speaker 2 And then Harvey Weinstein acquired it and did like a very Harvey Weinstein thing, which is he did reshoots and recut it and changed the premise that it was then called the X and it was a relationship comedy.

Speaker 3 I'm not sure where the title change came from, but I do remember very clearly the whole reshoot scenario where, you know, my character, I played an asshole in a wheelchair going after Zach Brass's girlfriend, Amanda Pete.

Speaker 3 And

Speaker 3 Zach Brass's character's theory was that I was faking it in the wheelchair, that

Speaker 3 he's making grounds on my lady because my lady feels bad for him. And he's not even injured.

Speaker 3 He's faking it in the wheelchair. And the truth is that I really was somebody that couldn't walk.

Speaker 3 And then they tested the movie and my character was testing a little bit too likable because, you know, he was an asshole in a wheelchair. He's

Speaker 3 fun to hate. I thought you were were gonna say yeah you know because you know I'm so likable

Speaker 3 and so they figured well now that's making Zach Graf's character seem very unlikable because he's the lead and he's trying to you know expose me anyway so their their big idea was to well let's make it so that he really is faking it to adjust the the and so that was going to be the reshoot and was the reshoot there was a big scene we had a reshoot where i stand up and i was like well wait a second i don't know if i'd play the character if i knew he was faking it and i had a phone call with Harvey Weinstein where I said to him, I said,

Speaker 3 what are the Screen Actors Guild rules?

Speaker 3 Can you really just make me reshoot a scene that changes the character completely? And now I'm a guy who's faking it. And he's like, yep.

Speaker 3 You're doing it. I was like, okey-doke.

Speaker 3 We shot like 30 pages of new pages.

Speaker 3 Jesse, was that, who did it? Yeah, Jesse Parrots. Director of Jesse Peter.
The great Jesse Parrots. Wow.

Speaker 3 Anyway, Mia was awesome.

Speaker 2 While we're on the digression,

Speaker 2 yeah, I have been trying to encourage my mom to be more game-to-work. I think there was a period of time where she just had so many

Speaker 2 bad industry experiences. People really came after her.
There was Woody Allen and bullshit.

Speaker 2 And

Speaker 2 she sort of, she's such an incredible actress. And because of those experiences, because she started as a kid, basically, you know, she was on Peyton Place as a teenager,

Speaker 2 she doesn't fully own her talent in the way that I hope she can. Like every time she does something, people are so bowled over.
Yeah, she's like, she kisses people so much. Yeah.
So, yeah.

Speaker 2 So I'm kind of just trying to encourage her to own that.

Speaker 3 It's kind of absurd that you're talking about Mia Pharaoh. Yes.

Speaker 3 Come on.

Speaker 2 She's one of the great actresses.

Speaker 3 Yeah, she is. I wish she'd really get up there and realize how good she is.

Speaker 3 Because, you know, to someone from me who didn't grow up close to that sort of thing, like, I think, yeah, of course.

Speaker 3 And you did grow up so close to that, which must have

Speaker 3 it's interesting that you,

Speaker 3 I mean,

Speaker 3 that you just went kind of 180 degrees away from that in a lot of ways, right? Yeah. I mean, that you just went into academia.

Speaker 2 Well, I didn't, I didn't. I did in the practical sense of the choices that I was making, but actually the philosophical underpinning very much comes from her.

Speaker 2 She is like altruistic, I think at times to a fault. It's It's genuine too.

Speaker 2 It's not performative. She really is like obsessed with helping people and has probably made like questionable decisions at the time because of it.

Speaker 2 I mean, she adopted all of these kids with special needs, which was this beautiful, wonderful thing, but also a source of like much, much chaos in my childhood. I was just going to say, yeah.

Speaker 2 Yeah, so like it's complicated.

Speaker 3 Did she ever pull over and try to pick up a hitchhiker because she felt like they needed a ride and it was just a real bad thing.

Speaker 2 She was very much that that kind of person and i think it's taken a lot of being brutalized by the world to disabuse her of that mother do not slow down the car what

Speaker 4 from just from a perspective you can talk about it as much or we can cut it or whatever but just from a perspective of me growing up with a single mom in a large family not nearly as large as yours what was that like because i always say we kind of all had to figure out even though we had an amazing mom like your mom my mom was incredible too and ran a food bank for the poor and the homeless and you know, some of the food we got was from the food bank because we were in that situation too.

Speaker 4 But so I put my mom on a pedestal too. At the same time, we had to kind of parent ourselves.
And did you, growing up in such a large family, feel that sense? Because there's so many kids.

Speaker 2 You know, you'd have to ask my different siblings about their experience of that. My perception was always, this is one of the amazing things about her.
She was incredibly attentive.

Speaker 2 Like she knit every single one of us a Christmas stocking with our name on it and like a relevant graphic.

Speaker 2 Holidays were real rituals. So she, even in the midst of a lot of chaos and painful stuff, and, you know, me getting dragged in and out of courtrooms and

Speaker 2 rammed through crowds of paparazzi and helicopters overhead, you know, to get to school,

Speaker 2 you know, there was a lot of, and also loss. I had a lot of immediate family members die over the course of my childhood.
So there's a lot there that didn't work.

Speaker 2 But one of the things that did work is what you're asking about. Like she's an incredibly attentive mom,

Speaker 2 almost in a superhuman way. And all of that redounded to me really caring in my worldview about compassion and altruism.
And

Speaker 2 look, I think there are pros and cons to this. The moral framework I was given was like, we're not really here.

Speaker 2 She would deny this, by the way, but my interpretation of it anyways, that we're, I was taught not to care about personal happiness, that the first goal was you're here with privilege and responsibilities, and you must work to improve the lives of others.

Speaker 2 And that is the source of true happiness.

Speaker 2 But that's the very long-winded answer to

Speaker 2 your question, that I wanted to do things that helped others.

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 3 how big is your therapist's yacht? Because

Speaker 2 here's the craziest thing, Will.

Speaker 2 I only did therapy for the first time, other than like court-appointed expert stuff in my childhood, which is probably why I then didn't leap to therapy after.

Speaker 3 You would make a therapist so happy, though, because your ability to articulate your feelings, and you are so beautifully vulnerable and human.

Speaker 3 And I bet you can have incredible conversations with a therapist. I mean, I've loved mine.
I mean, well,

Speaker 2 I have found it late in life. Like during the pandemic, I was actually, it did take hitting a bit of psychological rock bottom.

Speaker 2 I had been driving so hard with the philosophy that we've been talking about. Like, I've just got to give and give and give.

Speaker 2 And to the point I made earlier about it being a cocktail of selfish and giving instincts, like I also, I had been so scrutinized from such an early age and with so much expectation.

Speaker 2 I wanted to do things that were a 180 from my family. I wanted to be taken seriously.

Speaker 2 My early professional experiences where I'd be like talking about an infrastructure project in Pakistan, and they'd want to ask me about my family and stuff, just made me very, very committed to being so, so serious and such an overachiever that I could get out of that.

Speaker 2 And it took becoming

Speaker 2 so kind of souped up and like prominent in my own right for my work. I had to be involved in these like major kind of culture-shifting moments to get out of that.
And then finally, I could do it.

Speaker 2 I could go on a book tour and never get asked about my family. family.
Like, I did it. Yeah.
It had downsides, though. Like, I think I

Speaker 2 like alienated myself from people by over-credentialing.

Speaker 3 Have you ever talked to Anderson Cooper about it? We talked to him a little bit about, like, you know, he would, he, he talks about the game. He's gay.

Speaker 4 You must know him. He's gay.

Speaker 3 Yeah. That's what I mean.

Speaker 2 We do all, I mean, I, you know, I see him and Sean at like the gay

Speaker 3 meeting. I knew it.
I fucking, I fucking, hang on, let me write this down. Let me write this down.

Speaker 3 No, but I was going to say that I remember he had a very sort of similar answer when he would say that that was the thing that was always the sort of the flag, the red flag when he was on a date, if how soon somebody asked about his mom.

Speaker 3 And of course, hilariously, he talked about how

Speaker 3 Andy asked him in like 10 seconds.

Speaker 3 But

Speaker 3 so they became good friends.

Speaker 3 But yeah, I mean, that's a difficult thing, right?

Speaker 3 Yeah,

Speaker 3 I also have, well, not so good.

Speaker 4 Yeah, I also have

Speaker 4 a very, very famous friend of ours, very close that you would know.

Speaker 4 And this person comes from an extremely

Speaker 3 do you know Milton Burrell

Speaker 4 this person comes from an extremely famous family that everybody knows and this person

Speaker 4 to your point Ronan is is would shun all questions didn't want to talk about her family her identity is not that I do not you know I am this person over here I've created this world for myself and in doing so through many many many many years of evolution and growth she was like she learned the balance of embracing both, right?

Speaker 4 And bringing that in and not being not ashamed at all. It's just, it's your own personal identity and figuring out the path that that's in the middle somewhere.

Speaker 2 I've had that journey myself.

Speaker 2 I remember vividly, so there's fame.

Speaker 2 And then there's this particular subgenre of fame that's particularly awful and enduring in a troublesome way of fame

Speaker 2 connected to generationally defining sex scandal. And there's just a kind of prurience and shock element that 30 years later does not go away.

Speaker 2 And I remember vividly running into Chelsea Clinton at some event. And this was before I

Speaker 2 had done a lot professionally. I think it was right as I was getting out of her.

Speaker 3 I just recently met her.

Speaker 3 What a great woman.

Speaker 3 She's so, so.

Speaker 2 Well, she's probably one of the few people who has that very, very specific, awful shadow over her from childhood.

Speaker 2 And worse than me, right? Because she was in the White House dealing with it and all that.

Speaker 2 But similar in some ways. And I remember this is prior to my having done any work in the world and people really only knew me through that family stuff.

Speaker 2 And someone came up at this event and was like introducing me or saying hello to me in a way that foregrounded the family stuff. Like, oh, you know,

Speaker 2 here's this is a Nepo baby or whatever. And she was so forceful.

Speaker 2 I don't know if she would even recall this, but she was clearly, she had the same chip on her shoulder that I had, was my reading of it, which may or may not be fair to her, but she was like, he's his own person.

Speaker 2 He's done his own things. And I'm like, Chelsea, are you talking about you?

Speaker 2 And I do think like different people respond to that in different ways. But for me, I've learned the peril of that.

Speaker 2 First of all, because if you refuse to talk about it, people are just much more curious.

Speaker 2 Second of all, I think the

Speaker 2 wanting to dissociate yourself from it is very fair and understandable, but ultimately kind of finding peace in yourself does require require reconciling all of those parts of you and all of those parts of your past.

Speaker 2 Yes. And drawing strength from it.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And you got to get a lot of that managed before you start what becomes your new immediate family.
Yeah.

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Speaker 3 We all spend every single day of our lives with our mom, our dad, and our sibling until you're, you know, 18, 20, whatever it is. You move out and then you see them less.

Speaker 3 And then eventually you meet the person that becomes your everyday person,

Speaker 3 your spouse. And then you meet your kids, you know, when they're born.
And you see the people you used to spend every day with maybe once or twice, three, four times a year at holidays and stuff.

Speaker 3 So how are you now

Speaker 3 transitioning into that place of

Speaker 3 family, the new meaning of family for you, for all of us as we become adult children?

Speaker 3 Do you idealize the notion of family?

Speaker 3 Talk to us about your personal life to the extent you're comfortable about. You said you want to have kids and all that stuff.
Where does all that stuff sit with you right now?

Speaker 2 Well, this goes back to

Speaker 2 the joke about therapy. I did actually, there was this moment in the pandemic where

Speaker 2 the work slowed down because the world was slowing down, but the attacks were still coming.

Speaker 2 And it was like every day or at all hours getting these crazy shakedown attempts, like letter, going back to the inquirer example, like crazy letters from the inquirer having retained like ideologue, right-wing, crazy lawyers who might have actually like brought a case saying, you know, we're going to sue your pants off for defamation if you don't, you know, pay us like some crazy, like a joke amount, like $50 million overnight.

Speaker 2 And all of these like reputational smears and people I'd pissed off trafficking dossiers. And once in a while they'd make their way into the mainstream press.
And

Speaker 2 it's interesting. I've since stumbled into all of this like serious peer-reviewed psych literature

Speaker 2 about how

Speaker 2 attacks that threaten your core sense of identity and place in society are actually at times more ready instigators of PTSD symptoms than even like threats of physical harm.

Speaker 2 that those are the ones that damage people the most. And it was helpful for me to understand that because for a long time, I kind of kicked myself and beat myself up over it.

Speaker 2 Like, I've been in war zones, I've been in dangerous situations, I've been followed around, but the shit I care about is like, what is page six saying? You know?

Speaker 3 But it was really hard for me.

Speaker 2 And it finally did prompt me to

Speaker 2 start working on myself. And I did some,

Speaker 2 you know, this goes to your question of like, how do I build my adult identity and my path towards hopefully being a good partner and maybe eventually a good parent.

Speaker 2 I started putting in the work and I did a couple of years of cognitive behavioral therapy and then found like a great, more traditional analyst.

Speaker 2 And I think those tools can work for some people, not work for some people. There's good practitioners, bad practitioners, but I did, I found someone great in the end.

Speaker 2 And that was genuinely helpful for me.

Speaker 2 And I think part of allowing myself to work on that was not stepping away from but tempering the philosophy of like, any minute I don't spend helping someone else, I am morally failing.

Speaker 2 Letting myself

Speaker 2 work for myself occasionally.

Speaker 2 And it was extra hard for me to do that as someone who had always been

Speaker 2 in the press and people having these expectations.

Speaker 4 But the example that you lived with called your mother is, you know, we always, as we get to adulthood, we go, we rebel in different ways. And some of those are like, I see what my mom did.

Speaker 4 And I'm speaking for myself. I see what she did.
I see what she did to an extreme. And again, going back to the balance thing, which is the hardest for any human to do, is to balance

Speaker 4 the good from the bad and

Speaker 4 where do I lie in between? And as much as you celebrate your mom and I celebrate my mom, there are extremes, you know, and it's okay to recognize that and go, oh,

Speaker 4 where's me in all of this?

Speaker 3 Yes. Yeah.
And you find your version of their advice and their guidance. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Exactly that. And like, we, we aspire to do it better than our parents did it.
Yeah. And we're going to fuck it up inevitably in new and exciting ways.
And, you know, we have to just be kind both to

Speaker 2 the parents. Like, I think part of this path is you're not idealizing your parents, but you are greeting their complications with kindness and understanding.

Speaker 2 And then part of it is also being kind to ourselves, right? As we make those.

Speaker 3 Well, you have to let yourself off the hook.

Speaker 3 And you also can't let past things, you can't use, I think that one of the traps that I know that I have fallen into in the past and that I used to do more was to use those past experiences and to make myself feel shitty about it or to beat myself up about it.

Speaker 3 And believe me, if making, if beating yourself up about it worked, I'd be cured. It doesn't work.

Speaker 3 Do you know what I mean?

Speaker 3 It just doesn't work.

Speaker 2 I know exactly what you mean. I mean, I really have to work on this in an ongoing way because I have the most punishing interior voice.

Speaker 2 Just like anything I do that is not perfect, I am so cruel to myself. And I'm also...

Speaker 2 I'm like a hypersensitized person to other people. And there's different bodies of literature that categorize that in different ways, but I'm like anxiously attached.
I'm a super sensitive person. So

Speaker 2 there's these studies where people who exhibit those traits, they show them

Speaker 2 like videos of a face slowly morphing from one expression to another.

Speaker 2 And they actually, they detect the change earlier than other people, but they also have an inclination to draw conclusions from that prematurely.

Speaker 3 I completely relate to that. I completely identify with that.
And I call it thin slicing.

Speaker 3 And I have, and I, I've long felt like like I have an ability to thin slice and sometimes it to my own detriment.

Speaker 3 By the way, I also have a very punishing inner voice. And you're lucky because mine sounds like this.
Mine is fucking traditional. Mine's like you.
Why am I so turned on

Speaker 3 by your cruel internal voice? I tell you, so do you.

Speaker 2 I suspect most.

Speaker 2 I suspect most performers, and I'm not a performer per se, but I do like make a living on TV. There's a performative aspect or a communicative aspect.

Speaker 2 I think a lot lot of those people are probably hypersensitized in that way. And there's a nexus of the cruel interior voice and the public scrutiny and the hypersensitivity to the public scrutiny.

Speaker 2 Like I care so much what other people think. I care so much about the random Twitter cruel tweet and there's so much.

Speaker 3 I think that gets a bad rap though.

Speaker 3 I think that it's such a healthy thing to to be, I think, aware of as opposed to concerned with. It's just semantics.

Speaker 3 How you're coming across. I mean, it's certainly what the three of us do for a living with acting.
That's our job. We're professional liars in the way in which we come across, right?

Speaker 3 We're trying to trick people. And so in that comes an inherent ability or need to

Speaker 3 know how you're coming across and to be concerned with whether that's an accurate process.

Speaker 3 Well, first of all, first of all, the notion that when people say, and I've had it from people I grew up with who have nothing to do with entertainment, and they're like, you know,

Speaker 3 they're all Canadian, so they all sound like this. Well, you guys cure what you look like, eh? Or you care.
And I'm like, yeah, everybody does, motherfucker. And nice trike.
And

Speaker 3 every, if you have a mirror,

Speaker 3 there wouldn't be any stories selling fashion and there wouldn't be any makeup for sale and there wouldn't be anything. So A, go fuck yourself.
And B, yeah, that's how I, you know why?

Speaker 3 Because that's how I make my living. And I get, and we now live in a world where I get to hear everybody's opinion in real time from everywhere on the planet.

Speaker 3 Yeah. And it keeps you nicer if you're concerned or

Speaker 3 aware of what people think about you. I think, you know, to the extent you're able to handle it, then

Speaker 3 take it on because it keeps you kind and it keeps you aware of other people.

Speaker 3 What is it that you do with the purpose of that? Well, this is Jason to interrupt for a moment.

Speaker 2 What you just expressed, what you have taken away from being in a firestorm of public opinion about about yourself is not necessarily the norm.

Speaker 2 And I've seen all kinds of people who wind up very distorted by it.

Speaker 2 And it can lead to kind of more ego. But I'm fascinated by the fact that actually,

Speaker 2 to what I can observe, everyone in this group has taken from that experience all of these good, beautiful, caring things. Like,

Speaker 2 how do you do that? I mean, I hope that I'm achieving that myself, but I'm interested in that. Well, I think you are.

Speaker 3 You seem self-aware. I mean, I think it's about being, first of all, it's about who you surround yourself with.

Speaker 4 Well, and also considering the sources, like consider the sort. Like anytime somebody writes a horrible thing about me, and there's been tons of stuff my whole life.

Speaker 3 Yeah.

Speaker 4 It's like you go, at some point, you know, when you're much younger, I was like, oh, my God, I'd cry and crawl in a corner. Now I'm like, oh, that person is miserable, not me.

Speaker 3 When you were talking about

Speaker 3 your scary voice inside that chastises you,

Speaker 3 what is the thing that wakes that monster up the most?

Speaker 3 What do you do that most disappoints you? What's your dumbest shit?

Speaker 3 You're such a smart, insightful guy. I can't imagine you doing something that would really warrant

Speaker 3 a real talking to.

Speaker 2 It's a good point. Yeah, it is almost always not rational.

Speaker 2 And I've been shielded both by my, I think, generally good, strong moral code and instincts, and also surrounding myself with other people who have those qualities.

Speaker 2 Like I've had points in my career very prominently where I've been with like very craven, corporate, power-hungry people who

Speaker 2 when the rubber meets the road and there's

Speaker 2 a tough story unfolding, they're awful, they're cowardly, and it's so disillusioning and disappointing.

Speaker 2 But I have over time been able to refine the sort of chosen family professionally, not just personally, to include more people who are sort of big-minded, big-hearted, have good values, and have create systems for enforcing those values.

Speaker 2 So, like, the New Yorker is this magical, esoteric place where all of these like intellectuals with tons of virtue, not that they get it perfectly right all the time, of course, it's human beings, but I have been so impressed, even in cases where there's a disagreement about a story and I'm the reporter saying, like, I've worked on this for months, I want to get it out, here are all the arguments, why, the counter-arguments are always rooted in like good journalistic ethics.

Speaker 2 So, I've been protected by that from the real mistake. Like there haven't been inaccuracies in the story, even when the story is when they're under attack.
It's withstood all of that.

Speaker 2 And I have gradually come to trust myself more and be less punishing because I've seen over time that I do make good decisions.

Speaker 2 And I think I am increasingly

Speaker 2 trusting of the idea that

Speaker 2 I can pull off both. I can scrutinize my decisions and learn each time to be better without being punished.

Speaker 3 You don't have one reoccurring blind spot. Like you're

Speaker 3 always an angry driver and you're mad at yourself for honking at everyone. Jason, Jason, what are the things?

Speaker 3 Sorry, just quickly, I'm going to ask you: what are the things that you beat yourself up about? And let me guess the first five.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm curious about this, too.

Speaker 3 First five.

Speaker 3 The first five, you should. Yeah.

Speaker 3 I guess. Let me rephrase.
How did I write this down?

Speaker 3 I had said, Jason,

Speaker 3 here is my list of

Speaker 3 things. What you'd like to talk to me about? Yeah.

Speaker 3 Side Zoom.

Speaker 4 With all, you know,

Speaker 4 you're just amazing.

Speaker 4 Your brain is gorgeous and beautiful. You're gorgeous and beautiful.

Speaker 3 As is your skin and your hair.

Speaker 3 I mean,

Speaker 3 everything.

Speaker 3 Lips on him and everything. I know.
It's kind of incredible.

Speaker 3 All of them. Did I just spend more time with this group? Yeah.
It's true.

Speaker 3 I just got a call from HR, by the way.

Speaker 3 Oh, wait, I have a question.

Speaker 2 By the way, an aside on that,

Speaker 2 I've had work situations where, I guess, ironically, given some of the work I've done on like sexual harassment and stuff, where I'm like, I'm getting that treatment, like I'm getting objectified, and I'm just not a

Speaker 2 self-actualized enough person to not like it a little.

Speaker 3 Like,

Speaker 3 I'm actually like, you know what? I'm cool with this.

Speaker 3 Tell me more.

Speaker 2 Like, I like this. I've gotten so much more validation over the years for like, you know, just the

Speaker 2 intellectual store that being a piece of meat is great when it happens.

Speaker 3 Well, when you get into litigation, let the record show Sean started it.

Speaker 4 Yeah, so wait, no, so I actually, to that point, Ronan, with the intellectual stuff and all that, and all that fuels the fire in your belly and you continue to do all that stimulates that gorgeous brain of yours.

Speaker 4 What beyond of that,

Speaker 4 that excellent work in your life excites you? What outside of all this? When are you silly? What do you let it go?

Speaker 3 All that kind of stuff.

Speaker 4 Are you a video gamer? Like, what do you do?

Speaker 2 I am, yeah.

Speaker 2 So it actually took me a lot of time to understand that that stuff. I mean, this goes back to the broad philosophical conversation, right? That a life that's just about the work.

Speaker 2 I mean, I missed every major friend's wedding because I was like off interviewing a warlord. That's an actual thing that happened.

Speaker 2 I'm so sorry to my friend Jen, whose wedding I was supposed to sing at, and that I missed completely to go interview General Dostoum in Afghanistan.

Speaker 2 Like, I made that choice every time, and now I am making the choice to do do the fun stuff, too, to just find joy and yet keep the work going and have the work be informed by that.

Speaker 2 I think if you're kinder to yourself, you can be kinder to others. So yeah,

Speaker 2 I love being social. I mean, I like going deep with small groups and one-on-one, but I also love like...

Speaker 2 I love video games. I love all nerd culture.
I love sci-fi. I do too.
I love reading.

Speaker 3 Here comes Sean and Scotty.

Speaker 2 Are you a gamer, Sean?

Speaker 4 No, not not a gamer. Huge sci-fi.

Speaker 3 Yeah, Sean and Scotty. They have

Speaker 3 Star Trek Knight.

Speaker 2 Yeah.

Speaker 3 It's Star Wars, Harold.

Speaker 3 You would.

Speaker 2 Yeah, I'm more a Star Wars guy, and I really admire the worldview of Star Trek kind of more that it's more about intellectual curiosity, but I haven't taken the time to dig deep. Yeah.

Speaker 3 I haven't seen a lot of it, but let me guess. The good guys win.

Speaker 3 I mean, Jesus.

Speaker 3 Says the guy with the gravelly voice and the mustache.

Speaker 2 I want to start with all the all the old Shatner stuff. I want to really go back and check down on that at some point.

Speaker 3 Well,

Speaker 3 we're 16 minutes over here.

Speaker 3 I apologize, but I could talk to you for a whole day. This is such a great conversation.

Speaker 2 And I really am sincerely such a fan of all of yours. I mean, Jason, I remember watching the pilot of Ozark.

Speaker 2 I guess it was a series order, so I'm using the term pilot reflexively.

Speaker 2 The first episode that you directed and my ex turning to me when your name came up in the credits and being like, is Jason Bateman one of our great living directors?

Speaker 2 Is he like one of the best working TV directors?

Speaker 3 I can ask. I saw my name came up and he said, really?

Speaker 2 I think he might be.

Speaker 2 Well, you know, I had to discover that over the time that you were that too.

Speaker 2 And like even the

Speaker 2 first episode of The Outsider. Like every time I see you directing something, I'm like, how are you so good?

Speaker 3 Very, very kind. Yeah.

Speaker 3 Very kind. Well, something sinks in after a while and you surround yourself with good folks, and there you get it.
Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2 Well, here's to more of that for

Speaker 2 being so kind in this conversation.

Speaker 3 Oh, it was so good. Thank you for joining us.
Yeah, so great talking to you and meeting you.

Speaker 4 Ronan, thank you. We appreciate you so much for being here.

Speaker 3 And I hope you see you. Thank you, Pal.

Speaker 4 I hope I get to see you on the streets of New York again.

Speaker 3 Yeah, I hope I get to see you. Yeah, I'd love to meet you in person.
Yeah, I'd love that too.

Speaker 3 Bye, guys. All right.
Enjoy your day. You too.
Bye. Thanks, Ronan.

Speaker 3 Well, another boring

Speaker 3 prick that just is no charm and doesn't know how to talk. We got to start booking better guests.
Could have kept talking to Rondon Farrell. That guy.
He could have just kept talking to that guy.

Speaker 3 I'm real sweet on that fella. Handsome.
Let me tell you something. Smart.
Amanda's in a lot of trouble. Okay.

Speaker 3 She's in a lot of trouble. Why? Sorry.

Speaker 3 I just found myself really enjoying his company. Okay.
Uh-oh. Uh-oh.

Speaker 3 No,

Speaker 3 that's a real interesting fella right there.

Speaker 3 Um I cannot believe the guy went to college at 11. When you said, are you kidding? And I, I, I almost said like, Chris, he's fucking kidding, Sean.
Wait, he's not kidding. Not kidding.

Speaker 3 I know. 11 years old at Bard, 15 at Yale.
I mean, that's incredible. Good lord.
Can you imagine? Hey, guys.

Speaker 4 Anybody going to the

Speaker 4 frat party?

Speaker 4 15 years old.

Speaker 3 Yeah. Well,

Speaker 3 good for him. And

Speaker 3 Sean, I didn't know you did impressions. That was cool.
That was college. That fantastic

Speaker 3 say what's a big idea i'm gonna bust this joint up you sound like guys with a 30s film

Speaker 3 hey i want to have like a sandwich yeah now uh willie you're there you're there in atlanta i see you're in uh

Speaker 3 yeah

Speaker 3 and be sure to hang out your sales receipt what do you got the rest of the day out there willie

Speaker 3 well uh oh we got it we got another record later on we do i got i got some hockey later on after i've already been to the gym Really sorry about the kings waxing your dumbass maple leaves the other day.

Speaker 3 It's leafs, you fucking dick. What did I say? Did I say maple leaves?

Speaker 3 The leaves. It's plural.
He was doing plural.

Speaker 4 All the players are the leaves.

Speaker 3 Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 3 That is the plural, okay? And it was

Speaker 3 a battalion in the Canadian Army, World War I. So wait.
Maple leaf battalion.

Speaker 3 That's why Khan Smythe named him the Maple Leafs.

Speaker 3 If you had a bunch of Maple Leafs exiting the team bus, how would you write that? L-E-A-F

Speaker 3 apostrophe S? No. Or no, you wouldn't use the apostrophe.
You just have the S. Yeah.
Would it be leaves or would it be V or F? Leaves. The leaves.
With what letter? Leaves.

Speaker 3 S.

Speaker 3 No, with an F or a V? F-F. Huh.

Speaker 3 I don't know if it says it correctly. It says it on the jersey.
I think they spelt it wrong.

Speaker 4 Well, that's because it's plural. But if you had like three.

Speaker 3 And it's a proper name. It's a proper noun.

Speaker 3 That's why.

Speaker 3 They created a name. Yeah.

Speaker 4 But if you you had like three of something, you'd call it try. And if you had two of something, you would call it

Speaker 3 also if you went both ways. Smart.

Speaker 3 Smart.

Speaker 3 Smartless is 100% organic and artisanally handcrafted by Rob Armjarv, Bennett Barbico, and Michael Grantary.

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Speaker 5 At Capella University, learning online doesn't mean learning alone.

Speaker 5 You'll get support from people who care about your success, like your enrollment specialist who gets to know you and the goals you'd like to achieve. You'll also get a designated academic coach.

Speaker 5 who's with you throughout your entire program. Plus, career coaches are available to help you navigate your professional goals.
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Speaker 5 Learn more at capella.edu.

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Speaker 3 Clorox toilet wand. It's all in one.
Hey, what does all in one mean? The catty, the wand, the preloaded pad.

Speaker 3 There's a cleaner in there,

Speaker 3 inside the bag.

Speaker 2 So Clorox toilet wand is all I need to clean a toilet?

Speaker 3 You don't need a bottle of solution

Speaker 3 to get into the stiletto revolution. Clorox clean feels good.

Speaker 1 Use as directed.