407: Kat Timpf—Hot Soup Goes In Hot Takes Come Out

Mike Rowe here with another episode of The Way I Heard It.

Chuck, she always struck me as a jagged little pill on camera, our guest today.

And having just spent a couple hours with her, let me just say that I was right.

Well, she's also very smart and very opinionated without being obnoxious.

You know what I mean?

Yes, I do.

She's great TV and she's a great interviewer.

We're talking about Kat Timf, of course.

The episode is called Hot Soup Goes In, Hot Takes Come Out, in part because her husband accompanied her, Cam, and he among 35 other people.

Man, yeah, she had an entourage.

Well, her show is her tour is beginning here in L.A., so they all flew in.

They were up at 3 o'clock this morning in New York.

They came, they landed, they came straight here, which was great.

They were fun, too.

They were a lot of fun.

And she brought her new book, which is called I Used to Like You Until.

And I'm a...

How Binary Thinking Divides Us is the subtitle.

Yes.

Speaking of binary, about halfway through it, a little more.

But I love everything I've read.

I've listened to part of it, and I'm tearing through it.

And man, there are so many parallels between what she's talking about and my life.

I knew that you were going to love this book, and I knew you were going to love talking to her.

I mean, first of all, she's been on Guttfeld forever.

It's no surprise that we watch Guttfeld from time to time.

And the thing that she wrote about is the thing that you have harped on many times over again, i.e., appearing on Bill Maher and Glenn Beck in the same week and how people treated you.

Yeah, and on a larger level, you know, having a primetime show on CNN for three years and then another one on Fox Business for three years.

The average civilian just simply doesn't know what to do with that.

They don't know how to think about me.

Doesn't compute.

Nope.

It's the same thing, you know, and we talk about this, of course, singing opera and hosting dirty jobs.

People just don't know what to do with these conflicting images.

And there is no better example than Kat Timpf, who's a libertarian and a troublemaker, good-natured, big-hearted.

But Fox is her identity.

She works there every single day.

And in life, she is not what most people would think of when they think of a Fox person.

And so she spends a lot of time navigating other people's expectations.

And pretending that she doesn't work at Fox.

What did she say that she does when people ask her at parties?

No, thanks.

Well, there's that, or I work in porn.

Yeah, I work in porn.

And

they just go, oh, it's an amazing thing.

You tell a person in New York at a random cocktail party that you work in porn, and they'll be like, oh, okay, great.

Don't want to be disrespectful.

And interesting.

Good for you.

You tell them you work for Fox, and they're going to run you out of the auto ring.

How dare you?

How dare you?

How dare you?

It's actually a very personal memoir.

Yeah, she goes deep.

She does, but never without making a larger point.

And the points are prescient.

It reminds me a little bit of Michael Easter's book, The Comfort Crisis.

Right.

Where he tells a very personal story of personal discomfort, but then writes about it in a way that's filled with science and knowledge and research.

And lo and behold, it applies to everybody.

As is her book.

She's got a lot of research in there.

Yeah.

Anyway, the book is good.

We both recommend it, but the conversation you're about to hear might even be better.

Hot Soup Goes In, Hot Takes Come Out.

It's written on her husband's chowder-colored

sweatsuit,

which he was wearing,

which he wore without apology.

The dude's a Marine, FYI.

He's a ranger.

Yeah.

Oh, that's right.

I'm my bad.

He's an Army Ranger, and somehow or another, he and Kat got married, proving, once again, that whatever you think you know about the stereotypes we're all saddled with, it all goes out the window.

And this guy, he's a tough badass.

He comes walking in here.

It's just an impossible leisure suit

made out of sweat fabrics.

He's wearing his wife's swag.

Yeah.

All the merch.

That's a loving husband right there.

So what you got there is a love story.

And what you got here is another best-selling book from Kat Timpf, who you're about to meet right after this.

He's not like the other celebs, you know, but it occurs to me that Theo Vaughan, like so many other guests on this podcast, is a true American giant.

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First things first, I sucked up a bit before we were rolling, but it's a really good book.

Thank you.

Honestly, I sound the same when when I'm full of crap as I do when I mean it.

So it's hard to, but I'm really enjoying it because it's a version of a thing that I set out to write a while ago and just kind of bailed out on it.

I don't think I'm the best one to write it, but you'll love this.

There was a week in my life back in 2015 where I was promoting this foundation that I run really hard.

And in the course of that week, I did a lot of press, but on a Tuesday, I went on Glenn Beck

and talked for about an hour.

And I gotta say, it was a good interview for both sides.

Move the needle.

Audience loved it.

Two days later, I had literally the same conversation with Bill Maher on real time.

And when I came home,

just going through the social stuff,

that's when I saw your book in miniature.

I saw all my friends on the right clutching their pearls and just pooping up their backs.

Could you?

Yeah.

Could you?

Could you?

Could you sit next to Bill Bill Maher?

Yeah.

Like, I mean, just

this weird mix of outrage and disappointment.

Right.

But it was the equal and opposite on the other side.

Yeah.

All my friends on the left were like, dude, Glenn Beck, are you kidding me?

Yeah.

Did you smell the sulfur?

Did you see the horns?

Exactly.

That was the first time for me that I saw the irresistible force and the immovable object smashed together.

And I thought, holy crap, is this going to be a thing?

It's a thing.

It's a book.

It's a thing and you're living it.

Yes.

Because Fox

and it's your identity is a lot of things.

Yeah.

But the work is a big chunk and that's how you're known.

And aren't you having fun navigating that?

Well, what you went through is every day of my life, right?

Because I'm independent politically.

I'm not a Republican.

I'm also not a Democrat.

I do work at Fox News.

So sometimes there will be a story where I know the audience wants to hear one thing.

It happens to not be the thing that I believe.

So I'm going to say what it is I do believe.

They're going to get mad at me.

And then it's cat is a, I get that I'm a secret liberal, which I don't understand what would be the benefit of that.

I mean, I probably would try harder to pretend to than straight up saying, you know, I'm not a conservative.

Special handshake or something.

I would probably, if I wanted to just grift and pretend that I was super MAGA, that would be make my life a lot easier, actually.

Sure.

My life would be so much easier.

I would be selling more books.

I would be selling all my shows out fast.

I mean, some of them I do pretty well, but faster, all of them.

I'd have double bookings all over the place.

But I don't believe that, so I can't do that.

And people will say sometimes who watch Fox, they'll say, oh, she's just scared.

I'm like, what do you mean?

It's just scared to say I'm MAGA on Fox News.

I'm not getting anything anything from the other side either.

Because then on the other side, there are theaters that won't work with me because they see I work at Fox News and they tell my team that.

It's not like, oh, we're booked.

It's like, oh, she works at, we're not interested in working with somebody who works over there.

I had Variety Magazine do an amazing piece on me and on my book.

People were furious at the publication for platforming a racist bigot.

Now, what did I do or say that was nothing.

Just the fact that I, these people had never even heard me speak.

Just the fact that I work at Fox News.

So I'm getting this from both sides all the time.

And I decided I've always been someone who, when I'm going through something that's difficult, instead of becoming a victim or I want to create from it.

So I was like, I should write about this.

Especially because when I went on my last tour, I went to so many different places, met so many different people.

And I went to Portland, Oregon, but also went to Midland, Texas.

I mean, what do those places have in common?

Yeah.

But airports.

Airports, kind of, right?

And it's just

as different as these people were, and they were very different, and as many of the different ideas they had, most people want the same things and value the same things out of life.

What you have a difference of is an idea of how to get there, really.

It's like a dress code of sorts, right?

I mean, if you show up, you know, in a gown,

great if you're at a gala or an opening.

But if you walk into a burrito shop, People are going to look at you like, why, what is she doing here dressed like that?

It just doesn't make sense.

If your identity is MSNBC or CNN or Fox.

Or, by the way, it goes beyond that.

I mean, again, to bring it back to me for a moment, I mean, 20 years of dirty jobs leaves people like with a list of expectations.

They find out I sang in the opera for six, seven years.

You know, I sold stuff on home shopping in the middle of the night.

The first thought isn't, oh,

well, what an interesting, well-rounded Renaissance guy.

It's like, fake, you fraud.

Which one should I believe?

Are you a fancy pants singing theater guy or are you down there in the sewer with the blue collar?

You can't possibly be both.

That does not compute.

Yeah.

And it's the loss of nuance that I think is the main thing that's going to make your book a bestseller real quick because people get it now.

Well, I hope so.

And I really do think that this book would change everything if people would read it.

And I know that that sounds arrogant to to say, but I wrote this book for a reason and I really put myself out there in this book.

Dude.

Very personal.

You think?

But you know what?

That gives you a certain amount of permission.

Yeah.

Right.

Like if you're going to write a survival guide for the country.

Yeah.

Yeah.

You can't be the hero in it.

I'm not.

I begin the book by calling myself out.

I expose myself so much in this book.

And again, I can be somebody who just like overshares at a party, right?

But at a book, book, you got to decide over and over again, you really do want to include this stuff.

I mean, I talk about when I was, you know, took Accutane, made me suicidal.

I talk about, you know, the complicated relationship with my now dead mother.

I talk about how I'm not religious, which makes people really mad, but how I really wish I could be religious and I know I'd be happier if I would.

I talk about so many things.

I talk about my sexuality, which I never talked about.

I talk about an abusive relationship that I was in.

And I do this on purpose because I think that vulnerability is going to be a huge way out of this mess.

I think that if you're willing to show I've been through something, I've struggled through something, or I've gone through this, or there's this thing about me that I've never shared, let me share it with you.

Then that makes people more likely to have compassion for you.

But you know, we don't see each other as human anymore.

I think it's a lot of, okay, this team, that team, and that's all you are.

But if you want to be seen as human, you got to be willing to show that you are human.

And so that's what I decided to do, even though I truly was awake at night many nights after it the book was sent away and it was too late for more edits.

I was like, man, I really did include all that.

I really did.

Yeah.

That poop ain't going back in the goose.

Exactly.

And I mean, it's scary because it's really, you can't, once you put that stuff out there, you can't come back in.

No, and you know what?

In the natural world, they call it the

submissive posture.

You probably saw this in Africa on your safari.

You know, when a big wolf runs into a little wolf, you know, in the wild, the little wolf will just lay back, expose its belly, and and say look i get it you won you got me i'm hoping you're not gonna eat me yeah but i acknowledge that you could and it works because the big wolf will just be like okay good just so you know you know

you know you know what and so good writers do that intuitively they show their ass a little bit and i wonder why that doesn't happen more i mean obviously it's a scary thing to do but it's also very persuasive.

Yeah, and it is a really scary thing to do.

I have so much anxiety about it every single time.

But the way I make the decision is, this is how I make Mo's decision actually, the idea of this ghost ship.

There's one path or the other path.

And if there's a story that I know I could tell that would make my argument better and more persuasive or provide a good example of

what I'm talking about here, I always end up including it because I ask myself, okay, it's publication day.

What would I rather have?

Would I rather have included the story and have people maybe

talking, you know, just judging me for it, getting emails about it, getting tweets about it?

Or would I rather not include it and not have to worry about anybody being mean to me over this thing I shared and then always wonder if I did?

And I always say, let's go for it.

Yeah, let's find out.

Let's find out.

Because I'd always rather just say, okay, let's do it.

And then particularly with the religion stuff, I get a lot of, that's why the last chapter of my book is called, In Case You Still Like Me, Let's Talk Religion.

Not because I didn't know it was going to be controversial, but because I think, you know, there's a huge misunderstanding among people who are religious versus not.

And I have a lot of respect for religious people.

And I know jealousy is a sin, but I am jealous of religious people.

I would like to be religious.

I'm open to it.

I'm open to getting there at some point.

But my mom was very, very, very Catholic and she was awesome.

And that was a big sticking point between us.

I feel like I couldn't ignore something like that because, but research also shows that people are often their estimation is just like politics with that too.

People think that religious people are judgmental and all these other things.

I have a lot, some of my close friends are very, very devout Christians who I've never felt judged by these people ever at all.

But then also, there's religious people who will think people like me, like God came up to me and I was like, I have no interest in you, which is not true at all.

I'm not an atheist either.

I'm totally agnostic.

But it's not like a choice that I've made despite you.

So I decided to include that.

And that's one that people are obviously, I mean, have some things to say about.

Look, I mean, it's endlessly complicated, but it's just a couple days ago, a woman was sitting right where you are named named Rhonda Paulson, who's a born-again Christian and deeply involved in fixing the foster care system.

She runs a thing called the Isaiah 117 House.

But I haven't heard a more articulate critic of the church than her.

Because she's saying, look, this problem isn't going to be fixed by the government.

It's not going to be fixed by the media.

It's not going to be fixed by politicians.

It's going to be fixed by the church.

But when it comes right down to it, the church is is filled with people who are simply not willing to be as uncomfortable or take the kinds of risks that we're called to take.

And I loved that.

I loved it because the business of speaking the truth to your tribe is what you're talking about.

And you're a jagged little pill at Fox.

You don't,

you know, one of these chocolate bon bons is not like the other.

Yeah.

And that's you.

So I want to go back to just the daily reality of being you, whether it's a cocktail party or you know being out in the world with having all that Fox DNA tattooed on you.

So where are you with that?

Yeah, and that's my first chapter.

It's called I Work in Pornography because when people have asked me where I work before, you're at a party, you know, you're with someone, you'll never see them again, but you're stuck talking to them for five minutes anyway, whatever.

And then, what do you do for work?

I'll say, I've said porn before.

And then they just go, oh, that's cool.

And then it moves on because nobody wants to be judgmental.

And Fox News, you can't say that.

Way more controversial.

I've said no, thank you.

People are like, what do you do for work?

I say, no, thank you.

And then people get so weird.

Like, what is she?

But if you say Fox, it's like people are like, well, how could you?

And what do you think about?

And then they'll say, what did you think about?

And then it's usually like this thing someone else said on the air, however long ago, and that I'm not even aware of.

And I don't even know if that's really what they said or if it was spun a certain way.

What I do know is it's got nothing to do with me.

Also, like, don't you work at a bank?

You know, like, well, what did your bank do today?

Didn't your bank take someone's home away today?

But

it's only Fox News that really, in my experience, has this kind of reaction.

And it's so crazy because it's not my experience working there.

I've never been told I can't say something on Fox.

I have this platform where I'm sharing these ideas that are different than what you'll hear from a lot of the other people that are on Fox.

Of course.

And isn't that a good thing?

Yeah.

Isn't that a good thing?

If people complain about their grandparents who watch Fox News all day, no shade, my grandpa does too.

Right?

And it's loud too.

Of course, of course, yes, of course.

He's almost 90 years old.

Yes.

I can hear it from here.

He's in Texas.

So, but they would literally never hear a different perspective if it wasn't for other people like myself that are willing to go on there and share those perspectives.

So I definitely, I mean, people are like, how could, and it's like, you don't know what you're talking about.

And they don't ask questions.

They don't ever ask questions.

What's it like working there?

They're always like, well, how could you is generally the main response.

So I don't want to say anything.

People are like, If you were a good person, you wouldn't work there.

And it's like, okay, cool.

Like, well, it's my turn for the bathroom.

See you later.

It's so weird.

I know.

I know.

I remember I still have a show on Fox Business.

The thing still runs in the elevators all the time.

I see you sometimes in there, yeah.

It's everywhere.

But I had a primetime show on CNN a year and a half earlier.

I get it now.

I didn't quite get it how weird it was to go.

I mean, I know commentators have done it.

They've jumped ship, and that's always, it's almost like switching parties.

Yeah.

Like, what do you mean?

You're abandoning your party.

How the hell did we get there?

I mean, I get differences in branding.

Right.

I just, I don't quite understand when it became so binary.

And it really is.

And there's research in my book where I talk about how, and this research is so obvious, I can't believe they conducted it, but it's true that moral outrage is more often rooted in self-interest than altruism.

So studies actually found if people felt powerless over a problem, the more motivated they were to direct that outrage at a third-party target, and then the better they felt when they did.

And it makes a lot of sense when you think about it because a lot of these problems of the world are very complicated problems.

And as a single person, you can feel like you can't do anything and it can be overwhelming.

But if you can blame it on some other person, then you feel like you've done something.

So, if the other side is bad, then you're good just because you're not on that side, right?

Right, virtue by default.

Virtue by default.

And what a greater example than during COVID, right?

Where you were truly, it's not just that you didn't have to do anything to be good.

You were good because you weren't doing anything.

You were just by sitting on your ass, you were better than people who wanted to go to work.

And I couldn't stand this with the media, with people who were going from...

their job on TV where they're still employed and saying just stay home telling somebody who owns a restaurant or you know just close it just stay home I i would never even if i didn't think it was ridiculous which i did and i was a huge overreach and obviously that's not shocking coming from me but even if i did i wouldn't have it in myself i wouldn't have that lack of self-awareness to tell someone else from my job that they shouldn't worry about their job so i think that it really is it's easier for people i think it's i'm on this team so therefore i'm better than everyone who's not on this team it can be hard to give that up It can be hard to admit that if the other person's views are just views, then your views are just views too.

You're not a warrior saving the world and the kids or whatever else just because you believe what you believe.

But it's a super interesting idea that,

like, overnight, the virtue-vice proposition shifted.

Yeah.

Where we used to say, well, obviously, don't just stand there, do something.

All right?

That's the trope.

And it's a love letter to action.

Don't just

do something, stand there

is what we turned into.

And we started to say, to your point, well, we're all called upon.

The righteous road now is to just sit quietly and do nothing.

And I don't think that's ever happened.

Not in my life.

But the speed with which otherwise reasonable people embraced that and join team lethargy.

That was amazing to watch.

And I still think there's a kind of PTSD that the country's going through because there's no exit.

Watching people come out of their cocoons at different rates is endlessly fascinating.

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Yeah, I'm still not over it.

I'm still not over the fact that they were able to do that.

And I was living in New York the entire time.

So when they shut us down again in December, I mean, there's no outside.

There's nothing to do outside.

I'm just trapped, all trapped in our small apartments.

I never drank more in my life because there was nothing else to do.

That's not good for you because I couldn't work.

I love to work.

I'm somebody who loves to work.

I love to work.

It fills me with purpose.

I think it's important.

I just, I love working.

When I'm not working, it gets bad.

But I'm not special.

There's a lot of people who felt that way.

There were a lot of people who actually developed substance abuse issues that they then carried with them that they had to get addressed or maybe that they're still dealing with or mental health issues.

People lost their businesses.

People couldn't say goodbye to loved ones who are are now dead forever.

And we're just supposed to be like, oh, yeah, like, and then not just act like that never happened.

I definitely think that there's some PTSD from that collectively.

So are you a workaholic?

Probably.

What's the difference between being a workaholic and just being possessed or blessed with a work ethic?

Yeah, I don't know.

I love working, but I love what I do.

So it doesn't feel like work to me a lot.

So.

Did the book feel like work?

No, I love writing.

Deadlines?

See, yes.

So I wrote this book actually kind of before I shopped it around, more so because I got the idea for it like when I was on the tour and I was seeing all these things and I was kind of living the book as I was writing it.

This was the prior tour.

For You Can't Joke About That, which is my first book.

Right.

And writing is really hard, but I love it.

I think it's the thing I'm the best at, which is why I really, when people tell me they're reading my book, it's the best thing anyone could tell me.

Let me compliment you in a slightly adjacent way.

You are a good writer.

Thank you.

Maybe really, really good.

But you're a really good reader, too.

Your book book is easy to listen to and you have a obviously a cadence and a voice and an attitude yeah and did somebody try and direct you in this process or did you just invite them to off and do it the way you want second one yeah yeah i want to hear about the process of writing because it fascinates me yeah the process of writing so The first chapter I wrote was the half veteran chapter.

That's my favorite chapter.

That's my favorite.

Literally, we were just talking about that.

Oh, yeah.

So, because it's got every little bit of everything.

What I like to do in my writing is I like to take a topic that can be boring, and I like to weave in interesting personal stories into it to make it an interesting and fun read.

So, all my chapters are like that.

All my chapters have substance and research, but also all of them will leave you saying, did she really share that with me?

So,

the half-veteran chapter is about how my husband is a veteran.

He was in Afghanistan, and it's kind of about how I

snappy dresser, by the way.

I came in wearing a sweatsuit of my merch because we came here right from the airport.

That guy, Cam, he's committed.

What color is that sweatsuit?

It's a chowder color.

It's a chowder band.

It's soup girl merch.

It's really like for girls.

He was kind of just wearing it.

And then we really had to leave, rush out the door at three in the morning.

And we had the merch shipment.

I mean, we were scrambling to get to LA on time.

So he's in the car.

He's like, I guess I'm wearing Soup Girl.

Just so people can follow along, this is the beginning of the speaking tour and the book tour.

Yeah, it's a comedy show with a message.

It's like a one-woman show, but it's stand-up.

It's a big deal.

It's going to be exhausting.

How far along are you?

I'm about halfway done.

I'm 19 weeks.

19 weeks pregnant.

And she's here with her entourage.

We don't have room for him.

They're probably sitting in the hall.

I've never seen a posse that big.

I usually come to podcasts by myself.

And then my manager's here, my publicist is here.

But mostly your husband is here wearing a chowder colored a crew soupy thing.

So it says soup girl on the sweatshirt, and and then the pants have one of my slogans on them that says hot soup goes in, hot takes come out.

And we are selling these.

Charlie, chat that down in our endless quest for titles for episodes.

That's kind of that.

Yes, we are selling these.

So he's also, the thing is, so he is such a perfect example of a person who cannot be placed into a box.

And how I'm glad I realized that in time before some other girl snatched him up because he wasn't my type.

I dated these creative types.

I dated these musicians.

I was dating a rapper, comedians, whatever.

My sister convinced me to go out with him.

And he was like, ugh, like he has like a job in finance.

He's healthy, emotionally adjusted.

You know what I mean?

I had begun addicted to the toxicity of some of these relationships that I write about in my book.

I went out with him.

I still wasn't really sure.

He was dressed in his finance douche uniform, you know, and I was like, ugh.

So I was like, I'll just get drunk.

So I had a, because none of my excuses to leave the date were really working.

So I just got drunk.

I had five tequila sodas a lot.

He told me he went to Afghanistan.

I was like, you fought in a bullshit war.

I basically told him that.

And then he said, he agreed.

He said, as somebody who went over there, he knew pretty early on that what they were telling everybody they were going to try to do wasn't going to be possible.

And this was going to all fall apart.

This just wasn't going to be possible.

I still wasn't really sure about him.

You know, I kissed him before I left, but that was mostly because I was like, really, I made five drinks.

But then he was really interested in me.

I don't think most first dates go like that.

Really, the war you fought in was bullshit.

The girl gets drunk and leaves.

So he set up a few more dates with me.

I'm intrigued.

Yeah, he was like, what is this?

And he was like, who?

He's like, this girl also, she works at Fox.

He's like, what is this?

So I canceled the two second dates after that because I was like, whatever.

And then finally, my sister was like, just go out with him one more time.

So I went with him one more time.

He picked a place.

I mean, he had pulled out all the stops on these other days.

At this time, he just like picked a place, whatever, by his apartment, I guess.

He came late and he was wearing like a hoodie and a hat.

And he was so

I was like so hot.

And I never spent a night apart from him beside that.

We moved in together at four months.

And I was a girl who was like, I'm a career woman.

I don't really want, I don't want a boyfriend even, that commitment.

It's going to be a distraction.

I want my freedom.

And I was very wrong about that.

And I call myself out about that in this chapter over and over again.

My career skyrocketed when I started dating him to the point where it couldn't be a coincidence because I have the support that I ultimately know, you know, this person's going to love me no matter what.

I feel more free to be myself.

And I really have skyrocketed.

He's a finance guy, so he always jokes around that.

He started dating me in 2019.

I was on the Gut Veld show once a week, wasn't doing much else.

He likes to say he bought on the dip.

Which he did, because I was not killing it quite like I am now when I first started dating him.

But, you know, a finance guy, military veteran from Westchester, I thought this would be boring.

He's so exciting.

He is secure enough as masculinity to be wearing the soup girl sweatsuit to

come meet the dirty jobs guy.

Great, yeah.

I've got just a thing I'm going to slip into.

The plan was to change, but man, things, you know, it was just a busy day.

It's a busy morning.

But again, this man, he was an Army Ranger.

I mean, this is a tough dude.

And I remember I was talking on another podcast and I was talking about my husband and they were like, wait, the pretty boy that you were on FaceTime with was an Army Ranger?

I'm like, yes.

Right.

So, and I write about how important it is to challenge your biases and what I would have lost in terms of my relationships.

And I tie the chapter into the way that we need to talk about the military differently in terms of you can't question a war or they'll call you a terrorist or a terrorist sympathizer and now the new thing is you're a putin puppet if you question all the funny you go into ukraine and it's how these things happen i mean my husband he actually predicted what would happen at the kabul airport and i write about this like to a tea before it happened and it was a very difficult time for him and for everybody that went over to afghanistan to see this so um i tie those two things together but there's a lot of military veterans that are anti-war for these reasons.

You know, just a quick sidebar, our friend Scott Mann sat right where you're sitting.

He wrote Operation Pineapple Express and with a couple other guys facilitated the Underground Railroad that got the people out of that mosh pit and that nightmare of a thing.

He knew it was coming too.

Yeah.

I mean, anybody who was really paying attention could see it, but it was just la la la.

You know, we just marched.

We just marched right into that mess.

But Cam saw it.

Cam knew.

Yeah.

It was at his birthday brunch, and he was like, This is what's going to happen.

These people are very young.

They're going to be people who are going to die.

They're too close together.

These people weren't trained for combat.

And, you know, when we, these guys, these Taliban guys, we never saw the whites through these guys' eyes.

He was saying, he's like, people are, there's going to be a mass casualty event, and it's going to be people who are very young and people who are not trained for a combat role.

And it's not their fault.

And it was a rush to get this out, people out in time for a symbolic victory.

And it's just, it's just everything he said was exactly what happened.

And he's, you know, became close with some other people who work at Fox that were over there as well.

I mean, he's on the phone with people he served with.

I mean, he lost people, classmates over there.

People died.

And it's terrible.

That's awful.

What you said earlier, I think, is worth riffing on too.

This idea that the less freedom you got, vis-a-vis dating,

the more you committed to a thing, suddenly stuff takes off.

Yeah.

It feels opposite.

And my question is, that happens with writers too, at least with me.

The terror of the blank page

and the challenge of being able to write anything you want, Kat.

Go ahead, just write anything you want.

We think you're so awesome.

Yeah.

And we just need anything.

Anything.

And that,

right?

It's like sometimes you need rules, you know, whether it's QVC or Fox, you need to understand what your parameters are and where the lines are.

So you can cross them if you want, but you need to know where they are.

Right.

And there's something really human.

They write operas and musicals about this kind of thing.

Our yearning to do anything we want with no oversight, but the undeniable fact that the minute we have some parameters, we do better.

So much better.

I mean, it's absolutely crazy, truly.

And for the same reason, I was very afraid to have kids, and now I'm doing it.

And I say to him all the time, I'm like, what if I'm not, I mean, this book, if this book doesn't do well, I will see it as this, oh, see, I can't do both.

I can't,

and he's like, well, you were scared to date me.

You told me, you know, and it's true, I was.

So that was just another thing of me saying, okay, let's do it.

Let's see what happens.

Cause I never wanted kids.

And I'm like, but I have his kids.

You know, I'm very grateful to have a relationship like that.

And I feel like now it's also really popular to not admit that.

It's like cool to think your husband sucks, you know?

Like, you know what I mean?

My husband doesn't suck.

My husband's my favorite person.

Sorry.

You know, when I first noticed that, I think it was Everybody Loves Raymond.

It's a very well-crafted sitcom and it's full of laughs and wonderful performances.

But at the center of it is a guy who's never

the hero.

No.

Ever.

He's the brunt of every joke.

He whines.

He never quite measures.

He's always being weighed and measured and always found wanting.

And that really took off.

Yeah, there's a lot of that.

As you can see, I roast the shit out of him, too.

I mean, I definitely

make fun of him.

But I mean, it was worth it.

And it's, again, it's, I love to be wrong because then I've learned something.

So that's what I also write about in the book over and over again is times when I'm like, oh, I thought this, but this was wrong.

And I like that.

The half veteran.

Yeah.

I mean, if you don't want to give it away, don't.

But I mean, it's a reflection of.

of how you see yourself.

Yeah.

So it's a joke.

So half veteran is a joke that I made.

It started on Gutfeld joking that I was a a half veteran because when you get married, everything's split in half, making me half a veteran.

So and now he jokes that he's half pregnant.

But some people have gotten mad at me about this joke, not people who are in the military,

but some people, because people always want to get mad.

I'm the punchline of the joke in that case because, of course not.

You know, of course I can't.

take half of him going and putting his life on the line and shooting being shot at.

But I also started dating him after he'd served.

And that's not to say that I haven't gained any perspective or insight or that doesn't still affect a person after they do something like that, because it definitely does.

But there are people, spouses, for whom that's not far off.

I mean, there are spouses who their husband dies and they're raising these kids alone.

I mean, that's to me, that's, that's not far off.

So, so half veteran is not just a chapter name.

It's now a line of t-shirts that I have on my website that I give all net proceeds to Tunnel to Towers.

So I don't keep any of the money.

I give them all the money because that's where all their money goes to, you know, wounded veterans.

And he's great.

He's terrific.

I was overwhelmed.

I mean, as much as I talk about how horrible people can be online, I mean, we've raised tens of thousands of dollars already.

So it's still going.

And it's, cause it's so, and you know, if these, because Cam's classmate was, or one of his classmates, one of the people who was killed in the helicopter crash not too long ago.

And his wife, you know, left raising young boys.

And so I...

Tunnel to Towers was able to help them because I have these connections with these people.

And that's what motivated me to do this fundraiser because it's just unbelievable what these people go through.

So that's where half veteran has kind of come this-it was a stupid throwaway line I made on the show now, and now it's become this huge thing.

Well, it's you know, I talk a lot about, I mean, the shorthand is micro-macro, and you do that in your book.

And the reason that was my favorite chapter so far, I'm not done yet, but it's very micro in the sense that you're talking about you, and you're talking about you and your husband and the weird proportionality of dividing humans into.

But when I think about the Second World War and the degree to which the civilian population was vested in the effort, well, we were all half-vets back then

because we were all up to our neck in rationing.

We all knew that the steel and the plastics, we all knew, I mean, everything was going toward the war effort.

Everybody knew it, and everybody was engaged in it.

We were all half-vets.

And today,

man, the division of labor is.

21% of the country has somebody in the armed forces.

That's right.

And

I mean, most people don't know where Afghanistan is.

Never mind Kabul.

Never mind Ramadi.

Never mind Fallujah.

They can't find it.

It's all so abstract.

It's almost like Ender's game, you know,

these wars are being fought in just some kind of virtual,

literally a virtual digital space.

But we are not half vets.

We're not 10% vets.

We're just out of the fight, and that's a problem.

Yeah, I mean, I write a lot about this too, in terms of the lens of people love to just say, like, oh, like, support the troops, but they don't think about what that really means.

And thanks for your service.

Thank you for your service.

Okay, what is, but it can look a lot uglier than that.

And I write about Rob O'Neill, who's a good friend.

Him and his wife are good friends of my husband and I.

And he's got some issues, but how could he not?

Rob O'Neal being the guy that that shot shot Osama bin Laden I mean and he's been open about okay you know I have this issue with alcohol how could he not how could he not after going and doing all that and be being a trained killer be like this guy was this guy supposed to sit at a desk and do accounting now

so I think that also and then I in the chapter I do widen out to a larger conversation about mental health where I think just like support the troops and just like thank you for your service we've never waxed more poetic about the importance of mental health in this country than we do now but we've never in our actions given less leeway to people going through any kind of mental health crisis.

Once it starts to look a little ugly, which it always does.

It always,

being close with someone with a substance abuse issue is ugly.

Being close with someone who's even going through depression, which I've gone through some tough mental health things that I open up about in the book, and I actually share some of my diary from when I was having a breakdown, which was very hard to do.

But just to give people an idea of just how insufferable a person going through these things can be.

That's the people like to post, oh, I'm always here to talk.

If you're going through something, okay, but you understand that's going to be the last person you want to talk to, right?

Yeah, right.

It is.

And I've been that person.

I've been that person where I'm talking to my friends and I'm sure they want to throw their phone into a river, right?

But we should, you know, how can we be saying, oh, mental health, meltdown, but yet we're treating people as if a single mistake does define them.

That's not good for anybody's mental health.

Dumb.

As you may have heard me say several thousand times before, we need to close the skills gap in this country and we need to do it stat.

I hate to be an alarmist, but there are currently 7.6 million open jobs out there, most of which don't require a four-year degree.

And currently, 250,000 of those jobs exist within the maritime industrial base.

These are the folks who build and deliver three nuclear-powered submarines every year to the U.S.

Navy.

And there's there's a real concern now that a lack of skilled labor is going to keep us from building the subs that need to get built.

On the positive side, there's a growing realization that these jobs are freaking awesome.

I'm talking about incredibly stable, AI-proof careers, just waiting for anybody who wants to learn a skill that's in demand and start a career with some actual purpose.

Additive manufacturing, CNC machining, metrology, welding, pipe fitting, electrical.

All of it is spelled out for you at buildsubmarines.com.

That's where all the hiring is happening, and you really need to see it to get a sense of just how much opportunity is out there.

That's buildsubmarines.com.

Come on and build a submarine.

Why don't you build a submarine?

That's buildsubmarines.com.

If your husband were sitting here, I'd ask him this.

And I refer, of course, to Cam in the chowder-colored leisure wear.

Unbelievable outcome.

Like, what are his thoughts/slash yours on call it a reverse boot camp?

Like, this idea that rather than pluck a 24-year-old out of a hot zone, who, you know, two weeks earlier was being shot at and shooting back, and now they're interviewing for a job at Kaiser, sitting across on average from a 29-year-old woman who is going down the checklist of things.

And just, there's no way those two people with their requisite most recent life experiences are going to be

they have no hope of making a connection much less getting hired yeah that's where i think the chapter opens that conversation up too like if we're all half-vets then what can we do like we'll spend six eight weeks preparing somebody to go to battle and zero amount of time preparing them to reassimilate absolutely into this shit absolutely because also of course, you're going to be affected by if you go to war and you're in combat and you're like, then I'm fine, then there's something deeply wrong.

It's a matter of levels of how much it's going to affect you and what kind of help you can get, but everyone's going to be affected by it, every person who goes over there.

And we just say, okay, thank you so much.

And it's like, what do we do for these people?

You need to, and the judgment of people and without saying to yourself, okay,

why

my husband was over, you know, he went to West Point, then after college, you know, he was in Afghanistan.

I mean, I was by no means, I was going through a tough time too.

Things were not easy.

I was really, really broke.

I was a waitress, whatever.

I lost my apartment.

Things were tough, but I wasn't in a war.

If I had much of a hard time with what I went through, how could I judge someone else?

How am I so sure that if I had had that experience, that I would be handling it so much better to the point where I'm actually going to judge someone else for having, say, a drunken meltdown or something like that?

There isn't enough help for these people.

I really don't think.

And also just understanding of, you know, it's so aesthetically pleasing with like the support the troops and the flag pin and this and that.

It's ugly.

Yeah.

It's ugly.

It is, I think, of all of my friends who are amputees.

Yeah.

Travis Mills being one, quadruple, right?

Yeah.

I think one of the first to come back and survive.

Yeah.

No arms, no legs.

He runs an amazing foundation today up in Maine, Travis Mills Foundation.

He works as much with the families of catastrophically wounded as he does the wounded themselves.

Because to your point, just the ugliest interpersonal challenges imaginable are rooted with the people you love and just helping with that whole reassimilation.

And I only bring it up because covering up your stump or wearing a prosthetic or whatever it is, it's all fine and well and good, but we all ought to look at it.

We ought to look at the wound

because it's shocking and it's unpleasant and it makes people feel guilty and sometimes ashamed and just uncomfortable.

But

man, I see those commercials with the guy,

his face is so burned.

We see him on Fox all the time.

And I'm glad to see those ads.

Yeah.

Because I feel like I'm looking at the truth.

Yes.

Yeah.

I completely agree.

As opposed to.

Like, it's hard to know when you feel manipulated and when you don't.

Yeah.

You just know when you do.

And if Sarah McLaughlin is singing in the arms of a friend.

I take my cue from the music.

That's it.

That's it, man.

The soundtrack is like the leisure suit, the sweatsuit that the husband's wearing.

It sends a message, right?

It might not be one you intend to send, but when you take the right piece of music and put it with the right one-eyed cat

or the dog chained out in the cold, man,

like riff on that.

What do you say when there's more empathy for an abused dog than a vet who gets no grace?

I know.

I think that it's because you can also make more excuses for animals, I guess, because, again, it's uglier sometimes like when a human has a breakdown or has a meltdown.

It's truly an ugly thing.

And And a lot of the behavior that you're forced to deal with can be just, just can f your own mind up a little bit.

Whereas let's say that there's a cat that, you know, I have a cat, okay, who is a feral cat who's touched in the head.

Like got him six weeks old, streets of North Hollywood, actually, this cat is from.

14, so many medical issues.

I will not let this cat die, okay?

Like I give him medication.

His name's Cheens.

So it was Sergeant Pepper.

It became Pepper Cheeni Pepper and then Cheens just for short.

So I got him.

I had him this cat since I was 21.

I'm 35 years old now.

This is an old cat.

This is a mean cat.

All right.

And, you know, you'll be petting him.

Every now and then he'll just like bite me for no reason.

He'll bite my face, like my face.

I was like, come on, dude.

But like, what are you going to do?

It's just a cat.

You know what I mean?

We've been through.

But I think it's also now with, we're in this era in terms of human to human, whether you're a veteran or not, where, like I said earlier, that your mistake does define you.

And I think we've gone so far from accountability for your actions.

Of course, you should have accountability for your actions.

I've been close to people who are addicts and then they get sober.

That doesn't mean that the stuff they did when they were addicts is all okay.

That's why they make amends, they learn to make amends and so on and so forth.

But that should be accountability for their actions, not accountability for their being.

At this point, it's like you make a mistake.

Okay, why are you here in society anymore?

Which think about how crazy that is.

And I think that it's having, and I write about this too, it's having a effect on more than just the person being canceled.

Because other people look at that and as people who have made mistakes before too, you're like, wait, am I maybe if I haven't done the same thing, but people pretend to be more outraged than they really are sometimes.

It's a lot easier if it's just some person in a headline versus like your friend.

You know, and I write about Rob O'Neill when he had that drunken meltdown in the hotel in Texas, which a lot is coming out about that now.

And you can, you know, read about that, but he had a drunken meltdown.

Everybody was like, oh my God.

And I'm like, is my friend okay?

Which is very understandable if that's your friend, but we act as if it's not.

People would then say, oh, you really?

You're defending.

Like, no, you can say the behavior was bad without saying the human is.

And I feel like that's so radical now.

And we wonder why everyone's so miserable.

And we wonder why people do have all these issues.

There's a mental health professional who write about my book who said that she and some of her colleagues are noticing a new iteration of OCD, which literally is fear of being canceled.

She gives an example of a young man who's worried about something he did in his childhood coming out on the internet.

And it manifests in this constant worry and constant need for reassurance from those around around him and so on and so forth.

But we're all able to do this in our own lives.

Why are we not able to pretend otherwise?

It's not zero sum.

I think it's having a really bad effect on our collective mental health.

I think the most interesting thing about your title is the ellipses.

Yes.

Because it truly, to your point, this OCD fear of being canceled can come in virtually any form,

any disguise, right?

And the list seems to get longer every day, from the sublime to the ridiculous.

Oh my gosh.

Chowder-colored sweatsuit, you're out.

Yeah, or

more likely, no, sir, you're not coming in here.

Yeah, sorry, not here.

Do you not know me from dirty jobs?

There's a Chipotle down the street.

Go have fun.

But it's, of course, there was always a list of things that you can't do in polite society without reaping the whirlwind.

Yeah.

But now the list has no end.

It's ridiculous.

It has no end.

And I write about this now where it's this idea of one thing.

It's not even just that there's not independent thinking.

People are unable to perceive it.

People see, okay, you have a show on, you're on Fox.

Therefore, that must mean you're MAGA.

Therefore, that must mean you vote this way.

Therefore, that must mean you believe this way on this issue.

Therefore, that must mean you're evangelical.

All these things.

And it's like, no, but I am in some ways.

I mean, I'm pro-Second Amendment.

I'm a collection of my own beliefs, right?

People can't even perceive it.

The list is really long.

I write in this book, too, about, I made a joke about Jason Aldean.

And again, this is on the Gutfeld show.

This is when the whole try that in a small town controversy was happening.

And it was one of the two sides where the one side was like, he loves lynching.

He's pro-lynching.

Ridiculous take, in my opinion.

But then the other side was like, he's a hero.

I love him.

He's the best.

And it was like wall to wall of the two points of view on each type of news network.

So by the time I'm on, on Gutfeld at late in the night, my job, I try to say something else than what's been said all day.

and also

i'm not a country music i like merle haggard i like the old stuff i don't like a lot of the new modern country stuff it's not my thing but i wanted to just say something entertaining too so i made a joke and i just said i didn't know who he was i made this point in the joke i said Everyone's saying this one thing or one thing.

I'm like, I almost feel like I'm not allowed to say I just don't like this song.

I think the song sucks.

It's almost as if I can't say that I don't know who he is.

He looks like every dude ever to sit at the bar at a Buffalo Wild Wings.

That's what I said.

The audience in the room laughed.

It was whatever.

I didn't think about it that much.

Oh man,

I had to stay away from the internet for like a week.

I mean, I turned off social media, but people were emailing me, calling me a bitch, saying that, you know, I should, people were like, horrible, horrible, horrible stuff.

And they're like, you're an elitist.

You're a this, you're a that.

I'm like, I'd said it, and I explicitly had said, how crazy is it that I can't just say I don't like this song without people saying it and thinking it's a political statement.

Thank you for proving my point.

That's exactly what happened.

I mean, and I get shit every day from both sides, but this was one of the crazier times for me, actually, was this joke about a Buffalo Wild.

And also, I'm an elitist, and it's like, the crazy thing is, and I did say also that some things suck about a small town, like you can't get DoorDash or whatever, but a lot of these congresspeople who are tweeting these glowing things about Eldean, their publicists are writing them.

You don't live in a small town either.

Okay.

L.

Dean, too, by the way, not from a small town.

He has a 10-point whatever million oceanfront mansion in Florida, which I do not have, which is fine.

I'm not shaming that.

I love to see people succeed and make money.

But, you know, let's not pretend that just because I was honest about my own metropolitan DoorDash ordering lifestyle, that this means this whole host of things about me is true and that I should, I mean, people were calling to ban me from Texas.

Like it was.

The whole state.

The whole state.

Not even Austin.

Yeah, not just, and it's just like, oh, well, she's a woke.

You know, it's like, what, dude?

Like, I didn't like this song.

And I explicitly made this point.

And it's also like, think about nobody can drink a Bud Light anymore.

Because like you're seen with a Bud Light, then somebody's going to come up and talk to you about, well, what did you think about?

Sometimes you just want to drink a shitty beer.

Like sometimes you just, you know, sometimes you're eating.

You got plenty of options,

that's the thing, but people, because they are interchangeable, but it's like you're drinking a Bud Light because you want to, you have a long day of drinking ahead, you want to keep things slow, or you've already had a long day of drinking ahead, you want to slow things down.

Right, that's really what Bud Light's for.

And yes, a Coors Light or a Miller Light will accomplish the same thing, right?

Right, right.

It's so true.

It's like, and masks, obviously.

Yeah, same thing.

A mask used to mean, it used to be a health thing, a precautionary thing.

Now it's something else altogether.

What did I want to ask you?

Oh, did you hear Kevin Spacey being interviewed by Lex Friedman by any chance?

I saw like parts of it.

Yeah.

You know, back to your ellipses.

That was a Me Too moment of sorts.

But caught up in all of it, you know,

he wasn't convicted of anything.

He wasn't found guilty of anything.

It was all thrown out of court.

Now, what he did, was he a brat?

Was he, I have no idea.

He's admitted to being.

I definitely think he's a perv.

Yeah,

don't know.

But the absence of loyalty among friends.

That was the thing you said.

Yeah.

That's the other part of this that I find kind of chilling.

It's so chilling.

The behavior versus the person.

So you are nuanced enough to go, Rob, that business in Texas, that was not cool.

Fail, epic fail.

You're my friend and I love you.

That's what we can't do anymore.

HBO, no loyalty, no nothing, no wait to learn the facts with anything.

He was done.

His career is done.

He sold his house in Baltimore.

He's broke.

You're talking about Spacey now.

Yeah.

Sorry.

About Rob O'Neill.

No, no, no, no.

She knows Rob Seyne.

He switched era in the middle.

But the connective tissue is back to the nuance.

Can Kevin Spacey still be a great great actor who didn't break the law and is therefore allowed to work?

The answer is no, he can't.

He did something.

Something happened, and now that's it.

And part of me is like, hey, man, you must be this tall to get on the ride.

That's called consequences.

And you screwed up.

But the other part of me feels like, wow, that barrier for getting on the ride sure has shifted.

Yeah.

I have a tough time with him just because of the way he handled it too, being like, I'm gay.

We're like, okay, that's not what we're mad about, sir.

There was that too.

Absolutely.

Going back to what you said, I mean, and also it's like, I mean, he definitely does some pervy stuff, right?

But I feel like the bar doesn't have to be that high.

I mean, okay, so remember Aziz Ansari?

Do you remember that whole thing years ago?

That's a better, I think, example because this girl wrote this essay where I remember reading it, feeling like I shouldn't be reading this, where she says, you know, she hooked up with him and kind of like felt kind of weird about it, which, like, who among us has hooked?

Like, I definitely have hooked up with guys.

I'm like, ah, wish I didn't do that.

Okay, like, it's a very normal experience, but she wrote this really long essay, and then it became, okay, well, he should have known that because he's, I saw people say he's a comedian and he reads the faces of the audience every night.

He knows if they like it or not.

And he should have, I mean, like, that became a thing.

And I,

it kind of like, I don't think he got canceled all so he's not really around anymore.

And I think what you said about friends, I think it's people will say it's so far beyond that too, where I will go on, you know, Reddit sometimes because whatever.

I mean, it's a dark, it's a dark place, but it's actually lighter for me because I go on like the reality TV show, Reddits, and stuff, and I'm like, oh, you know, gossip and this and that.

But there's always people on there who will find some real, and these are reality TV people.

These are not anybody that people are looking to as pillars of anything.

You know, they're hired because their behavior is unhinged enough to be interesting to watch by the nation, all right?

But they'll find that someone maybe is in a photo with somebody with a MAGA hat on, or they'll find that somebody liked a tweet from Ben Shapiro five years ago, and then everyone's like, why aren't they fired?

And then anybody who talks to the person who liked the tweet, that person is unacceptable too.

And these are thousands and thousands of people piling onto this.

And it's insane.

Do people really not have a single person in their life who is mad?

And also on the other side, too, when people will be like, I'm very close friends at work with Jessica Tarlov, right?

Who's like the Democrat on the five to the point where I don't know how I would be getting through my pregnancy without like talking to her.

I don't have, having a baby in Manhattan is a weird thing to do.

I bet.

Right.

It's like, it's an alternative lifestyle to be a wife and a mother in Manhattan.

Right.

Yes.

And so I'm like, hey, so I feel like this.

Is this normal?

Why do I do this?

And I don't know where I would be without her.

People are like, she's evil.

She's communist.

She's bad.

You can't talk to her.

It's like, because she said something on a TV show that you disagree with.

So both sides definitely do it.

I'm not all putting it on one side, but it's gotten so parasocial.

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A commercial TV show.

The whole thing is a commercial enterprise.

The whole thing is transactional.

The whole thing is just clicks and eyeballs and eardrums, and everything is designed to get you to watch and to make you,

with respect to Fox, everybody does it.

That keeps people watching.

Every story needs a bad guy, and people love to hate as much as they love to love, probably more, which is kind of your point.

Yeah.

So, but I wanted to go back to the, I guess you didn't use the word, but

integrity.

Yeah.

So, like,

you wanted to say something that hadn't been said about Jason Aldeen

because it's your job.

Yeah.

And you know where you work and you know who your audience is.

Yeah.

And I also know from meeting you before, but now especially from reading your book, you're not going to say something that you don't believe.

No, can't do it.

Can't do it.

I appreciate that.

But it's an interesting crossroads, isn't it, to be sitting there on live TV.

Yeah.

Now it's your turn to say something.

A, you need to believe it.

Yep.

B, it needs to have not been said prior to this whole crazy news cycle.

So so where's your default go?

Like is your first instinct to say what you feel or is your first instinct to say something that hasn't been said before that coincidentally you also happen to believe?

To say what I feel, that's usually my first instinct.

And it's interesting because I prepare for the show every day.

I mean, that's my life.

I prepare for the show every day.

I write down something every time.

Okay, I'm preparing to say this.

Sometimes the show goes in a direction where, okay, now I need to say something about this or things change.

But yeah, definitely saying what I feel is where it goes first because sometimes it does fall in line with what someone else has said before.

But I just can't, there are shows I go into where I'm just straight up like, the thing I'm going to say is going to, I'm going to need to stay offline for a while.

So can I bend it back to Bill Maher?

Yeah.

Right.

So you like him, you admire him, you've watched him since you were in college, right?

You do his show and you're on his podcast.

Yeah, I did.

I was on his podcast.

Yeah.

This is where I am in the book at this point.

Yeah, okay.

Right.

When you walked in just an hour or so ago, I was sitting there reading this, laughing, because I got a similar moment, but you're in your head, you're like, am I going to smoke weed with him?

Yeah, yeah.

I better figure that out.

Right, right.

Right.

Because now it's not.

your audience, it's his audience.

And you don't want to be rude.

Right.

You don't want to go all Steve-O.

Right.

Yeah.

Right.

So now you're having this conversation with yourself that's really rooted in optics and perception.

Right.

And then you start thinking about, oh, God, I don't want to say anything.

I don't want to blow myself up.

Yeah.

Right.

And then you sit down and you find yourself in a policy argument with him around taxes.

Taxes.

So make all that make sense.

You know, the way you look, the way you behave, the things you say, and you're doing it with somebody who is kind of iconic to you.

Right.

I spent, I would say, from the moment I found out that I was doing this podcast to the moment I realized I was not going to be offered weed at all.

I was freaking out about whether or not do I smoke the weed.

I was like, oh, I don't know if I do.

I don't want to be rude, right?

Would it be like, am I not cool if I don't smoke the weed?

But also, I said this when I was on Rogan the other week.

My most boomer opinion is like the weed's too strong.

Like the weed.

And I'm like, what am I going to go nonverbal?

Like, am I going to be, like, am I going to be able to handle it?

And then is that worse?

Or maybe I just smoke the weed at the end.

But I also think my brain does this thing where I, this is like, it was a huge opportunity for me to do this podcast because I'm going to be seen by this whole different audience.

My brain will focus on some small thing to be nervous on, so I can't like grasp the larger thing.

Like,

if you freak out about whether or not to smoke the weed, you don't have to think about the fact that this is when a lot of people are going to see you for the first time.

You better not freak that up.

But yeah, I am always worrying about that because, but you know what?

I ultimately always say, people are going to be mad at me anyway, like no matter what I do.

If I include this story or that story, if I smoke the weed, if I don't smoke the weed, if I do this, if I don't do that, if I share that, if I don't do that, people are always going to be mad.

And then, yeah, do you not jerk?

I just have a question.

Yeah, do you ever adjust your opinion to go for the joke?

Like, how important is what you say to be funny as well as you believe it?

Oh, I also do sometimes as a comedian do just straight-up jokes.

This is actually interesting that you brought this up, which, by the way, how crazy is it that I have to say that?

Sometimes as a comedian, i just do straight up jokes which is because i had a clip go viral of me doing a joke i told a joke about um it was a caitlin clark joke okay i've never seen a single second of women's basketball and i openly admit this i openly admit this as part of the joke and i'm probably gonna get everybody listening if i get it wrong i know i don't know and i don't care so this is just the joke i loved the structure of this i loved the structure of this joke that i came up with on the show it was about caitlin not making the olympic team and i guess there's some stuff with like she's a rookie i don't know again don't care but i just said you know she didn't make the team but i honestly anyone who did if she feels bad to make her feel better i didn't recognize any of the other players on the team except for brittany griner and that's not so much because she's good at basketball but because she's bad at packing

and i was very like that's a great i was proud of the joke it's a great joke

It blew up comments.

People are like, you're, oh, look at this white woman making fun of this black woman, like, calling me a race.

And I'm like, we're talking about race now people are like oh wow well you're a girl caitlin i was and then i i was replying to some of them i'm like i don't care about caitlin i'm actually not i don't like dislike caitlyn i'm not a fan of her i've never seen her i've never seen either one of them play just ask jason albean people how i feel about that people are like you know and also when the whole britney grinder thing happened i more so than a lot of other people i was defending her like no she doesn't deserve to be in a russian prison because she had a weed pen and it was a dumb decision or she maybe just forgot was in her bag there's you know that that's very plausible to forget something's in your bag it's horrible she's going through this So I'm not like one of these people, but they saw where I worked.

They're like, oh, she's one of these people.

She's one of these people who's like, Brittany Griner should have rotted in a Russian prison.

And I also just feel like Brittany Griner, guys, has had real problems in her life.

I highly doubt she would be like blink twice at my joke that I told.

You know, she was in a Russian prison.

But I told the joke because...

I thought it was funny and it was a good structured joke and it got a big laugh.

And I said within the joke, like, I didn't know these other names.

I've never seen women's basketball.

So I was never claimed that like, well, if you don't know about it, you you shouldn't talk about it.

I'm like, no, no, no, but I know about jokes.

And that was my job there: to make a joke.

But it was truly, I mean, I still, today, actually, was scrolling on my phone on the way here.

I got someone else, Joke or Not is disgusting in regards to the joke, which again, this was a lot, this is months ago.

Wow.

People are still.

And outrage has a long tail.

It really does.

Well,

I see why you like Marr.

Yeah.

That was his whole thing, right?

For years.

He said stuff that just made people outraged,

politically incorrect.

You know, He made jokes.

Some of them pissed me off, honestly, but they were funny.

Yeah, and I really did enjoy talking with him, even though we did get an argument over taxes, where I think, I just think tax, I mean, taxation is theft.

It just is.

And I was trying to make that point where it's like, listen, you don't pay your taxes, then people will take you away with guns.

Like, that's armed robbery.

That's your money you earn.

And whatever percentage you're paying in taxes, that's the percentage that you're working without compensation.

And they steal that money from you.

It just is.

And he was like, well, you want to live without taxes?

Move to Somalia, blah, blah, blah.

You're just called me stupid a bunch of times.

But what I was trying to say was not, I wasn't trying to get an argument over policy or that we could just do away with them all of a sudden and write out.

That's what it is.

We've agreed to be burgled.

We are being stolen from.

And I think that that's another thing I write about too, because it's not the only time that happens with a language where people, they call it, for example, they call it student debt cancellation.

It's not cancellation.

Forgiveness.

It's not forgiveness.

It's reassignment to people who had nothing to do with it.

And for me, it's a personal thing because I got into Columbia Journalism School and then I unenrolled because I didn't have 80 grand.

And I also didn't have a plan to make 80 grand.

I took it, it was a very difficult path for me.

I mean, I alluded to it earlier, but I did internships instead for free to learn these skills, worked in restaurants.

And, you know, the boyfriend I was with for a while broke up with me and I had to move to this crappy apartment.

And then it was just, no, this guy was just like my college boyfriend.

He's a great great friend of mine now.

We were like kids when we broke up.

My plan was I wasn't going to live there for two weeks until my internship was over and my housing type had run out.

Then we were going to break up.

And then I was going to go to New York for Columbia.

So like I actually moved in with him non-consensually.

Like that was a little fed up of me.

I just didn't go anywhere.

So, so like, I completely, I mean, we're, we're great now.

You know, he was, there were 30 people at my wedding.

He was one of them.

So, um, but then I had to, you know, I lost my apartment.

I had to move in with this like Columbian bartender.

I was sort of kind of seeing him and his whole Columbian family from the California Pizza Kitchen where I worked.

It was just like me and my suitcase and the other, my cat that's still alive was with me during this time.

So that was really hard for me.

That was a tough time.

But I made that decision.

I'm like, no, like I don't have this money.

So I'm not taking it out.

So we call it cancellation.

That's forcing me to pay for someone who made the easier.

Let's just call it what it is.

You can think it's the best policy.

You can think that, but let's just call things what they are.

And I think this happens a lot if you have a small government viewpoint on something.

And I write about this over and over again in the book, where people will think if you don't think the government is the solution to a problem, you don't care about the problem.

And those are two very different things.

Of course.

And that's the way in which this book can be a guide.

This book really is a guide for connecting with people who might have written you off.

One of the things that I advise people is: if you can focus on the fact that you both care about the problem, you'll realize that that's what really is here: you set different solutions in mind.

Look, that was the thing to start to land this plane that brought me to Bill Maher and Glenn Beck in the same week.

And prior to that, nobody would have batted an eye.

And then all of a sudden they did.

And so I know we're living through some sort of a sea change.

You talk about your internships and whatnot.

I've also noticed this.

My foundation has given away a bunch of money for, we call them work ethic scholarships.

No four-year schools.

It's just trade schools.

Which means, of course, I'm anti-education.

Which means I just hate.

Right?

It's those.

No, I'm laughing because, of course, yes.

Of course it is.

Of course it is.

I mean,

I have a liberal arts degree.

It served me well.

Yeah.

It cost $13,000 in 1984.

Yeah.

And it costs $96,000 today.

I'm against that.

I'm against the debt of it.

I'm against the, you know,

best path for the most people is the most expensive path.

That's crazy.

Yeah.

But no, I get it.

It's to take any position that rankles anybody else, then you become anti-the other thing.

Yeah.

And that.

So aside from reading your book, how do we get out of this?

Definitely read my book.

I mean, I saw it definitely when.

So I'm assuming we read it.

Okay.

But I mean, what practically, is there a policy you would put in place?

What do we do to get our rationality back?

So I think what the book does, teaches you to do that you have to do basically is it teaches you how to realize when you're being manipulated.

Because as much as we have to lose by writing each other off, yes, in terms of personal relationships and all, that's very sad, but also in terms of opportunities to work together to solve these problems, the powerful people, like the people in government, and I'll even say the media as well, they have real gains the more divided that we are.

It's easier to say, vote for me, because if you don't, the other person's going to destroy life as we know it, and then we're all

and your kids will never grow up.

I mean, truly, that's more motivating than vote for me because you agree with the stuff and my policies and this and that.

But then once a person is also elected, this policy, if you don't support this legislation, then you don't care if bad things happen to kids or whatever, you know, national security or whatever emotional thing they throw in there.

And they're convincing people to give up their own rights.

So I think it is to take the thing out of it, take the emotional thing out of it.

When you're being asked to be afraid of something, to be like, okay, why?

What do the government or the powerful gain if they convince me to be afraid?

I think that that's something that I, an exercise I do often.

Yeah.

I wonder how many people will apply a similar rubric to the election.

Yeah.

By that, I mean, I wonder how many people are going to be forced to not choose between candidates, but kind of just get them both out of the sketch and just look at the policies as best they can and make a decision.

I worry that

half the country is going to wake up the day after this election

and be absolutely convinced we're over.

Yeah, no, we are.

But again, it doesn't have to be.

And again, that's why this book is a guide for how to connect.

And I also write about how November 5th is the 10 year anniversary of my mom's death.

And that's a huge milestone for anyone, not having a mom for 10 years, especially as I'm pregnant with my first child.

It's just mind-blowing to think of figuring out how to be a mom.

I don't even remember what it's like to have one.

I remember her, but I don't remember what it's like to call my mom.

It's been a long time.

I'm going to be thinking about that on November 5th.

I'm not going to be the only person thinking about something else besides the election on November 5th, but we're going to be all acting as if that's not the case.

I I think the more that we can focus on the human stuff or at least try to acknowledge that it's there and not reduce a person to a viewpoint or a candidate, then there's always going to be hope.

But I'm very concerned for the same reasons.

No matter who wins, the other side is going to be

just blank.

Is there anything Fox can do?

Is there anything CNN can do?

Like if you were really

king of the world and you could implement changes in your industry, in journalism.

Yeah.

What would you do?

I think the tough thing is, and I write about this too, about the radical acceptance of superpartisan media.

Like the cat's just so far out of the bag on this one that it's not going to change.

So I think that we need to radically accept that things are going to be this way.

There are going to be places that are a conservative slant.

There are going to be places that are a liberal slant.

But, and then what?

Because I think that goes back to if you just blame it on that, then what are you going to do?

I think I can only control myself.

And I try to make sure that I never let having a platform for a platform's sake be so attractive that I stop remembering why I wanted one in the first place, which is that I care about these issues.

I care about these subjects.

And if the worst thing that I have to deal with is people are going to be mean to me, maybe I don't sell as many books as I would have, which I really do because I think this book's important.

But if it's a harder climb for me, that's okay.

People have been to war, right?

I've got a guy living in my house who's been to war.

I'm going to be all right.

You know, I love the metaphor.

If your industry is a cat that's out of the bag, maybe it's cheenos.

Maybe it's cheens.

Maybe it's just a little feral.

A totally feral animal, man.

He's a love of my life.

What am I going to do?

I used to like you until dot, dot, dot.

Man, good title.

It's a good book.

It's a great listen.

By the time this thing airs, it's officially out now.

It's out now.

Your tour is going to be going on through into December.

Into December.

Until my doctor says you can't fly anymore.

So I'm going all over the country.

And you're still doing Guttveldt?

Yes.

I'm working seven days a week.

Pregnant.

All remote, obviously.

No, what do you mean?

Well, I mean, you're in L.A.

now.

No, I'm in L.A.

just for the tour.

So I'm in New York.

So I'm in New York Monday through Friday.

But Guttfeldt's on tonight.

Yeah, it took today off.

Slacker.

Yeah.

Took today off to do different work.

This is

a question I just have to ask because of the foundation that we run and I'm trying to remember to ask everybody that's here and I think I know the answer, but this work ethic thing, you have it.

Yeah.

You've got it.

What do you think of the state of work ethic in the country?

And is that even a thing that you

spend much time cogitating?

Let me say it another way.

What do you think of people who don't possess your work ethic?

Yeah, I think about it a lot and it's something that's I don't understand because I've always kind of been this way.

I mean, I grew up knowing my parents couldn't afford to send me away to college, that kind of a thing.

And I was like, okay, well, I got to work early.

I mean, I was, I wanted to save my first communion money in the second grade for college.

And my parents are like, eh, not going to really make a debt, like sweetheart.

Like, okay, go buy a bike.

You know what I mean?

But

I've always been that way.

I've always really wanted to, you know, to work hard.

And there's a lot of, you can get so much dopamine even, like the feel-good chemicals in your brain when you accomplish something.

And if you fall into a rut where you're not doing anything for a little while, then you can, it can kind of just, you can just spiral down in it.

Even if you start with something small and get something done, start checking stuff off your list, you realize how good that feels.

I mean, I love to work.

I have no understanding for people who don't love to work, but also my job's fun.

So, like, if I was a minor, then I probably, you know what I mean?

I would probably tell me to go f myself.

That's a M-I-N-E-R.

Yeah.

I mean, if I was working, you know, like in manual labor, then I understand.

But there's so much satisfaction in accomplishing things and getting things done.

There really is.

It's the best feeling in the world.

Love it.

Give my regards to Tyrus.

Of course.

Gutfeld.

Yes.

And the whole parade parade of horribles over there.

And Jessica.

Oh, yeah.

And Dana.

And Dana.

Dana's wonderful.

I do love Dana.

Me too.

Bill Hammer's okay.

Who else is over there?

I guess that's a ton of people.

I know there are a lot.

Yeah.

All right.

Thank you for making time.

Of course.

This was great.

Your book's terrific.

How was Rogan, by the way?

It was great.

I absolutely loved it.

It was a great conversation.

He's great.

Would you go?

Three and a half, four, five hours?

Three hours.

Yeah.

Was there a P-break in there at all?

No, which I'm pregnant, so I was like, that was what was tough.

I kind of almost wanted one, but I didn't want to like stop it.

Well, you know, he wears a stadium pal.

I thought about it.

I thought about wearing a diaper, but I didn't.

Cat tip, everybody.

Thank you so much.

Get her book.

Listen to it.

Read it.

It's awesome.

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