The Daily Stoic - Molly Jong-Fast on Generational Trauma and Cancel Culture

Episode Date: August 3, 2022

Ryan talks to journalist Molly Jong-Fast about the generational trauma that we’re passing down, the me too movement, how cancel culture has impacted our society, and more.Molly Jong-Fast is a contributing writer at The Atlantic and the author of its newsletter Wait, What? She is also the host of The New Abnormal and a columnist for Vogue. She often writes about parenting, whether that be reflections on her relationship with famed mother and feminist, Eric Jong, who is also an American novelist, satirist, and poet. Or about how she is navigating raising her own children in the insane times we find ourselves in now.✉️  Sign up for the Daily Stoic email: https://dailystoic.com/dailyemail🏛 Check out the Daily Stoic Store for Stoic inspired products, signed books, and more.📱 Follow us: Instagram, Twitter, YouTube, TikTok, FacebookSee Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Hey, prime members, you can listen to the Daily Stoic Podcast early and add free on Amazon music. Download the app today. Welcome to the Daily Stoic Podcast, where each day we bring you a passage of ancient wisdom designed to help you find strength, insight, and wisdom every day life. Each one of these passages is based on the 2,000-year-old philosophy that has guided some of history's greatest men and women. For more, you can visit us dailystow.com. Hi, I'm David Brown, the host of Wendery's podcast business wars. And in our new season, Walmart must fight off target,

the new discounter that's both savvy and fashion forward. Listen to business wars on Amazon music or wherever you get your podcasts. This episode almost did not happen because of some extreme traffic delays. My guest today at Molly Zhang Fast was delayed and delayed and delayed. She got stuck in the experience I've had many times. When I lived in New York and when I visited where you think a journey is going to take you 11 minutes and it takes two and a half hours or whatever. She got caught sideways, but I was

quite proud of us as we talked about the beginning of the episode. We handled the very calmly, normally when stuff, you know, interrupts for me, then I'm frazzled and then I might, you know, cascades into the rest of my day. But I feel like I was, I was very chill about it, chiller than I, as chill as I would like to be all the time when stuff like this happens. As chill as I would like to be all the time when stuff like this happens and it was no problem and Molly was wonderful Why I wanted to have Molly Zhang fast on the podcast. I've actually love her writing at the Atlantic She wrote a really touching piece about talking to her teenage

children about A number of recent school shootings that really touched me. How do you talk to kids about a world that feels like it's falling apart or that horrible things are happening in? Her feminist writings have been really interesting to me. Her mother, Erica Zhang, is a very famous writer. Her 1973 novel, Fear of Flying, so like a bazillion copies, and then became very relevant once again,

with some recent legal decisions here in the US. And I recorded this well before that ruling, but Molly's writing over the last year or two has been eye opening to me. I follow her on social media as well. She's great there. She's a contributing editor to the Atlantic. She's an author of a newsletter there,

Wait What, which is really good. She's the host of the new Abnormal podcast and a columnist for Vogue. And her stuff on parenting is fantastic. She's the author of two novels, Normal Girl and a Social Climbers Handbook and a memoir, Girl Maladjusted, which center around her wildlife as a girl in the 1990s in New York. You can follow her on Twitter at Molly Zhang Fast. That's J-O-N-G-F-A-S-T Molly Zhang Fast. You can subscribe to her newsletter on the Atlantic. I'll link to that

in today's show notes. And I was really excited to bring this episode. I think you're really gonna like it. I'm gonna be like, I'm gonna be like, where were you stuck in traffic in New York? Yeah, but you know, it was like, the thing is, I just,

the days that I don't podcast are complete, I get completely, you know, just for tuts. So I went downtown and I thought I'd be right back and then I was like on, you know, one street for like, and I kept like writing to your assistant having an anxiety attack. So, or producer, so anyway, I'm sorry. No, no, you're totally good.

I flew on Monday and my plane was five and a half hours delayed and it took all of my self-control not to utterly lose my mind. I mean, it's like one of those things with flying where it's like, it's miraculous, like it's a miracle, right? You can get into the sky and go places that humans haven't been able to go for your, but in the same sense, they're in there when it goes wrong.

You're like five hours late. Well, it challenges you because it's totally outside your control, but it feels insane to have zero emotion about it, right? So like you, you feel stressed or rushed even though it's a totally impotent, torturing emotion, but it feels weird to just be like, all right, I'll see you in five and a half hours later than I expected, but that's like really all you can do. Right. I also think like the thing when people get mad at the airline staff, you're like, what are they going to do? Like you want them to take off with the plane, like with the, the mechanic

down there, like fix it. Like what is, like you want them to fly into the bat? Like, like how would you want this to play out that would be better for you? Yeah, although like so like the flight that I was delayed on, it was like, I woke up and it was delayed two hours And I saw it before I left I still had to wake up at like 5 a.m. Right? But it was helpful that I learned two hours Yeah, but then then it was delayed another two hours and then it was delayed like another hour and a half or whatever Obviously if they told me it was five and a half hours up front

I would have been totally fine, right? Like, I could have made plans. I think part of what's, it's like the injustice of the way you're being treated, I think is what we're responding to. Do you know what I mean? Like, that they're not being straight with you, that you can't plan around it. There is a part of it that mimics,

I think a healthy thing, which is don't let people treat you like shit. And when you're being treated like shit, it's hard to just take it. There is a part of it that mimics, I think a healthy thing, which is don't let people treat you like shit. And when you're treated like shit, it's hard to just take it. Right. I mean, but I do also think like they don't care. Of course. You know, the grit, more than my favorite bits of video is Ted Cruz screaming at the airport attendants. Like, do you know who I am? If you ever find yourself thinking those words, you have so lost the plot. Yes. Oh, I mean, I would even go like a, you know, I'm sober a long time and like,

they used to, some of the meetings that I've gone to, where they've said, when you need to talk to the manager, when you ask to talk to the manager, you're in trouble. Like, that's the moment where you know things have really gone off the rails. Well, that's where the higher power thing comes in.

You don't have to accept a specific higher power, and you can just say the words, but I think the critical thing is realizing that you are not in charge. That's, I think, the wisdom of that idea. It's like, you're not in charge. And in fact, the people who are in charge don't care about you at all. And the sooner you accept this, the less distress you will feel going through the world.

It's true. Well, I would also say, I don't even know that it's not that they don't care about you. It's that they're not, they are not thinking about you. Yeah, they're in different views. Right. And I think it's like this idea, I mean, the thing, the single most helpful thing I have ever heard and it's been so true in so many relationships in my life is that they're not, they're just doing it, right? It's like it's an alinon thing. Like they're not doing it to you, they're just doing it. And like if you're in their way and I'll have moments like especially in the last 10 years, where I will think to myself like this person is acting out something they need to act out. And I

am like in their way. Yeah. You know, and that is like very, I mean, I once had someone, we're focusing on mental health issues here, right? This is what this fight, okay, good. I'm just checking. I'm going to talk about politics. I was on a sports podcast earlier today. So, I mean, they didn't, luckily, they didn't ask me about sports, but, but so I had someone try to make amends to me.

And she started telling me about how she'd always hated me and had always had been gossiping about me and saying all the terrible things. And I thought to myself, like this is what this woman has to say. And the most sober thing I can do is just say thank you. You know, and not say you're completely, this is an insane thing to say to

someone. Yeah. Yes, that you're actually hurting me by apologizing, but you're understanding that they're doing it for them and they don't have that much free will over it helps you not take it personally and just see it as an event. I thought of more, I thought it said a lot more about them than it did about me. Yeah, there's a stoic line that it's not things that upset us. It's our opinion about things. So like you're saying, they're just doing it. It's just happening.

You're telling yourself that this is unfair, that this is cruel, that it's selfish, whatever. You're putting these labels on it. And those labels are the source of your distress or pain or frustration. Yeah, I mean, I would also even, I might take it a step further, which is that over-personalizing and bringing the ego into it is what really gets people, I think is what causes the most.

A most hurt. Well, you wrote a piece at the beginning of the pandemic that I like that was about how sobriety prepared you for what was to come. How did that work? So, you know, because, I mean, it's an interesting thing because I'm sober a long time, but I also struggle from really bad sort of generational anxiety, right?

Like, you know, I, like I have stories of my grit, you know, I, in my mind, I can think of like my grandfather having anxiety attacks. Like, not even like on both sides, you know, like one of my, my grandfather Howard Fast, who was this writer who was communist and who was blacklisted and who went to jail. He had these terrible cluster headaches. So he had tanks of oxygen in his closet. So there was, there's like a very, so I would say that part of, you know, the whole, this tenon and a.I.

is the idea that you stay, you stay in the moment and you, you don't get too far ahead of yourself. And so what would this pandemic, I mean, certainly the way I felt about the pandemic in February 2020 was wild later than the way I felt about it in July 2020. And wildly different than the way I felt about it in December 2021. And so I would say like that idea of just, you know, you'd just like staying in one moment in a time and not trying to figure out, you know, what this would look like in six months or any year or any year and a half.

And I think that has really served me. Yeah, there was, I think if you could, the more, the closer you could get to an attitude during the pandemic that was just sort of like buckle up, it's going where it's going. Easier time you were going to have. It's the sort of fighting it or the denying it, which is sort of two different sort of approaches that a lot of people took. That's what I feel like got you and got people in trouble. Well, and I also think like there was a moment, and I have a grandfather who lived through the 1918 pandemic.

My grandfather and my father, my mother's side. So there was a moment when we didn't know if this would be the 1918 pandemic. And the 1918 pandemic was, they just, you know, it killed, you know, 12-year-olds and 20-year-olds and the healthiest people died. And I think that that would have been significantly, I have actually spent all the time thinking that that would have been significantly more traumatic than what happened. Because even though it was crushing and we lost a million people,

and there are people who will be sick forever from it, and maybe, you know, there was a sense in which it wasn't as destabilizing the idea that it went after people who were already in less good health. Now, that doesn't make it okay in any struts imagination. And in fact, morally, I think we sort of, we Americans went to a worse place because, you know, there was a lot of like, well, you know, grandma's got to go anyway. Your grandma's going to go in 10 years or 20 years, which is that kind of once you get into like, and actually when I wrote this piece recently about teenagers in, you about teenagers in this post-pandemic age, they have seen us as a culture, make a moral calculus about the value of human life.

If you don't think that's going to breed a generation of nihilists? Or at the very, I think there already is a generation of nihilists. I think the problem is that it bred, it's breeding a generation of cynics, which is in a sense worse, right? And I actually struggle with this with my parents, my parents are boomers to watch them betray all the things that they said were important to me growing up. As different things happened in the world and it was no longer expedient to care about

those things because now their retirement portfolio or their just day-to-day comfort in like discourse or conversation was threatened to toss that out the window to go with something that to have to stick with to get to stick with what they like. You know, I think there's a there we haven't yet discussed the generational trauma and consequences of that. Right. And I think that boomers and I'm going to go out on limb here. I hope you don't use this as the poll quote for the interview, boomers are going to, they're huge generation.

They're going to live longer than anyone else in history. I mean, maybe they won't be live quite as long because of the pandemic and the life expectancy has gone down in America. They're going to of a long time. And they're going to have had a very, very quality of life that the generations after them will not have had, because we have these quality of life. So they're set up for a fair amount of resentment already.

And I think that will continue like I, and that generation is just starting to be elderly. They're just hitting 80. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's going to be, it's going to be strange. Well, you know, I was thinking about you because I just read this book, Baby on the Fire Escape. Have you read it?

No. It's about like creative women in the 20th century and their struggle to be parents. So it's about like Susan Sontag and Doris Lessing and all these writers, mostly writers, although there's some sculptors, but the artists that we sort of know that were sort of freed by the sexual revolution in some way, and then still fighting again, still having to navigate that in their own way. I thought it was really interesting because I know obviously your mom is a writer a little bit later than them, but it was just really interesting to read just because the history

of the creative arts is so often male to sort of read about these women struggling with these choices and lose, lose situation. I just thought it was very fascinating. I mean, what's interesting about that generation, and like my mom was friends with Ansexten, so I think that, you know, some of those people, which is a little bit older generation and some of those women too, she was in front of Doris Lussing,

but she was friends with some, some a lot of women in that generation. And I think my mom certainly struggled with this. There was a sense for these women that they could not have it all. Yeah. Now I think it's we're in a different way, which is we are told that we must have it all, which is equal trap, right? Because how can you possibly do that?

So I would say, I think they really thought that they were sort of that they only had very limited choices and that they could sort of have these children, but they would have to be, you know, very limited. And now I think we are sort of put, you know, my mother was always like, it's a choice between my work and you. And for us, I think we, in my generation, I'm 43, it's sort of in a way I feel like almost worse. It's like, you must have children, you must have career success. And also you should work out and do this and do that and be happy, you know, and make me taught, you know.

Well, what was interesting about the book is, you know, like Audrey Lord, Alice Walker, Tony Morrison, I was talking about all these writers, although some of them are very well known, maybe other than Alice Walker, I guess Tony Morrison also, they almost none of them had any real commercial success. So like they're grinding against these gender stereotypes, but they're also just grinding it out with, like, sort of, subsistence level survival, the sort of starving artist thing for people who don't know. I mean, your mom's book sold like 20 million.

It was one of the best-selling books of the entire era. That must have been a different set of issues because hers are issues of abundance rather than scarcity, although time. I mean, Alice was super famous and Tony Morrison too. Tony was like so fit, but she was also like a professor. I mean, those guys were super famous and successful. Alice is still a live Tonya study. But yeah, I mean, her problems, but you know, again, being successful doesn't mean you're not completely neurotic.

There was a sense in which she felt that, you know, she had had this big book in 1973, and maybe she would never write again, or maybe the book would never be as good, or maybe she would never be as successful as that one book. It was like her, to have your first book be huge, is its own, I mean, look, it's not as bad as not. Yes. But I think it creates a whole other level of anxiety.

Well, you never really feel like you've made it. You never really feel like you're good. And then if you are driven, you're drives just expand to want to exceed or beat what you've already done. So it's kind of this treadmill that you get on that like family can feel like that it's fighting for a finite amount of resources.

I think that's terrible. And I also think with my mom, she definitely worried that she would and my grandmother had this to her mother where they worried that they would get lulled into parenting too much and that it would somehow take away from their work. And so they would always be very anxious that maybe they would do too much parenting and that would somehow write or correct. And you know the reality is, I mean my grandmother's a painter, my mother was a writer, they were both so profoundly bad at that kind of connection that they didn't come naturally and did not take them over and the anxiety about it made it even harder.

Yeah, I think that's where that's what's so insidious about it. It's like because you're very good at your work and your work is natural and your work is something you control. Family feels, it's not that family takes up a lot of time. It's that family takes you out of your comfort zone because it's all the things that work is not to you. Yeah, I think that's right. I also think like, you know, with that generation, they had sort of figured out that they didn't have to do it. Like my grandmother was like she sort of went with my grandfather on these trips because

he was an import exporter and they left the children with the her parents, which is very unusual for that generation of this 1920s, 1930s, 1940s, 30s, 40s, 50s. And then my mother had me in 1970s, 80s, and she had just discovered that she could just outsource almost all of it. And so that was thrilling to her. And this was the early days of like having people take care of your children. And so, you saved me formula and a lot of those things.

Right, a lot of those. Yeah. Right. I mean, that was the big shift that I think we don't spend enough time talking about or thinking about is women, especially, is that you had a time when, you know, the pill was the 60s. Abortion was the 70s, baby formula. You didn't have women were not, you know, sort of, they were part, you know, they were sort of baby makers and then they were, you know, wives. Yeah. I mean, they just weren't a ton of other roles for women and that was sort

of set up that way. So, it's a bit, you know, it's been a huge transition in some ways. Yeah, that it's funny when you, when I'm reading this book, still there's this kind of monstrous selfishness that all artists seem to have, right? But like, what struck me as sad, when, cause obviously when you read about the sort of male counterparts of all these authors, and I think about this generationally, like when I have young kids, and it's like my favorite thing in the world,

like I care about it more than almost as, more than anything as effectively, right? And you just think, and all my favorite memories are that, that I would rather do that, then go to parties or do all the perks of success. But then when you think like generationally, that fathers willfully deprive themself of said thing, it's kind of insane when you think about it.

Do you know what I mean? Like, when you think about how important this step is, it's obviously very hard. insane when you think about it. Do you know what I mean? When you think about how important this step could, it's obviously very hard. When you think about all the good parts and that dads chose or society chose that you just don't get to enjoy all these things. And people were just like, okay, that's how it works. I mean, I would say, I would say like they didn't even know.

Right, yeah. Like they didn't even know that that was an option. I mean, that's the thing that's such a change. It's like, I mean, during the time, you know, there weren't other options. But I do think the thing that's hard is it went from like, you can't do this to you must do this. Yes.

And you must do everything else too. And I think that's very tough. Like, you know, my, I mean, our parents' generation were, you know, was like, you, you know, you can't spend time with your kids. And our generation is like, you must spend a lot of time with your kids and also work and also also. And so I think it's a lot.

I mean, I think it's good. It's certainly better than the alternative but it's also you know it's it's it's meaningful shift. Is this thing on? Check one, two, one, two. There ya'all! I'm Kiki Palmer. I'm an actress, a singer, an entrepreneur, and a Virgo. I'm just the name of you. Now, I've held so many occupations over the years that my fans lovingly nicknamed me Kiki Keep a Bag Palmer. And trust me, I keep a Bag Love. But if you ask me, I'm just getting started. And there's so much I still want to do.

So I decided I want to be a podcast host. I'm proud to introduce you to the Baby Mrs. Kiki Palmer podcast. I'm putting my friends, family, and some of the dopest experts in the hot seat to ask them the questions that have been burning in my mind. What will former child stars be if they weren't actors? What happened to sitcoms? It's only fans, only bad. I want to know, so I asked my mom about it.

These are the questions that keep me up at night, but I'm taking these questions out of my head and I'm bringing them to you. Because on Baby This Is Kiki Palmer, no topping is off limits. Follow Baby This Is Kiki Palmer, whatever you get your podcast. Hey Prime members, you can listen early and app-free on Amazon Music. Download the Amazon Music app today. Yeah, my friend Austin Cleon, his rule is work family scene, pick two. And I think people struggle trying to get all three. The scene being, you know, social media, the scene being parties, the trips, the thing ironically that people glamorize and associate a creative

profession with, the idea that you're probably going to have to say no to those things if you want to actually be a good parent. Yeah, I mean, I think what being a good parent is when your kids are let all versus what being good parent is when your kids are old is like very different to I mean I have an 18 year old and 214 year old so like when they were little it was basically just sit there with them and stare at them. As they've gotten older like that's been a sort of different A change in what was sort of needed for me. But yeah, I mean, absolutely. I think that is super important.

And, you know, yeah, I think that's right. I've loved your teenager piece because you were sort of asking this question is like, how do you, and I think it's a philosophical question even, but you're like, how do you tell people it's going to be okay when you increasingly doubt the truth of that statement, which I feel like describes the last couple years quite tragically but truthfully?

Yeah, I mean, so I would say that, you know, that's like a fundamental question as a parent in general. I mean, you could make the argument that in 19, you know, in I'm thinking of like during World War two, you know, there were American Jews watching what was happening in Germany. Could they tell their children it was going to be okay, right? Or, you know, the kids are doing these lockdown, you know, not even locked address. These kids are doing nuclear drills in their schools in the 50s and 60s. Like, you know, could you say it was going to be okay? I mean, so I don't know.

I mean, I lived during 9-11. I was in New York. And after 9-11, like, there were two very relevant things that happened. One was that they were these, like, a little earthquake for reverberations of, like, anxiety where people would say, like, it's a code yellow. They found a, you know, there's a truck, which there's a truck with no license plate on 43rd Street. We're going to shut down the whole city because, you know, it, right, because we can't find the registration on the truck. So there would be these little earthquakes, but then there was also, and there was a lot

of anxiety about that, then there was also like an actual problem with the toxic fumes from the World Trade Center that was actually poisoning people and people didn't know it. And you know, lots and lots of people died of cancer because they thought it was safe and nobody told them. So you had like a sort of a non-existent fear and a real fear and both happening at the same time and not and no one knew what was happening. So I think it was, you know, a very strange time to live in. And so could you say things were going to be okay then I don't know. Well, yeah, that's the, yeah, that's the PTSD of coming out of the pandemic.

And we've seen it, the reverberations of like our murder hornets are going to be a thing now. Is monkeypox going to be a thing? Monkeypox, yeah. You know, for a good chunk of, like, let's call it normal life, stuff happens, it bubbles up, you know, this crazy thing, you know, they're getting reports of this crazy thing, people are speculating about this thing. And the vast majority of the time, nothing comes of it. So then one out of a thousand times, that thing turns into COVID or turns into 9-11, the thing happens.

Then how do you get back to a life where you're not hyper-vigilant, right? That hype, right? Because parenting, you're already hyper-vigilant, right? That high, right? Because parenting, you're already hyper-vigilant, then things happen in the world and it exacerbates the hyper-vigilance, but you can't sustainably or healthily live in a state of hyper-vigilance. So that's the struggle of being a parent and a person in an uncertain, unpredictable world. Yeah, I mean, I would also add that I think we don't, like one of the things that we don't talk about enough, which I think about a lot is like, part of why everyone is so in such a bad mood

and so angry is because of this. Like, you know, we are in this post pandemic kind of haze. And, you know, people think like, because there, you know, there's like this, this sort of rage going on in American life right now. And it's been, it's, you know, there's school shootings, there's crime, there's like, there's clearly, and you saw, and there's reporting today, that there's also a lot of, there's a lot of rural crime too. So it's not just in urban areas, like it's really everywhere. And part of it is people stuck in their home for a long time and the disruption, but part of it is this, like, you know, this going back to normal, whatever that means, and the kind of mental, you know,

this sort of, I think this sort of trauma of having lived through this experience. And, you know, because there are, because even though it wasn't like 1918 or our youngest and healthiest didn't die. We still had people who were, we still had people die. We still had people get sick. We still had stories of people who were young, who died. I mean, there was still a lot of randomness. No, it's profoundly traumatic. And trauma makes people behave in strange, unpredictable ways. And then it's kind of a feedback loop, right?

It's like when people are acting out because they've undergone trauma, it's very hard to maintain your faith in humanity when you watch people behave or tweet or speak in a certain way. And then it's like, how do you pull out of that spiral or at the very least, how do you not ruin your kids? So they like you know what I mean? How do you not ruin them like make them jaded cynical

suspicious etc without also being dishonest like you said like pretending everything's fine when it's profoundly not fine Yeah, I mean I think I think that the question of like you you, you know, as a parent, there's this like, there's a kind of want to, uh, to fix things and to, you know, to tell your kids they'll never suffer. And, and it's a control thing. I don't know that how good that is as like a parent. I feel like it's almost better to let them have some uncertainty about the world.

I mean, the problem with, I think, I talked to my teen world about this a lot. The problem with this generation of teenagers is they have seen my generation, which is younger than baby boomers were like i'm young gen x yeah so they've seen us uh... really not kill it and in fact the thing i always think about is like all all almost all of the leaders are many many of the leaders uh...

political leaders are in their 70s and 80s. And, you know, we're all in our 40s and 50s and 30s. And like, we're not running anything, right? Like, I mean, we're, you know, we've got Nancy Pelosi, we've got Chuck Schumer, we've got Mitch McConnell. Like, these people are our are septogenarians largely. And there's a sense in which our generation is sort of back of Bernard. And you know, and then you people like AOC who are like superstars, but they're in there, you know, she's a 32 or a 30, you

know. Well, no, it's like they want people to sort of respect the system and the norms as they personally don't respect the system or norms. Like, I think, like, you look at this, she's a hero to many people, but you look at Ruth Bader Ginsburg, like the profound selfishness of her choice not to hand it over earlier, or just assume it will work out, sort of a, there's almost like an all begun, your all begun attitude to the, the like, you know, what was the, what's that famous quote? After me, the deluge, it's sort of like this selfish, like I'm in

power now. I have what I have now. I should hold on to it. The idea that I need to set up an orderly transition, where there's even some idea of enough, like I've gotten mine, like I want to make sure that this neighborhood or this system or this company or this industry is on sound, younger fitting, not just for the person immediately after me, but many people after me. I think we have, young people have watched a repeated betrayal of that idea. Well, I mean, it's like the reporting from Rebecca Traster with a piece on Diane Feinstein, where she is like, don't worry, it'll be okay.

You know, like we're, and you know, it's like she doesn't worry because she is very, very elderly and is maybe not 100% there. And you know, again, I can't speak to her mental state, but certainly, there certainly have, we've certainly seen things that might make us think that. And, yeah, I mean, I don't know how, I don't know how, I don't know how we get, you know, we're stuck with this, this, uh, Jaron talk or say that is, you know, I don't think they have their, I don't think they have their, they are not as committed to the future as they should be, I think. I wrote this book about Peter Teal a couple years ago and he always says things that make you think.

He's not always right, but at least things about things increasingly. And he said, his question was how much of the Me Too movement was also just a kind of generational backlash against people who should have moved on a long time ago, but were otherwise impossible to push out. And I thought, even if that's not actually what's driving me to, the sort of me to the sort of simmering rage against a people who won't move on. There's going to that that energy is going to find an outlet somehow. Well, that is the baby boomer conundrum, right? Because that is where we're all really mad at them because they're taking over the planet and they won't stop and like we want to have our shot now.

And that, you know, I think that's pretty clear. I don't, you know, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find someone who's not a boomer who's not mad at them. Yeah. In some way, shape or form. With Peter T. So what I would say about me too, and then I want to talk about Peter T. Oh, yeah. This is your podcast.

I'll just, you know, I think that what's happened with me too is that the backlash has actually been stronger than the original me-tuing, which is really problematic. I mean, the thing that's good is like behavior has shifted and people don't feel comfortable behaving the same way. The thing that I think is very problematic is that like if you, the narrative of like backlash and these poor men who got, you know, like, I mean, I don't know, I mean, a lot of these,

a lot of these people were really behaving just beyond the pale for a long time and no one ever said, you know, I mean, it just, you know, I mean, I think about like there was this Republican candidate for governor Charles, Grouper, Grouper, Grouper, Grouper or something, but I think it's called Grouper. And you know, he like groped women in public, you know, in the year, I mean, there were like a ton of eyewitness accounts of him like sliding his hand down a woman's shirt. And, you know, like that kind of thing, it's not okay.

Like, it's just not, you know, and so I would say, and ultimately a lot of the people, like for example, Kevin Spacey has numerous accusers, like they're going to court in the UK at seven, five, I mean, a big handful of accusers, right? And then, so you have, you really do have, I mean, Harvey was a rapist, you know, like that Annabelle Sceora story, like if you ruin these women's lives forever and ever. So I do think, I do think the backlash has really, I mean, that's the other thing is like there's so much bad faith media. And

I mean, this as a member of the media is so we do what you do find that sometimes the response is worse than the actual. Yeah, no, no, I think I found that too because my first book was about medium manipulation. So for some reason it's like every time someone gets canceled, it's like my first book is like on the reading list. Like they read it. And then they all reach out to me. So I like you could name your Me Too person. And there's a chance that they set me like a dark night of the soul email. Right. And the the it's it's weird because it's it's deeply humanizing to talk to anyone whether they deserve it or

not. Right. The same thing you talk to someone on trial for a murder, they commit it. They would be like, fuck, right? Like there is something profound, but as you're facing severe life-threatening or life-altering consequences for your actions, that does something to a person, right? Even if you're rich or powerful.

So it's kind of, it's always weird, because you're talking to someone like that you recognize whose work you consume because they were on TV all the time or in sports or whatever. And you sort of feel a human connection to them because they're coming to you at this vulnerable moment. The weird thing is having had it happen enough times. All their stories are exactly the same, right? And it feels a little bit like a defense attorney for me, like the defense attorney who's

like, yeah, all attorney who's like, yeah, all my clients are innocent, right? Like they all have the same, so it's this strange thing where they all feel like this injustices happen to them and never, never is there any awareness about that there was another person on the side of what they're doing and that there was almost no,

there's nobody is profiting off doing this. Like that do you know what I mean? So it's the weird is I have the I have the most I think I have one of the more surreal views on all of it because I've ended up talking to a handful of all these people. Thankfully not Harvey Weinstein, but I have I they've reached out and it's this weird experience where like, I'm talking to this person, I hope they don't kill themselves. But they're also obviously guilty. You know what I mean? It's the weirdest thing.

Well, and I mean, I think, yeah, I mean, it's such an interesting. The two things that have made baby boomers the most upset have been V2 because the idea is like, I do think they, you know, they feel like, I mean, Charlie Rose, I just really, Rose wants to make a comeback again. First of all, like, they really do, some of these guys really do feel that they are entitled to another, you know, like bite of the apple. I mean, I am struck by James Patterson's recent comments.

Oh, the white, white, what rich white men are subject to racism? It's very hard to be a white male writer. He is the most probably one of the four most successful writers in the world ever, right? He doesn't even write, I mean, I don't know how much of his books are written by him, but there's certainly an argument to be made that not much. And he's mad, then his people are not getting their... I mean, you would have the level of brainworms you have to have to even have that idea and not say it. But it kind of goes to the travel thing where like, can't you just accept that things are happening

and that they're not always exactly how you would like them to be? And it just is. One of my favorite, one of my favorite quotes from Seneca, as he says, that taxes are a certainty of life, right? You're saying that's 2000 years ago, but that there's lots of different forms of taxes and he says, you just hate the taxes of life gladly. Like there's just, and one of the taxes of being one of the four most popular people in the world at what you do is gotta to be that the world attacks you, the world attacks your friends. You don't think things are perfect. There's a weird amount of arrogance to it where it's like, I don't think this is the

way that things should be. And therefore, that means this is somehow unjust or a persecution. When really it just is, it's just a moment in culture. It's a wave. But I also think that fundamentally, people who have enormous success and make a lot of money are inadvertently or advertingly surrounded by people who tell them what they want to hear.

Yes. And that gives them brain warms. And so when you, you know, when you interview them, you're not talking to an oracle person, you're talking to someone who has never had anyone tell them the truth. You know, or has it in three decades. And so, I mean, that's, you know, I wrote this piece about Bill Maher and he's super mad at me, which is God bless. And I said, he's been famous since 1993.

He has millions of dollars and he lives in Los Angeles. Like, this is not going to make you a normal person. And I'm very honest about my own situation. I come from a very privileged background. I've been very lucky. I have, you know, had a lot of advantages, but you know, people still tell me that the sky is blue and that it's raining out,

whereas I don't know the people tell that to Bill Mar. I think that's, no, I think that's right. So what's the other, so boomers, it's, it's Mitu and what's the other one that really upsets them? I think they, I think cancel culture. Yeah, because they just are convinced. I think it's an anxiety.

I think more than anything, they're just convinced that they will say something wrong and it will ruin their lives. When in fact, in actuality, the people we've seen who that's happened to have been people who were really bad faith actors, you know, like who are saying race? You know, I think of what's her name,

the woman who got canceled. She was like a polydene. Yeah. Like, polydene, this was not an accident. Like clearly, she said a lot of really problematic racist stuff. Like, you know, I mean, and she ended up still having, I think she still has some for empire, but, you know, I don't think you sort of stumble onto this.

I think, you know, if you make it, and I mean, a good example is Lizzo, right? She said something that people got offended by. She apologized and she changed it. And I mean, it was like not a big deal. It didn't matter. You know, people were like a little offended. She changed it.

Apologized. It's so, I mean, I feel like if you are a public person, you make a mistake. And you are a good faith and you say you're sorry. Like generally people forgive you. I mean, these situations are more, you know, they were more like real. They was malicious intent. Yeah, no, there's this boogeyman that's it.

And a lot of the people that I know seemed very worked up about the boogeyman. And I like, I guess I get it in the sense that like, I also worry about planes crashing and you know, like if you're a person who has a form of anxiety, I worry, you know, I guess people are framed for crimes from time to time. You know, terrible things happen. And I guess there is kind of a low level awareness and a preference that that not happen to you. But like, when I watch people, I know just sort of get radicalized by this like anticipatory fear of cancel culture or me too, it makes me wonder what happened inside their brain

that would, that this thing, that's not only exceedingly unlikely, but is affecting so few actual people needs to be like, not just like a thing that they worry about, but like the thing they go to the barricades about. It seems like the same with political correctness, which I guess these are all kind of same things. It's about the same. Yeah.

It's very strange. Yeah. No, I mean, I think it absolutely is. And I think that it is. And you know, it's an anxiety. I don't think it's a, I don't think it absolutely is. And I think that it is. And you know, it's an anxiety. I don't think it's a, um, I don't think it's a reality. If that makes any sense. No, no, I think it's, it's, it's like, uh, it's also like, you know, when they do like shark week and then people are real, or there's like a trend of sharks attacking people.

That it is. Like, I think it's a little bit like that too. It's this kind of moral panic about a thing that it's not that it doesn't exist, but like it's certainly like the idea that like it's so it so exists and it's so such a pressing threat that, in fact, every other principle idea, like ideology, should be jettisoned to protect from that thing. That's the weirdest part, right? You're like, okay, I was, I belong to this political party, the my entire life, but now cancel culture is a thing. So I will embrace and be fully sort of, uh, mag-a-ized, uh, in anticipatory fear of this thing that college students are doing on campus in excess about cultural appropriate. It's always just struck me as like

being clearly rooted in some, something other than what we're actually talking about. clearly rooted in some something other than what we're actually talking about. Yeah, I mean, I think that's right. I also think that there's, it's not, it's not, I mean, like, it's like the drag queen story hour. Is drag queen story hour our people being heard. Now, our people being injured now, our people like this immoral panic, right? People on the right are extremely angry about drag queen story hour. This is not, you know, this is like something

you can choose to take your kid to if you want to. You can certainly choose to not. And you have people on the right who are refusing to certify the New Mexico election because they don't believe that the voting machines are real. And you don't even like, these are not the same things. You know, it just because, and I think, and I mean, I think what we've seen, I mean, I'd be cute. So just tell me about Peter Till.

Okay. Well, if we had had that ocean world, if we had just let him have the ocean world, we would all be okay today. Well, so I wrote a book about his plot to destroy Gokker. All right. I was the only one that he was willing to talk to, but then Nick Denton would also talk to me.

So it's kind of, I found them both to be fascinating individuals and kind of at their core essence, like the same person. And that may have actually been what drew them inevitably, like a gravitational pull into console. It's like, like, it was like the world could only support, in their view, the world could only support one contrarian gay tech mogul, right? And even though, of course, they lived on different coasts and a different group, but they're very different. It did.

It did. It was like the town wasn't big enough for the two of them. And so I found, like my take on Peter was, I, I didn't necessarily, well, I felt like Gokka was actually horrible and more horrible than people. I felt like Gokka was horrible. I didn't even use that trumpet's horrible, the cruelty, the lack of adherence to any moral compass that driven by what the app, all of that. So I understood why Peter was doing it. I was also very impressed by the sheer competence of it. Do you know what I'm saying? Like that he did it. Yeah. Yeah. And so I was just more fascinated with like who these

two people were and what made them tick as opposed to having a strong moral judgment over either of them. But then I found that in the subsequent years, Peter has abandoned a lot of the things that make that uniquely interesting slash relatable. If that makes sense. It's interesting to watch how tech world has gotten weirdly Robert Baron asked. I mean, I am married to a VC, so I had, and we've been married for 20 years, so I have always thought, at least, up until about five years ago, I thought, well, you know, there are some bad people, but there are a lot of good people and want to fix the problems of the world.

And they're going to do it with this and this and this and their hearts are in the right place and they're building a better world. And as the years have dragged on, I have really abandoned that good feeling. And it just seems, and I mean, a great example, like one of the favorite conservative talking points is San Francisco, but how did we get to San Francisco? Techbrows, right? Yeah. Rollbook the price of the real estate.

They decided they didn't, I mean, for example, like where I live in New York City, there are quite a lot of people who are oligarchs like the techbrows and they have poured money into, I mean, a good example is Michael Bloomberg, right? Michael Bloomberg is in oligarch. He's incredibly rich. He's made a ton of money. And he spent a lot of money on the museum and the parks and the, you know, and I mean, when he was mayor, I mean, again, I'm not saying he was good on crime. He was terrible on criminal justice. He was, you know, he basically continued a lot of Rudy Giuliani's really racist policies.

But, you know, he was very committed to this sort of, you know, putting his money where his mouth was, with the philanthropy, you don't see that with these tech bros. Yeah, it's interesting. It's kind of like, it's like, it's all the same drive and ambition and money and power without the restraining sort of cultural code

or expectations that would protect against the work the worst excesses. And I think Elon Musk is an interesting sort of real time example of this. I know you guys tangled with him recently. We're just sort of like, you have all this money and all this power, but what seems to be motivating you most is like owning people on Twitter, right? Like whereas, yeah, as Bloomberg or, or one, let's say a generation before this sort of the wealthy people would

have thought a lot of this stuff was sort of beneath them or that they were busy for it. There's a, there's a weird, almost humanness to it. But the, as you become powerful and successful with that responsibility, or with that power should come a certain amount of responsibility and restraint. I wonder with Musk always how much of his personality shaped by people liking him. And I mean, I don't know how much that's true with other wealthy people too, but clearly like some of what's happened with Musk with his radicalization is that people on the right just adore him and are so excited to have him. And people on the left are like, you know, you sort of prove that you're, you know, he sort of feels

rejected by the Democratic Party and has gone on to them. You know, so I don't know if this is, like he makes these sort of lame ideological excuses, but ultimately you have to wonder how much of this is just like it narcissism and his own desire to be liked and popular. It's very Shakespearean. All of it is so Shakespearean that even at that level, like when you would have millions or billions of dollars to sway you one way or another at the end of the day like humans are driven or

repulsed by people whether people like them what they think of them or just these traits that we picked up early on that were just like where these kind of tragic figures who like can't Stop it ourselves from going down a Certain road. I ourselves from going down a certain road. I also think that with Musk, like the whole family wants to be famous, like the mother wrote a book and she goes to the make out. Like there's all sorts of layers of like weird kind of, you know, it's not, it's not quite like, I feel like you can have criticisms about Bezos, but like he bought the Washington Post.

He has expanded it. You know, I mean, that certainly are problems with Amazon and let you know, I think is very tough on, you know, that they need to do the things that are needed when it comes to unions for their workers. But I also think that, you know, there has been, you know,

like, that, you know, a lot of these people do, you know, do things that are really meaningful. And Muscus is sort of trying to build like a family brand. Yeah, it's very strange. Although I guess the left probably underestimates cultural power and what that power means to people. And when it is capriciously or unemphatically wielded, it can create certain enemies, right?

You could argue Trump himself is like almost entirely driven by this hatred of the left. I mean, I was going to say by the single joke made at the White House correspondent, you know, just that like you can set in motion that even Gokker itself, right? Gokker is ultimately destroyed 10 years after they sort of cruelly, snarkly out some person because they don't stop and think, what would it be like to be that person? What's interesting about Gokker too

is that Gokker was like one of the first places to the way that writers were paid by posts. And the way that the algorithm was juiced, like they were the early, early, early, sort of adapters of that. And that and that the fact that that was then taken out of, you know, put out of business by a tech bro is pretty is who sat on the board of Facebook, right? Like, and there's that Nietzsche quote about like beware those who fight monsters that you don't become one. I think there's an interesting take that Peter and then the sort of world he becomes absorbed into Musk also becomes in many ways a lot of the things that he claims to be trying to destroy in Gokr. Like when

you look at it, it's JD Vance or like Matt and you look at the media game that they're playing, it's right out of that playbook. It's say crazy horrible things. Don't care about what, who it's affecting, but understand that even the reaction, the horror to it builds your brand and your recognition. And as long as your tribe isn't alienated by it, you're good. It's, you know, I think a lot about this idea that you have these, you know, you have candidates or senators who were Tim Scott, Democrat, you know, Senator Kennedy, John Kennedy from the great state of Louisiana, Democrat, like, you have people who basically got, gave up what they believed in to become

senators or Congress people. But it's interesting to me, then they don't then get in there and say, okay, now we'll go back to normal. They can't, they can't stay, right? There's no world in which like JD Vance, if by some possibility he wins that he then becomes, then he becomes, you know, he goes back to who the never Trump Republican, he was what he wrote for the Atlanta. Well, you tell yourself that's why you're doing it, but it's like, I think it's the other Nietzsche quote. It's a mask that eats at the face, right? Like eventually you figure

out, like once you live by the algorithm, you die by the algorithm. Once you figure out, like once you live by the algorithm, you die by the algorithm, once you figure out what plays, you then don't go back to a world in which you fight that as a headwind. You know what I mean? It's a tragedy of it. Yeah, I think that's absolutely right.

Yeah, I think that's 100% right. So last question, how given the horrors of what we're talking about, how do you raise kids that, or how have you thought about this with your family? Like how do you send them out into the world? If not with hope, with a sense that they have some agency

or control and can do good in the world. So I think I've done a very good job with that because I was evil. I don't know why, but my, I don't know if it was my parents exactly, but I always felt that I could do stuff and that I didn't need to wait for someone to give me permission. One of the worst things that you can do to kids is make them feel that they can't just go and do something, right, that they have to, you know to get a PhD or they have to get a JD or they have to go to college and they can't do stuff until his society

has deemed them ready. And I wrote my first book when I was 19, and a normal girl. And people were a little bit mad at me. Like, you know, how dare you like skip the line. And I got the same thing. Yeah, by the way, those people are like, you know, who knows what happened to them?

But like, but I don't think that's right. I think people wanna know what young people have to say. And I think that it's actually quite good to have those kind of thoughts out there and that there really is a need, what's great about social media and what nobody ever says. Everyone's always complaining about social media

and they're so mad at it and they hit Twitter and they hit this and they hit that. And I think Facebook has done a lot of damage, but I also think that what's great about social media is you don't have to have a PhD from Yale. You don't have to be a writer at the Wall Street Journal. You can be anonymous account 234 and you can roll roll your phone, if people like what you're going to say, you can put your hand on a rock. There is no barrier to entry.

Like when my mom wrote for your flying in 1973, your book got discovered if it got good reviews in the following places. And if it didn't, no one would ever see it. And you couldn't, unless you got an op-ed published, no one would ever see it. And unless you got an op-ed published, no one would ever see your thoughts. And now the world is much more open. So I actually think it's great.

Have you read the Maggie Smith poem, Good Bones? Yes. All right, so I like that idea also. The world is fucking terrible. There's horrible people out there, but like a good realtor, you have to tell your kids there's good bones. Right. Well, and I also think like, you know, the world is complicated, but there's an opportunity.

Yeah. Which is as you can make this place beautiful. That's the idea. Yeah. It's ugly. Yeah. But there are opportunities if you so choose. What's complicated, I don't know that it's ugly, I think it's complicated and we haven't helped to get better.

Right. We have also been neglectful owners. Yeah. Yeah. I think they're pretty clear on that. Well, Molly, thank you. I love your stuff and I appreciate so much for having me. This is great. This is super interesting.

Thanks so much for listening to the Daily Stoke podcast. If you don't know this, you can get these delivered to you via email every day, check it out at dailystoke.com slash email. Hey, Prime Members! You can listen to the Daily Stoic early and ad-free on Amazon Music, download the Amazon Music app today, or you can listen early and ad-free with Wondery Plus in Apple Podcasts. or you can listen early and add free with Wondering Plus in Apple podcasts.