You're Wrong About - 10th Episode Spectacular!

Episode Date: July 14, 2018

Sarah and Mike take a break from debunking to reflect on the first 10 episodes and tell the secret history of how they met. Digressions include “Portlandia,” Snapchat and the The New York Post. The recording quality, as usual, is wildly inconsistent.  Continue reading →Support us:Subscribe on PatreonDonate on PaypalBuy cute merchWhere to find us: Sarah's other show, Why Are Dads Mike's other show, Maintenance PhaseSupport the show

I feel like we should do a little intro. So now Sarah wants to talk about our 10th episode and do some reflections on that. So we're gonna take a quick break. Do you hate going to the post office? No, I'm kidding, I'm kidding. Um, we have no break. Oh, thank God.

Welcome to You're Wrong About, the podcast where we circle back to things that we got wrong, but we're not doing that this week. We are doing a special 10th anniversary bonus content for not our 10th anniversary, but our 10th episode. What's 10 of something? It's 10 of something. And yeah, me and Sarah thought that it would be fun

to just kind of reflect a little bit on the 10 episodes so far and how it's gone and then give our 13 loyal listeners a little bit more information about who we are and what our deal is. So I am Michael Hobbs. I'm a reporter for The Hubbing to Post. I'm Sarah Marshall.

I'm a writer for The New Republic and BuzzFeed and The Believer. And I was thinking we could give our listeners a little bit of extra backstory about us because people keep being like... Who are you people? Everyone who's listening to the show has been like, who is this woman?

And like, what is she talking about? I'm sure you're getting the exact same emails. I have not been getting any who is this woman email. Are you getting who is this woman email? I literally got one this morning. A friend of mine from Berlin was like, was like, your show is good. Dot, dot, dot.

Who's this person that you're talking to every time? Actually, the feedback I've been getting about you is all of my friends being like, Michael is so funny. I mean, people have been saying that too. They've mostly been saying your friend is delightful. Who is she? I'm like... Okay.

I'm like retconning this in there now. I meant this as a compliment. I didn't mean it as a like, who the fuck is this woman? No, all my friends think that you're delightful. Of course. So I thought we would do something like, we could just ask each other a series of like boring first date questions

to find out a little bit more about each other. So Sarah, do you want to tell us what is your life story? Oh God. List all of the things that brought you to this exact moment right now. Go. Okay.

Well, my first memory is of my mom telling me to put my hands over my eyes and then putting on a witch mask and telling me to look and me screaming bloody murder and running down the stairs because my mom had been replaced by a witch. And I think that might have been in some way formative.

That happened in the year of our Lord 1990, I think. I don't know. I feel like my path to what we're doing right now relates to the fact that I tried to have a bunch of different careers and either I couldn't or I hated them and I ended up deciding to just invent my own career out of little bits of various careers.

Okay. This date is going really well so far. Keep going. Yeah. I know. Don't I seem fun? So I grew up in rural area outside Portland and then my family moved to Hawaii for five years

when I was growing up, which I hated. Which I liked. Oahu. Oahu. And why did you hate it? Because it was like the sudden shakeup. Everything was different.

I was eight. I had a hard time making friends at my new school and was kind of just excluded and bullied. And there were like all sorts of family dynamics going on that I really wasn't old enough of an observer to really understand at the time. But it was just like a crummy, stressful time for our family.

And it was like when I started developing the sense of like social enoughness and apartness, which I think is really important to being a writer. Oh yeah. I'm still developing mine. Yes. You gotta work on it every day. Yes.

Yeah. You just eventually get better at it stretchier. Yeah. Where did you go after Hawaii? We went back to Oregon. And the thing about being in Hawaii was that I think it made me doubtful of like meta narratives because the thing about Hawaii is that

it's where you want to go and you have a good time and everything's nice. I was very aware of my own unhappiness during the time that we lived there. And I was like, so this seems like bullshit. This idea that there are certain places that are better than other places and where you go to be happy,

but like I'm not happy. Ergo. There is a flaw. Right. In this logic. And so we went back to Oregon and I went to high school there and then I went to Bennington

and tried to be a theater major. And then. Wait, what's Bennington? That's a college in Vermont where you get to do whatever you want with other rich children. And so I did. And then I had a classic sophomore year flame out,

where you realize that you don't know what you're doing or why you're here and that you're a slightly depressed sponge and you're drinking all these, you know, jugs of wine all the time. And I went back to Portland and went to State College, which is why neither of us

are ever qualified to commentate on anything. Yes. Just like Monica were losers who didn't go to real schools. And I went to Portland State where I ended up hanging around for like seven years. And I started as a student and then I started doing an MFA program and fiction there. And it was something like the second year

that that program had existed. So there is this nice, I've talked to people since then who did these scary competitive MFA programs. It sounded awful. And at this one, it was like, no one really expected anything of it. No one attached with it had done anything yet.

Like people who went there are just starting to publish books at this point because it was so young. And it was at a school that no one had heard of. So there was just this feeling of like being in a church basement for a lot of it that I think was very good in an MFA program. And stuck around and did a master's degree and then stuck around and taught

and then realized that they weren't paying me anything and that adjuncting is terrible and soul destroying. Yes. And then I had also wanted to leave Portland for a long time, but had been afraid to because leaving your hometown is what all of those arena rock songs are about. So of course it's complicated to do.

And then started doing a PhD program in literature at UW Madison. And then was there for two months before I decided to become a lawyer. And then did an internship at the Georgia Innocence Project for six weeks before I decided, oh fuck, I'm not going to be a lawyer because the legal system is bananas.

What I imagine it's like is if you're a firefighter and you go to firefighting school and you're like, I'm going to fight fires. And it's your first fire. And it's this building, this warehouse. And you're like, I'm going to go in with my equipment and I'm going to put out that fire. And then you get there and the entire building is consumed

and it's a flashpoint and it's a thousand degrees and your skin melts off. And you're like, I am not going to go in that building. I am going to describe the building. And that was really like, and it wasn't until then that I had really thought like, what if I just attempted to be a writer? It was what I had always done

that had brought together everything I'd tried to do every job and career I'd tried to have, but had never had the sense of like, I'm going to go with my writing and do that. And that's my vocation and my identity. Like I was very afraid of not belonging to an institution in some way. Am I going to go be a free agent?

Is that possible? Am I allowed? Do I need an adult? And then kind of, I think in the last couple of years have been first learning how to do journalism and then rapidly feeling like, ooh, I don't feel great about this. Like I want some people to be doing it,

but I don't think I want to be like an actual journalist. And then you asked me a few months ago, I wanted to do a dream project with you. So let's talk about how you got here. How did you get to this moment in time? I grew up in Seattle. I went to a extremely mediocre college where I majored in journalism with a focus on PR,

which is still, I believe on my LinkedIn profile in case I need to cash that in. And then I decided to do the least useful degrees imaginable. I moved to London after college to get a degree in legal and political theory. I didn't know that. Yes, and the only reason I did it was because

I was gay as hell and didn't know how to deal with it. And I thought if I was as far away from my parents as possible, I would be able to do gay stuff. And it was also extremely cheap. A master's degree in London was like one eighth what like a master's degree in the States would have cost me. And I got subsidized housing right in the middle of London. And I basically just like wanted to cavort

and like be a gay adult man for the first time in my life. Well, that sounds like a really great decision. Yeah. And then I met my boyfriend a month into that and then had a really tumultuous and bad relationship for the entire time there. So then I didn't actually, I didn't actually get to do with a like fun, like carefree gay man

in his early twenties life. I was just like fighting a lot about like money and stuff. It sucked. Did you get to have like a period of early twenties like cavorting later on? That was like what I did in my early thirties. As long as you did it eventually. Yes, I got there.

I got like three months of a decade of my early twenties at some point. And then after London, I moved back to the States. I worked at Microsoft. I hated it. So I moved to Denmark because master's degrees were free ding. And then I ended up living in Denmark accidentally

for six years, got a job in human rights. And then I moved to Berlin and lived there for five years. And then, yeah. So I just started writing on the side and then became this weird writer dude and ended up getting a job at Huffington Post eventually. Yeah. And now you're a legitimate weird writer dude.

What was the first like person or event in the past that you got obsessed with and really went down a rabbit hole on? Oh, tiny harding. Was it? Yeah. And that started when I was doing my MFA and funnily enough it started

because I wanted to write this little quippy thing for like an open mic about cause all of these people like just moved to Portland to all of these other MFA students. And I had been living there this whole time. And it was the time when Portland was becoming really like synonymous with Portlandia. Oh, yeah.

So I wrote this thing being like, listen, Portland used to actually be known for being full of crooks and talked about DB Cooper and the Raj Nishikul and Tiny Harding who I just really not thought about at all the time I wrote that. And then I just, it just stuck, you know? Things just stick on you. And I just started thinking about it more and more

and just like read about her and thought about her a lot. Like I watched her skating videos so much and just cultivated this love of her. And it was something that was like everyone who knew me at the time saw as one of my most salient personality features that I love, Tiny Harding. Interesting. Maybe this is something I tell myself

to justify my intense emotional attachments to the people that I write about. But don't you think that like truly great historians are all ambiguously in love with at least some of the people they're writing about? That's my relationship to everything I've ever written is I just become this like weird asshole at cocktail parties who are like,

what are you writing about? And then like a 22 minute speech follows. I'm like, the first thing you need to know about millennials is fling. But you know what? All these people are like wandering around bumping into each other, being like, what do you think of millennials? I don't know.

The conservative columnists say this. So maybe this is what our generation should see itself as. We really need people to charge in and be like, no. And here's why in 22 minutes. Well, we also need people to charge in on like, Tiny Harding was not that bad. And like, Marcia Clark was not that bad. Yeah, and so ultimately, I mean, I just, it was like,

I mean, it was kind of like defending Tiny Harding on the Borch Belt before going to Madison Square Garden because I ended up locked in so many conversations with people. They'd be like, oh, Tiny Harding, isn't she the one who like clubbed that other skater on the knee? And I would leap across the table and be like, no. First of all, she is magnificent.

And then I just like home this speech and this argument and also just accepted that she was a part of my life and I cared about her and I accepted that feeling of attachment. My mom like recently was like, you know, I always thought that your like obsession with Tiny Harding was a waste of time. And I wondered why you were wasting so much time

trying to write about her. And I was like, it was like her telling me that like this relationship I had had, she was like, you know, I never thought you'd make it. And I was like, but how? It's like Judas. Well, it's just to me, it was just, it was clear that we were going somewhere.

And so, and after, you know, being obsessed with her for three or four years, I finally became ready to write about her and got someone interested in me writing about her, which was the believer and was able to write about it because it was the 20th anniversary of her, of the scandal. It is like the funniest shit that we need like excuses like that to talk about things.

Yes, it is completely insane. And it's so arbitrary. And it's just proof that we need to erect these imaginary boundaries about like what we feel ready to think about when, because it's like something happening an even or multiple of five number of years ago. Like that's what you talk about it.

And if I have to like quickly write like some cultural criticism and I don't have any ideas, I'm like, I don't know, what came out a multiple of 10 or five years ago? That's a movie that I like. Oh no, but yeah, I mean, it is, and that's why it took so long for me to place it. And then I wrote it.

And like to this day, you know, I feel like as my career continues, I'm gonna have, it was called remote control and it was in the believer in January of 2014. And I feel like as my career goes by, I'm gonna have the relationship to that piece that Stephen King has to the stand. It's like the thing he has the most fans because of

that people most frequently tell him is their favorite book of his. And he's like, I wrote that in 1978. And I feel like that piece is like, the reader response that I got to it was people being like, oh my God, she's not history's greatest monster. And you explained it in a way that I understood. And I was like, oh my God, you can do that.

And you can do that in a way that lasts. And then you don't have to do it bar by bar. Right, right, individual by individual. Yeah, and it was an amazing experience for me because I realized that writing could do that. That's how I answer people when they ask, who's this woman that you do the podcast with? I'm like, well, a couple of years ago,

she wrote one of the best essays I've ever read about Tonya Harding. And they're always like, I read that essay. It's incredible. I've read it twice. No one reads anything twice these days. That's insane. But this is also, I don't know if you know this,

this is how we met. So after I read that article, I was like, who is this woman? And I Googled you. And then I came across sarahmarshall.com or I think you had a Tumblr at the time. I had a Tumblr, yeah. And I used Tumblr through my Tumblr account,

which is like with some pseudonym, to write to you anonymously. And I was like, I never do this, but that essay is amazing. I just wanted you to say, I'm following your work. I like you. Good luck out there. And like, that was it.

And then I think you posted it on your Tumblr with like, aw, thanks or something. And I was like, she saw it. It's incredible. I remember that. And I hadn't realized that that was you. That's so cool. Because I do that like maybe once a year,

that I'm like, this is so good that I'm gonna like put up like three minutes of effort to tell somebody that's good. I think another takeaway should be that everyone should write more fan letters to writers because writers just like, we're all toiling alone. And if you appreciate someone writes, you should tell them.

It'll improve their day. And then ultimately maybe you'll end up doing a podcast together. Yeah, exactly. That's the lesson. Do a podcast with every single writer that you like. Well, it's more like the parable of the sewer, right? Where you cast seeds everywhere,

but only some of them are podcast. We should also talk about some of the general lessons that we've learned from our podcast now that we've done 10 episodes. What are the general lessons that we've taken away? I was thinking that there's something that I find interesting about the tone that I feel like we tend to fall into

when we're talking about the people and things that we're talking about that makes me think of what I've recently learned is called beginner's mind. Oh. It's an idea that I was sort of reaching for when I was teaching writing, but I called it accessing your inner four-year-old

to my students, which is just being like, but why, but why, but why? To me, something I think is really valuable in reconsidering these stories is essentially coming at it with a lack of first values or assumptions and being like, well, why did we think that? Why do we assume that, you know, I'd say that if a woman's testifying

about sexual harassment in the workplace, she must have come forward, even if she didn't like Anita Hill, didn't. And kind of looking at the things, looking at the assumptions that underpin the stories that we think we know and being like, why, why did we think that? Yeah, I feel like one of the things

that we keep coming back to is just how anytime something achieves national attention, it automatically becomes a narrative that's more simplistic than it could possibly have been, which is good for us. I think because it means we have infinity shows, but also bad for America, because I think we might be wrong about everything.

I mean, what do you think about that? I feel like it's gonna be the rare thing where we look into it and find out that we're right about anything, because it seems like there's something about the old cliche of journalism is the first rough draft of history, but nobody ever goes back and writes the second draft, right?

We move on so quickly that what we're left with is the narrative that formed about an event in the immediate aftermath of it. I mean, the one that I cannot get over and we have to do a podcast on about is Columbine. I mean, everything, like there was no trench coat mafia, those kids weren't bullied. Yeah, we always miss the most essential thing.

And what we remember about Columbine was what newscasters heard about standing outside the school from the kids who could use the phones inside the school and call them, and then they reported and the classrooms where students were hiding out had TVs in them, and so they saw them reporting these things on TV, which made them think it was real.

Yeah, and then they would call out and corroborate what they had seen on TV, because they were like, well, you said that, right? So that's true, because it was on the news, because I was watching it and it was on TV, so it happened. And so the TV news is telling the people at the scene of the school shooting what's going on, and then they call and they corroborate

what the TV news is saying. In one of my darker moments last year, I watched one of those miserable conspiracy theories, Sandy Hook videos, that everybody's a crisis actor, and what's really interesting is the actual conspiracy theory of Sandy Hook is, like all conspiracy theories, totally incoherent, that there's about, if you watch any one of those videos, they're long,

they're like two hours long, and there's like five different conspiracy theories in them. So in the initial reports of Sandy Hook, there was a second shooter, and the cops were chasing after somebody who was running through the woods, and then part of the conspiracy theory is like, well, why haven't we heard about the second shooter?

Why haven't we heard about it ever again? And obviously it's just because some sort of false report, rumors fly in the wake of a large tragedy like that, and never get confirmed. People are consistently wrong also about the number of shooters in a given incident. It was probably like someone just jogging through the woods. Could have been a deer.

Or could have been a deer. But to me, it illustrated the extent to which we really don't know anything for a very long time after these events happen. Like no matter what it is, right? That especially when it's breaking news, but also even things like Clinton Lewinsky, I mean, the entire narrative that we've put together

is like months later, like the whole thing about Linda Tripp kind of being at the center of it. That's not something we knew when the Star Report came out, right? Like that chronology was not in there. Well, to me, I just, I mean, I think this is probably our bias as magazine journalists

is that that's what magazines do is you go back and you figure out what actually happened and you take the time to actually talk to people and like, let's start from the beginning. Whereas what's interesting about the news cycle is the news you run with what you have. And you, like I learned in journalism school, they call it the inverted pyramid

that you put the most important fact first, and then the second most important fact and the third most important fact. Oftentimes the way you end up telling a story is not chronologically. You end up telling it with these little factoids that are kind of pulled out from space and then put in this weird order.

And so it's often very rare that people have an actual narrative of, okay, this all began with Linda Tripp hearing her colleague talk about she had an affair with the president. She began taping. That's not what you hear. You hear there's a woman has accusations

against Bill Clinton. This is the sixth accusation that he's had in his career. You get this like weird truncated chronology and then it's kind of up to you to put it together front to back. But it's very hard for us to talk about things as stories at the time. It's like we talk about them as facts

and then everyone fills in their own little stories and doesn't realize the extent to which they're doing a lot of assumptions and fill in the blanking by themselves. Yeah, and we tell stories and don't realize that we're telling stories. We're like, these are just facts that I've presented in no particular order.

And it's like, you're telling a story right now. I mean, we do it unconsciously. It's amazing that MFA programs need to exist, although clearly they do because we tell stories so naturally as a species and we still somehow have to learn how to do it as writers. I feel like it's just so funny how much of the time our brains are doing fill in the blank

and we don't even realize it. Like when I checked on, okay, was Bud Dwyer killing himself on TV? I just assumed the same way that you assumed. I was like, obviously that would have been like an accidental live broadcast and no one would have ever put that on TV on purpose. And of course they did.

And your brain just in a way that you don't even notice is like, I'm gonna assume that the blank I don't know is like what I imagine to be a normal human behavior, which is to accidentally broadcast footage of someone killing themselves but not edit it into like the noon broadcast for later that day.

But that we do that typically was stories that we don't know entirely. And most of us don't know any new story entirely because we don't follow it that closely as regular citizens. I assumed that Anita Hill had come forward. That was an astounding thing for me to learn that Anita Hill had not come forward, that all of this had been involuntarily on her behalf.

Which seems like a central fact. It's weird. It's weird how important that fact is and yet no one ever tells it to you. No, and it's yeah. And it's the same thing of like no one starts the Anita Hill Clarence Thomas narrative with, you know, long ago a young woman named Anita Hill

was trying to mind her own business in Oklahoma and got subpoenaed by the FBI. Yeah. And this is why I show my stories to my sources, which my editors hate, but there is a tendency of humans to fill in the blanks and other people's stories that I notice I do this all the time and I do this for a living.

And yet I still without realizing it fill in the blanks, you ask somebody, okay, how did you become a tennis pro? And they tell you, oh, I grew up. I was getting tennis lessons, blah, blah, blah. And then you write it up and then you show it to them. And they're like, no, I only played in one tournament. I told you I played in one tournament before I became a pro.

And you're like, no, no, you said tournaments. And they're like, no, I said one tournament, but my brain filled in that they had been doing tournaments for 10 years because that's what you do when you become a tennis pro. You know, you have these narratives and these little heuristics in your head that you rely on to fill in the blanks.

And like you said, you're not aware that you're doing them. And so I think as an exercise, it's really useful to try to retell someone's story without getting any of the facts wrong. Like you hear a funny story from your friend and then you turn around and try to retell it without exaggerating anything, without creating any details, without assuming anything.

It's really hard, dude. Like you end up filling in the blanks and oftentimes people's lives don't fit. People's lives include all kinds of extraneous detail, right? Of like, oh, you know, we moved from Minneapolis to Chicago while I was becoming a tennis pro. And you're like, well, that's not convenient for the story. I want it to all be in one place.

It's just easier that way. And our lives don't follow these trajectories. And so whenever you fill in the blanks, most people's blanks in their story are weird extraneous details that you as an outsider don't know. Yeah, and I'm sure that we do that as a species old behavior

that's a combination of defense mechanism and psychic resource and all sorts of things. And there's just this thing where if you need to take an upsetting event and construct some kind of narrative about it, like that's how you put it in a box to be examined by top men to use the Raiders of the Lost Dark Image.

It's like every terrifying thing that we encounter is people. We have to find a way to render it somehow inert and seal it up. And the way you seal up something is a narrative. You're like, well, this happened because of this. I know it makes sense. And I feel like one of the crazy things about trials is that a successful defense narrative

is one that makes coherent what a defendant has done. And like the coherent story is very rarely the true story because the true story never makes sense. Like people always behave in ways that don't really scan as a narrative. And you're like, but how? And it's like, I don't know. The person who did this doesn't know why they did it.

Like no one knows why any of us do most of the things we do. So if you need a story that makes sense in order to understand that someone's guilt is mitigated or to acquit or to convict or whatever, like if a story is the thing that you need to do that, then you're gonna get lied to because legal professionals have to lie to tell stories that make sense to people.

I think all the time of when I studied in Sydney, I had this professor who was five feet two. She was just like small and athletic and great. She always told us the story of how she lived in a big house with like six roommates. There was a weekend when all of them for whatever reason were out of town. She was sleeping.

She woke up with a man sitting cross-legged on her chest with a knife held above her. Basically he had broken in and was like about to kill her or do something completely insane. And this little tiny five foot two, mid 30s psychology professor leaps off the bed, throws him across the room and goes, fuck you, how dare you? I'm trying to have a relaxing weekend.

And she starts like kicking him in the face. And this guy is so shook that he's just like, ah, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. And he runs out the back door and she's like, get the fuck out of here, bitch ass motherfucker. And like kicks him out of the house and then closes the door, locks the door, locks all the other doors and then starts crying.

Sort of the reality of this whole thing hits her. And she always told us about how in a trial, nobody would believe her. In any sane logical description of this event, why would you, a 35 year old woman, take on a man who's probably a foot taller than you, much stronger, why would you possibly do that? And she said you should never act like you know

how you would react in an extreme situation. This obviously was not logical. This obviously was not something she premeditated. How would I behave if a man was about to murder me? We are incapable of predicting how we would respond in any extreme situation, whether that's like a plane is about to crash or someone we know was just murdered.

We have no idea how we ever would react. And yet we judge the way that other people act in these situations. A friend of mine just did jury duty and his case was a sexual assault case. And it was pretty open and shut like the guy did it. And he said in the jury room, a lot of people were like, well, if she was assaulted,

why does she send him Snapchat? Like two or three days. And like, why does she send Snapchats to a friend that were like, ugh, I bumped into my rapist today. Like she was being kind of like jokey about this guy. And this was seen as, oh, she couldn't have possibly be raped if she was joking about it.

Which like, I've never been raped. I don't know how I would react. I don't think it's fair to question or criticize how somebody would react if they got raped. Like I, it's pointless to try to predict the way that I would behave in that situation. And it's pointless to look at that situation and say like, oh, well, she couldn't have been raped

if she's telling jokes. Like that's completely ridiculous. I think that to a large degree is based on our desire to believe that there are just fewer rapes in the world than there are. Like there's just a lot of rape. This really haunted me when I learned it. And I learned it this week kind of tangentially

in research for snuff. Kim Wall, the Danish journalist who was murdered by the adventure entrepreneur and Submariner guy. One of the last text messages that she sent to her boyfriend was, I'm still alive BTW. Cause it's just this thing that women joke about, about like when you're going to meet like a strange man and like, Mike got murdered, bye.

Like that's just something that we've integrated into our culture. It's not weird that someone would send those messages to their friends about their rapists. Like it's not weird that you would have to find humor in your fears or your trauma. It's just something that we don't want to be legible human behavior.

I always think about that great Pamela Kalloff story about that guy in Texas whose wife was murdered and the night that she was murdered, he slept in the bed where she was murdered. And this was like a huge piece of evidence in the trial that like, well, you had to have killed her because what kind of a psychopath would sleep in the bed where his wife was murdered that very night,

like six hours afterwards. And so whatever, 13 years later, 15 years later, he gets exonerated from DNA evidence. He didn't do it. That's just a, it's a weird thing that he did. And it seems completely insane. Like when I was a kid and my mom was away, I would sleep in her nightgown, you know?

Like people have all kinds of reasons for the things they do. I mean, it's weird, but it's like, yeah, it's not suggestive of violence. And again, how would I behave if someone I loved was murdered? I have no idea. Like I'm not gonna sit here and be like,

well, that's pretty weird, isn't it? Like I'm sure that I would behave in completely baffling ways. I behave in completely baffling ways anyway. No, we're all super normal every day, always. I mean, I watched Faces of Death this week. That's a weird thing to do if I were ever to be framed for something.

That could be, you know, you spell who knows. In her spare time, she watched Faces of Death. Have you ever been interviewed by a journalist? Would this like make you less likely to? Finding out how much journalists get wrong in the immediate aftermath of things? I don't think I've ever been interviewed by journalists. Like I don't remember anything.

It's interesting. I think it would depend on the context. I mean, I think the kinds of interactions with people that I'm most interested in having when I'm practicing journalism come in the form of stories where I feel like people have gotten things wrong in the past and I'm able to come in and try and write that in some way.

Like I think I'm practicing on a large scale. You're wrong about journalism. And that's kind of the only way that I've ever done it, which is why we started doing this. Yes. I think I tend to associate my work with the act of repairing the damage often done by other journalists,

which is a little bit adversarial, actually. Throwing the gauntlet, Sarah. Fluff slap. But it would depend. I feel like it would have to do with just how much I wanted attention for the thing that I cared about. Right? Is that the only reason people talk to journalists

because they want attention? Isn't that the main, I mean, isn't that just a basic human need, just like fire and intimacy and attention? Sure. And water. What about you? I don't know.

I've been contacted by journalists to be part of things. And I usually turn them down because I don't like giving over control. I'm a weird person. And is it to comment on like millennials or? You know, when I lived abroad, people would be like, I'm doing a story about Americans who live abroad

who are interested in X. One of them was for like the New York Post. Well, the New York Post is, you know, you can't trust them to make a sandwich. I wanted to write back like, fuck, no. But I just, I was just like, sorry. What are your other, I'm gonna cut a lot of this out.

What are your other reflections? I'm really happy that we've done 10 episodes. I'm really 11 at this point. And I'm excited for our next 10 or 11. I don't know, what are you excited about that we have coming up? I'm excited for a lot of our special guests. I'm interviewing someone tomorrow

who's gonna tell me about the Ibonic scandal of 1996, which I'm totally obsessed with. And I'm really happy about anything you're obsessed with because they can explain it to me in a way that makes sense and takes like half an hour. And also people that like actually know stuff. My friend of mine is obsessed with World War One. I mean, not that we all talk about World War One

that much, but when you talk about World War One, I'm sure that, I mean, again, I lived in Germany for six years. You talk a lot about World War One when you live in Germany. So I also was kind of obsessed with it when I was there. So I'm looking forward to having him on, having a big fight. I'm also excited about the guests we have coming up.

I realized this when we had Rachel on last episode, we finished and I was like, wow, I didn't have to do anything. Yeah, that was great. And there's something also really great about just asking people to come on and talk about something that they really care about. This is another thing that I've realized about journalism

is that people never get asked too much about something they really care about. Yeah, no one asks me about Brexit ever. If we ever did a Brexit episode, it would clock in at like four hours and 45 minutes. Yeah, if you thought I was ranty about Anita Hill. I don't think you'd get ranty. I think that your thoughts are caramelized

to just a really delightful consistency. And you just, and you talk like the way a sled dog runs where you're just completely unconscious of anything around you, you're just like, and then, and then, and then, and I'm going. You have to be able to talk in a joyful and energetic way about things that people are not convinced that they find interesting,

which is really how one must talk about systemic issues of all kinds. Like people just turn off around those things. There's not the promise of narrative. There's not the promise of it being like a fun, saucy, kind of saucy around, but it is.