Molly Jong-Fast on Generational Trauma and Cancel Culture

in my generation I'm 43 it's it's it's sort of in a way I feel like almost worse it's like uh you must have children you must have six Career Success and also you should work out and do this and do that and be happy you know and and make me die [Music] [Laughter] 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 comp I get completely you know just for touch so I went downtown and I thought I'd be right back and 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 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 there when it goes wrong you're you're like wow I'm 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 gonna do like you want them to take off with the plane like with the the mechanic down there like fixing 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 my 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 uh but it was helpful that I learned two hours right but then then it was delayed another two hours and then it was delayed like another hour and a half or whatever um obviously if they told me it was five and a half hours up front I would have been totally fine right like right I I could have made plans I think part of what what's it's like the Injustice of the of the way you're being treated I think is what is what uh 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 [ __ ] and when you're being treated like [ __ ] it's hard to just take it right I mean but I do also think like they don't care yeah of course like you know the one of my favorite bits of video is Ted Cruz screaming at the airport attendant like do you know who I am if you ever find yourself thinking those words you have so lost the plot yes oh it's so I mean I would even go like I said I 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 um 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 is realizing that you are not in charge that's I think the 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 distressed 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're not thinking about you yeah right and and I think it's like this idea I mean the thing the single most helpful thing I have ever heard and 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 Al-Anon thing like they're not doing it to you they're just doing it and like if you're in their way and and I'll have moments like especially in the last 10 years where I've where I will sing 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 okay good I'm just checking I don't want 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 um but so uh I had someone try to make amends to me um and she and she started telling me about how she'd always hated me and had always and been gossiping about me and saying all these terrible things and I thought to myself like this is what this woman has to say like 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 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 May yeah there's a stoic line that um 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 uh you're telling yourself that this is unfair that this is cruel that it's selfish whatever you're putting these labels on it right and those labels are the source of your distress or pain or frustration yeah I mean I would also over personalizing and you know and bringing the ego into it is what really gets people I think is what causes the most and most heard well you wrote a piece at the beginning of the pandemic that I liked that was about how sobriety prepared you for what was to come how 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 great you know I in my mind I can think of like my grandfather having anxiety attacks like it's 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 uh terrible cluster headaches so he had tanks of oxygen in his closet so you know there was there's like a very so uh so I would say that part of you know the whole this Tenon in AI is the idea that you stay you you stay in the moment and you uh 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 wildly different 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 um you know you just like staying in one moment at a time and not trying to figure out you know what this would look like in six months or in a year or in a year and a half and I think that has has really served me back in the ancient world philosophy wasn't abstract it wasn't theoretical it was designed to help you live the best life in stoicism 101 we have a two-week course that will introduce you into philosophy that will make you a better person there's interviews with me daily lessons that will challenge you to be better give you new ways of thinking tackling the problems of Life becoming your best self as Marcus really says you could be good today a but instead you choose tomorrow Epic 2 that says how much longer are you going to wait to demand the best for yourself check out our new course stoicism 101 at dailystoke.com 101. yeah there was I think if you could the more the 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 yeah easier time you're gonna 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 uh yeah 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 the 1918 pandemic my grandfather and my father on my mother's side so there was a moment where we didn't know if this would be the 1918 pandemic and the 1918 pandemic was uh 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 a lot of time that that would have been significantly more dramatic than what happened because even though it was crushing and we lost a million people and 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 and any sorts of imagination and and and in fact morally I think we 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 gonna 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 It Grow you know 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 gonna breed uh a generation of nihilus or sit at the at the very the I I think there already is a generation of nihilists I think the problem is that it bred uh uh it's breeding a generation of cynics which is in a sense worse right um and and I 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 uh 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 to go with something that to have to stick with to get to stick with what they like you know I 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 gonna go out on a limb here I hope you don't use this as the pull quote for the interview uh boomers are going to they're they're huge generation they're gonna 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 but they're going to live a long time and they're going to have had a very very um a quality of life that they've that the generations after them will not have had yeah because we have these quality of life so they're set up for a fair amount of resentment yeah already and I think that will continue likely 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 uh baby on the fire escape have you read it no it's about like uh 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 uh 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 uh still fighting again still still having to navigate that in their own way I thought it was really interesting because I know obviously your mom is uh 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 I thought it was very fascinating I mean what's interesting about that generation and like my mom was friends with Anne Sexton so uh I think that um you know some of those people um which is a little bit older generation and and and some of those women too she wasn't friends with tourist lesson but she was friends with some some a lot of women in that generation and I think my mom certainly struggles with this there was a sense for these women that they could not have at all yeah now I think it's we're in a in a different way which is we are told that we must have it all which is it it's an equal trap right because how can you possibly do that but um so I would say I think they really thought that they were sort of that they only uh they only had they had very limited choices and that they could sort of have these children but they would have to be you know uh 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 it's sort of in a way I feel like almost worse it's like uh you must have children you must have six Career Success and also you should work out and do this and do that and be happy you know and and make me die you know what was interesting about the book is it you know like audre Lorde Alice Walker Tony Morrison oh it's talking about all these writers what although some of them are very well known uh maybe other than Alice Walker I guess Toni Morrison also they almost none of them had any real Commercial Success so like they're gr they're grinding against these gender stereotypes but they're also just grinding it out with like sort of subsistence level survival this sort of starving artist thing uh 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 of the entire era that must have been uh that must have been a different set of issues because hers are hers are issues of abundance rather than scarcity although time I mean Alice was super famous and Toni Morrison too I mean like and Tony was like Sophie but she was also like a professor I mean those guys were super famous and successful um uh Alice is still alive Tony is dead um but yeah I mean her problems but you know again being successful doesn't mean you're not completely neurotic I mean 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 you know it was like her you know to have your first book be huge is its own I mean look it's not as bad as not yes you know but it I think it creates a whole other level of anxiety well yeah you never you never really feel like you've made it you never really feel like you're good and then if you are driven your your 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 it's fighting for a finite amount of resources I think that's yeah and I also think with my mom she definitely worried that she would and and my grandmother had this to her mother were 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 right or prevent and and you know the reality is I mean my grandmother was a painter my mother was a writer they were both so profoundly bad at that kind of connection that that didn't come naturally and did not take them over and the anxiety about it made it even harder yeah I think that's that's where that's what's so Insidious about 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 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 yeah I think that's right I also think like if you get you know with that generation they had sort of figured out that they didn't have to do it like my grandmother uh 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 right for that generation of this 1920s 1930s 1940s 40s 30s 40s 50s so uh 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 like thrilling to her right and there was no you know this was the early days of like having people take care of your children I mean baby formula and a lot of those things right yeah right I mean that was the big shift that I think we don't spend enough time talking about or thinking about it as 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 apart you know they were sort of baby makers and then they were you know wives yeah I mean there just weren't a ton of other roles for women and that was sort of set up that way so there is it's a bit you know it's been a huge transition in some ways yeah that that it's funny when you when So reading this book still there's this kind of monstrous selfishness that all artists seem to have right uh but but like what struck me as sad when because obviously when you read about the sort of male counterparts of all these authors and I think about this generationally like when I I have young kids and it's like my favorite thing in the world like I 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 than go to parties or do all the perks of success but but then when you think like generationally that fathers willfully deprive themselves of said thing it's kind of insane when you think about it do you know what I mean like what do you think about how important it's obviously very hard when you think about all the good parts and that dads chose or Society chose that like you just don't get to enjoy all these things and people are 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 the what there weren't other options but I do think the the thing that's hard is it went from like you can't do this to you must do this and you must do everything else too and I think that's very tough like you know our 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 uh you know it's it's meaningful shift yeah my my friend uh Austin Cleon his rule is work Family scene pick two and I think people struggle trying to get all through the scene being you know social media the scene being parties right right the trips the the the the the the thing ironically that people glamorize and Associate a creative profession with right the idea that you have to you're probably gonna 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 a little versus what being a good parent is when your kids are old is like very different too I mean I have an 18 year old and two 14 year olds so like when they were little it was basically just sit there with them and stare at them uh as they've gotten older like that's been a sort of different a change in what was sort of needed from me but yeah I mean absolutely I I think that is super um important and and you know yeah I think that's right I loved your teenager piece because you're 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 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 nineteen you know and I'm thinking of like during World War World War II uh 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 Dr you know not even Los Angeles these kids are doing uh nuclear drills in their schools in the 50s and 60s like you know could you say it was gonna 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 uh relevant things that happen one was that there were these like 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 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 and there was a lot of anxiety about that but then there was also like an actual problem with the uh 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 yeah and nobody told them so you know you had like a sort of a not a non-existent fear and a real fear and both happening at this same time and not um and no one knew what was happening so I think it was um you know a very strange time to live and so could you say things were going to be okay then I don't know well yeah that's the I think that 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 right is monkey pox going to be a thing monkey pox yeah you know for 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 911 if the thing happens then how do you get back to a life where you're not hyper Vigilant right that hybrid because parenting you're already hyper Vigilant then things happen in the world and it it it exacerbates the hyper vigilance but you can't sustainably or uh healthily live in a state of hyper vigilance so that's 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 um 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 uh you know people think like because they're 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 there's also a lot of um there's a lot of rural crime too so it's not just in urban areas like it's really everywhere and 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 uh going back to normal whatever that means and the kind of uh mental you know where this sort of I think the sort of trauma of having lived through this experience and you know because there are because even though we it wasn't like 1918 and our youngest and healthiest didn't die we still had you know people uh 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 you know there was still a lot of uh Randomness no it's profoundly traumatic and cut like 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 a it's how do you 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 uh 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 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 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 18 year old about this a lot the problem with this generation of teenagers is they have seen uh they've seen my generation which is like younger than Baby Boomers we're like I'm young Gen X so they've seen us um really not kill it and in fact the thing I always think about is like all a lot almost all of the leaders or many many of the leaders of political leaders are in their 70s and 80s yeah and you know we're all in our 40s and 50s and 30s and like they're we're not running anything right like I mean we're you know we've got Nancy Pelosi we got Chuck Schumer we got uh Mitch McConnell like these people are are septuagenarians largely and um and there's a sense in which our generation is sort of back a Bernard and you know and then you have people like AOC who are like Superstars but they're in their you know she's a 32 or 30 you know well no it's like they 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 at Ruth Bader Ginsburg like the profound selfishness of her choice not to hand it over earlier or just assume it will work out as sort of a all be there's almost like an all be gone you'll be gone uh attitude to the the like you know what was that what was the what's that famous quote um 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 were that 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 footing not just for the person immediately after me but but many people after me uh I think we have young people have watched a repeated betrayal of that idea well I mean it's like the reporting from uh Rebecca Tracer with that piece on Dianne Feinstein yeah 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's very very elderly and is maybe not 100 there I'm 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 um and uh yeah I mean I don't know how I don't know how uh I don't know how we get you know we're stuck with with this this uh gerontocracy that is um you know I don't think they have their they don't I don't think they have their they are not as committed to the Future as they should be I think I um I wrote this book about Peter Thiel a couple years ago and one of he always says things that make you think he's not always right but he at least thinks about things interestingly and he said he said he his question was how much of the metoo 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 uh 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 I mean that you know I think that's pretty clear I don't yeah 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 um with Peter so what I would say about me too and then I want to talk about Peter till um this is your podcast you know um uh I think that what's happened with me too is that the backlash has actually been stronger than the original me tooing 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 I don't know I mean a lot of these I 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 graper or grow grop grouper or something but I think it's called groper Uh 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 it so I would say and ultimately a lot of the people like for example Kevin Spacey has numerous accusers right like they're going to court in LA in in in the UK it's seven five I mean a big handful of accusers right and then so you have you really do have I mean uh uh Harvey was a rapist you know like that Annabella skeora story like you ruined these women's lives forever and ever so I do think I I do think the backlash has really I mean that's the other thing is like there's so much bad faith uh media and I mean this as a member of the media is so we do you do find that that sometimes the response is worse than the actual yeah no no I think I I found that too because my first book was about media manipulation so for some reason it's like every time someone gets canceled uh it's like my first book is like on the reading list like they can't read it and then they they all reach out to me so I I like you could name your me too person and there's a a chance that they sent me like a dark night of the Soul email right and the it's it's weird because it's it's deeply humanizing to talk to anyone whether they deserved it or not right it'd be the same thing you talk to someone on trial for a murder they committed right they would be like [ __ ] right like there there's something profound 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've consumed 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 my all my clients are innocent right like they all have the same so it's this it's this strange thing where they all feel like this Injustice has happened to them and never never is there any awareness about right that there was another person on the side of what they're doing and that there was almost no there's no nobody is profiting off doing this like they do you know what I mean so it's it's the weirdest yeah 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 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 the two things that have made Baby Boomers the most upset have been V2 because the idea is like I do think they they you know they feel like I mean Charlie Rose I just read Charlie 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 I am struck by James Patterson's recent comments oh that white white rich white men are subject to racism very hard to be a white man writer 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 a argument to be made that not much uh and he's mad then he's not you know that his people are not getting their fair I mean it is like the you the level of brain worms 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 what you would like them to be and it just is one of my favorite one of my favorite quotes from Seneca is he says um uh uh that taxes are a certainty of life right he was saying this 2000 years ago but that that there's lots of different forms of taxes and he says you just pay 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 and what you do has got to be that it doesn't the world doesn't the world attacks you the world attacks your friends uh you don't think things are perfect like there's a weird amount of arrogance to it where it's like um 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 advertently surrounded by people who tell them what they want to hear yes and that gives them brain worms and so when you you know when you interview them you're not talking to a normal person you're talking to someone who's never had anyone tell them the truth you know or hasn't 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 you know God bless um and he you know and 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 and I'm very honest about my own situation you know 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 that people tell that to Bill Maher I think that's no I think I think that's right so what's the other so Boomers it's it's me too and what's the other one that really upsets them I think they I think cancel culture 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 were saying race you know I I think of um what's her name the woman who got canceled uh she was like a Paula Deen yeah like Paula Deen 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 summer 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 apologize like it it's so I mean I feel like if you are a public person you make a mistake like and you are of 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 there was a malicious intent yeah no there's this Boogeyman that's and a lot of the a lot of the people that I know seemed very worked up about the Boogeyman and I like uh 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 yeah 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 a low level awareness and a and a preference that that not happened 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 would that this thing that's not only exceedingly unlikely uh 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 the same things it's about that I think 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 it 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 uh you know when they do like shark week and then people are real or there's like a trend of sharks attacking people yes but I think it's a little bit like that too it's this kind of uh moral Panic about a thing that it's not that it doesn't exist but like uh it's it's certainly like the the idea that like it's so it so exists and it's so uh 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 let 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 magaized 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 yeah I mean I think that's right I also think that there's it's just not it's not I mean like it's like it's like the um drag queen Story Hour is drag queen Story Hour are people being heard no are people being injured no are people like the 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 uh you 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 know what I mean like these are not the same things you know just because and I think and I mean I think what we've seen I mean so what is so just tell me about Peter Thiel okay so 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 I wrote a book about his plot to destroy Gawker uh and okay I was the only one that he was willing to talk to but then Nick Deton 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 conflict 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 and uh even though of course they lived on different coasts and that different Group whatever but they're very different yeah it was like the town wasn't big enough for the two of them and so I I found like my my take on Peter was I I didn't necessarily well I felt like Gawker was actually horrible and more horrible than people I felt like Goku was horrible reasons that Trump is horrible the cruelty the lack of experience to any kind of moral compass the driven by what the all of that so I understood why Peter was doing it um I was also very impressed by the sheer competence of it do you know what I'm saying like he did it yeah yeah and uh so 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 sting to watch how Tech world has gotten weirdly Robber Baron asked I mean I am married to a VC so I ha 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 they want to fix the problems of the world and they're gonna 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 as the years have dragged on I have really abandoned that good feeling and uh you know and it just seems and I mean a great example like one of the favorite conservative talking points in San Francisco but how did we get to San Francisco Tech Bros right yeah you drove up 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 tech Bros and they have poured money into I mean a good example is Michael Bloomberg right Michael Bloomberg is an oligarch he's incredibly Rich uh he's made a ton of money and he spent a lot of money on the Met Museum and the 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 um you know he was very committed to this sort of you know putting his body where his mouth was with philanthropy you don't see that with these Tech Bros yeah it's it's interesting it's kind of like um it's like it's it's all the same drive and ambition and money and power without the restraining uh sort of cultural code or expectations that would uh protect against the work the worst excesses and I think uh Elon Musk is 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 whereas Bloomberg or or one of 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 too busy for it there's a there's a weird almost humanness to it um but the as you become powerful and successful uh 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 uh personality is shaped by people liking him and I 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 you know so I 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 hit narcissism and his own desire to be liked and popular it's it it's it's very Shakespearean all of it is social experience that even at that level like uh 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 were these kind of tragic figures who like can't stop ourselves from going down uh 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 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 she has expanded it you know I mean certainly our problems with Amazon and let you know I don't I think is very tough on you know that they 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 um you know do things that are really meaningful and musk is is sort of trying to build like a you know family brand yeah it's uh it's 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 uh unempathetically wielded it can create certain enemies right you could argue Trump himself is like almost entirely driven uh by this by his hatred of the left I mean I was gonna say by the single joke made at the White House correspondent you know just that like you can set in motion that even Gawker itself right Gawker is ultimately destroyed 10 years after they sort of cruelly snarkily out some person because they don't stop and think what would it be like to be that person what's interesting about Gawker too is that Gawker was like one of the first places to uh the way that writers were paid by posts yeah and the way that the algorithm was Juiced like they were the early early uh 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 uh is pretty is who sat on the board of Facebook right like um and it there's that nature quote about like uh uh Beware those who fight monsters that you don't become one I think there's an interesting take that Peter and then the the the sort of world he becomes absorbed into musk also becomes in many ways a lot of the things that he claimed to be trying to destroy in Gawker like when you look at it at JD Vance or like matches and you look at the media game that they're playing it's right out of that Playbook it's a 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 it I think a lot about this idea that you have these you know you have candidates or or Senators who were Tim Scott Democrat you know uh Senator Kennedy uh John Kennedy from the great state of Louisiana Democrat like you have people who basically got gave up what they believed in to become uh senators or congress people but it's interesting to me then they don't then get in there and say like okay now I'll go back to normal they become they can stay right like there's no world in which like uh uh JD Vance if by some you know possibility who wins that he then becomes uh then he becomes you know he goes back to who the never Trump Republican he was when 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 ninja it's a mask that eats at the face right like eventually you you figure out like once you 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 you you fight that as a headwind you know what I mean right it's it's a no that's the tragedy of it yeah I think that's absolutely right yeah I think that's a hundred percent right so last question how given the horrors of what we're talking about how do you raise kids that or 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 uh 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 get a PhD or they have to get a JD or they have to go to college and and they can't do stuff until if Society has deemed them ready and you know it's I wrote my first book when I was 19 in a normal girl and uh and people were like a little bit mad at me like you know what ha you know how dare are you like skip the line yeah I got the same thing yeah by the way those people like you know who knows what happened to them but like um uh but I don't I don't think that's right I think people want to know what young people have to say and I think that uh that it's actually quite good to have those kind of thoughts out there and that there really is a need you know what's great about social media and what you know what nobody ever says is everyone's always complaining about social media and they're so mad at it and they hate Twitter and they hate this and they hit that and and I think Facebook is largely uh you know 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 uh Anonymous account two three four and you can grow your file if people like what you're gonna say you can put your hand on a rock there is no barrier to entry like when my mom wrote if you're flying in 1973 you know your book got discovered if it got good reviews in the following places and if it didn't no one would ever see it right and you couldn't you know 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 uh the Maggie Smith poem good bones uh yes that's right that I I love I love I like that idea also the world is [ __ ] 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 the world is complicated but there's opportunity yeah you when she says you can make this place beautiful that's the idea yeah it's ugly uh yeah but there are opportunities uh if you so choose well it's complicated I don't know that it's ugly I think it's complicated and it's and we haven't helped it get better right no we we have also been neglectful owners yeah yeah I think they're they're pretty clear on that well Molly thank you I I love your stuff and uh oh well I appreciate you so much for having me uh this is great this is super interesting