Ronan Farrow

[0] Welcome, welcome, welcome to armchair expert.

[1] I'm Dax Shepard.

[2] I'm joined by Ponica Madman.

[3] You're so excited that you realized.

[4] It took me six years.

[5] But I don't really understand what you realize that.

[6] It's Madman.

[7] Yeah.

[8] Oh, okay.

[9] Yeah, yeah.

[10] If I switch the Pee and the M, it's Ponica Madman.

[11] But Ponica isn't really big.

[12] Pongica sounds fun, like a Ponji Pit, Pitchie Pit, and you fall in, there's spikes at the bottom.

[13] Ooh.

[14] Ooh.

[15] That's kind of like me. Well, especially if Madman's your last name, Ponji Pitt, Madman.

[16] You guys, we have a fucking real -life Douglas Houser M .D. today.

[17] A doogie, Houser.

[18] My goodness.

[19] I really, as Monica and I have talked about, a bunch since interviewing him.

[20] I thought this was stuff of fiction.

[21] Yeah, me too.

[22] I did not think people went to college at 11 years old.

[23] Vunderkin.

[24] A vundercin.

[25] Ferro's here.

[26] And boy, do I hope you listen to this one, because I was so blown away with every single aspect.

[27] Now, Ronan Farrow, one, I believe, a Peabody.

[28] for his work with the New Yorker in uncovering the allegations of sexual abuse against Harvey Weinstein.

[29] Yes.

[30] Weinstein.

[31] Weinstein.

[32] Oh, my God.

[33] Now I'm saying Stein so much.

[34] Harvey Weinstein.

[35] Yeah.

[36] Oh.

[37] That's right.

[38] Oh, my God.

[39] I'm so fucked up now.

[40] Harvey Weinstein.

[41] No. We shouldn't laugh at Harvey Weinstein.

[42] I'm laughing at you.

[43] Oh, okay.

[44] Let's just be clear.

[45] Also, Ronin, you know, he worked for the government before he did that.

[46] a lawyer.

[47] He's the son of actress Mia Farrow and filmmaker Woody Allen.

[48] He's just an altogether fascinating person.

[49] He has a new book called Catch and Kill.

[50] And he also has a great podcast of the same name, Catch and Kill.

[51] So I think after listening to him, you're definitely going to want to check that out.

[52] So please enjoy Ronan Farrow, aka Phon Rero.

[53] Wondry Plus subscribers can listen to Armchair Expert early and add for right now.

[54] Join Wondry Plus in the Wondry app or on Apple Podcasts.

[55] Or you can listen for free wherever you get your podcasts.

[56] But Ronan, I have to, I'm going to start with an admission.

[57] Please.

[58] I'm going to own some of my baggage.

[59] Also, we're so excited to have you.

[60] We really are.

[61] Thank you for having me. But I must admit, increasingly over the last two days of reading about you and stuff, you are from New York.

[62] you're very well -spoken.

[63] You're very well -dressed.

[64] You have great hair.

[65] Even right now, I'm wearing my gym shoes so I can go to Barry's boot camp after that.

[66] Well, but you're wearing the shit out of it, though.

[67] Let's just say that.

[68] Thank you.

[69] The Adidas boosts.

[70] I think over the years as I've seen you on television and stuff, my terrible hang -up, my class warfare hang -up, where I always feel less than by people who are East Coast and well -spoken, I think was initially triggered.

[71] I was like, I have a chip on my shirt.

[72] shoulder, and I'm very embarrassed to admit it, because I'm now consumed a bunch of your stuff.

[73] And I just, I'm legitimately now an enormous fan of everything you've done.

[74] I'm also completely blown away with your story.

[75] I had no idea you're a legit Wunderkin, which we've never spoken to a real -life Wunderkin.

[76] I feel like I'm such a disappointing Wunderkin.

[77] I can barely calculate the tip now.

[78] I was supposed to be good at numbers, but it's no more.

[79] Yeah, but you, you're the youngest graduate of Bard.

[80] Does that still hold?

[81] I believe that still holds, yeah.

[82] That is so fascinating.

[83] I started college at 11.

[84] Oh, my God.

[85] Wait, wait.

[86] It's a real -life duty houseer.

[87] And then I went to, like, like so many lawyers, I'm basically a failed doctor at heart.

[88] So I just, I sucked at organic chem.

[89] And then I went to law school.

[90] But I did, I deferred my start at law school for two years so I could be 18 instead of 16.

[91] You started law school at 18.

[92] You had a two -year gap year, basically?

[93] I had a two -year, yeah.

[94] And what did you do in those two years?

[95] I mean, that's when I started working for this guy, Richard Holbrook, who was this kind of veteran diplomat character who figured heavily in my first book, which was called War on Peace and was about how we're ravaging the State Department and cutting the budget and not respecting diplomats.

[96] And obviously we're seeing some of the consequences of that in the news right now with the impeachment stuff.

[97] Yeah, and was that with the Obama administration?

[98] So at that point, this was way bad.

[99] I'm now, I'm getting there now.

[100] 31 are you?

[101] I'm 31 now.

[102] How triggering is that, Monica?

[103] All of our guests are older than Monica.

[104] So in her mind, just like me, she's like, well, I could still do that.

[105] I got a couple of years.

[106] How old are you, Monica?

[107] Out of context, I would never ask, but I feel like the context was appropriate.

[108] Okay, so we're the kids on this program right now.

[109] Yeah, but I started college at 17.

[110] That's better than most.

[111] Yeah.

[112] Not better than you.

[113] It's certainly not 11.

[114] Well, I started working for Holbrook while he was doing kind of just foreign policy, freelancing.

[115] Like, he was advising the Kerry campaign.

[116] That's how far back we're talking.

[117] So he's like a consultant?

[118] Yeah, I mean, he was just, you know, what establishment Democrats do between regimes.

[119] He was floating around with Madeline Albright and stuff.

[120] And I worked for UNICEF for a little bit as a youth spokesperson and a couple of African kind.

[121] And then later, after law school, I went back in during the Obama administration and was in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

[122] How do you get on the track of ending up in college at 11?

[123] Like, when does that process start?

[124] Well, you know, to your point about me being slightly annoying and coming from a lot of privilege.

[125] No, no, no, no. It's me. It's me. It's me. It's me. It's not you.

[126] No, it's me, too.

[127] And it's incumbent on me to be conscious of it.

[128] I mean, I look, I famously had a childhood with a lot of pain and turmoil and trauma.

[129] and, like, death and destruction in a literal sense.

[130] Yeah.

[131] But also had a tremendous amount of privilege and really feel very fortunate.

[132] And, you know, I always had access to incredible educational opportunities and where not everybody does.

[133] And part of that was, like, I tested in a certain way early on.

[134] And then they put me in a Johns Hopkins, oh, God, it's called the Center for Talented Youth.

[135] Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[136] It's a nerd camp, basically.

[137] And you take the SAT really young for that.

[138] But really quick, what ages are we talking about?

[139] That point.

[140] Eight -ish, ten?

[141] Yeah, that's, I can't remember the exact age, but it's around there.

[142] So you start taking the SAT at eight, nine, ten.

[143] And then, you know, I got a score where people said, okay, you're already skipping all these grades and taking your high school credits early and tested in a certain way.

[144] So can you tell us what it is?

[145] It's, I did, I did get a, you know, perfect SAT, whatever it was at the time.

[146] You got a $1 ,600.

[147] Okay, well, see, we're the same age.

[148] So you remember when that was an important big number.

[149] Now, now, people are like, well, what the hell is a 1600 because they've got some funky other number.

[150] That's true.

[151] Oh, they added a third category or something?

[152] An essay category.

[153] I mean, I think I still have PTSD from all.

[154] To be clear, I did not get my high score the first time around.

[155] Like, I took it a couple of times.

[156] Okay, so I just want to get into the particulars a little bit.

[157] Because leading up to that test, there's steps before you're even taking the SAT.

[158] So your mother, I assume, is like, this fucking kid's pretty bright.

[159] Or did you just have this crazy pension and desire in appetite for learning?

[160] Or were you making mom happy to mom kind of label you, shit, he's on to something?

[161] And then steer you that way, or was it self -generated?

[162] So I definitely didn't have a helicopter mom pushing things.

[163] You know, she was a single mom.

[164] I have 10 adopted siblings.

[165] Oh, my goodness.

[166] Special needs, physical disabilities, mental health issues that they've had to surmount.

[167] So she was busy.

[168] amazingly.

[169] She was incredibly supportive.

[170] I think it was self -generated.

[171] I mean, I think there's always an element of wanting to impress either mom or, like, the figurative mom.

[172] I definitely have a, like a yawning, bottomless cavern of insecurity that I'm constantly filling.

[173] Sure, me too.

[174] Yeah.

[175] I mean, who among us doesn't it?

[176] It's really shocking.

[177] Monica's like, I don't.

[178] I'm perfect.

[179] I'm good.

[180] No, we've had some of this, objectively, the most attractive human beings on planet Earth in here.

[181] And you ask them, what do they see when they look in their mirror?

[182] And they see the same gargoyle I see.

[183] You know what I'm saying?

[184] It's boggling.

[185] No one can have a sense of themselves.

[186] Well, it's fascinating to me, though, that everyone has a different species of insecurity.

[187] There's always that thing that, like, just hits you where you live when someone insults you about it or where you really need validation and praise about it.

[188] I don't know that I'm self -aware enough to know what my thing is.

[189] I think it's all the things.

[190] If you get terribly addicted to something at some point, you will end up in AA where I've ended up.

[191] And you'll have to do a four step.

[192] And by God, you'll find out what they are.

[193] You will find everyone I've worked with in the program has about two or three fears that are pretty much governing their entire life.

[194] Are they always the same two or three?

[195] No, people have different things.

[196] So mine, you know, I have a huge fear that people think I'm stupid.

[197] I have a huge status fear.

[198] I'm constantly obsessed with my status and ranking in every scenario I'm in.

[199] And then I have this huge financial and security thing growing up kind of without money.

[200] And then my mother working very hard to get money.

[201] So all my things kind of just all lead back to that.

[202] And almost when I'm getting mad or emotional with somebody, I'm like, one of these three things right now is going off.

[203] That's what's happening.

[204] Fascinating.

[205] Yeah, I think there's a lot of truth to that.

[206] And I'm sure that's true of me. It's what's chilling about it too is those things never go away, right?

[207] Like I assume no matter how financially secure you are, you always feel that same.

[208] I'm lucky enough to find out that getting lots of money didn't solve the problem in recognizing, oh, it's all a mental racket.

[209] Because we either feel secure you down.

[210] We're done.

[211] We're out of the oven.

[212] We're broken forever.

[213] It's funny, though, because I was actually having a conversation with a very drunk friend last night who was saying, similar to what you just said, he said my great insecurity is that people think I'm dumb.

[214] And this is someone who just, it would have never crossed my mind that people would think he's dumb like he's always struck me as a reasonably smart person and I put him in that category and not that I don't also love my dumb friends I just didn't categorize him that way and like that he just has this profound insecurity about it for what it's worth I also would not have put you in the category of anyone who's anything but extremely smart yeah they're not rooted in any foundational well I was dyslexic and didn't learn to read it went to you know knock on the door and the two people who can't learn leave and they go down with the people who have some serious real mental challenges.

[215] Okay, that's tough.

[216] And yeah, and I can't shake it.

[217] It doesn't matter what degree I get or what accolade I get.

[218] Even though you understand that has nothing to do with intelligence.

[219] By the way, I have shaken a bit.

[220] You should have met me 20 years ago.

[221] I was insufferable.

[222] So I have made progress.

[223] No, me too.

[224] I was so much more in the vice grip of insecurity and I think also quite insufferable for a long, long time.

[225] So, okay, sounds like my wife's similar to your mom in that she has bottomless empathy and bottomless capacity to take on causes.

[226] And what I sometimes will say to her is it's beautiful, it's lovely.

[227] And also, you have a bandwidth, and there's certain people that you've brought into this circle, and you kind of got to stake out an X amount of your band with for those people.

[228] This is the great existential conversation for many of my siblings.

[229] So my mom, you know, adopted all these kids and was adopting like in the 70s when it wasn't in vogue and she was getting called crazy for it.

[230] And, you know, and then in standing by my sister, when my sister had this allegation of sexual abuse against Woody Allen also was like smeared and blacklisted, she's been really treated terribly unfairly.

[231] And I think is also, on the other hand, rightly regarded as a hero in some circles, you know, women come up to me and they say, like, your mom is a hero to me. And I think that's correct.

[232] I mean, she's a hero to me. And what I took away from the altruism was, my God, I don't think I'll ever have the strength to do quite this.

[233] Right.

[234] Upend my whole life.

[235] Give up the possibility of being totally comfortable on the level that I would have if I didn't have, you know, 14 kids.

[236] Yeah.

[237] She's really limited who she can be partners with.

[238] Tremendously isolating.

[239] Yeah.

[240] And like fame is already isolating here.

[241] So she made a lot of sacrifices, I really, I know her well enough to know sincerely for the greater good.

[242] And I think for her that's rooted in, she was raised super, super Catholic.

[243] Like, she still has all of her handwritten notebooks from when she was, you know, nine and ten years old.

[244] And they're all super detailed illustrations of, you know, Christ on the cross with his crown of thorns and, like, her writing diaries about going to lords and bathing in holy water.

[245] And, like, she was way super into, yeah, she was all in, and, you know, getting wrapped on the knuckles by nuns.

[246] She was a Catholic boarding school.

[247] And, you know, then she was also a hippie and she's lots of fun and stuff.

[248] But I think that she retained the philosophy of that, that kind of hair shirt, like, I got to do good.

[249] Sacrifice.

[250] If I suffer along the way, so much the better.

[251] Yeah.

[252] We definitely weren't raised with a philosophy of, you know, happiness as king.

[253] It was very much like, you have been given privilege.

[254] You better go out there and make the world a better place.

[255] That is all that matters.

[256] Yeah.

[257] And I think for a lot of my siblings, they did not take, as I did from it, this like, oh, how inspirational.

[258] This is difficult, but it's great.

[259] They really, I think not unfairly, I mean, everyone has their own experience of it, so I won't say they like all of them.

[260] But some of them, I think, really walked away with a ton of resentment of that.

[261] Sure.

[262] Because, you know, they could have had a totally comfortable childhood, and instead it was, you know, chaos.

[263] Yeah, you feel like you deserve or you're entitled to a parent who's got, you know, an allotment of time for you.

[264] That's significant.

[265] And she was a fantastic mom to all of us, but it is a very different situation growing up with, you know, a few kids versus growing up with so many kids with so many special needs who also often were adopted older.

[266] So it's not just physical special needs or mental health special needs.

[267] It's 10 years of abuse before we even met some of my siblings.

[268] You know, in really tough developing country orphanage type situations.

[269] and I'm very inspired by them and how they've overcome incredible challenges, but it definitely makes for a childhood where you have a great sense of perspective and also it's hard at times.

[270] Yeah, it's weird because on the surface it was privileged and now I'm realizing, oh, I had it way better for my own personal selfish desires of having all my mom's attention at all times.

[271] Well, we've all got our shit.

[272] And, you know, I really focus on the privilege and the positive stuff, because there was plenty of it.

[273] Is it likely that amid that chaos, you were like, well, I better be a goddamn Sears Tower of accomplishment to get noticed.

[274] Absolutely.

[275] But not actually, I think the last half of what you said is not right.

[276] I think I felt like I had to be a kind of, like the model child in the family, not to stand out or get attention and not to set an example, but to just make life easier for my mom.

[277] You know, this was not one of those situations where, like, I didn't have an authority figure.

[278] She was a great mom and was always an authority figure.

[279] But I had a sense of empathy and understanding as I would with a friend where I realized, like, oh, this is this is a lady who set out to do a really good thing and is shouldering an immense burden.

[280] Yeah.

[281] And, you know, I better be an easy one.

[282] Yeah.

[283] It was a little bit part of it.

[284] What order are you in this?

[285] They're four younger than me. Okay, so you're middle.

[286] Yeah, middle -ish.

[287] Middle -ish.

[288] But they're older, but they came after you, some of them.

[289] Technically.

[290] Right.

[291] I think there's also, you know, there's, I'm trying to remember the term in gay lit.

[292] There's like the best boy in the world theorem, you know, that like gay sons, you know, feel the need to overcompensate in some tremendous way.

[293] That makes sense.

[294] Like you're going to let them down in your mindset at that age.

[295] You're going to let them down eventually on this one part.

[296] going to get married and they're not going to go to your wedding so you better crush the other is that what it is yeah and also just that you know you're going to get teased or ostracized for something so you're not going to be alpha in these particular traditional ways but you're going to be really dominant in these other ways yeah and you know i find now as i'm in positions where i'm like hiring people for my team and stuff there are all sorts of great arguments for hiring in a way, whether it's people of color or people from various, you know, gender and sexuality minorities.

[297] But one of them is definitely that you get these incredible journeys where people kind of have to assert themselves early and find themselves early.

[298] Well, they've overcome a bunch.

[299] Yeah.

[300] It's not even that you're selecting for that, you know, checking that diversity box, it's that they bring a perspective.

[301] Yes, they've honed in on what they're good at, I think, early like people growing up as minorities feel like okay where's the lane when do i excel at because i got to go gung ho at that because yeah there's all these other elements that monica's a state champion cheerleader just let you know too time decorated so not surprised i do have a bow in my hair right now so it's pretty cool thank you you were trying to look even younger because you're intimidated by ronin's 31 years of age and you know i i run into this in in my stories too everyone has a different journey that informs how they respond to hey can you tell this incredibly invasive personal account of something that's going to upend your life if you tell it publicly and put you at odds with all these powerful interests and like for the catch -and -kill podcast that I'm doing now oh so that's a book but it's also a podcast right so I wrote this book catch -and -kill it's this series of stories that I broke about Donald Trump and Harvey Weinstein and the various tools deployed by powerful people to suppress stories in the press.

[302] Manipulate news outlets and have tabloids buy stories for them to kill them.

[303] That's where the term catch and kill comes from.

[304] And it's also, it's a memoir of a very low point in my life where I was physically deteriorating and not sleeping and I was on the run from literal spies that Harvey Weinstein hired this Israeli private intelligence firm called Black Cube, and they sent like a femme fatale with false identities.

[305] after my sources and me and these two Russian spies that hung out outside my apartment and chased me around and really quick so I have to imagine in those moments it's both scary and intimidating at times and then in other times though where you're like I'm in a goddamn James Bond movie and this is exciting was there an excitement associated with it as well not at the time in the midst of it because I was losing my job and scared shitless yeah but um but in the aftermath writing the book, definitely I had to make these decisions like, okay, priority number one is the reporting has to be airtight and incredibly respectful of the real life people who are affected by this.

[306] So lots of fact checking, lots of legal review.

[307] But then also there was this process of it's an incredibly dramatic story.

[308] That can be a boon in terms of getting what I think is an important story to the widest audience possible.

[309] So in terms of structure, let's write it in a way that is a page turner and propulsive.

[310] Thankfully, people have gotten that.

[311] I haven't been eaten alive for making it dramatic and honestly at times fun.

[312] I think to go through these incredibly heavy stories, you need to then alternate with some levity and I'm proud with how it came out.

[313] But now I'm doing this sort of accompaniment podcast, the Catch and Kill podcast, a very straightforward name.

[314] And it's like if you finish a book that you love, The idea is then you get to spend a half hour or 45 minutes with each of the characters and their little true crime documentaries about that character's life story.

[315] So for the people who liked the plot of the book and want more, there's all this new stuff.

[316] And in some cases, it's people who didn't speak for the book, but figured in the plot.

[317] We did this episode with this wonderful woman who was an assistant to Harvey Weinstein in the 90s named Rueena Chu, who I had talked to around the initial Weinstein story I did in 2017.

[318] and she wasn't ready to talk.

[319] Her name didn't come out at all.

[320] And it's been this long journey that she talks about of why she didn't speak.

[321] And a lot of it is circumstantial and would be true for anyone.

[322] You know, it's the career repercussions.

[323] It's having to tell your spouse.

[324] It's having to tell your parents.

[325] Yeah.

[326] But to our point we were talking about earlier, if you bring your own story to that decision, I mean, she talks a lot about being Chinese, British, and those two cultural forces, you know, this sort of stiff upper lip thing of the English and also the kind of what she describes as the model minority pressure of being Chinese.

[327] Yeah.

[328] Yeah.

[329] Both of them making it extra hard for her to speak.

[330] Yeah.

[331] Which I was fascinated by, yeah.

[332] When I was reading about catching Kill, I was wondering, what would be your most generous reasoning for why people protect people they admire, who they love, there's loyalty, there's some kind of evolutionary wiring in there to really ignore the truth.

[333] I think many of us are really vulnerable to that.

[334] In terms of protecting bad guys on occasion, it's, well, I think we're built as a species to form our judgments based on the limited data points we have.

[335] And so, you know, I could name any number of names here, but pick your favorite person comes out and says, well, but I loved working with Roman Polansky or Woody Allen or Bill Cosby and it's like, of course you loved, of course he's going to be great to you famous person on the especially famous guy on set.

[336] You're not an underage girl or a model that has just been drugged or whatever the thing is in that scenario.

[337] And you know, I am not perfect in that respect either, but I try in cases where there's someone that I like and even care about and feel loyal to who's credibly accused of this sort thing to step outside of my own experience of that person and acknowledge that there is another universe that I don't get to see firsthand.

[338] Sure.

[339] And I think it's just about respecting the unknown as well.

[340] Like a great example of what you're talking about is I broke these stories about CBS and Les MoonVes and a chain of executives under him, including in the news division and, you know, many, many dozens of people talking about how a culture of harassment kind of gets baked into a company's practices.

[341] Corporate culture is a real thing, and it can turn bad in these ways.

[342] Right.

[343] And it's all these different factors from the legal department to a board that's saying these sort of crazy mustache twirling villainous things in the board minute meetings that they're saying, like, you know, I don't care if it's dozens of women accusing him of race.

[344] He's our guys.

[345] The Times did great reporting after I broke that story.

[346] Literally, that was very close to a quote that came out of that board.

[347] I remember in the wake of, I did two stories back to back about Moonvez, and in the wake of the first one, which had six women accusing him of assault and harassment, and they were, you know, very serious stories.

[348] It was people like Ileana Douglas, wonderful actress, saying, you know, he jumped on top and he held me down in this business meeting.

[349] You know, not super cool professional conduct, obviously.

[350] Right, right, right.

[351] And yet there was, even after those first six came forward, a real contingent of CBS talent, but also in the wider Hollywood community, people who raced to his defense.

[352] And there were people who came out and said, you know, that's not the less that I know.

[353] Sure.

[354] And, of course, that was true for them, I'm sure.

[355] Right.

[356] But it's like it never entered into their calculus what I knew already at that point, which is there's another six coming with even more.

[357] extreme violent claims backed by a whole lot of evidence.

[358] And I just think there's wisdom in, like I said before, respecting the unknown.

[359] If there's a sign that there might be a wider pattern than you're aware of, just don't say anything for a few minutes.

[360] Well, okay, great.

[361] So you'd be the perfect person to ask about this because I don't feel like there's room currently to take the non -binary option, which is either you come out and conduct.

[362] the person or you come out and defend the person.

[363] Is there room or is it wrong to say, let's say, I don't know Louis C .K. But I do hear many of his friends end up on Stern or any of these places.

[364] And they're now put in a position where they have to kind of publicly say they don't like this person, who they do like and they love.

[365] Is there room for me to go, look, I love this person.

[366] and I absolutely believe the accusers and I think this person has a problem and I also love them and to be honest we'll continue to be friends with them and hope I'm a part of some growth and solution like is that option on the table and should it not be or should it be yeah it's really tough I mean first of all it's not really for me to say like I'm not you know the the high priestess of what people should say about people accused of well you are in a unique position that you really are the vanguard of the Me Too movement.

[367] So I would hope that people would consider your opinion on how we course correct to be relevant.

[368] Well, I mean, this is a bit of a sidebar, but I actually, I don't really agree with that characterization.

[369] I see how people could see that from a ways away from it.

[370] But from my perspective being in it, there's a really sharp distinction.

[371] I mean, I'm an investigative reporter.

[372] I report on all kinds of corruption and malfeasance.

[373] And to me, it was actually philosophically very important that the stories I've been fortunate enough to break about sexual violence weren't distinct from any other serious kind of story.

[374] I think that these kinds of claims had been almost ghettoized for years and years and described as something that was distinct from any other kind of criminal application.

[375] Like tabloidy, right?

[376] Tabloidy, not news impossible to bring out of the realm of he said, she said.

[377] And I, just even based on my legal training, understood that's not the case it's in some cases it's he said she said and in some cases it's actually backed by tangible evidence whether it's an audio recording or a video or a paper trail of settlements to conceal something or there's eyewitnesses who saw someone leave a room and saw how distraught they were there's all sorts of mechanisms yeah was your take uniquely corporate corruption not just corporate but just systems why are systems where by learning about this hopefully we're not just learning about an individual we're learning about the the ways they get aided and abetted and how that is baked into our culture, our corporate practices, our government practices.

[378] There's all sorts of legislative implications to the reporting that I've done on NDAs, for instance.

[379] And a bunch of reporters have now done really good, important work, kind of exposing how for years and years, non -disclosure agreements were just used very freely to conceal crimes.

[380] Monica and I have one.

[381] Well, there's nothing.

[382] We don't.

[383] No, we do.

[384] I don't have one.

[385] Yeah, remember when you first started working a babysitting?

[386] No. Yes, you signed an NDA.

[387] Okay, nope.

[388] There is nothing wrong.

[389] I mean, because I'm, I mean, not much of a lawyer, but I took contract law one L year.

[390] I'm very aware there's all sorts of valid uses of NDAs, and I have signed many an employment contract with a standard non -disclosure clause.

[391] The reporting I've done is specifically on the application of NDAs to conceal criminal activity.

[392] Yes, yes.

[393] I just don't want her to say like, oh, Dex, It's never flushed the toilet in the five years we were.

[394] No, we do.

[395] A thousand percent.

[396] You have one.

[397] I love that you've forgotten.

[398] I promise you we don't.

[399] We'll solve this off our.

[400] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[401] We've all been there.

[402] Turning to the internet to self -diagnose our inexplicable pains, debilitating body aches, sudden fevers, and strange rashes.

[403] Though our minds tend to spiral to worst -case scenarios, it's usually nothing.

[404] But for an unlucky few, these unsuspecting symptoms can start the clock ticking on a terrifying medical mystery.

[405] Like the unexplainable death of a retired firefighter, whose body was found at home by his son, except it looked like he had been cremated, or the time when an entire town started jumping from buildings and seeing tigers on their ceilings.

[406] Hey listeners, it's Mr. Ballin here, and I'm here to tell you about my podcast.

[407] It's called Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries.

[408] Each terrifying true story will be sure to keep you up at night.

[409] Follow Mr. Ballin's Medical Mysteries wherever you get your podcasts.

[410] Prime members can listen early and add free on Amazon music.

[411] What's up guys?

[412] It's your girl Kiki and my podcast is back with a new season and let me tell you it's too good and I'm diving into the brains of entertainment's best and brightest.

[413] Okay, every episode I bring on a friend and have a real conversation.

[414] And I don't mean just friends.

[415] I mean the likes of Amy Poehler, Kel Mitchell, Vivica Fox, the list goes on.

[416] So follow, watch and listen to Baby.

[417] This is Kiki Palmer on the Wondery app or wherever you get your podcast.

[418] I think it's fair.

[419] It just shouldn't be applicable if you have a serious criminal place.

[420] I totally agree.

[421] If you see him do some crimes, then, you know, that NDA should nod.

[422] I'm generally, I'm against them.

[423] Yeah.

[424] Across the board.

[425] I kind of am because even if it's not criminal, it's still a way to inflict power on somebody in general.

[426] And even just treatment, behavior.

[427] all of that stuff, even if it's not like a criminal thing or a...

[428] Well, but let's just, for us, in our exact situation, let's say, so you're coming into the house and you're going to be exposed to every aspect of our life.

[429] And then now you're in a position if you were a piece of shit, which you're not, to go write a book about the fact that I fart too much and I...

[430] Just like embarrassing.

[431] The people need to know.

[432] We talk about that on here all the time.

[433] He farts too much.

[434] Well, embarrassing gross stuff that could potentially, let's even say, diminish my income because Samsung doesn't want a guy who's got compulsive flatulence to sell a refrigerator.

[435] And now...

[436] Totally.

[437] So in some way, I need some...

[438] Well, that would technically probably be a non -disparagement clause.

[439] Oh, maybe that's what we need.

[440] I mean, the two are related, and there's a lot of overlap.

[441] What if you said, like, I think, I don't, I've observed that Chris and Dax haven't had sex in three months.

[442] Like, you know, there's just, you need some protection from that.

[443] I totally agree.

[444] But let's say that you...

[445] you do something to me. I get fired because of that, let's say.

[446] That also affects my income moving forward if I'm trying to get another job.

[447] And I can't because I can't really say, well, this is actually what happened.

[448] I don't think that's fair.

[449] I know.

[450] I agree.

[451] So are you seeing a non -disparity?

[452] It sounds like that would be the compromise.

[453] I think they're always going to be valid applications of confidentiality clauses of some kind.

[454] I mean, I'll give you a more clear -cut example.

[455] You're a scientist, you know, working in a lab on some incredibly sensitive technology for, you know, whatever, a car company, and they have to be able to limit contractually in some way you bringing that to a competitor.

[456] There's all sorts of very clear -cut cases where I don't think this is a terrible social ill to have this as a legal institution.

[457] I agree to your point, Monica, that they were overused widely and particularly in the context of the kinds of stories I did, just years of working with sources who were scared shitless because they had signed the bad version of this, which is, you know, Harvey Weinstein paid me a million dollars to destroy all evidence of the crime he did and never speak about it again.

[458] That's one of the episodes of the podcast is about this young woman, Ambera Gutierrez, who participated in a police sting and got a recording of him admitting to groping her.

[459] It's a very dramatic, crazy story.

[460] Oh, wow.

[461] And then he gives her a million dollars, and she signs away her right to ever talk about it and has all her devices scrubbed of the recordings.

[462] And thankfully for me, she finds a secret way to preserve a copy and get it out.

[463] But that's like, that's a bad NDA.

[464] Yeah.

[465] I feel like if a criminal activity, you know, something criminal has happened, that should pretty much void an NDA.

[466] Is there any room legally for that to be part of how they're constructed?

[467] So that should be the case.

[468] And there's conversations happening in different legislative bodies now about how you make that more clear and like actually preemptively, preventing them from being used in cases of sex crimes.

[469] I think that that actually is now the case in California in the wake of this reporting.

[470] Yeah, if you sign an NDA, you should probably say, well, I will sign this, but what I want included in this is that this excludes any kind of sexual misconduct towards me or something.

[471] Carve out.

[472] In various jurisdictions, that is now mandatory already.

[473] In California, I think you cannot at this point do the kind of agreement I just outlined of it is expressly for the purpose of covering up a sex crime.

[474] So, lawyers who are engaged in brokering that kind of agreement should know, you know, that they can't do that and they should put a stop to it if someone is trying.

[475] And now just in a juicy gossipy way, do you have a sense, a global sense or a cumulative sense of what Harvey had paid out over the years?

[476] I mean, I won't speculate other than say it's, obviously it's in the seven figures because there was a single settlement.

[477] Yeah.

[478] So it's a lot of money and it is one of the remarkable things about that story and so many others that there was a whole echelon of powerful person who was just buying their way out of criminal accountability for a long time.

[479] Well, I watched that loudest voice in the room, which was incredibly well acted by Russell Crow.

[480] I just want to add that.

[481] Did you watch that?

[482] I didn't watch it, but I know Gretchen a little.

[483] Yeah, I'm sure you know the particulars of all these things, but yet they were paying out, you know, tens of millions of dollars.

[484] I mean, it really added up to huge amounts of money.

[485] Well, that's where.

[486] I think the reporting is especially important because we need as many journalists as possible digging into cases of corporate culture normalizing that sort of thing.

[487] And I think it's pretty widespread.

[488] I mean, I've done now risk reporting on NBC, on CBS.

[489] It wasn't just, you know, a single rogue studio.

[490] Like the Weinstein Company, to your point, Fox was, you know, one of the leading examples.

[491] I hope that we're seeing the death of this idea that powerful guys, figureheads of these companies are so indispensable that it's worth concealing potentially criminal activity.

[492] It just, it never is.

[493] It's bad for the bottom line.

[494] You know, in the CBS story, when Word leaked that we were about to run at the New Yorker, not even when the article itself hit, like, 10 hours before when I think the Hollywood reporter put out a piece saying, you know, Run Affair was about to put out this CBS reporting.

[495] It had been much rumored for months.

[496] And I was sitting with my fact checker and we're, of course, just focused on the one thing we have to do of getting the reporting right and kind of trying to tune out the noise.

[497] But meanwhile, the news cycle around this is starting, and he turns his phone towards me, and CBS's stock has just, you know, plummeted.

[498] They've lost, like, a billion dollars of value.

[499] And on the one hand, you know, you hate to see that happen based on speculation.

[500] I mean, that's dumb.

[501] Wait for the actual facts, investors.

[502] On the other hand, I hope that's a lesson for companies everywhere.

[503] They thought they were doing the right thing for the bottom line, covering this up.

[504] I mean, this was a board that knew that there was a, criminal investigation at one point.

[505] They knew that there were payouts and they kept him in power.

[506] And I hope now people have internalized the lesson.

[507] Like actually there's a cost to that.

[508] I imagine you gather all of your information and you're structuring and writing and you're doing all these things and you're fact checking and that has this whole, I would imagine excitement to it.

[509] Like you're really on to something.

[510] You've really got something.

[511] And I wonder what the journey is from going like, fuck, I got this.

[512] This story is good.

[513] It's solid.

[514] I'm very proud of it.

[515] And then the panic, the chatter, the probably legal threats, the stock dropping, you now really are responsible for like a billion dollar movement.

[516] Do you lose your conviction at all?

[517] Do you go like, oh my God, if I've got this wrong now, I am fuck fucked.

[518] Are you at that point?

[519] You're so solid on it?

[520] Or what's that experience?

[521] You just, you only get to that point if you're so solid on it.

[522] I mean, to give you an example, I had a major political story that would have been the kind of thing that, you know, would take over.

[523] over the news cycle for a week or something.

[524] And we had it fully drafted and multiple sourced, but I and my editors just decided at the 11th hour not multiple sourced enough.

[525] We wanted another voice in the room for this particular thing that had happened.

[526] And it's just never worth putting it out unless you're so, so rock solid.

[527] And as you pointed out, all of these stories generate these crazy legal threats and attacks on me personally.

[528] And so there's really no temptation to put it out prematurely.

[529] I wish I could credit myself for that.

[530] The New Yorker has this absurdly high standard of fact checking.

[531] So things only really progress to that point if you know it's going to weather the storm.

[532] So I guess that's a way that you're bolstering some confidence as you have the vote of this institution.

[533] The New Yorker that's behind you that could lead to your own confidence a little bit.

[534] Well, and I think just to make it more specific for people, because there's no reason anyone at home would necessarily know what that process looks like, it's not like you're doing secret research in a void and then saying, we feel confident, so we're going to put this out and see how people react.

[535] The fact -checking process entails going to everyone who's mentioned and saying, okay, here's what we are reporting and here's the evidence.

[536] Yeah.

[537] And getting all their rebuttals.

[538] So no one who's a subject of this kind of reporting is this kind of reporting meaning investigative reporting is shocked.

[539] And you kind of know what the responses are going to be and calibrating it to those responses.

[540] It still can be a shitstorm when it comes out publicly and even, you know, you see people admitting to things in fact -checking and then still being underhanded in the public discourse and denying and.

[541] Yeah.

[542] I would imagine, though, that you're getting a lot of opportunity to exercise your muscle of constructing a real argument for the other side, which I think is one of like the healthiest things people can do and seems to be one of the things people are most reluctant to do, which is like give it a real, real shot.

[543] What is that other point of view?

[544] Absolutely.

[545] And, you know, it's a way in which I think the legal training helps because that's very much embedded in legal thinking.

[546] And sincerely, you know, my work involves burning a crazy amount of my bridges all the time.

[547] But I do think that if you're going to be in the crosshairs of some kind of tough investigative reporting, better to have it be an outlet like the New Yorker that's really going to sincerely want to hear you out.

[548] And all the time I listen to someone during a fact -checking process and think, huh, okay, actually, I see that point, or they've presented this piece of evidence that's persuasive and it changes the tenor of the thing.

[549] I've had sometimes, I guess, a provocative view of some of these situations.

[550] I am of the opinion, certainly not in the wine scene thing, certainly not in many of them.

[551] But in some of them, I do have a hunch both people sincerely believe they're telling the truth.

[552] I think we do process experiences so differently, again, with the baggage of fears and insecurities we all carry, as we already discussed, I have events in my life that you would think would be, there's no way we would remember this differently.

[553] my brother and I watching my mom get beat up by our stepdad.

[554] That's a very memorable experience.

[555] He has it in a completely other house that we lived in.

[556] We have it in different houses.

[557] And we have like, you know what I'm saying?

[558] When I experience in my own life, that kind of dissonance of like, how could we have this drastically different memories of this experience?

[559] And yet I witness it all the time and benign things.

[560] Aren't there many cases where it's like I believe her and I kind of believe him?

[561] I believe that they may have had completely different experiences walking away from the situation.

[562] So I certainly in principle think that can be true.

[563] I think that in the stories that I've chosen to report, they're actually on a specific subset that is about sufficiently violent criminal allegations that you don't get into those gray areas as much.

[564] I mean, the prominent examples of stories about sexual violence that I've reported really are.

[565] Sometimes there are less violent anecdotes in there that are meant to establish an emo.

[566] but they're always rooted in very, very serious criminal claims where there just wouldn't be a lot of room to have a reasonable interpretation of events that would be totally consensual.

[567] Is it frustrating?

[568] Because I can tell by that answer, you're making a real distinction as you totally should between what you've reported on and what I will just say when I read the Aziz account.

[569] Of course.

[570] That's a different universe.

[571] Yes, and is it frustrating to, and I think I might be guilty of having sometimes lumped you into all of the stuff.

[572] And is it frustrating at all that what you're doing is such a specific thing?

[573] Yeah, I mean, this is where we get back to the distinction I talked about earlier.

[574] Like, I am not the high priestess of the Me Too movement.

[575] Tarana Burke, who founded the Me Too movement and created that term and is an activist working in the trenches with survivors, you know, advocating for them.

[576] She's the high priestess of the Me Too movement.

[577] And those are different jobs.

[578] I admire her so much.

[579] She's a truly badass individual.

[580] And I'm really grateful as a reporter that you can put out facts into the world.

[581] And then there are activists who have an agenda and turn them into change.

[582] That's a meaningful part of how our culture should work.

[583] But actually to preserve the independence of this kind of reporting, I don't even get involved in that.

[584] I don't really have an agenda.

[585] Of course, I care about the issue.

[586] I have a belief that, you know, a variety of the issues I've reported on need more attention on them.

[587] Yeah.

[588] But, But I really maintain the posture of going wherever the facts take me and not going forward with the story if I don't feel like it's rock solid and not being an advocate for my sources.

[589] You're trying to respect them and make them feel protected in the process, but you're not carrying water for their set of facts until you have the evidence to back it up.

[590] So that is a hard distinction.

[591] And yes, I think for outside observers who just hear a swirl of names and they understand, And there's a lot of social change happening around this issue.

[592] You know, there's no reason to necessarily understand like this person is a reporter and this other person is an activist and this other person is a source who came forward.

[593] But it is relevant because when I was talking to my wife about you, I guess maybe it was when you were on Bill Maher recently and she made a point to say to me, Ronan's commitment is to investigate situations, that that is what your kind of mission is.

[594] Your mission isn't to like, you're not trying to go expose every person.

[595] You believe in everyone should be heard and everything should be investigated.

[596] I love your wife.

[597] I love her even more hearing that.

[598] She's heard my talking points.

[599] Thank you, Kristen.

[600] I thought maybe you're, because I am very supportive of the movement.

[601] And yet at the same time, I kind of reject believe all women.

[602] I just think don't believe all anybody.

[603] I do too, yeah.

[604] No, and it's actually, it's antithetical to what I do to say believe all anybody.

[605] I've always been very clear.

[606] I talk about this a lot.

[607] You know, my ethos is listen to all survivors of sexual violence, listen to all women, listen to many categories of people we weren't listening to for too long.

[608] And I think the best service you can do to claims of this type is to investigate them thoroughly and even adversarially.

[609] I was having this conversation for one of these episodes of the podcast with a young woman named Emily Nestor, who was one of the first Weinstein accusers to come forward and had documentation to back.

[610] back it up and so forth.

[611] So her account of events was very important to this early phase of the reporting.

[612] And she was reminding me that I basically, I grilled her to the point where it was an extraordinarily unpleasant process for her.

[613] I've made sources cry with my question.

[614] I mean, it's a horrible thing to go through.

[615] You have to ask every question that your denouncers are going to ask ultimately, right?

[616] That's right.

[617] Yeah.

[618] Kind of like when you prepare a witness, right, for testimony, you have to act as the prosecution, even if you're a, the defense.

[619] Yes, with the important distinction that I'm not, I don't have the agenda of preparing them.

[620] I just literally have the objective of finding out what's true.

[621] Right.

[622] And God bless every source who puts up with that, signs up for it, understands, like that's part of the process.

[623] And I try to do it in a way that's compassionate and makes them feel safe.

[624] But also, you know, I think ultimately they understand that's important.

[625] Well, as I was reading about your life and your Wanderkin status and then graduating at 15 and then went on to Yale law school, got a doctor.

[626] doctorate in law.

[627] You didn't even say it was Yale.

[628] Well, buckle the fuck up.

[629] Then you're a Rhodes scholar too, right?

[630] Oh my God.

[631] No, it's insane.

[632] It's preposterous.

[633] But he passed the New York bar.

[634] So I have to imagine at some point you at least were considering practicing law.

[635] You know, you get into this tunnel vision when you're in any closed universe like that, like the legal profession in my case.

[636] And I think I knew going into law school, even going to Yale law, For people who don't know law schools, Yale law is kind of, it's the Montessori school of law schools.

[637] Is that where Bill and Hillary meant?

[638] It is where Bill and Hillary meant.

[639] They turn out a lot of the great sort of legal professors and judges, but the stereotype about the places, like, you kind of don't learn black letter law.

[640] They're going to hate me for saying this.

[641] But like people don't go there and then litigators.

[642] I mean, a vast majority of them, in fact, do.

[643] And there's plenty of great practicing lawyers that come out of Yale law.

[644] but just relative to the competition, relative to a Harvard law even, there are quirks to Yale law, like you don't have to take property.

[645] There's basic, you don't have to take tax.

[646] Like there's basic gaps in your legal knowledge you can emerge with.

[647] And I actually, I love that about the place because you can have this incredibly kind of philosophical legal education.

[648] And I was very, very fortunate to be able to go there and use it as training that didn't necessarily have to be for practicing or going into a big law firm.

[649] So I was a summer associate at a big firm, but I knew pretty early on that I wanted to do something a little more public servicey, I guess.

[650] Right.

[651] So looking at the road, it would appear from the outside and correct me if I'm wrong, that this specific focus of your journalism seems to have found you.

[652] Is that accurate?

[653] You worked in the Obama administration and you were doing work in Afghanistan and Pakistan with how the U .S. government is interacting with non -governmental and civilian populations over there, right?

[654] Yeah, so I was there in 2009, and there was a resurgence of what came to be known as coin strategy, counterinsurgency strategy, and it was a school of thought, championed by General Petraeus, and the idea was, you know, you send the soldiers into the communities, and there's a series of steps where, you know, you clear out the end.

[655] but then you're actually like living with the local population and trying to win them over and yeah there's a huge body of debate about is this a terrible approach is this a good approach and you know ultimately I mean I wrote a book yeah you wrote a book about the failures of our policy in Afghanistan yeah we're on peace you can buy it now but uh you know in this case what I was writing about is how our militarization of foreign policy that happens as we scale back our investment in diplomacy can backfire and how Afghanistan is a great example of that.

[656] And there's many, many great books about how we've messed up Afghanistan over and over again.

[657] And it's this quagmire and famously the graveyard of empires.

[658] And I don't know that I'm going to be able to offer any new insights into that in this conversation.

[659] But I think that whatever the merits of that counterinsurgency strategy that we were just talking about, it did not work there.

[660] Right.

[661] Did you have the sense I did as you're flying over Afghanistan.

[662] There's nothing to capture.

[663] It's the most kind of theoretical place to have a war.

[664] There's no town to overrun.

[665] There's nothing.

[666] It's just mountains and deserts and you fly from one previous Soviet base to another previous Soviet base.

[667] And you realize like, this isn't really a thing you can get your arms around.

[668] Yet everyone's there.

[669] Again, I'm not, I'm not making a case for Oregon's our involvement there.

[670] Well, what blows my mind is we just keep making this mistake of thinking and it's you know often it's out of the pentagon you know our military brass just is able to sell our whatever the white house is at the time on this idea that we can win Afghanistan and it's just not how it works over and over again going back to the proxy wars of the the cold war era the whole country of Afghanistan as it exists now is a creation of proxy wars gone wrong yeah and that's not going to change and we would need many more hours to discuss what should happen in Afghanistan.

[671] But in the context of what I was writing about in the time I was there, there was a small but vocal contingent of diplomats saying we should try to negotiate our way out because this military solution isn't going to work.

[672] Right.

[673] And I think there was ultimately something to that and we're finally years late kind of coming around to that idea.

[674] People are just now starting to speak out right?

[675] There's more negotiations happening with the Taliban and so forth.

[676] And there's been fits and starts to that.

[677] It's complicated.

[678] But certainly we lost a window of opportunity where I think there was a viable negotiation path that we didn't take because there was a frenzy of military action and a White House, in this case the Obama White House, in the thrall of these sort of celebrity generals.

[679] Right.

[680] You know what I had the appearance of defeat if we left at that exact time or something?

[681] That's always part of the political incentive.

[682] Yeah.

[683] I do think that there's a real phenomenon in domestic politics where there's sort of an intoxication that comes along with a war.

[684] Yeah, oh, yeah.

[685] I mean, Obama, I think, as an individual, was very much not susceptible to that.

[686] He wanted to get us out of places.

[687] He was an isolationist in that way, but also was a political pragmatist and understood the need to fall in line with the military brass at various points.

[688] And, you know, you see an interesting thing between the terms of the Obama administration where the first term was marked much more by a rejection of diplomacy.

[689] And I go through all these examples of that in that book.

[690] And the second term, you know, they did belatedly kind of come around to, okay, we need to invest more in diplomatic activity.

[691] Well, wasn't his big, I can't remember what I was watching or reading.

[692] But his big self -admitted failure was how he dealt with Israel, right?

[693] That was something he set out to do with great fervor.

[694] And it just, he didn't do what he was hoping to do.

[695] I mean, you have four hours to talk about that.

[696] Okay, well, okay.

[697] Well, then let's scan it.

[698] Part two next time you guys.

[699] I feel like I want to start having dinner with you because there's so many of these.

[700] Let's do it.

[701] I'm out here almost half the time ostensibly for the relationship.

[702] Well, your bowl is too.

[703] I want to talk to you all day long.

[704] I know.

[705] I want to do the thing on Afghanistan.

[706] And then you are also then appointed by Hillary Clinton while she was Secretary of State to work with youth or advise on youth.

[707] Yes, then they had this global role.

[708] And in the wake of the Arab Spring, it was kind of related to that.

[709] Right.

[710] Yeah.

[711] So you must know so much about that region.

[712] I can't believe you're 31.

[713] I'm intimidated.

[714] I feel like the failure.

[715] I feel like I know so little.

[716] You know, you talk to these guys like Steve Kahl who have just spent decades writing about nothing but that.

[717] And there's no bottom to that well.

[718] If you're going to be a specialist in Afghanistan and Pakistan, like that's your life.

[719] Right.

[720] I have enough of a knowledge from the years I've spent there and the investment I've put into reading the history and so forth to, I think, understand the contours of what I was writing about in that case, but I would not call myself an expert.

[721] Okay.

[722] So...

[723] Sorry, I have a real quick question about being young.

[724] When you were at law school...

[725] By the way, she did a little hand gesture, like, shut up, Dax.

[726] The youths are speaking.

[727] Don't fool yourself.

[728] She is in charge.

[729] When you were 18 and in law school, are people, like, side -eyeing you?

[730] Like, do you feel like you're constantly...

[731] having to prove yourself when you're in that situation because there's like 40 -year -olds in law school.

[732] Are they like, who is this kid?

[733] Or is everyone embracing you and it's not an issue?

[734] Much more so in college where I was really, really young.

[735] That's what I wanted to know.

[736] What was the social cost of that?

[737] You know, I mean, you guys could be the judge of how dysfunctional I am as a result of all of this.

[738] So far so good.

[739] Yeah, you're doing great.

[740] Thank you.

[741] We'd have to date you to really know what's going on.

[742] You guys, let's do it.

[743] It's time.

[744] I'm sure Kristen and John will be careful.

[745] You know, I deliberately went to small schools all the way through and my scholarship program at Oxford was small and my law school was small and my college was small and I turned down bigger university settings that I could have been in partly because I knew it was going to be weird as hell to be a kid in these classrooms and I wanted to be in a place where I wouldn't fall through the cracks and where people would be sweet and supportive and nurturing and they really were.

[746] I was very fortunate in that respect.

[747] I mean, I have all sorts of residual trauma from, like, childhood stuff and from some of the public part of, you really do growing up in the spotlight and then making a lot of public enemies in your work, you get smeared and hazed and terrible negative stuff said about you publicly, and that can be its own form of, like, the equivalent of high school bullying, but I actually, because I skipped high school, and then I was in these settings where people were actually quite lovely.

[748] By the time I was in law school where it's an older, more mature crowd, they were just great.

[749] I mean, some of my best friends are from that period of my life, and they were very, very supportive and nurturing.

[750] And you kind of, with a path like this, you do actually have the silver lining of, you circumvent the getting shoved into lockers phase where high schoolers are mean.

[751] Yeah, but how do you, how do you date?

[752] Can I ask a practical question?

[753] How are you living at a college at 11?

[754] Do you have like a...

[755] Dorms?

[756] Did you have a...

[757] For the two years, my mom and friends of my moms drove me. Oh, boy.

[758] There was like a little community of moms who put in the word.

[759] And my mom especially just spent days driving me to class.

[760] So you see my point about like, sure.

[761] There was no positive of attention from her.

[762] This was incredible of her to do.

[763] And her posture through this was very much, can't you just not skip any more grade?

[764] Are you sure you want to do this?

[765] But she was supportive when I said I did, and she did drive me. And then the last two years, when I was a little bit older, I lived on campus with a professor.

[766] Okay.

[767] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[768] Okay, so now through the work in Afghanistan, and then as the youth consultant for Hillary, does your journalism start?

[769] Where does it start?

[770] It overlapped with all of that.

[771] I was, during the UNICEF stuff I was doing and traveling in Africa, I was in places where there was pretty limited access for the press, and I started writing op -eds, which were kind of one -foot in repertage, one foot in commentary.

[772] They were...

[773] What's repatage?

[774] They were heavily reported commentary.

[775] So, I mean, you know, the op -ed format, they're like 800 words, a thousand words, whatever.

[776] And they'd be in, I mean, it started out really quite small.

[777] I think my first op -ed was for Long Island Newsday, some Boston.

[778] and Herald action very early on.

[779] And then I most frequently wrote for the Wall Street Journal.

[780] It was commentary, you know, where I'd write something and say, hey, well, you take this, and they'd be in that short format.

[781] And sort of similar to what maybe Nick Christoph does is the nearest comparison.

[782] If anyone else his work, yeah, where I was in places where I thought part of what I wanted to do was get facts out.

[783] And I was interviewing people and fact -finding.

[784] But it was then in this sort of commentary vein.

[785] And it was more agenda -driven, like I'd be in Sudan saying, hey, here are these stories of, even in some cases, sexual violence as a weapon of war.

[786] Maybe this is a case where more intervention and more international attention is needed.

[787] So less arm's length than the kind of investigative reporting that I have also done, but still rooted in the facts.

[788] And that continued on and off for years and years in print.

[789] And then I got a gig anchoring on MSNBC every day for an hour.

[790] And eventually, came to use that platform, which nobody watched, but I was proud of what we did on the show to do long -form investigative work.

[791] We were airing, you know, 20 -minute features on over -prescription at VA hospitals or sexual violence on campus or, you know, some of the international issues we've been talking about, the erosion of diplomacy.

[792] Yeah.

[793] Which nobody wanted to watch at 1 p .m. on MSNBC, but, you know, we did work that I felt proud of.

[794] But the, what you're most certainly now associated with, Does that start with your sister making the allegations?

[795] The two things dovetailed.

[796] I mean, I was already doing more and more contentious investigative reporting.

[797] Uh -huh.

[798] And then, you know, I describe in the book this journey of wanting my sister's allegation to go away, asking her why she can't just shut up about it.

[799] Oh, really?

[800] That's where you started.

[801] Because just no one wants any of this attention?

[802] Is that where?

[803] Nobody wants that.

[804] And we talked about insecurities earlier.

[805] I think so much of my insecurity was having a chip on my shoulder about doing work that I cared about and wanting to be recognized for that.

[806] Yeah, on your own merit.

[807] Right, and it's the most impossible kind of shadow to outrun.

[808] There's lots of people who deal with the shadow of famous parents of one kind or another, and Lord knows there's worse crosses to bear.

[809] But the particular species of that that I had to deal with, which was a kind of generationally defining sex scandal.

[810] Yeah.

[811] I can't, I can, it's hard to think of another.

[812] person who has quite such an intense shadow of fame in the previous generation.

[813] Maybe Chelsea Clinton.

[814] Sure.

[815] Sure.

[816] Well, I was immediately just, before you got to that aspect of it, I was like, you and Anderson Cooper must really like talking to each other.

[817] Just having been from very famous mothers and finding journalists.

[818] I can't speak for Anderson, but I like talking to and he's at least politely tolerant of talking to.

[819] No, it's true.

[820] Like, we'll have drinks and there is an immediate kinship.

[821] It's probably a very annoying conversation for anyone else to listen to, but when famous kids get together, or like I met Billy Lord, Carrie Fisher and Brian Lord's daughter recently, this is a lovely young woman and a fine actress, but I had never met her before and like immediately, you know, you sit, sit someone like her and someone like me together and it's just all of these buckets open.

[822] I need a full lunch with you just about how do I not ruin my daughter's lives.

[823] I mean, I need the real little tips like the no bullshit.

[824] So I remember having a conversation with Ashton Coucher, and I think it was maybe just before Wyatt, their kid was born.

[825] Yeah.

[826] But I remember saying one practical piece of advice that I have because I think Milo was pregnant at the time was you know, you guys do you, but I kind of wish I had had a not famous surname.

[827] Oh.

[828] And was very inspired by the example of Jane Fonda you know gave her son like an old family name.

[829] Troy Garrity who's a great actor and everything, but doesn't have the immediate association of being the famous kid.

[830] I think you have to do that extra step of Googling him to find out.

[831] I think it makes a big difference when you see his name in the credits for something, and you're just judging him based on the performance you just saw.

[832] Yes, yeah.

[833] And it's a little bit of sleight of hand where if I could give my kids the advantages of some of the privilege and profile, but not the disadvantage of the immediate association that just makes people hate your guts and puts you under a microscope of like, oh, what coattails did you ride on?

[834] And they come in with maybe previous knowledge of you and that seems unfair.

[835] So much previous knowledge.

[836] I mean, in my case in particular, it's such a huge weight of assumptions and baggage.

[837] And, you know, I don't want to be woe as me about it.

[838] It's pretty great overall.

[839] Like I'm trying to both be frank about the ways in which it's hard and also understanding of the way you don't have like a crazy outstanding city bank credit card debt that you're probably made.

[840] I do not.

[841] I do not have Michael Cohen's finances.

[842] But yeah, no, I was in the position recently to have to say to my four and six -year -old daughters who were about to do this musical.

[843] And it's just where you sign up in L .A. to do a musical.

[844] And of course, it's frozen.

[845] And I had to explain to them.

[846] I'm like, I just, I really urge you guys not to say that your mom's in Frozen.

[847] It'll seem like something that would be, you know, fun to share.

[848] And I just, some people are going to be jealous.

[849] And, you know, you choose what you.

[850] you do, but, like, it's a little dumb things like that.

[851] Yeah.

[852] Oh, I don't know.

[853] What's the playbook on this?

[854] But they're going to, there is no playbook because those other kids are going to know anyway.

[855] Yeah.

[856] Yeah.

[857] Well, yeah, we're in the audience.

[858] Right.

[859] Right.

[860] Great substitutes.

[861] There what is Kristen going to like wear a Groucho marshmallow must have?

[862] She dressed as Elsa.

[863] That's so funny.

[864] Yeah, I mean, there's no way out of it because there will always be a contingent that knows and that does resent as a result.

[865] Yeah.

[866] And that's life.

[867] And that is life.

[868] I mean, I think that for me, I was very shaped by not growing up in Hollywood, but also not even in New York where there would have been a more immediate association with all of this, but most of my childhood was in Connecticut.

[869] Oh, it was?

[870] Yeah.

[871] So having a relatively rural upbringing did put me a little bit at arm's length from that.

[872] Yeah.

[873] And then, you know, my mom wasn't really super in the industry during the period when I was growing up.

[874] She wasn't working as much.

[875] She was focusing on us.

[876] I think she was a little alienated from the industry after all of the stuff she went through.

[877] And in a way that helped me probably be a little more sane because I wasn't a Hollywood kid in terms of my upbringing.

[878] Right.

[879] So as I understand it, your first kind of foray into these sexual abuse stories was a discovery of both kind of systematic bearing of stories and whatnot about Cosby and about your dad, right?

[880] About Woody, is that where it started?

[881] I went from really resenting and even when I didn't resent and I understood that my sister had been through something tough, just wanting it to go away and question whether it was worth the trouble for all of us, that every time she would speak about it, it would spin up this huge machine of publicists and money going into creating a narrative that he had gotten away with it, which is just emphatically not.

[882] true.

[883] And part of my process on this was finally realizing I got cornered into writing about it.

[884] It was becoming more and more of a point of contention that, you know, people were believing my sister's allegation.

[885] My sister wasn't shutting up about it and the kind of typical sycophantic profiles of Woody Allen weren't cutting it anymore and there was a feminist backlash when things like that would run.

[886] So two things started having.

[887] One was I really, I went and interviewed my sister.

[888] As you would, just if you were an actual.

[889] Kind of.

[890] I mean, you know, I wouldn't claim to be an independent observer of this one.

[891] Right.

[892] Yeah.

[893] But, and wasn't reporting on it, obviously, but I needed to understand the underlying facts.

[894] And hearing her detailed account, which she's maintained since she was seven years old, consistently, and then going in and reading all the court records where there were eyewitnesses, there were babysitters with no incentive to make anything up, who saw him, you know, performing a sex act on it.

[895] It's just horrible, horrible stuff.

[896] And this is all there in the court records.

[897] And it really is a case where the cover -up wouldn't have happened in the present day.

[898] Right.

[899] It was an era where, you know, you could have the best publicist in the world, and you could secure the covers of time and newsweek and 60 minutes, and you could just commandeer the narrative.

[900] Right.

[901] And there are so many miscarriages of justice in there that I immediately realized were miscarriages of justice.

[902] Yeah.

[903] But suffice it to say, I kind of did my own fact finding and then came away thinking, well, shit, this isn't something I can avoid because it's really serious and it's really credible.

[904] Yeah.

[905] And so I kind of put a toe into the water and there was this backlash happening about coverage of Woody Allen and the Hollywood Reporter was one of the publications that had run one of these profiles and then gotten criticized for it.

[906] And Janice men, who was running the Hollywood reporter at the time, asked if I would write about it.

[907] So there was a forcing incident where I kind of had to do this analysis and talk about it publicly in a way that I hadn't before.

[908] Right.

[909] And the argument I made very carefully was, you know, as a brother, I care about and believe and support my sister, but also as a journalist and an attorney, I see that the fact pattern is strong enough here that people should be asking harder questions.

[910] and I tied it to something that I had already been seeing in my own career as a reporter, which was, you know, I'd try to cover the Cosby allocations.

[911] I was already simultaneously seeing that there was a bit of a culture of silence around this particular issue.

[912] And it felt less like my sister had this claim and therefore I wanted to be associated with this issue or cover this issue.

[913] Or take up a cause.

[914] Right.

[915] Quite the opposite, actually.

[916] The last thing I wanted to do was be associated with all this family stuff.

[917] Yeah.

[918] But that did increase my...

[919] understanding of it.

[920] And, you know, I'm a reporter who loves a story, particularly a story that's been buried.

[921] Yeah.

[922] And seeing that this was a topic that had those qualities, that it had, you know, the element of serious criminal activity by high -profile people and structures set up to conceal it.

[923] I mean, it's a puzzle.

[924] It's a mystery.

[925] It's significant news.

[926] The coupling of those conversations with my sister and my evolution in my understanding of what she had gone through and that reporter's understanding of how important that beat was led to me covering that issue more and more even on my MSNBC program and really coming to understand the veil of silence around it.

[927] I write in the book about covering Cosby and producers not understanding, particularly kind of veteran producers who had been around for a long time and were very establishment in they're thinking just not getting why I would want to raise these allegations when Cosby came up.

[928] Let's just say in the most basic level, there are stories people want to hear and there are generally stories people don't want to hear.

[929] And they're kind of measured in either eyeballs in the viewership or box office receipts.

[930] We kind of know what stories people have an appetite for.

[931] And I would imagine there just wasn't an appetite to take America's favorite household comedian and find out something terrible about it.

[932] It's just not the story that anyone is going to want to consume or create or anything.

[933] Exactly.

[934] And it was almost considered in polite to bring it up.

[935] I mean, the example that I'm thinking of...

[936] Right?

[937] And I remember having a biographer who had written an authorized biography of Cosby on...

[938] This was, you know, right before the shit really hit the fan all over again about Cosby.

[939] But the allegations had been there for years.

[940] And, you know, Tina Fey had joked about it years ago.

[941] By the way, on all of these issues, there's always some clip of Tina Faye joking about it.

[942] Yeah, yeah.

[943] But you know, it's funny as well, as you were just, we were talking about your unique situation.

[944] And I kind of went back to the question I asked you six hours ago, which was, you know, why do people have some kind of pre -wired protection?

[945] Protection.

[946] And you know what I just was thinking while I was saying it is, I think we're all primed for it by our parents.

[947] We love our parents.

[948] And so many of us have pretty deeply flawed parents.

[949] And we've learned to love.

[950] and overlook some pretty big transgressions just in childhood.

[951] I think that's where we're kind of all primed.

[952] It's like, yeah, dad's not perfect.

[953] Mom's not perfect, but we love them.

[954] We're sticking with them.

[955] I mean, that must be part of the...

[956] I think it varies in these cases.

[957] When you talk about a Bill Cosby or a Michael Jackson, I think you do have a generation...

[958] This is built into the Woody Allen reaction, too.

[959] I mean, there are Woody Allen fans who just sit on Twitter all day and, like, harass my sister.

[960] Uh -huh.

[961] They make that their first.

[962] full -time job there's harassing.

[963] And very often the tactic is also, you know, blame the mother.

[964] So it's all directed at my mom.

[965] Sure.

[966] God bless her.

[967] Just all she did was sort of get dragged along for the ride and I think do the right thing ultimately in supporting my sister.

[968] But it's a terrible toll.

[969] And certainly she was never the instigator of any of it.

[970] Well, no one's even thinking about it for me as a parent.

[971] Like I was molested.

[972] And there is, you know, the parent, thank you.

[973] The parent and as I would be, I would take my daughter having been molested on my watch way worse than I'd take my own like the pain of that that has to be one of the deepest trenches of her sadness agonizing sadness and you know I imagine feelings of guilt over the fact that it happened yes and she let him have access to her I mean it's a horrible thing yeah and you know in private moments I've heard her you know when my sister says you know I'm writing an op -at I'm coming forward I'm doing I've seen my mom both say the right thing to like, of course, I'll support you, but also just know the tsunami is going to come again and be directed at her.

[974] And so God, props to every parent who's stood by a child with this kind of allegation.

[975] Oh, the sad, did you watch Aaron Lee's wonderful documentary about the Olympic coach, the gymnastics?

[976] Nassar.

[977] I didn't, but that's a horrible story.

[978] It's a very horrible story on all levels, but for me, the nadir of that, the worst moment was a dad who did not believe his daughter, and for years didn't.

[979] and then eventually came to accept that it was true and then killed himself.

[980] You can't even begin to evaluate the ripples that emanate out from these things.

[981] And for the kids who have these kinds of claims, I mean, you would understand it better than I. I can't imagine the phenomenon of not being believed by your parents.

[982] Right.

[983] I mean, this is why it's so important that parents, even in the face of all of that machine and smearing and negative backlash, that they do stand up for their kids in these cases.

[984] Yeah, yeah.

[985] But what I see in that reaction is there are people who they have grown up caring about someone and their work.

[986] And you know, and you see that in the Michael Jackson reaction example as well.

[987] It's so deeply emotional.

[988] And it does connect to, as you say, the ways in which, you know, we look up to our parents.

[989] And there's no arguing on a rational fact -driven level.

[990] For me, I feel like I come at it pretty evenly because there's incentives on both sides, right?

[991] In my sister's case, for instance, yes, I care about her and believe her, but there's a terrible cost to my believing her, right?

[992] And it means going up against that whole machine.

[993] And also, like, I of all people would love to, you know, not have a pedophile father.

[994] It would be lovely.

[995] So I kind of, I actually understand the super fans who just, you know, sit there harassing Michael Jackson's users every day.

[996] Well, I would argue that, and I'm not excusing them, but more trying to understand and explain them, is that what they're really defending is a piece of themselves.

[997] That is a highlight of their time on planet Earth.

[998] And in this emotional association with fucking Annie Hall or a thriller.

[999] And that, you feel like the option now is to let that go.

[1000] To believe this means I must now reject this experience I had with it, which I don't think is required of anyone.

[1001] I had this is exactly as much fun.

[1002] skating Saturday night at my daughter's roller skate birthday party to many Michael Jackson songs.

[1003] I can still embrace that and absolutely abhor him and the horrendous things he did.

[1004] Totally.

[1005] And I think it's incumbent on all of us, no matter whether it's your parent or an artist you love, to have enough of an anti -establishment streak that you can call into question those authority figures and those points of emotional significance in your life.

[1006] And absolutely, if you want to separate out the work and continue to enjoy the work, you know, I can still enjoy a late night rerun of Chinatown while also acknowledging the guy who directed that is a terrible, you know, criminal.

[1007] Right.

[1008] I mean, my God, I could talk to you.

[1009] We're really planning a dinner.

[1010] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[1011] Please.

[1012] I'm like, as we're talking, I'm like, this will be one of the first interviews that has zero at it.

[1013] Take out anything that you think will get me canceled.

[1014] I will.

[1015] Believe me. She has a cancel setting on her on her computer.

[1016] Will you do me a solid and just listen to this bad boy and save me from cancellation?

[1017] Thank you.

[1018] What do you think about that for real of this idea that people are canceled now, forever?

[1019] I think it's great when people are canceled for terrible crimes and incredibly stupid when people are canceled for saying the wrong thing.

[1020] Yeah.

[1021] Like unless the thing that said is rooted in or reveals some set of actual actions that are malicious or a pattern or an attitude that is bigger than just the thing that is said.

[1022] But I think by and large, if someone opens mouth and inserts foot and then apologizes, like, why are we wasting our time canceling that when there's actual criminals to be canceled?

[1023] That is my main objection to it.

[1024] It's just we end up spending all this capital and energy into things that aren't really the enemy.

[1025] You know, the clearest, for me, example, is like Hillary Clinton, regrettably said all lives matter.

[1026] I think she then came to understand why, that was not the right thing to say and then apologize and it wouldn't go away.

[1027] I was like, guys, David Duke's still operating.

[1028] He's still out there.

[1029] There's actual white nationalist right now planning something.

[1030] We got to move on past this.

[1031] I mean, right.

[1032] And Hillary Clinton is one of those examples of someone who's just a magnet for all kinds of.

[1033] Well, she represents a lot more than just who she is to some people.

[1034] There's just so many, you know, unfair, misogynistic headlines all the time.

[1035] Which is, you know, not to say that she's above her approach or.

[1036] valid questioning on various things.

[1037] I've been among the people who have raised questions about, you know, her relationship with Harvey Weinstein and so forth.

[1038] But in addition to the valid questions, she gets a whole heap of unfair sexist criticism.

[1039] Oh, yeah, yeah.

[1040] So my last two curiosities are, I have had a very complicated relationship with my father.

[1041] He was not the dad I wanted.

[1042] Among the things that occurred to me that I was resentful at him about was, and this is so selfish and low of me, but it's just the truth is I wanted to respect the person in my life who was supposed to one day pat me on the back and say, good job, you did it.

[1043] I felt robbed of that.

[1044] I was like, it won't mean anything if you say this to me because you didn't live your life in this way that I would have wanted you to live.

[1045] It's so much beyond that in your case.

[1046] And I just, I'm just curious about that, that's just, that story's over, right?

[1047] You'll probably never speak with him, I would imagine, or there'll be no resolution.

[1048] Are you curious about him?

[1049] I mean, not really, you know, there's been such ample public discourse in this particular case, that it's not like there's a paucity of opportunity to hear all parties out.

[1050] Right.

[1051] So it's a little different in that respect, but I do seriously empathize with what you're talking about in terms of the void that's left there.

[1052] I mean, I had a different experience of it because, I think I never had, you know, a positive father figure around enough to feel on a conscious level, a sense of loss there.

[1053] So, you know, I don't, you know, it would probably require more therapy than I've had to actually.

[1054] Well, you've been very busy.

[1055] I've been so busy.

[1056] I don't know.

[1057] Are you sliding therapy in there?

[1058] I'll have to get a good referral from one of you at some point.

[1059] But I am not aware of that sense of loss in me, but that doesn't mean it's not there.

[1060] And certainly, you know, in the cocktail of things that drive me, I don't know, I've been seeking validation from someone, seemingly just for myself because there's no, you know, it's not like my mom wants me to be more successful.

[1061] Like, I know who that's for.

[1062] And, you know, I've tried my best to just take wherever that comes from, take that impetus to keep going, going, going, break the next story, do the next thing into something that hopefully is positive for other people.

[1063] I hope you'll have kids, so it's just like a whole new lens pops in, and then you just start kind of replaying your whole life going like, oh, my God.

[1064] I don't know.

[1065] It's the most profound mental shift I've ever experienced.

[1066] Fascinating.

[1067] It sounds like you're a really good dad, Dex.

[1068] Well, I'm trying really hard.

[1069] He is, like, attest to that.

[1070] It's such a terrifying mind field to me. I absolutely want to have kids.

[1071] I mean, Lord knows why any of us wants to, it must be some act of narcissism.

[1072] Oh, sure.

[1073] everything else.

[1074] Yeah, everything else.

[1075] But it does also feel like this incredible minefield.

[1076] Like, how do you do it right?

[1077] There is no way to do it right.

[1078] They will resent us for some reason.

[1079] Even when you were talking about the name, right?

[1080] Like, give another name.

[1081] So if you have two kids, one of them would have hated you for that.

[1082] Like, why wouldn't you include me in this or what you did you want?

[1083] So maybe Ashton was right because Ashton was like, no, this is going to be a butcher.

[1084] What are you talking about?

[1085] Why would I not?

[1086] I fought hard to make this name mean something.

[1087] And fair enough.

[1088] Yeah.

[1089] Well, the last question I had for you is becoming such a prominent journalist that has now broken such huge high profile cases, people, people, people call you or send you emails, like, with fucking crazy stories.

[1090] Yeah.

[1091] And I would imagine as you get more and more prominent, you're one of the top three people, someone would want to entrust with a story.

[1092] So did the floodgates just open once that, and is it overwhelming?

[1093] And there's obviously not, you don't have enough bandwidth to investigate.

[1094] everything like what is that whole dynamic like it's a huge honor it's one of the silver linings you know as you're weathering the storm on each story and being in the crosshairs of really powerful interests you also have the counterbalancing force of more and more people are coming to you with important leads and what an honor because a lot of the time those are people risking a great deal to bring you that information or that evidence i mean a great example is right as i was about to published the book.

[1095] I got a hold of all of these emails showing MIT's secret fundraising relationship with Jeffrey Epstein, which included all these emails where they literally had put in writing, you know, hide this Epstein money.

[1096] It's amazing what people put into emails.

[1097] And that led to resignations and so forth.

[1098] But that was, that was an incredibly brave whistleblower named Cygney Swenson who had held onto those emails while she was working in the fundraising office.

[1099] And, you know, it led to a bunch of other sources that gave stuff too.

[1100] But, you know, she really got that ball rolling and we turned around something very quickly.

[1101] So you both try to be limber in terms of when something compelling comes along, you attempt to do right by that and fact check it as quickly as possible and get it out into the world.

[1102] And you also have to realize you're not going to be able to report all the stories.

[1103] You're triaging in a sense, right?

[1104] Which has got to come with some emotional weight.

[1105] Like, fuck, I don't have the time to do that.

[1106] And that needs doing.

[1107] Yeah, for sure.

[1108] One of the ways I cope with that is if you have some important piece of information that is newsworthy but not right for me to report versus the other things that I need to try to report, I'll try to pass that to another reporter.

[1109] You're like the Miracle on First Street or whatever that.

[1110] What was it where the Santa was working at the store?

[1111] Miracle on 31st Street.

[1112] And he would advise them to go to different stores.

[1113] Do you know that?

[1114] Yeah, that's right.

[1115] That is new.

[1116] compare it to Santa before.

[1117] Well, Ronan, sincerely, I just want to publicly thank Monica, because Monica was the one that came to me and said, like, we have an opportunity to talk to Ronan.

[1118] And she was very, very exciting.

[1119] Monica, thank you for having me on.

[1120] Yeah, and then as I started learning about you, I just got immediately intrigued by you, and you're very, very interesting, hyper -intelligent.

[1121] I'm really grateful that, because, you know, increasingly, as we all know, this, I'm not breaking any new thought here, but, you know, the fourth estate, this thing that's going to somehow, save us from all this bipartisan whore shit and the, you know, your guys are our last hope.

[1122] You're the, you're the, really the last hope.

[1123] And there couldn't be more important work for someone to be doing.

[1124] So, I'm just, thank you.

[1125] Yeah.

[1126] We're doing an episode of the podcast about journalists who circled the Weinstein story over the years.

[1127] And it's kind of a light motif that runs through the book and on the podcast.

[1128] I love journalists and journalism.

[1129] And I've been really fortunate to have other journalists help me out at various low points in my career.

[1130] And I do think like every career has complicated politics and so on, but fundamentally people who get into reporting do it because they want the truth to out and they believe in this constitutionally protected profession.

[1131] And it's importance in holding the powerful accountable.

[1132] And I've just seen them be generous over and over again to try to get the truth out.

[1133] Well, catch and kill is the name of the podcast.

[1134] It is.

[1135] The catch and kill podcast with me, Ronan Farrow.

[1136] Are you on the Pod Save platform?

[1137] No. Oh, that must have been tricky.

[1138] It's Pineapple Street Media doing it.

[1139] The fine folks there, they do great work.

[1140] I don't know how I would feel if Kristen launched a podcast on another network.

[1141] Because isn't your fiance own?

[1142] He's a podcast mogul.

[1143] Yeah, podcast Moble.

[1144] Yeah.

[1145] Pod Save America.

[1146] Oh!

[1147] Do you know it or leave it?

[1148] Is his program?

[1149] He's very funny.

[1150] Amazing.

[1151] Yeah.

[1152] I think it's great.

[1153] Have your own lane.

[1154] You know, we talked about it.

[1155] I don't, you know, it wasn't like I said, no, I don't want to work together.

[1156] Okay.

[1157] You're going to have to have him on and ask him about that.

[1158] Okay, Ronan, such a pleasure, and I hope we get to talk to you soon.

[1159] Back at you.

[1160] Thanks for having me on.

[1161] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate, Monica Padman.

[1162] Monica, I am obsessed with this free nationals album.

[1163] Do you hear me listening to it this morning?

[1164] Yeah, you were blaring.

[1165] Yeah, there's an artist that I'm sure everyone in the world knows of but me because I'm so young.

[1166] I'm changing my narrative.

[1167] Benny Sings, have you ever heard of Benny Sing?

[1168] Uh -uh.

[1169] Oh, my God, he's a super sweet soft voice like Michael Franks back in the day.

[1170] You probably don't know Michael Franks either, but just this gentle, gentle, sweet voice.

[1171] But then with a really awesome beat under it.

[1172] It's a song called Apartment.

[1173] I just can't stop listening to it.

[1174] I'm going to try to get you infected with it.

[1175] I will.

[1176] I like getting infected.

[1177] Yeah.

[1178] Well, part of your NDA, you can't tell it.

[1179] You can't tell anyone you were infected by us.

[1180] Here we go.

[1181] Here we go.

[1182] You know, it's unfortunate because I did not get proof either way.

[1183] I just emailed your business manager to see.

[1184] He hasn't responded yet.

[1185] I wonder if he'll respond by the end of this.

[1186] But Howard Altman.

[1187] Great.

[1188] Let's just give Howie a shout out.

[1189] Howard Altman is the best man in the world.

[1190] He's my favorite person I've worked with over the last 20 years of working.

[1191] he really is he was very helpful in you getting your house very incredibly helpful just you're not his client and he just got in there and helped didn't he did oh god bless howie and i still think i don't yeah i think maybe you guys plan to do that no you were standing at the banyo we have a section of cabinets in the house that there used to be a bathroom there and we tore that out to put some more storage in we now call that counter space the banyo and you were standing at the banio standing right over your shoulder trying to imbued into you a real sense of danger that I would kill you if you didn't sign it.

[1192] Ew.

[1193] Ugh.

[1194] It didn't work.

[1195] More reason for me to not sign it.

[1196] I don't think, I just think I would have remembered that.

[1197] Yeah, you did.

[1198] You totally did.

[1199] You're so adamant and I'm very adamant.

[1200] Yeah.

[1201] But you should remember Malcolm Gladwell's memory test.

[1202] Uh -huh.

[1203] That either of us are very likely to be both wrong.

[1204] but mainly more wrong you because Time shall tell I'm disappointed in ourselves Wobby Wob we were supposed to do we still need to do it Our what would we call it Our garbage heap fact check Sure I'd love to take on that list Maybe email to me Wabiwob And in my downtime and my twailer Yeah I've got the big list that's long Okay good I'm gonna start researching some of these All right great I'll have a standalone episode That'll be fun Anyway, so we, you know, I'm sorry because we still don't have the big answer to that.

[1205] Yeah, yeah.

[1206] Hopefully Howard will get back.

[1207] What was I wearing when I signed it if your memory's so good?

[1208] Well, that's the thing.

[1209] You were wearing a thong.

[1210] Oh, okay.

[1211] And then you made me sign one.

[1212] Uh -huh.

[1213] Uh -huh.

[1214] That sounds accurate.

[1215] Yeah, I mean, I don't like them.

[1216] I don't like the idea behind them at all.

[1217] I know you don't, but I thought we already covered what the difference in your mind, in my mind, which is no one should be forbidden to tell a crime.

[1218] But it's not even a crime.

[1219] But you write a book about my pooping habits?

[1220] You should not be allowed to do that.

[1221] Yeah.

[1222] Don't you agree?

[1223] Don't you think I should have some recourse so you can't write a book speculating on my poop habits?

[1224] I guess.

[1225] It's not like when you hire someone, you're giving permission for them to write a book about you.

[1226] No, that's true.

[1227] Or go to People magazine and say, oh, they don't really.

[1228] like each other.

[1229] Well, of course.

[1230] Yes, I understand that.

[1231] I understand the point of it, but it really only protects those two people, and I don't like that, because those two people could also be doing bad stuff.

[1232] And to be honest, in my opinion, I think that's probably more likely to happen, that the person who gets hired is the one that ends up getting mistreated, but then can't say anything or do anything, and then leaves or gets fired, and then can't say why.

[1233] I don't like that.

[1234] First of all, we hear about the ones where something, you know, criminal has happened.

[1235] That's why we hear about NDAs.

[1236] But there's millions of NDAs going, you know, that exist and have prevented people from selling tabloid stories about the people.

[1237] I know.

[1238] I know it's a good thing.

[1239] It can be a good thing.

[1240] I just, I think it protects generally the people who are already powerful.

[1241] From someone who might sell a story to a tabloid.

[1242] So I don't think the person that's going to sell a story to the tabloid deserves protection.

[1243] I think the person who's going to have the story sold about them deserves protection.

[1244] In that case.

[1245] But what about the other cases where that little person does need protection?

[1246] It doesn't have it.

[1247] When we were talking about with Ronan, Ronan said, A, that there's movement and success in excluding anything criminal or harassing.

[1248] Yeah.

[1249] Which I agree with.

[1250] But harassing is a fine line.

[1251] Like, if it's sexual harassment, then that counts as criminal and that is like a clear boundary, but you can still be completely mistreated by a human and it not be criminal and then have to leave that job because of it.

[1252] Yeah.

[1253] Yeah.

[1254] I guess my only thing is if I got a job when I worked at SportsFab that built race car parts, if my boss was a dick to me, I would just quit.

[1255] Mm -hmm.

[1256] And then I wouldn't go sell the story somewhere.

[1257] Well, yeah.

[1258] I think I think we agree on anything dicey or criminal or predatorial.

[1259] Yeah, that's not even a part of this conversation for me. Okay.

[1260] Because I'm just thinking about all these assistants working in this city and everywhere, but specifically in this city, and I know personally so many stories that are horror stories.

[1261] Uh -huh.

[1262] Well, the stories get out anyways, by the way.

[1263] It's really at the press level.

[1264] And they're really bad and people are mistreated by powerful people.

[1265] Yeah, I agree.

[1266] And then they leave.

[1267] sure, a lot of them do quit, but then in order to get another job, they ask you, why did you leave?

[1268] Well, you just don't tell them about that job.

[1269] Well, you have to or else you have no experience and they won't hire you.

[1270] Okay.

[1271] You have to, I mean, you don't have to, but it'd be beneficial to say I just worked for blank and blank.

[1272] Mm -hmm.

[1273] And then they'll say, oh, why did you leave?

[1274] It's just curious because, let's make real -life examples.

[1275] Let's say someone goes to work for George Clooney.

[1276] Mm -hmm.

[1277] And they find they, right.

[1278] And they find people don't get along with their bosses and bosses don't get along with their employees.

[1279] Sure.

[1280] It's not like inherently bosses are evil and employees are great or vice versa.

[1281] They're just people.

[1282] And a lot of times people don't get along.

[1283] Yeah.

[1284] So if one person's in a position to go public and make a bunch of accusations that could cost that person their career and it's just an interpersonal issue.

[1285] Sure.

[1286] I just feel like that's, you know, anytime you're going to go to the media.

[1287] to say you didn't like somebody is just dicey.

[1288] Yeah, I know.

[1289] If it's criminal, then it should be criminal.

[1290] But if it's just you didn't like them or you think they're a dick, I just don't know that, you know, because that other person, it can't, it doesn't work both ways.

[1291] So if George Clooney fires you, he's not going to go to TMZ and say Monica Padman was a terrible employee.

[1292] Mm -hmm.

[1293] So just you that can go to TMZ and say that George Clooney was a terrible boss.

[1294] There's something uneven about that.

[1295] Yeah, I mean, I think you're only thinking about media elements.

[1296] Right.

[1297] And I, well, that's the only reason I have an NDA.

[1298] Right.

[1299] You want to renegotiate yours?

[1300] Do you want to get out of yours?

[1301] Yeah.

[1302] I'll let you on.

[1303] If you feel encumbered by it.

[1304] No, I don't.

[1305] Obviously, I don't know.

[1306] You don't even think you have one.

[1307] I don't think I have one.

[1308] And also, I obviously wouldn't say anything ever.

[1309] But I do think that Let's put it this way.

[1310] You've in the last six years seen me make 14 ,000 parenting decisions.

[1311] I hope a great number would be that 10 ,000 of the 14 ,000 were good ones.

[1312] Yeah.

[1313] But if you only want to tell people the 4 ,000, you could paint a real picture of me that I wouldn't think it was fair.

[1314] Definitely.

[1315] Yeah.

[1316] I don't think that's right.

[1317] I don't think people should be able to do that.

[1318] And I also don't think people should feel like they can't talk about their experience.

[1319] And I don't mean to the media.

[1320] Right.

[1321] Well, that's the thing with these NDAs.

[1322] They really do tell all their friends because we have friends that were assistants that signed NDAs and we've heard all the stories.

[1323] Yeah, that's true.

[1324] Yeah.

[1325] But you also, you have to admit, you know, you say that people just sometimes don't get along in those.

[1326] And that's true.

[1327] That happens a lot.

[1328] But also, there's a huge, huge, huge power dynamic in these assistant relationships.

[1329] Oh, big time.

[1330] Yeah.

[1331] They're ripe for exploitation.

[1332] Exactly.

[1333] More than most jobs.

[1334] Yeah.

[1335] I guess all I'm saying is if you ask anybody who works with a bunch of people, they hate five or six co -workers.

[1336] Of course.

[1337] Now just you give one of those co -workers the title boss.

[1338] Now it has this other meaning, which might not be fair.

[1339] Yeah.

[1340] Okay.

[1341] So Ronan, he is the youngest graduate of Bard Still, according to my research.

[1342] Congratulations, Ronan.

[1343] We love.

[1344] We love.

[1345] wonder kids.

[1346] Oh my God.

[1347] Why do you think it is weird?

[1348] Why do we fetishize intelligence so much?

[1349] Good question.

[1350] I mean, for you, it's because you have always wanted to be smart.

[1351] Right, right, right, right.

[1352] And then for me, I, you already were smart.

[1353] So what?

[1354] No, no, no. I think for me that is familial.

[1355] Like, from day one, my parents are very impressed by good schools and yeah intelligence yeah so i think it's just ingrained but do you think it's a little you know we could admit it's a little dice because people are pretty much born with their intelligence it's not like you know you either hit the lot or you don't yeah but well let's say i'm going to defend us we're equally impressed with the olympics oh god yeah yeah it's like if ronin was an olympic uh gymnast which he probably was yeah if he had just focused on it for it looked like he would yeah he would be a perfect he put six weeks into practicing i'm sure he could have landed something impressive Tokyo 2020 that's the Olympus this year yeah Tokyo 2020 oh I'm so excited we have to do an episode in Tokyo oh I'd love Olympic week in Tokyo oh god oh no but on the body element so when we had Kumail on yeah remember everybody he was starting to get in shake yeah and then recently he posted up a picture that just blew up the inner Of course it did.

[1356] Oh, my God.

[1357] He had the vascularity, the veins, the bulges, the low body percent fat.

[1358] He really transformed himself.

[1359] I mean, it was astonishing.

[1360] Astonishing.

[1361] Yeah.

[1362] He really accomplished his goals.

[1363] He did.

[1364] I like that.

[1365] That to me is sort of like being a wonder kit.

[1366] Yeah.

[1367] We're just impressed by things that are hard to do.

[1368] That's what it is.

[1369] Achievement.

[1370] Yes, like the guy who treaded water for four days in India.

[1371] I'm equally as impressed with him.

[1372] No, I'm not equally impressed with the water treader as I am Ronan going to college at 11.

[1373] Me either.

[1374] I mean, that's the most impressive thing I've ever heard.

[1375] He got a 1600 at 8, age 8.

[1376] I keep trying to picture an 11 -year -old walking around campus.

[1377] Oh.

[1378] I feel like, A, I'm nervous for him.

[1379] Me too.

[1380] It's because it's not like cesspreds are only in the less educated realm.

[1381] It's equal distribution across all platforms.

[1382] maybe even higher in those, you know, NDA -type worlds.

[1383] Oh, huh, definitely, definitely.

[1384] So I'm nervous for him.

[1385] I'm also excited.

[1386] What if like a 17 -year -old girl really liked him?

[1387] He's gay.

[1388] Ronan.

[1389] Oh, right, right, right, right.

[1390] Yeah, I guess if I just...

[1391] You're really transported yourself.

[1392] Well, if I just saw an 11 -year -old, I don't know that I...

[1393] First of all, I probably wouldn't think he was gay or straight because I wouldn't even think he was sexual.

[1394] Sure.

[1395] So I probably wouldn't even be trying to figure that out.

[1396] Yeah.

[1397] Okay, wait, though.

[1398] You just made me think of something.

[1399] Oh, Honeyboy.

[1400] Oh, my God.

[1401] It's so good.

[1402] Oh, my God, is it good?

[1403] It is so hard to watch, beautifully done, perfectly done, I would say.

[1404] And really makes you think a lot.

[1405] Yes.

[1406] It made me think a lot.

[1407] Yeah, I almost wanted to do a whole episode about it.

[1408] Shia Leboof.

[1409] Leboof.

[1410] Leboff.

[1411] Oh, you're buff.

[1412] Speaking of Camille, LaBuff.

[1413] Camille LaBuff.

[1414] Oh, my God, he should change his name to Camille Labuff.

[1415] Anywho, check it out.

[1416] I'm so impressed with the whole thing.

[1417] I have so much empathy for his whole story now.

[1418] Oh, I know.

[1419] I really want to talk to him about it because I could relate.

[1420] I mean, in some ways and other ways not.

[1421] But, yeah, I was having some real moments during it.

[1422] Yeah, I was thinking about you a lot during it.

[1423] Anyways, check that out.

[1424] Okay, Ronan Farrow.

[1425] Ronan, 1600, age eight.

[1426] Okay, so the SAT is.

[1427] now back to 1600.

[1428] Thank God.

[1429] I'm so pissed anyone would have fucked with that because it means something.

[1430] Well, I was confused.

[1431] Oh, he was saying they batted a third category.

[1432] That would have brought it to what, 3, 3 ,400?

[1433] They added a writing portion.

[1434] It was the year after I graduated.

[1435] They added that in.

[1436] No, I wanted that.

[1437] I would have loved that.

[1438] Oh.

[1439] Oh, yeah.

[1440] I would have too.

[1441] I was a good writer.

[1442] Yeah.

[1443] So I I've missed that boat, but then I guess now it's back, I think.

[1444] I mean, I couldn't find anything on any of these websites saying that the score was higher now.

[1445] So I think it's back to 1600 and it said, writing section is optional.

[1446] And students who choose to take this component of the test receive three separate scores, each ranging from one to four.

[1447] So that's like a separate thing now.

[1448] One to four.

[1449] Okay.

[1450] It's more like an ACT score number.

[1451] It's just an extra thing to do if you want to.

[1452] do it.

[1453] You want to do extra shit on that stressful day.

[1454] So 1600.

[1455] Yeah, if I, if there were an option on the SAT for me to just write a short story on any goddamn topic they wanted to throw my way, that's what I would have picked.

[1456] Do you know what you got on your SAT?

[1457] No. Well, what, here's what I do know.

[1458] Uh, I think I told you this after Ronan left.

[1459] I took it really young, like seventh grade.

[1460] Mm -hmm.

[1461] And then I took it again in, I guess, 11th or 12th grade, probably 11th.

[1462] I did better on it in seventh grade than I did in 11th grade.

[1463] Yeah.

[1464] That's crazy.

[1465] It's probably just more reflective of how much I cared at that point about going to college, which I did not.

[1466] Yeah.

[1467] I was not good at it.

[1468] You weren't good at it.

[1469] That surprised.

[1470] That surprises me. I got a 1300.

[1471] But isn't that great?

[1472] It's pretty good.

[1473] It's pretty good.

[1474] It's pretty good.

[1475] But I went to SAT class to do that.

[1476] Because I took it a couple times in the first.

[1477] And the first.

[1478] It's pretty great.

[1479] It's pretty good.

[1480] It's pretty good.

[1481] But I went to first time I got a low score.

[1482] I got a one.

[1483] I got a one on it.

[1484] You got sub 1 ,000 maybe?

[1485] No, no. I got like 1 ,100 or something.

[1486] Oh, okay.

[1487] And then I took it again.

[1488] I took it again.

[1489] I took it again and I increased my score by a fair amount.

[1490] And then I took it again and I increased it again.

[1491] Good job.

[1492] You should have kept, what's the limit?

[1493] How many times can you take it?

[1494] I think you can.

[1495] I don't know.

[1496] This is another way that this test is a little bit flawed.

[1497] Well, I mean, it favors like rich people.

[1498] People who can spend the money on it.

[1499] Yeah.

[1500] That's true.

[1501] But my score was even.

[1502] I got a 650 for verbal and math.

[1503] Oh, that's very nice.

[1504] I was pretty proud of that.

[1505] That's great.

[1506] More of the evenness than the score.

[1507] Yeah, of course.

[1508] You know.

[1509] It's very symmetrical.

[1510] Yeah, yeah.

[1511] Which it just goes to show.

[1512] It's so silly.

[1513] It doesn't make it.

[1514] It has no correlation to anything because I am, I would say, 10 times better at English reading comprehension than math.

[1515] Horrible skills than I am math.

[1516] So the fact that that did not parlay into the score.

[1517] Yeah.

[1518] Shows, it really has nothing to do with anything.

[1519] Yeah.

[1520] So.

[1521] I'd have to imagine my math portion was much higher than my...

[1522] Probably for you, maybe, because you had to read...

[1523] Because my eyes were crossed.

[1524] You had to do a lot of reading.

[1525] I can imagine reading comprehension.

[1526] Oh, that was, yeah.

[1527] It would be really tough for a discipline.

[1528] The second I'd look at those paragraphs, I would be in, like, full.

[1529] flight panic yeah i could see that yeah i was like oh my god there how many i couldn't even quiet my brain i'm like oh there's so many lines okay and then there's extraneous information and what i yeah oh yeah it was very stressful and the timed element of it very stressing okay the term in gay literature the best boy in the world theorem that's what he said it's called the best little boy in the world about gay sons needing to um compensate or feeling like they need to be best in all of the areas that basically they can control.

[1530] Because they're going to let you down and get married and have kids category.

[1531] It's not really for the, it's not really that, I don't think.

[1532] It's not really for the parents.

[1533] It's more of, let's see, since young gay men cannot be assured of family support, peer approval, or God's love, as long as they hide their sexual orientation from everyone, it may be wise for them not to invest their self -worth in those life domains.

[1534] So success in these domains cannot be controlled and guaranteed when one is gay, unlike success in academics, good looks, and being the best at competitive tasks, which are relatively more controllable and guaranteed with at least some effort.

[1535] So it's just like where they can control validation, really.

[1536] Yeah.

[1537] Not to keep getting into shows and stuff we watch, but don't fuck with cats.

[1538] Oh, yeah, I was talking about this on the last episode.

[1539] Yeah, now it is really, now that I've seen it.

[1540] You know, once again, I found myself, you know, wanting this person to be punished thoroughly.

[1541] Sure.

[1542] But with a tremendous amount of compassion for this.

[1543] kid growing up in Canada and being called gay pejoratives, his whole life and no friends.

[1544] Yeah.

[1545] How is that not going to impact you?

[1546] Yeah, people don't just arrive places.

[1547] You get there by your experience.

[1548] Now, the guy might have been twisted already, but yeah, like KB said last night, do you think if that bullying hadn't happened, he would have done all the things he did?

[1549] And I said, I don't think just the absence of bullying would.

[1550] have prevented that.

[1551] But I do think if he were totally emerged in a friendship circle and activities and a bunch of other stuff that was rewarding.

[1552] Yeah.

[1553] I don't think he's on that path.

[1554] I know.

[1555] It's heartbreaking.

[1556] Yeah.

[1557] Check it out.

[1558] Netflix.

[1559] Don't fuck with cats.

[1560] It's a wild ride.

[1561] It sure is.

[1562] It takes a lot of turns.

[1563] Strap yourself into your bed.

[1564] That's an Easter egg.

[1565] Oh.

[1566] Another.

[1567] Part that this isn't a spoiler about that a big takeaway I had was social media's influence on people.

[1568] Because another question is if the Facebook group, so the story of people haven't seen it is a guy kills two kittens.

[1569] Exactly.

[1570] And post a video of it.

[1571] And a group forms on Facebook that sort of decides we're going to find the sky.

[1572] Vigilante style.

[1573] And it really spurs him on.

[1574] and makes him feel famous, which is what he was searching for in the first place.

[1575] And it really escalates from there.

[1576] And there is a question of how responsible are these people?

[1577] See, now, yeah, that became the big question of the documentary.

[1578] My issue was, and I couldn't get Kristen to really see the point I was making.

[1579] Or maybe she saw it and just didn't agree.

[1580] But I was like, what's so interesting is all the people involved are living, alter egos online everyone the people hunting him him and i'm like it's so interesting that all the players in this story are doing the same thing it's no one's playing an evil character one's playing a heroic investigator several of them are playing heroic investigators but they're using different names yeah she was saying she can act dumb she can act smart she loves the ability to be all these different things in this virtual world exactly and i just started thinking of the whole group of people that are drawn to that and actually live on a computer and they're drawn to that anonymity or those alter egos, they're all participating in something similar.

[1581] They're living out a version online that they want to be that they're not in real life, or at least that differs.

[1582] Well, that's everybody on social media.

[1583] That's every single human.

[1584] Yeah, but it's a very.

[1585] Instagram account.

[1586] Everyone is showing the version of themselves that they want the world to see.

[1587] That's maybe 10 % accurate.

[1588] Yeah.

[1589] Yeah.

[1590] So part of me was like, this guy, is he really that or is his online persona evil?

[1591] Well, as we know, that's he, no. Right.

[1592] But I'm just saying if the online world wasn't an outlet for him, is he doing that stuff in a vacuum?

[1593] I don't know that he is.

[1594] I don't know that that just him wanting to do that as much as him wanting to play that role on the internet.

[1595] I don't know if I agree with that.

[1596] I think.

[1597] This is strike two for me. He wanted to be famous.

[1598] Uh -huh.

[1599] And this is a way.

[1600] This is too easy of a way.

[1601] Yeah.

[1602] And people will meet you there.

[1603] People will attach onto your extremes online.

[1604] Mm -hmm.

[1605] And so I don't know.

[1606] I think there's something interesting to take away about our responsibility.

[1607] What I really couldn't believe at the end of all it was like the internet is designed in such a way that you don't have a license plate on your car.

[1608] Mm -hmm.

[1609] Like, that they can't just know where those people are that are writing those things at all time is kind of crazy to me. You can't figure out who posts a murder video.

[1610] That blew my mind.

[1611] You can't figure out the cops can't just in one second find out who murdered these cats by like what computer uploaded the video and where the computer's sitting.

[1612] That's kind of crazy to me. I know, especially since in the last episode you were saying you can talk to Google and they can send you.

[1613] Oh, your entire history.

[1614] Yeah, yeah.

[1615] Every single place you've been.

[1616] Yeah.

[1617] So I guess Google Kim, but not the police.

[1618] Which seems a little weird.

[1619] Not fair.

[1620] Okay.

[1621] Okay, yeah, NDA law in California.

[1622] California will be among the first places to restrict the use of non -disclosure agreements.

[1623] Ooh.

[1624] Oh, yours might be Nolan void already.

[1625] Last April, New York endorsed a new NDA law that's starting in 2019 permits confidentiality clauses only at the request of the victim.

[1626] other laws are in the works.

[1627] In September, outgoing Governor Jerry Brown signed into law bill that would ban non -disclosure provisions in settlements involving claims of sexual assault, harassment, or discrimination based on sex.

[1628] Oh, good.

[1629] The California bill, one of a raft of hashtag Me Too inspired laws, goes into effect January 1st.

[1630] Oh, my gosh.

[1631] You're free.

[1632] Oh, you know how he gave that piece of advice for famous parents about maybe giving their kid a different surname.

[1633] Oh, uh -huh.

[1634] I thought that was interesting because then you were talking about Anderson Cooper and I was like, yeah, I never think of Anderson Cooper as coming from famous Vanderbilt, Gloria Vanderbilt.

[1635] Parents, because his name is Cooper.

[1636] Right.

[1637] So if it was Vanderbilt, I probably would constantly be reminded of that.

[1638] Anderson Vanderbilt.

[1639] Yeah, what a name.

[1640] I don't think that would be as a successful show on CNN.

[1641] It's a lot of syllables.

[1642] It's too many.

[1643] And it sounds too hoity -to -to -y.

[1644] For me, it would have been triggering for me because I'm low -class.

[1645] But maybe then he'd go by Andy, Andy Vanderbilt.

[1646] Ooh, Andy Vandy.

[1647] That's even worse.

[1648] Andy Vandy.

[1649] I'm Andy Vandy.

[1650] Oh, I like him.

[1651] Me too.

[1652] I'd love to have him on.

[1653] Me too.

[1654] Okay, so Miracle on 31st Street.

[1655] Hmm.

[1656] The film, the Christmas film?

[1657] Yeah.

[1658] You said that he would advise people to go to different stores.

[1659] Yeah.

[1660] Mm -hmm.

[1661] So Chris Kringle is indignant to find the man, Percy Hilton, assigned to play Santa in the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade, is intoxicated.

[1662] Oopsies.

[1663] Yeah.

[1664] Seems to be common with these Santas.

[1665] Yeah.

[1666] By the way, I'd have to drink if I had to sit there all day long and take pictures with kids.

[1667] Oh, my God.

[1668] Yeah.

[1669] When he complains to event director, Doris Walker, she persuades Chris.

[1670] take his place.

[1671] He does so well.

[1672] He's hired to play Santa at Macy's flagship New York City store on 34th Street.

[1673] Ignoring the instructions to steer parents to buy from Macy's.

[1674] Chris directs one shopper to a competitor, Gimbles instead.

[1675] Yeah, Gimbles.

[1676] Impressed, she tells Julian Shellhammer, head of the toy department, that she'll become a loyal Macy's customer.

[1677] So it all worked out for old Chris Crings.

[1678] They sacrificed that sale, but they won customer loyalty.

[1679] which is very prized, very prized.

[1680] As you can see, I've never seen that movie.

[1681] I haven't either.

[1682] Clearly.

[1683] Yeah, yeah, but I did know that aspect of it.

[1684] Yeah, you were right.

[1685] You were right.

[1686] What if they refused to sell people's stuff?

[1687] They just only directed them to other stores as a plan.

[1688] That's a good plan because people like hard to have, hard to get exclusive, limited edition.

[1689] Yeah, if you were told there was a store that wouldn't sell you their stuff, you'd be there in one second.

[1690] I'd be knocking on that door.

[1691] Please.

[1692] I need it.

[1693] I'll pay anything.

[1694] I don't even know.

[1695] Ma 'am, it's just the same stuff that's at Target and Walmart.

[1696] There's no reason for you to pay.

[1697] Yes, I'll do it.

[1698] Exclusive.

[1699] I want it.

[1700] That's all.

[1701] That's all?

[1702] Yeah.

[1703] Again, let me just close and saying mind blown by Ronan Farrow.

[1704] We want him to be our best friend.

[1705] I'm serious about that.

[1706] Ronan call me. Okay.

[1707] Yeah.

[1708] I want to hang out.

[1709] I'm just going to forward him your stuff and just say, hey.

[1710] Monica wants to hang out.

[1711] She needs some you time.

[1712] Yeah, I do.

[1713] She's going to take that SAT for a fourth time and she needs your guidance.

[1714] All right.

[1715] Well, I love you.

[1716] Love you.

[1717] And thank you for recommending Ronan.

[1718] You're welcome.

[1719] It was your recommendation.

[1720] You're welcome.

[1721] You deserve all the credit.

[1722] Bye.

[1723] Bye.

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