"Ronan Farrow"

Hey, well, good to see you. I'm glad to see your mustache is still alive. That's great. What do you guys, you guys?

The bear come keeping an honor. What is it with people who have mustaches that they're two halves? They don't like yourself. You can't grow a full mustache across the full lip.

You know who is cursed with that too? Clark Gable, look him up. Oh boy. Welcome to Smartless.

Smart. So Will, while you've been out of town, Sean has discovered Invisalign. And he's just popped it in his head. Why do you need it for a podcast guy?

I have to wear 20 hours a day. And I just had it in before we started. Would this be one of the hours that you don't? Yeah.

We get four hours without it. No, it's better to keep it in as much as I can. But you know much better for who? I just want to get for the listener.

I keep that going like crazy. No, they're actually not. Your teeth are totally fine. And I think you've fallen into the trap of vanity health.

Well, I don't know. My teeth are going crooked. They're not. Oh, they're not.

They were always crooked. And then why don't you just allow one little flipper, one little fang, like everyone else, has one that's a little askew. It's just less than perfect. I got this one down there.

They're pretty like screwy. I just want I'm just getting older and I want to get ahead of it. They started going crazy. Hey, what about yesterday?

Will, you know, Sean and I were having a meeting with Amanda at a very nice restaurant with a very respectable person? You first on. And and old snaggle tooth pops out his his head gear. Well, you have to table into his little dish or snap dish that he keeps in his pocket.

You can't eat with it on. Able does the same thing. But why don't you go to the bathroom and take that out? Instead of having to suck this alive out of it before it puts it in the tray and, you know, we've got a guest.

Yeah, I know. I know. Look, I'm just struggling to get through every day. How do you say it?

How's it? I had a list. Huh? I had a list.

I said to Sean the other day. I said to Sean, are you getting into his line? Because you wanted to list just in case people didn't know you were gay. What are you?

It's called the gay tray. And none of us goes into the show. None of us goes into the show. If you're looking to pull a question mark off your profile, try a gay tray.

What question mark? Gay tray. Well, I had a little bit of a list before. No, it's worth.

I'm getting through it. I'm getting through it. OK, well, if you hit a couple of, but I did just have tough passes in this interview, we're going to ask you to pull it out. I don't like my chair.

OK? This is the first. Let's pause the interview. You guys stay where you are.

Keep talking. I don't like my chair. OK, we will. OK.

Gosh, that's so much better. What kind of chair did you get? I just wanted that wasn't, it was on wheels and I'm going to herbivores who was sliding all over the place. Are you OK?

Are you OK? You just need a sandbag? I'm not sure. All right.

Are you guys, have we caught up? We really haven't caught up that much. We've got a couple of guests waiting and we'll listen. We'll listen at Atlanta.

I haven't seen him for a couple of weeks. My heart hurts. I see him. I'm coming home really soon.

When do you come home? I'm going to be home Tuesday. Did you sleep yesterday? I did.

I talked to Sean last night. I was so wrecked. Have you ever heard me that tired before Sean? No, not my own life.

And I just got him about to have Ben Sean called. I can't believe he picked that. Maybe there was some kind of emergency with the Envisalign and I should pick this up. Maybe he choked on it.

I got to talk. Yeah, he thought it was like one of those glass noodles or something that they did. I checked in special. Yeah.

And so I picked up and then he was telling me about the dinner because obviously I could be at the dinner with you guys. It was concerning stuff that we do together. And I just was like, oh, honey. I literally just got kind of like, can I go, can I go, can I go, can I go, can I go, can I go, can I go, yeah, we don't, why did you even pick up?

I realized I don't miss you that much. And let's get to our guest. Guys, put all your dumb away and smart enough. Our guest today is a bright fella and he has opened our eyes to quite a bit over the past few years.

He's a graduate of Yale Law School. He's a member of the New York bar. He has a PhD in political science from Oxford University where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar and he served as a State Department official in Afghanistan in Pakistan. What have you two done?

What's the gym? He has spent the last decade or two doing some of the most important investigative journalism in our country, both in print and through his production company. His recent most high profile work has revealed many interesting and shocking facts about some of the most famous power figures in our country like Elon Musk, Donald Trump, Les Moon Bez and of course Harvey Weinstein. Folks, please welcome Ronan Farrow.

Whoa. Wait a minute. Ronan Farrow. Let's tighten up.

Amazing. Ronan came to the show this summer. Did he? I did.

I saw good night Oscar. It was amazing. Thank you. You can really tingle the ivory.

Well, I've had tea. You should see him play piano. Ronan, did you go backstage and compliment Sean? Yes.

No, you did. Very nice. I gushed over you as I will today. You're just a huge fan.

Well, you're a sophisticated author. I don't think I'm all good at you. Thank you Ronan. I'm not sure you're saying it.

Even if it's not true, we appreciate it. No, it's very true. Also, by the way, the gravelly baritone from you, I was like, you know, stifling, saying it's no turn on. Isn't it?

It's real. No, no. I'm talking about me. Ronan, you've got a voice over quality voice.

Have you ever done any? I love hearing that because I very lightly dabble in anime and video game voice acting. Oh, really? Is that true?

Yeah. Just because I'm a nerd than anything else, you know? I think I play a character called Mitsubishi Man who has three lines and one Miyazaki movie. Really?

It's a guy who will fix your catalytic converter with no questions asked. Where are you, Eric and his? You know, as I said, you're a sophisticated New Yorker that frequency arts, can you confirm for me this thing where if you go see a play and you have a recognizable name, you are obligated to go backstage to introduce yourself? I know you.

I know you. I'm with you. I'm with you. If you don't go backstage, regardless of whether you know anyone in the cast, if you're somewhat known, if you don't go backstage, they know about it and they think you hated the show.

And so you kind of have to go backstage and say, hi, I'm famous. You're going to have to love the show. There's a lot of the show. I love this runner through the different episodes of this show.

It's one of the few bits of commentary I love with you on. Whereas you watched nobody, I have to try, on both sides and that look, exactly on 14 degree. You all play this role so you don't call parking. You don't like to go backstage.

Right. Maybe, in, in, you know, as a matter of fact, let's do it, just sit on a wall and look around and say, oh, this is a lot like this, is that not as fun as you can. It is a lot like, oops. You chose to go in and move into one way or until—ū And I like the name you dropped there.

to piss people off who then either like go to jail or like they'll get fired or something and then they have nothing but time and money to come after me. There's a real genuine mix of good and bad in the kind of... Well, I wanna get into that, but quickly, and this silly question of mine, like just find it like, hey, you're famous, I'm famous, why on backstage? But is that true?

Is that an acceptable thing in New York culture just to go back simply because you're also famous? It does seem to always happen and I think there's a bit of a sense of obligation, right? That you almost experience. If you know someone in the show or like peripherally are connected to them, then it feels like a little bit of momentum.

That's the rule. Thank you for your indulgence. Now, let's get to what you were talking about because it was a deeper in my question line up here, but let's get right to it about, you know, your incredible investigative journalism has yielded some unhappy folks on the other side, I would imagine. So how do you sort of, get yourself ready for possible blowback?

Like, I mean, all the way up to and including, do you have 24-hour a day security? Or is that something that you ever had to consider? I don't. I mean, I almost hesitate to say it, to create your opening for people, but I've been followed around and staked out and that's like not be in my apartment.

I move actually in one case. The weirdest physical surveillance coming after me thing was not even getting followed around, but when I did some reporting that ultimately was at the heart of the first of those Trump indictments at the Hush payments during the election. The catch-up thing. It involved his relationship.

Yeah, exactly. The catch-and-killing story is on his behalf by the national acquirer. And the acquirer, which was led by some very vindictive people, and in some ways was a sort of blackmail or blackmail-a-chase-and-business model that they had come up with. Like, there were people seducing me?

They published my sex with someone. So you can imagine the trust issues forever. But they've been very good about surveillance and I put in quotes, research for years and years and years. That's sort of their model, right?

So they had a bunch of resources. And I got all these messages from celebrities who have been brutalized by them and endured similar things. And I'm like, God, thank you for writing about this. But despite all of that, I haven't gone to the place of getting around the clock security.

Yeah, I don't even know how I would make that work economically. And the truth is, I don't want to overstate the case. I'm very conscious with the work I've done in different parts of the world. I actually did a film with two wonderful filmmakers, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady.

That was just up for an Emmy, probably to them. I can take very little credit because they did all everything on the creative end. But following journalist under threat through the pandemic. So seeing a lot of those stories of people whose lives aren't jeopardy all the time, I'm very conscious of the fact that this is a much lower grade thing I experienced in a country with a good rule of law.

And it's psychologically taxing. But the actual sort of getting followed around height of threats to physical safety, I feel is something that ebbs and flows. And I've been OK without heavy security. Right.

You're talking about endangered, right? I mean, this was the encroachment kind of on press freedoms. And do you feel like maybe this is kind of the start of that possible encroachment here by leaning on folks like you that are uncovering necessary truths that we all need to know about. But they're trying to keep that stuff down by intimidating journalists.

Is that a creeping problem in this country? Well, I certainly agree with the idea that it is a creeping problem, broadly speaking, whether I'm representative of that or not. And I think it's something we need to talk about more. Because it's not just journalism that's at stake.

It's a sign of encroaching fascism, right? This is not a new thing in history. It's one of the tactics that gets deployed. This characterization of the press has an enemy of the people that we saw during the Trump administration.

That is, tale as old as time. That's sort of the first thing to try to separate the public from the facts and reduce accountability so that people can pursue power and justly. Yeah. It feels like the first play in the playbook is to muddy the waters.

And if you can do that, and then people just don't know what to believe. So they can't. Right. It's a free throw.

So you can't forget reading about the truth. You can't discern between them because you can't trust any of it, right? And that's what they want. And if you can build that level of distrust, then you're winning.

It'll never win. It'll never win. And of course, the press is imperfect. And sometimes it's only worth any.

I've done a lot of writing about the brokenness of media institutions and the suppression of important stories and stuff. And I've experienced some of that. I occupy an odd place in this discourse because I've been on all sides of it. Because it's hard for people, I think, to absorb this as a truth.

The skepticism about the existence of journalists that aren't motivated by partisanship is very extreme right now. So when I do a story about the adversely effects of Democrat and then a story that adversely effects a Republican, it's like that each of those constituencies affected doesn't see the other piece of what I'm doing. So I'll get moments where Tucker Carlson is doing a really flattering monologue about how I'm heroic for exposing some Democrat. I never agreed to do that show to be clear as a matter of principle.

But it was an odd strange bedfellows thing that the right was very into some of this reporting when it suited them. But then I do reporting that was unflattering to a Republican. And I get the opposite. All this like blowback and reputational sneers and stuff.

So yeah, it's a time I'm very disillusioned with in terms of the correct. Do you see a fixed, I know it's such a general question, but do you see a fix to this issue about how people now absorb news that they get? Obviously, it's again, a topic that's tailored as everybody's fed, what they want to read and what they want to absorb and digest. How do you break through to get the truth out to everybody all at once?

Is there a person? Is there an outlet? Is there a thing? Is there a future where all of us will get all the same facts at the same time?

It's really hard. I don't think we're going to answer that. You're starting to sound like Jason. I know.

I'm sorry. I'm sorry. You've had some sort of... Is it the vern absolute truth that we can then just refer to?

I really like that aspect of this show. There is whether you guys want to cop to it or not. There's an idealism in these conversations that you have. We're called this blissfully ignorant.

We're simple folks. But sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. Sorry, I just wanted to point that out. I don't think there's an easy answer to this.

I don't think we're going back to the Walter Cronkite monoculture. And I don't think we're going back to the same kind of trust in institutions. There's a lot of things that feed into this. The declining trust in institutions is in all sectors.

It's particularly acute with media. But it is a general trend line. Technology obviously changes this in an irreversible way, particularly the kind of greedy algorithms that have come to understand that extremism and misinformation cells better generates more clicks. And experts on radicalization talk about this a lot.

The way those algorithms work is like if you get someone, I did all this work unmasking people in security camera footage during the January 6th, right? Yeah. You know, the siege of capital. And then we're sort of the crowd source movement.

Can you not? They were just tourists from the... What did it say? Have you ever seen the other tourists?

Do you not see any of the footage? They were just saying. They were talking through. They were touring.

Anyway. That's it. That's what my story said, actually. Like these lovely tourists.

Sure. The crowd was scrubbing through these videos framed by frame, like using facial recognition and trying all sorts of ways to find these people. And I was able to identify a few collaborating with those people who were doing that crowd source movement at a time when they were on the run and had not surrendered themselves to the FBI, but they were wanted posters and stuff. And it was, I highlight that context part because you wouldn't think they would be confessional at a moment like that.

And the through line, obviously Chase was different, was definitely this phenomenon we're talking about. Like they're, you know, it's the Pennsylvania mom who has eight kids and she gets on Facebook and it's showing her extremist stuff and they haven't grabbed someone like that. She's already mad at mask mandates. And then they just get fed more and more content of escalating.

Why have all of them got her? Yeah. And it's the... I don't mean to put soul blame on that, but it's a definite factor.

And it goes to the point that you're making, that everyone is sort of in their own bubble, consuming things that they agree with. And it encourages them to dig in more deeply rather than do the thing we should all be doing, obviously, which is to be open-minded to the facts wherever they may lead. We'll be right back. And now back to the show.

I'd like to get into our guest a little bit here about where one gets the amount of intelligence you've managed to pack inside your head there. Now was there a lot of... Did you eat a lot of wheat germ as a kid? Was there like carrots or...?

It was diet. I just... I don't know. If you feed your kid enough wheat germ they will get a Pulitzer.

That's what I've heard. Okay, confirm. It's in the box. Wait, what do you need to become a Rhodes Scholar?

Because I want to know. Wheat germ and carrots, I'm thinking. I'm tempted by the way when I get some variation from this question to say something truly insane. Like, you know, I just eat the Joe Rogan thing.

Joe is right. I eat six tins of sardines every time. It's a cold plunge. And then cold plunge.

You're cold, you're plunging. Is it? The cold plunge you're... Is it really swear by sardines?

Yeah, yeah. There was a little news item where he apparently thought he was getting poisoned because he was like getting too much mercury from the sardines. I think about sardines and I get bloated. No, they're very...

They're really good. And they are very healthy and modern. A lot of sodium. Well, they're not predator fish.

They're full of salt in my face. That's always safer in terms of the contaminants. Now, I'm... I appreciate you.

No, he doesn't. No. Quiet, Will. You skipped a few grades in school.

You entered college at a very young age. I want to know how you're that sort of educational experience. Oh, great. Yeah, a few grades.

What was it? It was seven grades. I did a 15-hour thing. No, you did not.

No, no, no. Why am I socially maladjusted, guys? No, no, there's only 12 grades before college. You skipped seven of those?

I skipped seven of them. Yeah, I went to college at 11. Are you serious? Holy shit.

Wait a second. Wait, Ronan, you went to Yale at 11? No, I went to Bard for undergrad at 11. I got into Yale at 15, 16.

I actually took a little time then to do, like, did some UNICEF work? It was like a youth's books or something in a couple of African. I mean, I'm really proud of my children, but I'm a little less now. Hey, Ronan, ask these guys what the last book they read was.

Oh, are we Avid readers here or no? Well, this is a smart group. I enjoyed Tom Sawyer a lot. Does that count?

Let's go and talk to Barry Finn. What about you? What about the last book I read? The last book.

pamphlets don't count. They're giving trade. I don't know. This guy's writing books.

Ronan, when was the last book that you wrote? The Catching Kill 2019. I think I have the next one that's going to be a book. I'm doing this sort of...

Are we making news? We make news on this? No. I can never get into specifics on investigative topics that haven't hatched yet.

Because I always, further to the point of, like, people can be skeptical or not, but I am genuinely led by what's the biggest but also most interesting and hopefully humanistic story. Like, how can I ferret out the intricacies of the characters involved and be compassionate and the portrayal of even the bad people? Sure. And it's not about politics.

And part of that being led by the facts and making sure that those are the kinds of stories that I do and the way that I do them is, I have to be willing to see. I have to be willing to throw them in the trash if they don't pan out. I've done six months of work on a really giant political story that I didn't think was wrong, factually, but I felt like it wasn't... The misconduct being alleged wasn't serious enough and the way the facts came together wasn't bulletproof.

We're fine with your say. If you want to just let us know, just the rumors. Yeah, I'll just be the guy. So I can't talk about specifics, but yeah, I'm doing this like trans media approach in a lot of cases where I'll do a print story for the New Yorker and then either during or after some combination do it as a podcast or an HBO series.

My documentary, Business at HBO, which has been interesting because I think I grew up with a love of film and I got my start as a TV news anchor and I do love being able to tell the stories in different ways. But what is it? One of my questions I think Sean was saying, he was going to ask you this too. How do you pick?

And I'm sure you've answered this a million times. I apologize. But what guides your picking of stuff to investigate? It's a matrix of different factors.

I think you want to assess will it potentially do some good in the world? Not in an activist way where it's not an op-ed when I'm doing this particular kind of relatively clinical investigative work, but you do want to find some social relevance in it? Yeah, you want to pick the stories where something potentially could change, not necessarily because you're proposing a specific change, but because those are the exciting meaningful stories a lot of the time that cause people to sit up and take notice. And then you are looking at not just the strengths of the facts and constantly assessing as the facts come in.

I think that this is a slam dunk story on the journalistic side, but also especially as you move between those different formats, is it a narrative arc that people can relate to and understand emotionally? Are there people involved that are rich, complicated characters that people will potentially connect to? Talk to us about the thing that really drew you to public service in government and how that changed or didn't changed, meaning is it the same thing that drew you into journalism? Was it a sense of altruism that then transferred into something different or did you find the same drawing both?

Well, it's probably for most of us to some extent or others a mix of altruism and belief in public service and caring about other people and narcissism and ego and wanting to be successful and that led to most of these decisions you're asking about. I was very fortunate to grow up with my mom who is a big fan of yours Jason, by the way. I was a big fan of hers. I was so lucky to have you.

I really like you. I hope you guys get to work together again. I'm trying to like encourage her. This was actually a film for the Weinstein company called the X with Zach Braff and Amanda Pete and Charles Groden and Mia.

Oh yeah. I played an asshole in a wheelchair. Was it Amy in that? Was that?

I think Amy wasn't. What was it called? It was called the X. It was actually, if I recall from the deepest recesses of my mind, it was a script at the time titled Fast Track and it was like a workplace comedy and then Harvey Weinstein acquired it and did like a very Harvey Weinstein thing which was he did reshoots and recut it and changed the premise that it was then called the X and it was a relationship comedy.

I'm not sure where the title changed came from, but I do remember very clearly the whole reshoot scenario where I played an asshole in a wheelchair going after Zach Graff's girlfriend Amanda Pete and his Zach Graff's character's theory was that I was faking it in the wheelchair. He's making grounds on my lady because my lady feels bad for him and he's not even injured. He's faking in the wheelchair. The truth is that I really was somebody that couldn't walk.

They tested the movie and my character was testing a little bit too likable because he was an asshole in a wheelchair. He's funded a fund to hate. I thought you were going to say, yeah, I'm so likable. They figured, well, now that's making Zach Graff's character seem very unlikable because he's the lead and he's trying to expose me.

Their big idea was, well, let's make it so that he really is faking it to adjust the test and so that was going to be the reshoot. There was a big scene where I stand up and I was like, well, wait a second. I don't know if I played the character if I knew he was faking it and I had a phone call with Harvey Weinstein where I said to him, I said, what are the screen actors guild rules? Can you really just make me reshoot a scene that changes the character completely?

Now I'm a guy who's faking it and I'm like, yep, you're doing it. I was like, okay, Doug, we shot like 30 pages of me. Jesse Parrots, the great Jesse Parrots. Wow.

Me, it was awesome. While we're on the digression, I have been trying to encourage my mom to be more game to work. I think there was a period of time where she just had so many bad industry experiences. It really came after her.

There was a Woody Allen bullshit. She's such an incredible actress. Because of those experiences, because she started as a kid basically and she was on Pete and play as a teenager, she doesn't fully own her talent in the way that I hope she can't. Every time she does something, people are so bold over.

She keeps people so much. I'm just trying to encourage her to own that. It's kind of absurd that you're talking about Mia Farrow. I wish she was one of the great actresses.

She really got there and realized how good she is. Because to someone from me who didn't grow up close to that sort of thing, I think I can have a course. You did grow up so close to that. It's interesting that you just went 180 degrees away from that in a lot of ways.

You just went into academia. I did in the practical sense of the choices that I was making, but actually the philosophical underpinning very much comes from her. She is altruistic. I think that time is to a fault.

It's genuine too. It's not performative. She really is obsessed with helping people. It's probably made questionable decisions at the time because she adopted all of these kids with special needs, which was this beautiful wonderful thing, but also a source of much, much chaos in my childhood.

I just got to say that. Yeah, so it's complicated. Did she ever pull over and try to pick up a hitchhiker because she felt like they needed a ride and it was just a real bad thing? She was very much that kind of person.

I think it's taken a lot of being brutalized by the world to diffuse her bad. Mother, do not go down the car. From a perspective you can talk about it as much or cut it or whatever, but just from a perspective of me growing up with a single mom and a large family, not nearly. As large as yours, what was that?

Like I always say, we kind of all had a figure out even though we had an amazing mom. Like your mom, my mom was incredible too. And ran a food bank for the poor and the homeless. Some of the food we got was from the food bank because we were in that situation too.

But so I put my mom in a petal's too. At the same time we had a parent ourselves and did you growing up into a large family feel that sense because there's so many kids. You know, you have to ask my different siblings without their experience of that. My perception was always one of the amazing things about her.

She was incredibly attentive. Like she knit every single one of us. A Christmas stocking with her name on it and like a relevant graphic. You know, holidays were real rituals.

So she even in the midst of a lot of chaos and painful stuff and you know me getting dragged in and out of courtrooms and rammed through crowds of paparazzi and helicopters overhead to get to school. You know, there was a lot of, and also lost. So I had a lot of immediate family members die over the course of my childhood. There's a lot there that didn't work.

But one of the things that did work is what you're asking about. Like she's an incredibly attentive mom. Almost in a super human way. And all of that redounded to me really caring in my worldview about compassion and altruism.

And look, I think there are pros and cons to this. The moral framework I was given was like, we're not really here. She would deny this by the way. But my interpretation of it anyways.

I was taught not to care about personal happiness. That the first goal was you're here with privilege and responsibilities and you must work to improve the lives of others. And that is the source of true happiness. That's the very long-winded answer to your question that I wanted to do things that helped others.

Well, how big is your therapist's yacht? Because... You're the craziest thing. Well, I only did therapy for some other than like, court-appointed expert stuff in my childhood, which is probably why I didn't leave to therapy after.

You would make a therapist so happy though, because your ability to articulate your feelings. And you are so beautifully vulnerable and human. And I bet you can have a couple of conversations with the therapist. I mean, I've loved mine.

Well, you know, I have found it late in life. Like, during the pandemic, I was actually... It did take hitting a bit of psychological rock bottom. I had been driving so hard with the philosophy that we've been talking about.

Like, I've just got a give and give and give. And to the point I made earlier about it being a cocktail of selfish and giving instincts. Like, I also... I had been so scrutinized from such an early age.

And with so much expectation, I wanted to do things that were 180 from my family. I wanted to be taken seriously. My early professional experience is where I'd be, like, talking about an infrastructure project in Pakistan. And they'd, like, want to ask me about my family and stuff.

Just made me very, very committed to being so, so serious and such an overachiever that I could get out of that. And it took becoming so, so kind of souped up and, like, prominent in my own right for my work. I had to be involved in these, like, major kind of culture shifting moments to get out of that. And then finally, I could do it.

I could go on a book tour and never get asked about my family. It had downsides, though. Like, I think I alienated myself from people, like, over-credentialing. Have you ever talked to Anderson Cooper about it?

Can we talk to him a little bit about, like, you know, he talks about the point? He's gay. You must know him. He's gay.

That's what I do. I mean, I, you know, I beat him and Sean at the gay, you know, like, he needs to be. I fucking, I fucking, hang on, let me write this down. Let me write this down.

No, but I was going to say that I remember he had a very similar answer. When he would say that, that was the thing that was always sort of the flag, the red flag when he was on a date, if how soon somebody asked about his mom. And of course, hilariously, he talked about how Andy, Andy, he asked him in, like, 10 seconds. So they became good friends.

But, yeah, I mean, that's a difficult thing, right? I did, too. Yeah, I also have, well, that's good. I also have a very, very famous friend of ours, very close that you would know.

And this person comes from an extreme. I don't know that do you know Milton Burl? This person is an extremely famous family that everybody knows. And this person, to your point, Ronan, is what Sean, all questions didn't want to talk about her family.

Her identity is not that. I do not, you know, I am this person over here. I've created this world for myself. And in doing so through many, many, many years of evolution and growth, she was like, she learned the balance of embracing both, right?

And bringing that in and not being, not ashamed at all. It's just, it's your own personal identity and figuring out the past that's in the middle somewhere. I've had that journey myself. I remember vividly.

So there's fame. And then there's this particular subgenre of fame that's particularly awful and enduring in a troublesome way of fame connected to generationally defining sex scandal. And there's just a kind of prurience and shock element that 30 years later does not go away. And I remember vividly running into Chelsea Clinton at some event.

And this was before I had done a lot of professional things right now. So I was getting along. I just recently met her. What a great woman.

She's so, she's probably one of the few people who has that very, very specific awful shadow over her from childhood. And worse than me, right? Because she was in the White House dealing with all that. But similar in some ways.

And I remember this is, you know, prior to my having done any work in the world and people really only knew me through that family stuff. And someone came up at this event and was like introducing me or saying hello to me in a way that foregrounded the family stuff like, Oh, you know, here's this is a nephobe, baby, I remember him. And she was so forceful. I don't know if she would even recall this.

But she was clearly, she had the same chip on her shoulder that I had. I was my reading of it, which may or may not be fair to her. But she was like, he's his own person. He's done his own things.

I'm like, Chelsea, are you talking about you? Yeah. And I do think like different people respond to that in different ways. But for me, I've learned the peril of that.

First of all, because if you refuse to talk about it, people are just much more curious. Second of all, I think the wanting to dissociate yourself from it is very fair and understandable. But ultimately, you kind of find it piecing yourself, does require reconciling all of those parts of you and all of those parts of your past. And drawing strength from it.

Yeah. And you got to get a lot of that managed before you start what becomes your new immediate family. And now a word from our sponsor. And now back to the show.

We all spend every single day of our lives with our mom, our dad, and our sibling until you're 18, 20, whatever it is you move out and you see them less. And then eventually you meet the person that becomes your everyday person, your spouse, and then you meet your kids when they're born. And you see the people you used to spend every day with maybe once or twice, three, four times a year, holidays and stuff. So how are you now transitioning into that place of family, the new meaning of family for you, for all of us?

How do you become adult children? Do you idealize the notion of family? Talk to us about your personal life to the extent you're comfortable about. You said you want to have kids and all that stuff.

Where's all that stuff to sit with you right now? Well, this goes back to your talk about therapy. I did actually. There was this moment in the pandemic where the work slowed down because the world was slowing down, but the attacks were still coming.

And it was like every day or all hours getting these crazy, shakedown attempts, like going back to the enquirer example, like crazy letters from the enquirer having impretamed, like, ideal log, right wing, crazy lawyers who might have actually brought a casing. We're going to sue your pants off for defamation if you don't pass some crazies. It's like a joke amount, like $50 million overnight. And all of these reputational smears and people I pissed off trafficking dossiers and once in a while they'd make their way into the mainstream press.

And it's interesting I've stumbled into all this serious peer-reviewed psych literature about how attacks that threaten your core sense of identity and place in society are actually at times more ready instigators of PTSD symptoms than even threats of physical harm, that those are the ones that damage people to most. It was helpful for me to understand that because for a long time I kicked myself up over it. I've been in war zones, I've been in dangerous situations, I've been followed around, but the shit I care about is like, what is page 6 saying? But it was really hard for me.

And it finally did prompt me to start working on myself. And I did some, this goes to your question of how do I build my adult identity and my path towards hopefully being a good partner and maybe a good parent. I started putting in the work and I did a couple years of cognitive behavioral therapy and then found a great, more traditional analyst. I think those tools can work for some people, not work for some people, there's good practitioners, bad practitioners, but I found someone great in the end.

That was genuinely helpful for me. And I think part of allowing myself to work on that was not stepping away from but tempering the philosophy of any minute I don't spend helping someone else. I am morally failing. But letting myself work for myself occasionally.

It was extra hard for me to do that as someone who had always been in the press and people having these expectations. But the example that you lived with called your mother is, you know, we always, as we get to adulthood, we go, we rebel in different ways. And some of those are like, I see what my mom did, I'm speaking for myself. I see what she did, I see what she did to an extreme.

And again, going back to the balance thing, which is the hardest for any human to do is to balance, you know, the good from the bad and where do I lie in between. And as much as you celebrate your mom and I celebrate my mom, there are extremes, you know. And it's okay to recognize that and go, oh, where's me in all this? You find your version of their advice and their guide.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Right. Exactly that. And like we aspire to do it better than our parents did it.

And we're going to fuck it up inevitably in new and exciting ways. And you know, we have to just be kind both to the parents. Like I think part of this path is you're not idealizing your parents, but you are greeting their complications with kindness and understanding. And then part of it is also being kind to ourselves, right?

That's right. We have to let yourself off the hook. And you also can't let past them. You can't use, I think that one of the traps that I know that I have fallen into in the past and that I used to do more was to use those past experiences and to make my self feel shitty about it or to beat myself up about it.

And believe me, if making, if beating yourself up about it worked, I'd be cured. It doesn't work. You know what I mean? It just does.

I know exactly what you mean. I mean, I really have to work on this in an ongoing way because I have the most punishing interior voice. Just like anything I do that is not perfect. I am so cruel to myself.

And I'm also, I'm like a hypersensitized person to other people and there's different bodies of literature that categorize that in different ways, but I'm like anxiously attached. I'm a super sensitive person. So there's actually, there's these studies where people who exhibit those traits, they show them videos of face slowly morphing from one expression to another. And they actually, they detect the change earlier than other people, but they also have an inclination to draw conclusions from that prematurely.

I completely relate to that. I completely identify with that. And I call it thin slicing. And I have, and I've long felt like I have an ability to thin slice and sometimes it to my own detriment.

By the way, I also have a very punishing inner voice. And you're lucky, good mind sounds like this. Mine is fucking bad idea. I'm not so sure about your cruel internal voice.

I suspect most, I suspect most performers. And I'm not a performer per se, but I do like make a living on TV. I think a lot of those people are probably hypersensitized in that way. And there's a nexus of the cruel interior voice and the public scrutiny and the hypersensitivity to the public scrutiny.

Like I care so much what other people think. I care so much about the random Twitter, cruel tweet, and there's so much. I think it's a bad rap though. You know, I think it's such a healthy thing to be, I think, aware of as opposed to concerned with.

It's just semantics. How you're coming across. I mean, certainly what the three of us do for a living with acting, that's our job. We're professional liars in the way in which we come across, right?

We're trying to trip people. And so in that comes an inherent ability or need to know how you're coming across and to be concerned with whether that's an accurate perception. First of all, the notion that people say, and I've had it from people like, we're up with who have nothing to do with entertainment. They're like, you know, they're all Canadian.

So they all sound like this. Well, you guys care what you look like. Yeah, everybody does motherfucker. And they call it a mirror.

If you have a mirror, you care too. There wouldn't be any story selling fashion. And there wouldn't be any medical for sale. And there wouldn't be anything.

So go fuck yourself. And be, you know why? Because that's how I make my living. And I get, and we now live in a world where I get to hear everybody's opinion in real time, everywhere on the planet.

Yeah. And it keeps you nicer if you're concerned or aware of what people think about you. I think, you know, to the extent you're able to handle it, then take it on because it keeps you kind and it keeps you aware of other people. Well, this is Jason to interrupt for a moment.

You're what you just expressed, what you have taken away from being in a firestorm of public opinion about yourself is not necessarily the norm. And I've seen all kinds of people who wind up very distorted by it. And it can lead to kind of more ego. But you have fascinated by the fact that actually to what I kind of serve everyone in this group has taken from that experience, all of these beautiful, caring things.

Like, how do you how do you do that? I mean, I hope that I'm achieving that myself. But I'm interested in how to do that. I think it's about being first of all, it's about who you surround yourself.

Well, and also considering the sources, like consider this like, any time somebody writes a horrible thing about me, there's been tons of stuff in my whole life. Yeah. It's like you go at some point, you know, when you're much younger, I was like, Oh, my God, I cried and call it call in a corner. And I'm like, Oh, that person is miserable, not me.

When you were talking about your, your, your, your scary voice incited chastises you. What is the thing that wakes up monster up the most? What do you do? What do you do?

What do you do? Do you do it most disappoints you? What's your dumbest shit? Because you're such a smart insightful guy.

I can't imagine you just doing something that would really warrant a real, a real talking to. It's a good point. Yeah, it is almost always not rational. And I've been shielded both by my, I think, generally good, strong moral code and instincts and also surrounding myself with other people who have those qualities.

Like I've had points in my career very prominently where, you know, I've been with like very like craven corporate power hungry people who, when the rubber meets the road and there's, you know, a tough story unfolding. They're awful. They're cowardly and it's so disillusioning and disappointing. But I have over time been able to refine the sort of chosen family professionally, not just personally, to include more people who are sort of big minded, big hearted, have good values and, and have good systems for enforcing those values.

So like the New Yorker is this magical esoteric place where all of these like intellectuals with tons of virtue, not that they get it perfectly right all the time. Of course, it's human beings. But I have been so impressed even in cases where there's a disagreement about a story and I'm the reporter saying like, I've worked on this for months. I want to get it out here.

All the arguments. Why the counter arguments are always rooted in like good journalistic ethics. So, so I've been protected by that from the real mistake. Like there haven't been inaccuracies in the story, even when the stories when they're under attack.

It's withstood all of that. And I have gradually come to trust myself more and be less punishing because I've seen over time that I do make good decisions. And I think I am increasingly trusting of the idea that I can pull off both. I can scrutinize my decisions and learn each time to be better without being punished.

But you don't have one one reoccurring blind spot. Like you're like, it's not always an angry driver and you're mad at yourself or honking at everyone. Jason, Jason, what are the things that you beat yourself up about it? Let me guess the first five.

First five. The first five you should. I guess let me rephrase. I don't like this time.

I said, Jason, here's my list. No, Mike, as you were talking about, with all, you know, you're just amazing. Your brain is gorgeous and beautiful. You're gorgeous and beautiful.

Your eyes are skin and your hair. Everything is amazing. I know it's kind of incredible. The one.

All this. Spend more time with this group. It's true. I just got a call for me.

By the way, I've had work situations where I guess ironically given some of the work I've done on sexual harassment and stuff, where I'm getting that treatment, like I'm getting objectified. And I'm just not a self-actualized enough person to not get a little... I'm actually like, you know what? I'm cool with this.

Tell me more. I've gotten so much more validation over the years for just the intellectual stuff. Being a piece of meat is great when it happens. When you get into litigation, let the record show Sean started it.

Yeah, so wait, no. So I actually threw that point with the intellectual stuff and all that. And all that fuels the fire in your belly and you continue to do all that, stimulates that gorgeous brain of yours. What beyond of that excellent work in your life excites you?