Muse

First time at the program? I can always spot a newbie. It's my fifth year with Wings. I guess Paul McCartney's got nothing on me, huh? Love, take me down to the streets. It's not a Wings song. Yeah, it's one of their hits from the 70s. I'm not sure which one. It's not a... it's not. It isn't? No. I think it might be. It's not. Nobody sings that song.

I don't know about that. I'll have to Google it. The TBTN!

When I found you, you were so slobbering drunk You couldn't buy brandy And you, friendless, brainless, helpless, hopeless Do you want me to send you back to where you were? Unemployed in Greenland

I use what God gave me

I'm not supernatural, I use myself This is without a doubt one of my favorite items by dinner with Andre Action Figures. And what you can do, which is so cute, is you can reenact the whole scene, you know, where the two guys talk to each other and say, you know, oh, I'm sure glad you found a good restaurant. It's so hard these days to get in. You know, who do you know? Oh, I just called. Oh, you, you can always get a reservation.

I don't understand. I made a reservation. Do you have my reservation? Yes, we do. But the reservation keeps the car here. That's why you have the reservations. I know why we have reservations. I don't think you do. Targets, targets. That may be the first time in my life a man has dared insult me.

Well, hello, good afternoon, and welcome to a Wednesday edition of TBTL, the show that just might be too beautiful to live. It's a kind of magic. My name is Luke Burbank. I am your host. The guy is a nut bar. A nut bar. Coming to you from the Madrona Hill studio perched high above the mighty Columbia where it's raining today. Didn't know you like to get wet, though. Other than getting to play that Denzel Washington drop, there's nothing good about this rain. And in fact, I have now had to turn the heater on here in the Madrona Hill studio for the first time of the year.

You've got to be kidding me.

And as we learned last year, that sometimes blows a circuit out here, and the whole show goes offline. But so far, so good, I think, as we arrive at episode 4,291 in a collector series. Let the fun begin. I'm in day three, I guess, of this 75 hard- Ish, ish. 75 hard-ish thing that I am doing. And I think I might have actually learned an important life lesson.

I'm learning.

Or been reminded of an important life lesson that is related to this. I guess the whole idea of this thing is, one, you maybe sort of work on your fitness. But two, there might be some life lessons to be learned. And we may get into that. But there's much bigger things to talk about here on this Wednesday. Of course, last night was the big presidential debate. Donald Trump, Kamala Harris many people wondering how it went for Donald Trump. It was literally a major disaster. I mean, I don't know, I guess if you consider statements like this by a person who wants to be president a disaster. They're eating the dogs, they're eating the cats they're eating the pets. And we have just the person to help us break down what happened last night and what the next, I don't know, 50 days or so may hold for all of us it is our friend and the host of all in on msnbc weeknights as well as the must listen podcast why is this happening it's chris hayes joining me right now chris welcome

to the program i am thrilled to be here what a fun thing to do what a fun sexy time for us i mean

this is a big get for tbtl talking to television's chris hayes the day after one of the more consequential debates in although we keep saying that and then there's another one that's super

consequential so well the i think it's fair to say the first debate was the most consequential debate in american political history at least in the in the in the context of the modern presidential debates yeah um we'll see how consequential this was right it's hard it's i mean unless one of the two drops out because of it it's gonna be hard to match the first one

And I actually want to ask you about the impact of this or what might be the impact in a minute. First, though, I just want to like kind of 24, almost 24 hours after this thing happened. I'm wondering, like, what what you're thinking about, what jumps out at you. The initial reaction, I think last night was slam dunk for Kamala Harris with with 24 hours to kind of ruminate on it.

What are you thinking? Well, the same. I mean, I, I, the, the,

good i'm just so listen the joke i was gonna make the joke that i almost made and the joke that i made on set right before we went on air last night when we were all there was i turned to everyone deadpan i said i'm just gonna come on air and say like we made a huge mistake biden back that was

a disaster and she's gotta we gotta undo it were you gotta undo this way were you a little bit tempted to make that joke on national television or do you like i wasn't because i made it i made

it on set before i went on air everyone like looked at me and it took a lot of beats and And then people like sort of laughed, but we're like, there's just like a trauma response we all have. But no, my initial reaction was that she crushed him, that she did the best job debating Donald Trump of anyone who ever has, which is a lot of people and a lot of debates. And that Lawrence O'Donnell said it's arguably the best presidential debate performance ever, which I think is possible. I haven't I haven't gone back and studied. I do remember, like, Kerry's first debate against Bush in 04 was incredibly strong. There are a few that stand out, but it was incredible. And she had, you know, so much riding on her shoulders.

That's the thing. Considering the stakes and also who she was trying to corral, which I think she did very effectively. Yeah, I mean, and I heard like in the very first maybe two paragraphs of her talking, just the slightest hint of the nerves that any normal, rational human being would have in that moment.

In her throat, which I found incredibly humanizing and relatable.

Yes.

And absolutely. And it was almost, I mean, it's like having a basketball player get at the line to shoot 10 free throws to win the game, and they have to hit 10 in a row, and she basically did that. I mean, that was the level of pressure and expectations and the level of performance. And it was amazing.

it was such a weird scene here at my house first of all i was watching with my dad who when i tell you chris the excitement that he he couldn't connect the idea that this person on tv we were watching you was also going to be on tbtl today i said yeah chris is going to come on the show he goes tbtl and i was like yeah don't act like that's completely insane but no i was like i was pacing around the house like a kind of like a maniac and and you know various parts of but have been analyzed and will continue to be analyzed. I felt like for me, the really big moment was when she mentioned the crowd size thing. And like, you just saw something shift in him. Was that kind of your sense?

Yeah. I mean, people said that that would the rallies that people leave his rally is because they're bored. You know, that was something that she did. And I said this on air last night. And if people are listening to this after they've also watched my program, I don't know how much overlap there is, but I'm just apologizing in advance for you guys hearing the same take in multiple.

We're putting this out in like two weeks.

Yeah. Well, actually, I saw TVTL post today and be like, the show's going to be a little late today. And I had the thought, literally, my first thought was like, oh, bummer, I'm going to bike to work. And I was like, oh, I'm the cause of that. So I thought, you know, she did this thing that it became increasingly transparent over the course of the evening. At the point that she did this, it wasn't quite that transparent, which is that every answer would have some bait for him to latch on to things that he just can't pass up. So that was the first big one, although she had already destroyed him on the abortion question prior to that. That's a good point. And the abortion question, I actually thought the moderators did a great job, and particularly the first 15 or 20 minutes, which were incredibly substantive, incredibly policy focused, you know, that they were talking about what their plans were. And they engaged on the Tara stuff. They talked about taxes. They talked about housing. They talked about abortion. But, yes, I thought she had sort of had him staggering after that abortion answer. And then she baited him with the crowd size. And then you could just see the steam coming out of his ears. And then every time she would she would basically lace into her response. Some, you know, Charlottesville, very fine people. He can never pass up an opportunity to get that the whether the election was stolen or not. John McCain, she wove John McCain into the ACA answer, the Affordable Care Act answer, knowing that he's going to go nuts on John McCain because he can't not basically like insult John McCain.

I don't think I've ever seen anything like this just in a performance. I mean, maybe not even in the context of a debate where you have these two really hard jobs to do. I think I might just be parroting literally what you said on MSNBC last night, but just of needing to make the case for herself as presidential, but also somehow backdoor these little things that we all knew were going to trip him up. But that's such a hard thing to do. I'm wondering, like, who came up with this strategy, if it was Vice President Harris or if it was somebody she was doing debate prayer with? That person needs to win like an EGOT at this point.

Well, there's two things I'll say about this and two things I know. One is that Harris is notorious for being an incredibly prepared politician or principal in the term of art that staff members use. She's very prepared. She's famous. prepared she could be incredibly hard to work for because of her level of preparation and focus

it's like andrew and john having to work with me exactly attention to detail sure just the devils in the details i always say that that's that's the i would say that's the slogan you live

your life by yeah yeah um and i don't mean to say you know it just to be clear hard to work for i I don't mean in a sort of insulting fashion.

Amy Klobuchar, get me a fork, get me a comb to eat with what.

And again, all this stuff is very fraud. It's particularly fraud along lines of gender and expectations. And there was a piece about it. I just mean that she has very high expectations for her, the people that work for her, high expectations for herself, is famously a very, very locked in prepared person. Yeah. So that's one. Two, there's a woman named Karen Dunn, who I happen to have known actually for, I think, decades at this point. It was a personal friend. I was at her wedding, but also as an incredibly able lawyer and also a political operative who has done debate prep multiple times. She did debate prep for Hillary Clinton. She's done. So she was the one, I think, running the debate prep. And I think she's really good at it. And that was I mean, what was amazing was it was like it was a little like a football game where just one side really got out coached and they came in with like a scripted plays on the first drive and just like marched down the field for a touchdown. And every play call, you were like, oh, wow, wow, wow. They're like it was it was it was both preparation and execution were flawless.

Yeah. Do you think that the like they're eating pets thing, which when he said that, I kind of also freaked out because I was like, this is going to be memed, you know, like crazy tomorrow. Does that kind of stuff even like stick to him, though? Or does it just make like people like me happy?

I don't know, man. It's increasingly difficult, I will say, and I confess this on air all the time. It's increasingly difficult for me to mentally model undecided voters. I do think the immigration stuff draws blood. I think that's shown in the polling and anecdotally. I think there's a lot of people who feel like that these sort of base, this kind of base appeal to the sense that people are coming to take something from you is a powerful rhetorical line. It's been powerful across Western democracies and sometimes not even in Western democracies and other places that have dealt with large influxes of folks from other countries. I mean, there was a huge sort of xenophobic backlash in Pakistan against Afghan refugees, a whole bunch of tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands kicked out of the country. So there's a they're working. They're working with some elemental forces in human politics and human psyches. That said, he sounds completely nuts to me. Like there was the post the post debate CNN poll last night, which was like 63, 37. These polls are these snap polls are pretty unscientific. I don't know what that means. But when I saw the number, I was like, I texted, I slacked it to my staff and I was like, this should be the election outcome. Like this to me is the proper this 6337 is like what I think the final vote.

Did you see that that Washington Post thing this morning where it was like this sort of group of undecided voters and then where they had gone after watching the debate? And it's like 16 are in like Harris one and two are in like Trump one. yeah first the first thought is what the hell are these two people thinking right like what did you see there that well he's got my vote yeah i was i was like really obsessed with trying to figure out who these little drawings of these people were so i could try to study them but like so

so you're saying so i think yeah well i i think look i think it i think i i your original question is like does the ranting like a maniac hurt him they're eating the dogs they're eating the pets I saw it on TV. You know, yeah, yeah. I think so. I mean, yeah, the guy is underwater in favorability. He's never been particularly popular. He's never assembled a majority coalition. He only won once because of the weird quirks the electoral college. This remains the case. And yet he still is disconcertingly close to winning. And so I throw up my hands a little bit about trying to kind of psychologize what what the knock on effects of all this stuff is.

Well, right. But this is, I think, the journey for any of us who are hoping that he doesn't become president again is, like, trying to read various tea leaves, like, oh, Nate Silver ruined my weekend, you know, with what's probably some pretty good information about, like, how, you know, Kamala's sort of momentum seemed to have maybe hit a bit of a ceiling or whatever. I think she would appear she probably got it back from this. But I guess it's like I'm obsessively constantly trying to get some information that will calm me down, and it never works. And it doesn't help that.

the position from the Harris-Waltz campaign is, we are the underdogs. Do you think that they're legitimately the underdogs, or that this is a way of just keeping the base energized?

I think they're the underdogs because they have to win by two to three points. So I would say right now they are favored to win more votes than their opponent. Right. It also matters where those votes are, right? Well, my point being that every single race in America, from dog catcher to school board to governor to senator, works the same way, which the person who gets more votes gets the office they're running for, except for one. There's one exception, which is President of the United States, where you can win when you get fewer votes. It's the only one. The vagaries of the Electoral College mean that they are running uphill. Hillary Clinton had to run uphill in 2016. Joe Biden won by four and a half points. Let me tell you, there's a bunch of Senate races where someone wins relatively comfortably at three points and it's not considered a nail biter. And that might not be enough in an electoral college situation. So because they're running uphill, they are right to recognize themselves as underdogs because they have to. The Democratic vote is distributed in such a way that favors the Republican Party.

And also there's probably no upside to them acting overconfident and therefore depressing some of their vote or, you know, phone banking or whatever. Totally. It only makes sense. But I guess for me it's like unscientifically, anecdotally, and because I live in the bubble that I live in of people who were doing backflips last night about how this went, it's so hard for me to shake the feeling. I was having dinner with my buddy in Santa Barbara last week, and we both said, we're both terrified of the outcome of this election and also low-key think it might be a runaway. And I don't even know how both of those thoughts can exist in my head.

Yeah. I mean, I think that I do think, look, the places that I think are sources of hope are, A, the polling miss in 2022 was in the midterm. In the midterm was in Democrats' favor, right? Then a bunch of marquee races outperformed the polls. If you look at the people most likely to vote in the middle of the bullseye and then you move out concentric circles to those least likely to vote, Harris is winning by the most amongst the people most likely to vote. Yeah. And also just the eye test. Like, I keep telling myself last night, like looking at him being like, is that guy really going to win this race? That guy really? But he might.

I mean, again, you know, I do want to tell you, I can report from Cowlitz County, Washington State. i saw a guy in home depot yesterday wearing uh a harris waltz shirt that had like a cartoon cat on it and i assumed a hundred percent that it was basically a let's go brandon because i yeah i saw harris waltz on there and i thought well what's the back of the shirt say right yeah but it just said mind your own damn business oh and i like went up to this guy like i had found a fellow traveler because where i live for people that don't know is a place where it's mostly not that Now, I don't think that indicates any movement of the needle significantly, but I do, I just feel like in the air, like you said also, just the eye test, like those two people on stage, it strains my ability to think that more people would want that guy than would want the other person. There's all the structural problems that you've talked about, but it just feels to me like I wouldn't be shocked if she won by a pretty substantial margin.

I think that if you ask me what the race is, I say 50-50. It really is almost exactly a coin flip. If you ask me who do I think is going to win, I think she's going to win. I do. I ultimately, in the end, don't think the shtick is going to work enough. But the last thing I would say just about sort of riding the polar coaster and looking at Nate Silver's projections is, you know, one thing that has been something that I think as I've aged has really sunk into me is just that unexpected things happen and you don't know the future and you can't extrapolate. And I remember like reading a piece. I remember after Trump got after the Senate failed to convict him on his first impeachment, reading some piece about like he's got his mojo back and he's headed into the election year and his approval readings have risen. And then it was like and there's this like weird thing coming out of China. It's like covid happened. No one, you know, whatever discussion you were having in February about like, what are the political implications of the impeachment? meant nothing. The entire world shut down four weeks later. Same thing about what the discussion was about Biden eight weeks ago. Like, unexpected things happen. No one knows the future. And that is a central thing to keep in your heart and soul

as you, like, try to figure out what the future is. I mean, the big cherry last night, obviously, on top of the whole thing, was this Taylor Swift endorsement, which I was trying to explain to Walt. And again, based on no science on my part or research. Why I think that this is actually maybe the one celebrity endorsement that could make a difference because of how much she crosses political lines. What do you think? Does this actually matter?

I think it. Yeah, I think it does. I mean, you know, she has endorsed before. And I think the question of in a close ways, would you rather have her endorsement or not? It's obvious you would rather have it. I thought she did an amazing job both in the timing right after the debate and in what she said, which is I watched the debate. Yeah. Which was I thought a great like I watched it. I listened. This is a new candidate kind of like and she's got my vote. And I thought it was very effective. And, you know, there's some interesting data from vote.gov today that had several hundred thousand people, I think, referred to vote.gov to find out about registration from her Instagram URL. She's got 239 million followers. It got a million likes in the first like 10 minutes. So, yeah, like, again, with all these all these questions, it's it's a polarized country where every election happens on the margins. So at the margin, would you rather have Taylor Swift in your corner or against you? I think there's a very obvious answer.

Yeah. I was listening to something yesterday about something I hadn't thought about, you probably have, which is the U.S. citizens abroad vote. Yeah. And like the actually how important that could potentially be if enough totally Arizonians who are living in wherever like I was like, OK, if you need me to doorknock, I will do it. I will go back to Paris.

Sorrento. We got a bunch of people from Butler, Pennsylvania now relocated to Sorrento.

Yeah. And then what I had heard was that it may have actually been significant for Biden when he beat Trump. This is actually a thing that could matter, basically, because if you're talking about a million people who are registered voters but don't live in the U.S., but live in these states that are swing states or whatever, it's a real thing?

It is. And I actually read something that Republicans had done a better job of this in the past and that Democrats had sort of—

I don't understand the person who is a Republican. This is so this is so short sighted. I don't understand a Republican wants to live abroad.

Well, it's funny you say that. Right. Because I think that one of the things that's happened over the course of our lives, like you and me are basically roughly the same age, is that the two parties have polarized basically on a bunch of psychological traits that have to do with high trust, low trust and openness to new experience versus not openness, new experiences like sort of, you know, cosmopolitan mindset. for lack of a better word and that those personality traits are distributed in all kinds of different ways throughout the population in different places but increasingly the parties select for these different traits and openness to new experience is increasingly a liberal coded you know, Democratic Party thing but I don't think it's always been that case and like, you know, people end up abroad for all kinds of different reasons and they could be just downloading serving in the U.S. military being a huge part of it

Oh, that's a really good point I hadn't even thought about that cohort of folks. But also, you just don't know what they're watching.

That's probably the biggest cohort.

A reasonably normal person who just gets hooked into some bad internet stuff or Fox News and goes down a rabbit hole could get converted pretty quickly.

Yeah, totally. And also, people are partisan Republicans. When we talk about all this stuff, you got to remember that partisan behavior is deep and ingrained, and most people are just On both sides, if the Democrats nominated a complete disaster as a nominee, there would be more rebellion and fall away among Democrats than Republicans because it's a less authoritarian operation. And we saw that, in fact, with the remarkable post-debate debate about Joe Biden and the ultimate decision to stand down. This proved how different the two parties are. At the same time, like you could pick someone at random, make them the Democratic nominee, and they'd probably get 40 to 42 percent of the vote.

I mean, I have repeated this thing that you said and have said before. I've repeated this to so many people to try to explain how our national politics work when it comes to president.

Yeah. Yes, exactly. So you're starting at a at a floor of 42, maybe, you know. So everything above that is where the real difficult fights happen. But yes, I think the Democrats have invested, particularly this year, in the Democrats abroad. And when you're talking, I mean, it might come down to one state and that state might come down to 5,000 votes or 1,000 votes. I mean, it could be so close. It's crazy to contemplate.

I am really hoping that, I don't think this is going to be the case, but that somehow this matter is settled again in the correct direction, in my opinion. on the actual election night because I rented a very fancy hotel room in downtown Portland for me and Becca to sell, because I live in the middle of nowhere and like if Kamala, when Kamala Harris wins, I have no idea. one to go like pop bottles without well so i wanted to be in the i booked this hotel room which by the way non-refundable and then i realized we're not going to know shit by the end of the actual night it'll be we're all going to go to bed and just like wait for the returns from

pennsylvania or something right yeah i i don't i think it's very unless something again unless there's a big polling mess yeah that or something crazy happens in the next 50 days or a big polling this it's possible yeah um you know 2008 and 2012 we both knew that night um yeah but i think it's

not likely we'll know it probably isn't um i used a lot of bonvoy points also to offset the cost take money yeah precisely thank you for being a town our donors today that we are thanking are None other than Kayla Forzali, Tampa, Florida. Thank you, Kayla. Thank you also, John Jordan of London, England. And this little spreadsheet that I'm looking at, London is where I think maybe normally the, at least if this were the U.S., it's where the state would be, and England is where the city would be. So like Nicole Thompson is in Carmel, Indiana, right? So as I read that, it all makes sense to me. John Jordan is in England, London, on my sheet. And I almost messed that up, but I caught it just in time. So you're welcome, John. And also, thank you. It was a weird way for me to thank John. Thanks, Nicole, over there in Carmel, Indiana, for your support. Thanks also to Constance Buck in Waterleet, New York. w-a-t-e-r-v-l-e-i-t watervleet new york i am going to be in rural new york state next week i'm going to be um up kind of near rochester at a place that um makes whiskey out of tree sap and i wonder if i will travel through watervleet new york where our friend constance is also thanks to Mary Collins, who's in Charlotte, North Carolina, and our friend Corinne Reese of Hot Air Balloon fame, who's keeping it handled there, keeping it locked down in Florence, Alabama. Thank you so much to all of our donors for making TBTL possible. We absolutely could not do this thing without you. Hello, and welcome to Top Stories. Okay, well, listen, thank you for indulging me on that. I know you spend your whole day talking about and thinking about politics and things like that. But really, we have brought you here to TVTL to talk about the important issues, and that is car rentals in Italy. And I even have some rights-free Italian traveling. Oh, can you play it?

I was going to ask you. Yes.

The finest traditional Italian music that AI can generate in under two seconds. Yes. So just to catch people up in case, maybe the Chris Hayes bump has added some new listeners to our show today. I was in Italy recently and I rented a car because the place we were staying, the town was Sorrento, Italy, but then we were way up in the hills and it was not something you could walk to. I didn't know this till we were getting close to the place. Rented a car and the only car they would rent me was a standard size Audi that you would see driving like in Houston. and what happened was

no thank you

when I got there I learned that the roads in this part of Italy are so narrow and in fact are often bordered by these stone walls so it's not even like you're driving on the shoulder there is no shoulder the shoulder is either a thousand foot plunge to the ocean or a wall that's going straight up you're just constant and then going to the actual place we were staying was so harrowing like I am very proud of my driving but like honestly when Becca and I were there we were supposed to go get dinner in town on like night two and i literally lied to her and said we just have so many groceries left over here can we just like whip up dinner this was all to cover for the fact that i not getting back in that car breaking out in like hives trying to get this car out of this thing and then you mentioned to me that you because i know you actually you've spent a significant

amount of time in italy yes so i i found all this extremely really relatable content and i've loved I love the travelogue. We can also talk about Iceland if you want. Oh, I have it.

Listen, buddy, on the script. Chris, colon, defend Iceland. Oh, yeah, it's in the plan.

I studied abroad in Italy in the year 2000. I was there for five months. I lived in Bologna and attended the University of Bologna. It was amazing. I've been back a number of times.

I love it. I'm Italian-American. My mom's family is all from Italy. I speak decent Italian. Oh, wow. I make fresh pasta. Like, I am very Italian-identified. So there's a few things. One, your point about alcohol was 100% spot on. Okay, thank you.

I felt like Andrew wasn't ready to go there with me.

No, their relationship to it is so different than what I would say, like, Anglo culture. So right. Irish, English, American and different than Germans, too. But like they don't binge drink. They don't you never drink without food. It's it accompanies meals. They don't go out drinking. It is not a cultural thing. That's that's the thing. There are Irish bars that people go to as a kind of like in the same way that we sort of will occasionally go to like Korean style karaoke as a kind of fun thing that's imported from another culture. Like people will go to Irish pubs in Italy because it's it's different. It's a kind of, you know, exotic or whatever. But but you're totally right about the relationship. So first, I wanted to say that. Second of all, two, I have two good car rental stories. So one, it was very similar to your Sorrento experience. We went for two weeks a few years ago, and we went with our family, me and Kate, our three kids, our au pair at the time, and my dad. We got two different cars. We flew overnight into, I think, Rome. I forget if it was Rome or Florence. And then we drove to, that day, Siena. Siena is an amazing town in Tuscany. It has one of my favorite cathedrals. It's an incredible piazza. We're pretty cooked, jet lagged, drove overnight. Not enormous car, but like not a tiny car. We parked in the public parking lot in Siena. We eat lunch. Now we're going to go to our, similar to you, we're going to drive into the Tuscan Hills to go to our Airbnb or whatever, rental. I'm in this parking lot. And as I drive out, there's one of those corkscrews, you know, that you get in like airport parking lots, right? And it is the narrowest corkscrew that I have ever been in. And I'm driving down this corkscrew and I'm like, man, this is really narrow. And I get to the bottom and I encounter a chain stopping me from going forward and a cul-de-sac. And I realize this is a one. This is the I went down the corkscrew the wrong way. I'm now at the bottom of this thing. I've got a car full of people. There is no way to make a three point turn. I get out and try to lift the chain up because there's, like, a little lot past the chain that I can do a three-point turn in. I can't get the chain off. I try – I put it up, and it starts driving under, and I'm going to scratch the paint off the top.

Had you – I don't know if you remember, but had you, you know, gotten the, like, extra insurance on the car? Because that was one of my – I had not for the exact same reason.

And I told him I like my insurance. No, I didn't actually say that. I like my insurance. Thank you.

Yeah, that was one of the things that I really regretted immediately was not paying for the full coverage because I've never had a rental car that's been more imperiled while in my possession than this car. So in other words, this chain scratching the shit out of the car is going to cost you a bunch of money.

Yes, it's going to be terrible. And so I'm like, I can't do this. And then at this point, it's that claustrophobic panic sweat, fight or flight. And you've got your kids. and the kids and like it's like and my dad's in the car with me. Kate is actually with the other so we sort of split up and I'm just like and the kids are like you know the kids also sense your own. They don't like seeing your parents in distress like so I just am like there is no way out but to back up back this up this corkscrew. Oh my god and I told the kids to get out of the car and I just backed it up three levels up this course group without a scratch and it was oh man the most i mean honestly like when you said that thing that becca said kate was not in the car which i was bummed because i really wanted her to be in the car for it but my dad watched the whole thing happen and when you said that thing about becca was like wow like i was like i felt like i had just won an olympic gold medal this was like an accomplishment in my life i mean that's

so much harder than what i did because the the main thing i pulled off that seemed to impress becca was somehow we ended up going because we're like talking on the phone to the person at the airbnb but the directions are not leading us in the right way and we were going up this road we're supposed to be going up and then all of a sudden it just it ends in an apartment building parking garage which is narrow and so anyway we went all the way under this apartment way down into the bowels of this garage only to realize we've got to back out that's got nothing on your whole corkscrew thing like i don't even understand how you kept your bearings it was you know the

The only thing was that it was a modern enough car that it had the back, you know, it had the back camera.

No worse. I would have been so screwed by trying to use the camera.

It also had that, like, the beeping, which I find is there for a reason, but also is, like, drives you insane if you're in that situation. Because it's just the whole time. Oh, dude, the harmonics? It's beeping.

I was calling it the symphony to back. I was like, would you like to take a trip to the symphony? because when we were getting out of our airbnb for about a half a mile it never stopped because you were never far enough away from exactly from a from a hazard so so you just kind of like you kind of went back by just like this was more an auditory experience for you than anything is like listening isn't it crazy listening it's beeping at you if there's the car anyway so we got it we

got it back up that's a you got it back up i got it back up the kids walked back up and then we got But I'm still, like, sweating. The other car rental was years earlier before we had kids. Kate and I went to Sicily. This is actually, we rented a smart car, which is the two-seater, which was amazing. This was so much fun to drive around Italy. This is the size car you want in Italy is a smart car. You could zip between things. You were never too big. You could get everywhere. I didn't have that feeling that you had of, like, I'm going to hit stuff. We had an amazing time. We drove around Sicily. Midway through the trip, we stopped at this little town. on the water i parked the car we go in we find a room the next morning i go to leave and it's got one of those like the parking brake where you push the bottom at the top and pull the lever up yeah right so it's on a steep decline and i cannot for the life of me get the parking brake to unlatch and i'm on it for 15 20 minutes working it sweating again that like panic claustrophobic feeling finally go back this pre-cell phone we go back into the pension we ask the woman to call we call the car rental place they're like fine you idiot american we're gonna send a guy guy comes 40 minutes later gut comes in gets in the car half a second what because you got to pull up oh i was just pushing down because it's on the hill and you're pressing the button and pushing pressing the button and i'm pushing but because it's on the hill the brake is engaged and to loosen the tooth of the gear yeah you gotta pull up he gets in half a second pulls up and does it and like looks at me like you you goddamn idiot and i say in italian i'm like oh i didn't know he goes like every single car works this way like doing the like shaking you know there's a certain

i'm making you're allowed chris as an italian american is allowed to do this yes i'm not

like this is the like mud eye like give me a break like giving me this i never felt more humiliated like having sweat in this car for 20 minutes in front of kate and just coming in doing it in half a second and being like every single car works this way

i also think some of this is because you're a new york kid like obviously you're very uh comfortable with automobiles at this point we've just heard the legend of the backwards spiral but i i'm wondering like you know because you grew up in the bronx uh you i'm guessing you did have a family car but like were you you're i don't think your teenage no you're right your teenage life around

cars was different than my teenage life around way way way way less i learned to drive much later i didn't learn to drive till i was like 19 or 20 i didn't spend like i wasn't driving a lot like i was it took me a much longer period of time to get comfortable with cars but yes those are my two

italian uh well car rental stories this is okay now maybe your smart car experience flies in the faces we got an email from a listener named lindsey who said we went to sardinia last year and rented a car they saved the biggest car for the americans they told us and i cannot tell you how closely i related to your driving stories at one point en route to a restaurant we pulled into a dead end alley from which we could not extricate ourselves and a kindly italian had to get behind the wheel and back the car out herself if not for her the car would still be there i i find this so troubling because i did ask i mentioned this on the show i asked the rental car people if we could have a smaller car which is nothing it's not the thing i would probably do in the u.s right and she said no we they brought the car over for you especially which might have to do with how italian car rentals are certainly not what happens if you're at avis or something they'll just give you a different car i'm wondering is it possible that they are trolling americans by giving us these big-ass cars? Well, here's the thing about Italian culture

that's so fascinating to me, because you sort of touched on this a little. It is one of the most friendly and inviting cultures I've ever experienced. Like, people, if you, you know, this has happened to me, like, I was walking in Sicily, and I asked someone, one in my Italian, like, oh, is there a wine store nearby? And he looks at me and he goes, well, what do you want? This is just a wine store. He goes, come, come. And he's like, we walk 50 minutes. He goes to the wine store. It's his cousin. He takes me through. You know, this is like, people are so friendly. They so want to help you. They want to show off their culture. They're so proud of their culture. But Italian customer service does not have that vibe. And it's a very weird mismatch because in other contexts, it's such a friendly, welcome thing. But, like, Italian car rental, ticket taker, it is a very curt, not super, like, chit-chat.

It's not coming from a place of wanting to be brusque or rude. In fact, what I was figuring out was my initial interaction would always feel a little brusque, like, oh. And it didn't help that I don't speak Italian, although I was making use of my Google Translate on my phone or whatever. There would always be a moment of being like, is this person mad at me? And then just realizing, no, some of it's language, some of it's just like we had this moment where we did a little grocery shopping in Sorrento because we had a kitchen at our Airbnb and we were with the cart, the shopping cart going around. And the woman who was checking us out, she took all the groceries out of the cart that Becca had been pushing. And she said, you need to spare the accent, but she said, you need a different cart, a different trolley. And we're like, why? And we had this one, this grocery cart that had this big metal box in it. And she goes, because that is for dog. We were pushing around the dog shopping cart in this Italian grocery store.

I love that country. So like, I just can't, I, you know, the last time I was there, I said to Kate, I was like, I definitely just want to lay a marker down now at 43, I guess we were at the time. And, like, I could see being the kind of person that when I'm in the 50s or 60s, like, we come here for a few months every year. Like, I just love Italy so much. I love Italians. And it is just a funny part of the weird disconnect between the incredible level of warmth and friendliness culturally generally and then that tone vibe in all customer service interactions.

Yeah, and sometimes actually in doing something that is actually, I would say, nicer and kinder than even in the American model, which is like when we would get a coffee and some kind of breakfast thing, it was unheard of for us to be taking it to go. And so what it would be is like I'm trying to like figure out how to – I'm getting like – I'm sweating, flop sweating as I get up to the front of the line to try to say my coffee order in Italian or whatever. and then the person's like kind of totally not interested really in like managing me or help me and they just kind of put the coffee down they put down the thing and then i'm trying to pay and they're like no no go sit and have it and enjoy it and then when you're done we assume you'll come back and pay for it like it's in a way a very trusting and very like nice like hey enjoy yourself take 10 minutes like no one's rushing you do totally but i'm in this americanized mindset totally well you probably want my money right now because otherwise i might just sprint down the street and not pay and like that doesn't even occur to folks there and you realize too like

how much i mean this is true within the u.s different geographic regions true i've this is very true when you get outside new york and then i think in the south of just like my impatience my like just everything has to go fast how if i'm on a line for a sec a second too long i'm anxious and like it's just i hate that i hate that character trait that i have it really is one of my least favorite character traits it's a real character trait i try to work on it but it is so amazing to be places where that is just not the background cadence of life and that's not just italy there's basically everywhere else it's not like that like um you know brazil all through south america turkey i mean many places that i've been in my life and it's it is one of the great things about travel is it takes a little while to adjust because you still have that there's a little bit of that white lotus thing happening in you where you're like hi there's my vacation i paid for this and i'm waiting and then i i do find that it it does kind of ratchet down and it's like i don't have to be anywhere i'm gonna have a perol spritz while i wait or whatever and and that that feeling is just such a great feeling when you can get to that place the other thing too and again i

don't have any actual like economic data to support this so i'm probably just kind of hopefully guessing or wishfully thinking but like we we and when rome we went to the sand a few different coffee shops we ended up going to this one a couple times because we liked it and the folks were pretty nice and there was a woman who worked at this coffee shop and she was there like both of the times we came in and we're just watching her kind of do her thing and operate and i was saying i bet you that this woman lives not super duper far from this place and we were in like a you know like a decent middle class part of rome i don't know what a middle class part of rome looks like but like

My theory was that because it is not a society, maybe as much, where your self-worth is attached so closely to your professional accomplishment or your title on the door, that maybe it allows for a little more, you have a job that you find rewarding, and again, I'm really guessing here, but that it's possible to have a job where you, this woman did not appear to own the coffee shop. She appeared to work there, but she appeared to be very comfortable and happy there. And my guess was, was not driving two hours to the exurbs to, you know what I mean? Like, I just felt like it seemed like there was something about the thing. Maybe it's also the drinking and the healthier relationship. It seemed like there was some shit that was figured out over there that we have somehow not figured out in the U.S.

Yeah. I mean, the sort of aggregate data version of that observation is that in the aggregate, the thing you could say about Europeans is that they've traded wealth for time. Yes. which is that they are less wealthy societies. If you control for – you use this PPP, which is a way of sort of controlling for different currencies. They're less wealthy societies. They are. America is a wealthier society. They have less inequality, but they also just have a lot more time. They have more free time. They all take August off. They have shorter work weeks. And they basically made at a societal level in country after country the trade of time for money. And they're also, I think, considerably happier in the aggregate. And I think there's definitely something to that.

Yeah, it seemed like, again, you know, this was not the most sort of rigorous study I was doing, but it certainly seemed like that was sort of the vibe. Until I arrived in Iceland for over one hour. Anti-Icelandic rant. Well, this is what's so funny is that, and I hope it's okay to say this, But, like, you know, I saw on Instagram that looks like you had an unbelievably lovely trip to Iceland with the family. And, like, you couldn't have had, like, I mean, the places that you visited, the photo op, your family, all of it was just gorgeous and looked amazing. I had the opposite experience, which was I was just trying to change planes in Iceland. And I just kept running up against what I thought was, in the way maybe Italian customer service is a little brusque, this was both brusque and then it followed through with being mean.

I would say, let me meet you where you are. Thank you. On a few things, which is that I don't love that airport. It's not a particularly well-designed airport. It's stressful. It feels like an airport that was probably built 10 years before the huge tourist influx hit Iceland.

I was going to say, with all that banking they did, didn't they improve the airport with all that?

I think they built that airport for a level of flight traffic that it doesn't that has been when fishing was still the main industry exactly and i think they so i think that's part of it yeah i also had a pretty stressful experience there where like that that gate that you go to where it's like the new customs check and you didn't realize that was

going to happen that's super stressful and everyone's freaking the hell out because no one

knew no one knew because everyone's getting there being like oh i'm boarding and then it's like oh now you're going to wait on a passport control line yeah um so all of that i agree with also on the weather like also let's just let's just say we just talked about all the things the italians have figured out that americans haven't and there are many we gotta move past the buses on the tarmac oh it's the worst it it sucks so bad and it's not just iceland like that is the case in a lot of european airports yeah the worst feeling in the world is to get to a place and then

get into a crowded bus it happened to us in dublin it happened it's it is i've always my i hate it my standard joke is like if i'm given a week to live i want to spend it on one of those buses because it will basically extend i'll live a hundred years it'll feel like a hundred years time stands absolutely still when you're on those things oh my god so yes that experience is also

and also the weather there again it's cold and raining like it rained a lot when we were there

Really? I wondered if there was like a summer period that's just like the absolute best. It's still it's still the weather's a little dicey.

It's 55 degrees and it rains a lot. There was a few there was one day that was perfect where you were like, wow, this is pretty amazing. It was like crystal clear side. But mostly there's one day Kate and I went for a hike and it just I mean, we just hiked in the rain for hours, like like wet down to every last fiber you're being. All of that said, I agree with you. I wouldn't characterize the Icelandic people as jolly. That wouldn't be the word I would use for them. But very funny, very witty, incredibly distinct place, incredible pride for the singularity of what they are, and really interesting people. To be in a place like that that is a combination of at once, it is so small. It's 600,000. people it is such a distinct it's an island it's got a distinct culture but because of that you also have to be pretty worldly because no one else anywhere in the world speaks your language so you're going to learn english you're going to learn other things you're going to travel there's a really cool combination culturally of people that are really proud of their heritage and and the and the the weird singularity that is iceland and also very worldly well-traveled interested curious um so i really i loved i really love the conversations and and uh we have with

icelandic people so just to defend yeah and i want to also be clear that i am totally aware that i have no leg to stand on mostly this was because i did find it shocking that the airport also is not like if you can't if you like right if you came through la guardia you're like new york sucks i

hate queens i hate queens because i was in la guardia i'd be like yes no that's that's no i

want to i want to acknowledge that i was most here's what i was struck by i don't have that many i haven't had very many run-ins with musicians of any note and it turns out two of them are icelandic that seems weird bjork and sigaros that seemed that seemed uh like it was weird it was it was a surprisingly high number of run-ins but i actually would like to go there and and you know do the whole thing the way that it's meant to be done and and experience it so it's actually it

would be a great as you were talking about it is a it would be a fun place for you it's a little different from the east coast it's so close that you can do like a four-day trip i think it's our kids went and they loved it but we were kind of the only people hiking with kids um it's a lot more of folks like you and becca who don't have kids where you could do there's like a really there's like 12 hour hikes you can do there's two-day hikes you can do where you sort of stop at a campsite there's and and the natural beauty is unlike i mean it's such a strange place but it It is the newest place on Earth, which is what makes it so cool. It's the newest landmass on Earth. And in fact, there's an island off Westman Island that just popped up in the 80s. What? Yeah. It's like Underwaddle Volcano made this island. That's actually the newest landmass on Earth. And so that sort of geologic story there and what that means about the landscape is very cool.

What we need to do is figure out a way to get Iceland Air to sign on as a sponsor of TBTL and do some sort of like- Yeah, an Australia trip. Yeah, sure. That was the other worst flight I've ever been on. Thanks, Qantas. I was like, maybe they'll... I mean, they gave us tickets for free, which was nice. But we were like... I was like, well, maybe they'll try to take care of the podcast boys. Maybe they'll put us up in at least Economy Plus or something. We were so far in the back of the plane. No, no, no, no. And then at some point, I think I might have told this story on the show, a flight attendant came up to us and said, oh, are you looking at Andrew? And I was like, now it's happening. And she said, we've got these pajamas from first class we'd like to give you. And they gave us each a pair of pajamas. Not a seat in first class, but like the night kit from first class. That's great. It's kind of a nice gesture. Hey, I know you have to go host a television show and do a lot of other important things. But can I just, and again, you don't have to get into this if you don't want to, but what's the latest on your book project?

Oh, that's interesting that you're asking me. I will scoop myself a little bit in this venue.

If you want to hide, honestly, if you want to hide some information, this is such a great place to do it.

Yeah. No one will ever find it here. Sorry, Tucker. So the book is now available for preorder. Okay. I worked on it for several years. I think it's the thing I've worked hardest on. It's called The Siren's Call, How Attention Became the World's Most Endangered Resource. And it's a book about attention and attention extraction and basically making the argument that attention has become the most important resource of our age. And the logic of capitalism means that it's being extracted against our will in ways that are profoundly alienating a and transform and often warp both public debate and our inner lives. and um so that's that's the book and and i um you know i have a i think you have a unique perspective on it from the perspective of all the media work you do and also having the show off demon inside you i also have the show off demon um and do media work and i think obviously those things are related these these things are um sort of central i think to our identities and our experience of the world but i think it's more more broadly shared by everyone in the age where we have basically a slot machine in our pocket at all times.

I'm so excited for this book because, I mean, first of all, I just think you're a really great writer, but also I love how you think about things. And this feels like the kind of essential question. Maybe, again, especially for people like me that are prone to putting my attention in places for reasons that maybe I don't even fully understand or about some emotional soothing or God knows what. But I'm really, really excited to read this book because I think you're like the perfect

person to write it. So congratulations. Thank you for saying that. And I think that's part of why this has been a very rewarding experience is because this is my third book, the first two books, which I'm both really proud of. This book of the three was the one where it just felt like only I could write this book or I had a genuinely, here's what I would say. I don't have expertise on anything but for this. Like the thing that I live every day is how to keep people's attention in my work and how to channel the flows of attention, how attention works in our society, and what that means for my daily job. The book, by the way, let me just say, if you want to pre-order, which I would encourage all 10s to do, if you go to sirenscallbook.com, sirenscallbook.com, you can go pre-order there, and that will take you. You can buy at your local bookstore or one

of the big behemoths i'll go i'm gonna go do that right now let's get that thing on the bestseller list let's get it did you happen to catch the um gia tolentino on ezra's show oh sure i did the

attentional scraping of coco melon yeah i mean coco melon is you know the the amount of hours on that thing and and coco melon is fascinating too because you know she wrote writes about this in the new yorker but if you you're you were sort of the wrong generation for it with addy but for for me you're you encounter it because somehow your kid encounters it and then they're watching it and you're like this is monstrous and dystopian and they're just locked in and you're like there is something happening at an attentional level here that is totally opaque to me that that that doesn't work on me i find this you know upsetting and they're like i'll take i could take 10 hours of this. And so you sort of encounter this feeling of alienation, which I think is really

the core experience of the attention age. You've also exactly described Kate's experience when you listen to TBTL in the car. That's totally true, actually. It's horrifying. Why is this winning my husband's attention right now? Anyway, hey, thank you so much for doing this today. I know you're so busy this was a big treat for us and very cool that we can say we have you on the show today of all days oh it was so much fun thanks for having me all right we'll see on tv tonight all right all right so that's gonna do it for today's edition of tbtl again big thanks to chris for coming on the program go to sirenscallbook.com and pre-order that bad boy we are going to be back here tomorrow with more imaginary radio for you we're going to be talking to pd aka pd usa a particular fascination of mine and andrews the singer and like you know instagram and tiktok performer who we are big big fans of so please do tune in for that on tomorrow show in the meantime have a great wednesday take care of yourselves and please remember, no mountain too tall and good luck to all. I'll say all of it. That's fine. Power out.

Thank you. You