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Episode 952022-09-10EnglishMembers only
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In-depth read · Key ideas, reasoning, and examples, organized by topic.

§01A Moncler hat and the question of free clothes

The episode opens with banter about a hat one host wore the previous week. A tweet about it started trending, and the hosts joke that the hat has now sold out. They use this to grumble that a show with no advertising should at least get free clothes, and one host asks where his cut as an influencer is. The brands named are Italian, and the speaker says he knows the entrepreneurs behind them.

The exchange is pure comic filler: it sets a loose, teasing tone and produces no claim that needs checking.

§02A surprise birthday party and Kevin Hart's roast

One host describes a surprise birthday party built around a poker game, which several of the other hosts and their wives attended. According to him it came together only four days before the birthday, and the host who missed it explains that he was at Burning Man.

The highlight, as they tell it, was Kevin Hart, who stood up with no preparation and delivered an ad-lib roast of everyone. The speakers call him possibly the funniest person in the world. One host says the emcee put him on mid-program rather than last, which left the next speaker having to follow him.

The host who had to follow him says he threw away his written jokes and simply told a story instead, likening the experience to being punched by Mike Tyson. Others tease that the emcee did it on purpose and that the emcee is about as funny as a root canal. All of this is the hosts' own good-natured ribbing.

§03Farewell to the Code Conference

The conversation turns to the Code Conference, where the poker game was held and which is ending after twenty years. A host congratulates Cara Swisher and Walt Mosberg, who ran it together for many years, and says that Jim Bancoff of Vox is due to run it next year, as he describes it.

The speakers recall that the first conference featured Steve Jobs as its first speaker, and that two of them were present when Gates and Jobs gave a joint talk. They praise the legacy Swisher documented and say they have many memories of the place. They also wonder where the poker game goes next, joking that it might land at their own summit.

§04Press requests for a profile and wariness of the media

One host says the podcast now draws too many high-profile people and that three or four press outlets have asked to profile it. They have declined. The reasoning offered is that the outlets are competitors, that a piece would likely be a hit piece, and that the podcast is taking influence, clicks and views away from them.

One host asserts, as his own view, that such outlets are ideologically motivated and write hit pieces on people who contradict the official narrative. Another host pushes back by asking whether he is not ideologically motivated himself. The same speaker adds that he likes the independent voices, pointing to the Substack movement and to Cara Swisher, who left the New York Times and now publishes independently with Vox.

§05The New Republic's approach and a joke taken literally

A host says the New Republic is also preparing a piece and that he has no idea why. He recounts that a reporter asked about a joke he made, a comment about visiting a co-host in the White House in twenty years, and asked whether that meant the co-host would be writing for a president. He says the reporter simply did not understand it was a joke.

Another host says he has no time to talk to them and calls the magazine just another left-wing outlet that polices speech, in his words, contrasting it with the days when Michael Kinzley ran it. He says the outlet sent questions, including why he supported a recall effort (the transcript garbles the name). His PR person replied by pointing to the show's transcripts, since he advocated for the recall every week for two years, and the reporter's reaction was to note that he had discussed it on the podcast.

§06Refusing the profile and the complaint about lazy reporting

A host continues his complaint about the New Republic. In his telling, the reporter seemed to think he was just a right-wing donor who tried to get someone removed from office (the transcript garbles the name), and he says he called the exchange a waste of his time and told the reporter to read his tweets and watch the show first. Another host calls that lazy reporting: why write a profile without doing the reading?

The group then jokes about turning every inbound request into on-air material: say no, then discuss it on the podcast, and tell outlets that if they want a quote they can transcribe the show. The same host offers his own sarcastic quote, that he would happily spend his time if Michael Kinsley were still the editor. He adds, as his own assessment, that the profile cannot be fair because the outlet is now among the "speech police".

He also says he was the first person he is aware of within Silicon Valley to criticize that official's performance. Another host replies that the recall was bipartisan and that the speaker cannot be written off as just a partisan. The speaker agrees that is not how he approaches these issues. This is the speakers' own account of the recall and is not checked against anything here.

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