00:00:37.740When we started talking about like doing this, it was like, okay, we're going to record a couple episodes and then we're going to release them and we'll get like, I don't know, maybe 10,000 downloads or something.
00:02:11.300It's just a platform where writers can post their work.
00:02:14.040And the only difference between it and the old school blogs is that you can subscribe to certain writers, which allows them to build a financially viable career off of it.
00:02:26.800I should also, I guess, disclose at the top that I have a sub stack.
00:02:30.760Conflict of interest here. Are we good to go?
00:02:33.340But I feel weird about it. Is it OK to do things as long as you feel weird about them?
00:02:37.240I mean, there's a sort of necessity to Substack because it's like the byproduct of a dying old
00:02:42.820media ecosystem, right? That just like can't sustain the careers of many journalists.
00:02:48.800And it's like, why compete for a tiny handful of positions at traditional outlets? Right.
00:02:53.900You can go independent, in many cases, make more money and not have to worry about an editor
00:05:44.940Somebody's got to talk about the campuses.
00:05:46.240Yeah. Writing about how liberals on college campuses were becoming authoritarians. You know, they're the real authoritarians. They're suppressing free speech and so forth.
00:05:54.820And there's a little bit of irony and trivia. Any real Barry Weisshead knows as an undergrad at Columbia in the mid aughts, she led a much reported on campaign against professors who she felt opposed Israel and labeled them racist and was like clearly angling to get them fired.
00:06:13.580The stuff that she is publicly complaining about and has built a career complaining about is stuff that she directly engaged in when she was in college.
00:06:22.780Yeah. I mean, it's almost as if you're implying that nobody has a content neutral belief about quote unquote cancellations. And it's actually the content of the speech that people think should or should not be punished. Interesting. I wonder where you're going with this.
00:06:37.040Her Substack is not just her writing.0.54
00:06:38.660She treats it like a sort of an outlet where she'll host other writers.
00:06:43.480I do want to read off a few examples of the top pieces from the last couple of years on
00:07:02.060Another classic cancellation story that I'm sure is not any more complicated upon further
00:07:08.940investigation. Clear cut cancellation. I refuse to stand by while my students are indoctrinated.
00:07:15.060Nice. My university sacrificed ideas for ideology. So today I quit. Hell yeah. I'm
00:07:20.600a public school teacher. The kids aren't all right. I'm noticing a theme, Peter. These are
00:07:26.480the same fucking pieces over and over again. And these are like the most popular in the history0.99
00:07:30.920of her sub stack so i've chosen a couple of uh select entries what was your criteria for choosing
00:07:38.820these before we dive in i sort of just rolled through it and at first i was like you know i'm
00:07:43.280just gonna talk about the dumbest stuff i can find but that was overwhelming yeah it's incredible
00:07:48.360i tried to pick what i thought were emblematic pieces that talked about themes that the sub0.94
00:07:56.640stack constantly hits on okay the first one the title of the piece is free bird on elon musk and
00:08:05.280twitter okay by walter kern oh oh who i like yeah well you're gonna put that in the past tense soon
00:08:13.700he wrote the novel up in the air yes i always sort of appreciated him because he's like a left-wing
00:08:19.540dude who lives in montana he's somebody with actual on the ground experience he's not parachuting in
00:08:24.080And I always appreciated that. But then a lot of these like rural whisperer people have become reactionary centrists over the last couple of years. And I'm afraid that's what you're about to tell me.
00:08:36.360That's basically what's happened. And this is a classic reactionary centrist tick where they're like, look, I'm actually quite a liberal. And they list off like 10 issues where they're a liberal, but they never talk about those issues. They only talk about the issues where they're conservative. And it's like.
00:08:51.900Yeah. And these causes that you never promote. It's like these private beliefs that like, oh, I believe in climate change.
00:08:57.340It's like, well, have you ever written about it? Right. You're not advancing these causes in any material way.
00:09:01.380And you are advancing the cause of like kids these days bullshit.0.78
00:09:05.400So he writes this on November 2nd. So right after Elon Musk took over.0.97
00:09:12.880But before all of like the related drama starts to unfold, he, of course, is a professional writer, which makes some of the writing,