00:17:50.740Well, you know, people, most people who run for office or who have run for office have a legal degree or they had a family legacy, like their dad was the mayor or the congressman or some sort of connection.
00:18:07.200And so it's like it's going to be passed down.
00:18:09.400I remember when I was in college, I would be so annoyed with the Bushes because it was like George P. Bush, who was the grandson.
00:18:15.640Well, I'm going to run profits. Well, it's inevitable because you come from a ton of money and you're connected. And it felt like there was so much distance between a regular citizen and somebody who comes from a political dynasty.
00:18:32.340And I think that's kind of going away now. And I think more people are getting so fired up about the direction of the country that we're seeing more people who come from different industries who are kind of rising up now and running for office. And that, to me, is a positive move forward.
00:18:50.700Yeah, I agree with that. And I think that's really interesting, too. And I think there's another reality television impact there. I remember when shows like American Idol first started out, and all of a sudden, it's like anyone thought they could be a massive pop star or rock star, literally anyone, right?
00:19:10.740And before that, it was it was much more gatekept. And so this suddenly opened up the possibility as reality television has generally opened up the possibility that anyone can be famous for just living their lives.
00:19:22.960It's almost democratizing fame. And now we see that bleed into social media. Now everybody can be a singer.
00:19:30.040Now everyone can be anything. Everybody can be anything. So that would obviously trickle down into politics.
00:19:34.800Yeah. Well, and I say this constantly, like, you know, when I'm at book events and people are like, tell me about your career as a journalist and how did you get here? And I'm like, well, I covered celebrities. I was a gossip columnist. I covered the rise of reality television. And then I moved on to cover politics. And frankly, it's the same game, just better hair.
00:19:55.060And then the two just melded into each other. Right. Where I mean, I used to cover Trump as a celebrity and then all of a sudden, look what happened. So I actually don't think that we can we can discount Spencer Pratt. I spent a lot of time interviewing Spencer, actually, for my book Celebrity Inc. I have a whole chapter on Spencer. It's a lot smarter than people give him credit for. Maybe I should put the Spencer Pratt chapter on the sub stack so people could read it.
00:20:56.720We're starting to see a lot more vets.
00:20:58.600Yeah, like I have a really great friend group that are all female Naval Academy graduates because I had a neighbor when I lived in Virginia Beach, and then I met all of her friends.
00:21:11.960So I'm actually going to a huge birthday party in Texas for that group.
00:21:16.880And they're all the most accomplished, ball-busting, get-it-done kind of women.
00:21:24.920And their classmates are running for office.
00:21:30.200And so I think you're going to see a lot of, like you just said, like a lot of veterans that are going to go out and run.
00:21:35.440And I think that that is a great thing, too.
00:21:37.220So that's who, by the way, they are the people that I trust most because the military requires you to have a thoughtful decision process when you're putting people's lives in jeopardy.
00:21:49.300And I feel like anytime I talk to somebody who's in the military about what's going on in the world, they always kind of calm me down.
00:21:56.540They're like, well, this could happen.
00:22:01.120So I think that that's what the kind of leadership that we need is specifically in this country are people that are thoughtful leaders. Also, the United States military is the most diverse workforce. It just is. So if you have somebody who is a high-ranking official in the military, they've already put that into practice.
00:22:21.800working with people who have diverse opinions and again just being thoughtful in their decision
00:22:27.660making process yeah yeah i agree i agree i think it's i mean i think the politics are about to get
00:22:35.560even more interesting than they are right now and spencer pratt is honestly just the beginning of it
00:22:41.220frankly i would like to see the left start pushing some people forward who are a little
00:22:45.860more charismatic who know a little bit better how to be this kind of political character just
00:25:28.200Before they became these massive franchises.
00:25:31.140So it feels like less reality TV where you're almost like it's almost like a doc series because they're they're so unaware of their celebrity yet.
00:25:40.180which is kind of great so like one woman is married okay her name's rula she's married to
00:25:45.740brian and then you find out that uh brian was previously married and rula was the mistress
00:25:52.060and now brian has another mistress and she is getting really involved in their business
00:25:59.180which like their their actual place of business and then you find out that brian has a tracker
00:26:04.800on Rula's car which means like is she is she cheating or is this more like are they involved
00:26:11.620in some shady business and they are afraid that the other person might tell on the other it's like
00:26:16.560so complicated and intricate and then you get the sense that the other women know what's going down
00:26:23.800and they're waiting for it to kind of all play out so it almost feels like godfather meets early
00:26:29.220first season of like Real Housewives of New Jersey. Oh, I mean, yeah, that's exactly what
00:26:34.780I want to watch. Speaking of Godfather, I just found out that my friend and one of my favorite
00:26:39.900authors, Adriana Trigiani, is writing a new book, and it's The Godfather from Connie's perspective.
00:26:47.180Oh, now that, see, now you're talking. Now that's interesting. Oh, that's good.
00:26:52.580I know. I know. It's currently in the process of writing it.
00:26:55.720It's coming. It's not coming out till 2027. I literally just saw it on my Instagram feed and I'm like, OK, I'll smash that preorder button right now because this concept is I didn't know we needed it. But of course we need this.
00:27:09.160OK, so what I'm currently obsessed with, I want to write a piece about is I just did two episodes about the Martha Moxley case.
00:27:18.960We don't know about the Martha Moxley case.
00:27:20.740So Martha Moxley, in 1975, October 30th, 1975, this 15-year-old girl in Greenwich, Connecticut, which you know is like a tony, beautiful town.
00:27:32.760She's at a neighbor's house, the Skakels, and she's last seen with one of the seven kids, which is, he's one of the six boys of the family of seven.0.91
00:27:42.980He's the 17-year-old, and they are last seen together.
00:27:45.700The next day, she's found deceased in the backyard of her house, which is around the corner.
00:27:51.340She's been bludgeoned to death with a golf club.
00:27:54.560And so for the last 51 years, it's been a question of who did it.0.92
00:27:59.900And the one Skakel brother was convicted and then he was released from jail.0.79
00:28:05.400So it's like it was solved and then unsolved.0.65
00:28:07.900And what's most interesting is the Skakels are the first cousins of the Kennedys.
00:28:12.660Oh, I knew their name sounded a little familiar.
00:28:21.260And I want to write an article where I, so when it went to trial, they used her diary entries.
00:28:28.680And when I started to look back at it, every person that wrote about that case, you know, for the first 15 years, 20 years, were all men.
00:28:38.300The ones who wrote books and articles.
00:28:40.420The prosecution, the defense men, the judge men.
00:28:43.020And I would love to relook at the diary entries and through the lens of the modern language that we now understand because of true crime, like coercive control and male entitlement and all of these things, just to see if we see it in a different way.
00:29:01.380Oh, yeah. No, I think I need you to do that like ASAP.
00:29:05.280I know I am. That's like I'll be working on that today.
00:29:08.040And good, good, good. Yeah. No, that's great. That's so great. I mean, I think if we look back at any of these true crime stories from the 60s, 70s, 80s, and honestly, even 90s, that if we looked back from a female perspective or a female lens, we would have a totally different idea about them.
00:29:27.100I agree. That's my mission right now.0.80
00:29:31.000So that's a good podcast episode to go back and listen. I did two episodes about it with a man who did a podcast series for NBC Studios. So the episodes are called The Murder of Martha Moxley. And it has been the case that I've been most obsessed with my entire life because I first read a book about it by Dominic Dunn, if you remember him.
00:29:52.480Of course I remember Dominic Dunn. Yes.
00:29:54.500The book is called A Season in Purgatory, and I recommend reading that.
00:29:57.880And then my sister and I were just obsessed.
00:32:45.820And the Valley Forge Church still to this day has a plaque.
00:32:49.660In fact, my friend Emily, who just moved to Philly, went to Valley Forge to the chapel and was like, I went looking for the plaque because you mentioned it.
00:33:33.780He seemed to have been working with the teacher she was having an affair with to maybe conspire to kill her and her kids and to get rid of the kids' bodies.
00:33:45.080oh my god now i believe i can't i'm forgetting right now if it's lower marion or i think it's
00:33:50.280lower marion what's crazy is that right around the time that this happened there was a new pool
00:33:57.000put into the high school and people speculated that the kids bodies were thrown underneath the
00:34:03.960cement when they put the pool in stop it i'm not kidding you so hbo apparently is making a series
00:34:11.440about it that is the other great obsession of my life what happened to the children what happened
00:34:16.080to the children what do you think where do you think nancy is um i think she was actually taken
00:34:21.980probably not far from the house and she was probably killed right away or i think she had a
00:34:27.720heart attack when she was taken out of the house and that because i interviewed an fbi expert and
00:34:34.360they said this is like the this doesn't make any sense in terms of a kidnapping she's not
00:34:39.700she has to take all this medication you don't you don't give yourself a lot of runway in terms of
00:34:45.380like ransom right right i hate to say it but i just feel like her relatives savannah's relatives
00:34:51.840are a little sketchy i mean look my this is a constant subject in one of my group texts with
00:35:00.280the ladies that i went to paris with and you know it's just like you know once a week where's nancy
00:35:05.460that that is a theory among among the group texts they're like something is off with the
00:35:11.360i think something's off yeah something felt off something felt off i mean god bless savannah i
00:35:15.500feel so terrible for her but also i wonder too if like human behavior is an interesting thing
00:35:21.500and you and i study people all the time and i wonder if deep down inside when she goes to sleep
00:35:27.540at night she knows something's weird too but just doesn't want to see it because you don't want you
00:35:31.920wouldn't want to see something like that no no um i mean we're gonna see the where where's nancy
00:35:37.420documentaries coming out at some point oh i'm sure i think people are going to be very interested in
00:35:43.060because it's like you kind of follow the money right like weren't there any relatives that
00:35:48.260who were in need of money money yes yes because this is what i want oh that's the other thing
00:35:53.660the fbi experts it was like she lives in tucson it's not you know for example he said he's an
00:36:00.420ex-FBI or ex-FBI agent and also was high ranking in the military. And now his job is he protects
00:36:08.320CEOs from potential kidnappings. And he said, I have got clients who have mothers that live
00:36:17.660like in the middle of the country in like a neighborhood without a, you know, a gate or
00:36:24.440security system and they like ai ceos for example right and that would be a target because they'll
00:36:32.540just they would pay the money because money yeah every time but this is he said just this doesn't
00:36:38.220make sense like she's in tucson but she's you know a tv personality like a ai ceo nobody would know
00:36:46.840it would just be like they're gonna pay the money and they're gonna pay the money no matter what