Ryan Millsap, Chairman & CEO of Atlanta-based Blackhall Studios, is one of today’s top entertainment executives! With a vision for Blackhall that’s ambitious, energizing and boundless, Millsap is blazing a trail through the heart of the South – and setting his sights on the future of entertainment. Listen and learn as Ryan Millsap journeys through the myriad industries, people and landscapes that traverse the complex and dynamic world of film production.
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Ryan: I'm Ryan Millsap, host of the Blackhall Studios Podcast from Atlanta, Georgia. I'm an entrepreneur mostly by necessity, because I have massive authority issues, and also by constitution – as the entrepreneurial life is filled with things I love: freedom, adventure, creativity and imagination. When I began this leg of my journey into the entertainment industry, you may find it interesting to know that my background before this was all commercial real estate.
And then I built Blackhall Studios as a specialty real estate project for production giants like Disney, Sony, Warner Brothers, and Universal to have a place to ply their skilled craft of production. I'm from Los Angeles, but I moved to Atlanta six years ago. I've done business all over the world, and I know few places with the dynamism of Atlanta. It's a world-class city with a huge economic future as a center of commerce for a global economy. On this podcast, we get local and global and talk to people who are inspirational, sensational, sometimes motivational, but at all times somehow tied to the ecosystem that is the culture and business of entertainment as it relates to Blackhall Studios.
Joel Stein is a dichotomy of sorts. His career had a less than auspicious beginning as a writer for Martha Stewart Living, where she reportedly fired him twice in one day. And for 20 years, he wrote a regular humor column for Time Magazine -- not noted for being one of your funnier publications.
Along the way, he became a Boy Scout at age 39, took Paul Rudd to a bar to find a straight man to date, invited George Clooney to his house for dinner, covered Joe Biden in 2008, and crafted a cover story on Michael Jordan. That's versatility. He wrote 22 cover stories for Time; he has five failed television pilots under his belt. He's contributed to The New Yorker, GQ, the Los Angeles Times, Men's Health, and appeared on The Today Show, Nightline, VH1 -- just about any show that asks him. And he has a really funny take on Real Time with Bill Maher.
A favorite Stein quote: “I'm all in for a little high school bullying. You don't become a successful humor columnist without it. If it weren't for bullying, I'd be a contract lawyer.” He's also a bit of an anarchist, trying to join our conference call in stealth mode, just to listen in on our conversation. My kind of guy.
He'll tell us about his new book: ‘In Defense of Elitism: Why I'm Better Than You and You're Better Than Someone Who Didn't Buy This book.’ Joel Stein is a talented writer, a reluctant philosopher, and a funny man. All in all, a fantastic conversation, coming up on the Blackhall Studios Podcast.
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Sarah: I'm super excited about this interview with Joel Stein.
Ryan: He sounds like a fun guy
Sarah: When he comes to Atlanta, I want to do a program with you and him. I love it and it's great, but entertainment. But I think that we should absolutely talk about people -- like with Joel, it took two days. He got right back to me, which I love. I'm going to call Joel’s cell to make sure... or should I give him a minute? He's not late yet. It's 12:59. Let's see...
Ryan: I was just laughing at his book on elitism.
Sarah: Oh my God. I think that is a blast.
Ryan: It's amazing. I have enough Ayn Rand philosophy in made to believe that if the elites disappear, that everything falls apart. Not hard to convince me that there that there are layers of society, right?
Sarah: There he is.
Joel: Hey, I was just going to try and listen in and find out what you guys talk about.
Ryan: I love that. We're just talking about your book, which I have not read, but I love the title.
Joel: I'll read it out loud to you right now.
Sarah: The whole thing, right?
Ryan: Please. It's amazing.
Joel: You've got time.
Ryan: I would love that. Are you kidding?
Joel: I'll do that -- in a nice bedtime voice. I did it for the audiobook, so I have a little practice.
Sarah: I really love that. So, I'm going to mute, and Ryan -- take it away.
Ryan: Hi, this is Ryan Millsap. Welcome to the Blackhall Podcast. Today we are lucky. We've got Joel Stein: author, comedian, scriptwriter extraordinaire. Joel, welcome to the program.
Joel: Oh, my. This is quite an honor. Especially since I've only been on a stage for stand-up once, for a story, so I can't call myself a comedian, because it did not go well. But other than that, the ‘extraordinaire’ part is correct.
Ryan: You know, in a world of ideas, if you can live in that world and survive -- you’re extraordinary.
Joel: Well, then, many of us are extraordinary right now just for surviving.
Ryan: That's for sure. Well, one of the things that we were talking about before we started this was this notion of elitism that you wrote an entire book about: ‘In Defense of Elitism.’ Share with the people listening a little bit about what that means to you.
Joel: Well, let me first define the kind of elitism I'm talking about, which I get into about halfway through the book -- what I would call ‘intellectual elites’ versus what I later call the ‘boat elites.’ So I'm not talking about the 1% that that Bernie likes to yell about. By the elite, I'm talking about the same way that Sarah Palin or Rush Limbaugh defines the elite, which are people in government, in the media, in academics, who kind of are more interested... the way I describe it in the book is, my people are far less interested in owning a yacht than giving a TED talk. It's people who compete in the world of status and ideas and influence.
Ryan: And how do you defend that?
Joel: That's a great question. I defend that by the last three and a half years. I defend that by what's going on right now, and who we're choosing to listen to during this pandemic. Or, I think most of us are not looking to people who think they know in their gut how many ventilators each hospital should have. Maybe that's a bad example because ventilators aren't proven to be that useful. But we're not talking about people who, in their gut, just kind of think, “If disinfectants work on packages, maybe they'll work in your body.” We're leaning more on people with real expertise in immunology. You know, the people who have studied these things.
And my book is not just about politics. It's about the fact that when you go to the doctor, and you’ve looked up your symptoms on WebMD, and then you argue with your doctor who tells you, “You're wrong; you don't have cancer,” you're throwing away the fact that they went to medical school and that they've seen thousands of patients. You're making a really bad mistake. And then when things get bad -- like, you have cancer -- you go and look really carefully at those framed diplomas on the wall. And when things get serious, like they are now, I think people realize how important expertise is, and how people who say they just ‘know from their gut’ the right thing to do are not the people to follow.
Ryan: Well, how does this fit together with the ideas of Ayn Rand?
Joel: Probably not. I've tried to read one of those novels and failed. But libertarianism in general is definitely less about cooperation and globalization. And, in general, that hasn't proven as effective. We're a very communal species. That's kind of how we've survived, and that's how we've succeeded so well on this planet -- much like ants, the other hugely communal species. So, my book is not about libertarianism. In fact, the one person I spend time with in the book who used to be a libertarian, Tucker Carlson, isn't anymore. So, no, it's not about economics and politics that way. It's more about the death of expertise.
Ryan: Well, what I'm really thinking about with Ayn is, she makes the argument in her book, ‘Atlas Shrugged,’ that if the ‘one-percenters’ in the way that you're describing them: the intellectual elite, the real thinkers, the people that are dealing with reality at the deepest sense, whatever that is -- spiritually, in physics, in medicine, et cetera. if that 1% were to disappear or just say “I'm out,” then society falls apart.
Joel: Yeah.
Ryan: It's the moments like this when you need that intellectual elite. You need an Anthony Fauci to come out and say, “Hey, this is what's going on.” And everybody starts to go, “Wait a minute. That guy sounds like he knows what he's talking about.”
Joel: Yeah. Especially if you've organized a pretty complicated society. Like, the people who are saying this moment has proven that nationalism is correct because we didn't have all of the ventilators we needed, and we had to buy stuff from China -- I think they’re missing the point of globalization. The point is, what if a French company develops a vaccine? And what if a Chinese factory can pump out syringes much more quickly? Then we're much more interested in globalization.
And being able to do everything yourself has really led a lot of countries way backwards. Like in Brazil, when they wouldn't let anyone make cell phones outside of their country -- and I believe they're still on BlackBerries over there. So, yes -- I think, in an increasingly complicated society where none of us understand most of the things we use every day -- like, I know we're all at home now. We're learning to cook. But even that was the kind of skill that was going away. We're all really, really dependent on the technical expertise of each other. And I'm worried that a lot of people want to throw that away.
Ryan: That's so true. You know, we talk about how if everybody on the planet who knew how to do a heart surgery disappeared, how long would it take us? How many years, generations, would it take us to be able to do heart surgery again?
Joel: Oh, I know I can't. If you sent me backwards in time, and I thought I had all this knowledge just from being in the 21st century, and the first thing they asked me to do was to build a bridge over a stream -- I'd have no idea. I mean, I went to a really good college. I've been to really important conferences. I have no idea how to build a bridge -- like, a basic footbridge.
Ryan: Well, the same analogy with the heart surgeon actually applies to concrete. So, if everybody on the planet who actually knew about concrete -- like, really knew about it -- disappeared, how many generations would it take us to get back to a place where we could build skyscrapers or bridges?
Joel: Will we still have the YouTube videos on how to make concrete?
Ryan: No, you don't get any of that. All that stuff has disappeared. We're starting from scratch, right? You don't get to build on any of the expertise. You don't even know where to mine this stuff. You don't even know where the Portland cement comes from or how to get it out of the ground.
Joel: By the way, when you threw in mining, you were already way beyond my knowledge of concrete. I didn't know the mining had to take place.
Ryan: No, there are entire Portland cement mines that grind away to create the base. Then rocks are added, et cetera. Whatever.
Joel: All cement comes from Portland, Oregon -- that’s what I just learned.
Ryan: Yeah.
Joel: And that's amazing. That's a fact all your listeners should throw out, because that’d be great at parties.
Ryan: The people in Portland are going to be so pissed.
Joel: You don’t think of Portland that way, either -- with all those hipsters. But how did Portland get built? I never thought about it. Clearly, concrete mining.
Ryan: Yeah. From Portland cement. Tell me about some of your background in philosophy and ideas. I mean, tell me what you studied; how you got interested in the global idea chain. Give me some of that intellectual history for yourself.
Joel: So, I'm the last person who should be writing a book like this. In normal times, when there isn't populism everywhere in the globe threatening us, I would be writing penis jokes about or jokes about my family -- I spent a lot of time as a humor columnist for Time Magazine. I was there for about 20 years, and my previous book was about finding out that we were having a boy. My wife and I were panicking that I'm incapable of raising a boy. And I went out and did a bunch of manly stuff to learn how to be a man. I became a Boy Scout in my late 30s. Then I wound up fighting Randy Couture, and doing three days of boot camp in the army. So, that's the kind of stuff I'm supposed to be doing. But when politics have gotten to the point where humor columnists are writing about it, I think it's a bad, bad sign.
I'm not a political scientist; not a philosopher. I'm just a journalist who went out and got kind of panicked when Trump won. I was going to this party down the block. I live in Los Angeles -- in the bluest of the blue kind of areas, even in Los Angeles -- and I was going to a party.
Ryan: Brentwood?
Joel: Oh, no. Actually, it's true. There's always a bluer spot in L.A. So I'm in the Hollywood Hills.
Ryan: It's pretty blue.
Joel: Yeah, but we can be beaten by Brentwood, or the Pacific Palisades, or even Santa Monica, I'm sure. So, I was going to this party four houses up on my block that the liberal radio host Stephanie Miller was throwing for the election. They were all getting drunk and having a good time. And I had brought a bottle of Trump Blanc de Blanc, the Virginia sparkling wine, thinking we would open it and toast Hillary Clinton's victory, and mock him for the fact that he had tried to become an ‘elite’ by making this Virginia sparkling wine that he loved so much. And, of course, it started to go the other way.
I started to panic -- not because a Republican had won. I have friends who make great wine who are Republicans. And plenty of Republicans have won before. I’ve lived happily through that -- sometimes better, sometimes worse. I was panicked because it was the first time the elite had lost since, probably, Andrew Jackson. And I was I was really, really worried about what was going to happen to our country -- like, truly just scared.
What I tend to do when I'm scared -- because I have no actual skills, as we've established -- is to go and try and find out more information, because usually, when I do some reporting and look into things, they're not quite as scary as what my anxiety kind of spirals them out into. So, the first thing I did was, I looked up what the county was with the highest percentage of Trump voters. I thought they'd let me come down there and live there for a week. So, I went down to this town in Texas called Miami (pronounced ‘Miamah.’)
Ryan: How do you spell that.
Joel: You spell it like Miami, which is very confusing. I kept calling the mayor of the town. His receptionist would pick up and say, “Miamah, Texas.” Except not in a thick accent -- just plainly, “Miamah, Texas.” Like, why is she saying “Miamah?” It turns out, everyone says “Miamah,” but they didn't have thick accents. So I started to think, “Maybe the original founders of this town had thick accents.” But I quickly learned that was the name of the tribe in that area. It was a huge area.
Ryan: Ah, yeah. The Miami tribe. Is the college pronounced “Miamah” or “Miami?” You know, Miami University, in Florida?
Joel: Oh, no. Not in Florida. That's different; that's named after a lake there. But the University of “Miamah” -- “Miami?” I don't know which one it is. It's in, like...
Ryan: It's in this town?
Joel: No, no, it's a big college in, like... I want to say Missouri.
Ryan: Ohio? You mean Miami University? They say “Miami” -- “Miami University.”
Joel: I think it’s a tribe.
Ryan: Okay.
Joel: So anyway, there's this town. 96.4% of people there voted for Trump. I went there and hung out with them for a week to find out kind of why they hate me. And it was really interesting.
Ryan: What'd you find out?
Joel: Well, I got really scared before I went down. Everyone I knew, my family, even my friends, were like, “You’ve got to be careful down there.” They were really scared for my safety. They were like, “Don't tell them you're a Jew, whatever you do.”
Ryan: Had you never lived around blue-collar, redneck, working-class folks that were conservative?
Joel: No. I grew up in New Jersey, and then I went to college in the Bay Area. Then I moved to Manhattan, and then I moved to Los Angeles. So, no. I did a summer job for one summer in Paradise, California, which has since burned down in a fire. But even that place was more like a retirement community. They were conservative, but not in this way.
Ryan: Not in a ‘non-elite,’ super locally-informed kind of way.
Joel: Yeah, because Paradise, California is right next to Chico, California, which is a college town. And it's mostly a retirement community. So, no -- I'd say I have not lived in a blue-collar area my whole life.
Ryan: Right. And particularly, not a blue-collar area that was also conservative.
Joel: Did you grow up in a blue-collar area?
Ryan: I went to three different high schools.
Joel: Did you get thrown out, or did your parents move?
Ryan: A little of both. But really, it was my parents moving. I grew up in Scottsdale, Arizona, but I grew up really kind of on the border of Scottsdale and Phoenix, where I went to schools that were half elite -- half economically elite -- and half economically challenged. It was a really interesting mix, because it was like, the rich and the poor. It was not super middle class, right? It was the rich and the poor. And then I went to high school in California, in a small town south of Stockton -- a little town called Manteca, California.
Joel: Yeah. You made that up.
Ryan: I know, right? You know what Manteca means in Spanish? It means ‘lard.’ That’s the name of that town.
Joel: No!
Ryan: Oh, yeah. Straight up. Manteca.
Joel: Why would they name a town ‘Manteca?’
Ryan: I have no idea. It doesn't make sense.
Joel: I just gave this amazing story about how they named the town I was in for one week. You lived in this place, and you don’t know?
Ryan: I know, I know. But I wasn't as intellectually curious when I was in high school -- at least not about that. After this call, I'm going to go try to figure that out. But when I moved to this town, it was interesting for me, because I didn't realize that I'd never truly lived amongst the poor, white, conservative world.
Joel: A rural world, right?
Ryan: It was rural. Yeah. But it was also small-town California, Northern California -- which is based on agriculture, but it was still a town. There were a lot of working-class people. There were warehouses -- all kinds of stuff. But what was fascinating to me is, I had moved from an area where we were solidly middle class. I knew lots of people who had lots more money, and I knew lots of people who had a lot less money. But I moved to this town where suddenly, everybody thought we were rich.
Joel: Ah. How’d that feel?
Ryan: Well, it felt bizarre because I knew that wasn't true. I used to tell them, “Listen, I'm not rich; you're just poor. There's a huge difference. Right? My family's not poor, but you guys are broke. You think because my dad has a job and my parents are married, that we're rich -- and that's just not true.” Then we would have these... they would not be long arguments, because they're not from the intellectual elite by any stretch. Yet it was an amazing experience, because it grew my breadth of understanding about the fabric of our culture in a way that I could have never learned if I'd only stayed among the conservative economic elite, and/or the liberal economic elite, and/or the liberal intellectual elite, which I've lived amongst as well. So, what it did for me was, it gave me a comfort with the layers of society that I'd never had previously.
Joel: Do you still feel that comfort?
Ryan: Well, I feel comfortable, because I've lived amongst people of every economic level and every race and every creed. I mean, truly, I feel comfortable everywhere at this point. But I've lived deeply enough in those circles of people to know what makes them tick. You talk about your anxieties and fears; I get their anxieties -- I don't necessarily agree with their anxieties and fears, but I can empathize with them and be compassionate toward them.
And I don't feel unsafe, because I'm a six foot three, 220-pound white male, walking around as privileged as can be. I got an amazing education. I had access to anything that I dreamed of. When I look at like what my life story is, it's not hardship. It was curiosity that could be then fueled -- which is what I hear in you. Like, I hear tons of curiosity, but I hear curiosity that has been able to be fueled, which is awesome.
Joel: That's a great part of being a journalist. I mean, that's the part, right? Everything else is very secondary. I mean, I went into it to become a writer. I didn't care about the reporting. But what I eventually learned when I was sitting in a sitcom writers room for months at a time -- basically in a meeting all day long, which is what a sitcom writer's room is -- I realized that all the great things, besides my family, in my life were due to reporting. All the cool experiences I had. And that was worth so much more than a job that maybe paid more, or had more prestige in some way. Just being able to be interested in something, and then meet the people that that do those things, is kind of amazing.
Ryan: So, your curiosity leads you to Miami, Texas, and what happens?
Joel: Did you read Hillbilly Elegy?
Ryan: No, but that sounds like a great name.
Joel: Cool book. I expected kind of the rural West Virginia life he describes growing up in -- like you were talking about in your ‘lard town’ -- which is very poor people who aren’t very educated, probably extremely racist, and a little scary. So, I was panicked when I got to the bed and breakfast that I was staying at, which the mayor didn't even know about. There's 500 people in this town. I asked the mayor where to stay, and he told me to stay an hour and a half away at a Holiday Inn. But somehow, someone had listed their house on Airbnb and created a bed and breakfast.
I stayed there, and I was really panicked. As panicked as anyone's ever been to stay in bed and breakfast. The woman who was running this place was just so lovely and cool. And I quickly learned that this town is not at all poor. In fact, the average income there was significantly higher than in Los Angeles. They mostly worked in the oil and gas industry, which was not doing well, but they were pretty well paid. And there were also some old-money ranchers in town -- these families who had kind of run the town forever.
Ryan: Always. It’s always ranchers.
Joel: Yeah, I know. There's an elite everywhere, in every variety -- the intellectual elite and the ‘boat elite.’ Even in a town of 500 people, where everything is high school. So, there was one cafe that's open sometimes; there's was one store which was only open Saturdays for a few hours, and was actually just this guy selling his hoarder father's old stuff now that his dad had died. Like, that was the only store in town. And they were also pretty well educated. Like, the percentage of people that went to college was higher than in Los Angeles.
And so, they were not at all what I expected. And they were so nice. I didn't pay for a meal the entire week I was there. They either had me in their house, or they brought me to this cafe, and they really welcomed me into their lives. I got to see kind of how they viewed the world. I think the citification and globalization of the world was something they found really threatening.
Now, political scientists will tell you that people do not vote selfishly. They vote almost completely altruistically. So, when my liberal friends yell about how stupid Trump voters are because they're voting against their own interests -- because they have less money, or they're soybean farmers who are voting for Trump, even though the tariffs are going to hurt them -- they don't realize people are voting for what they hope is a better country, just like rich liberals will vote for higher taxes even though it hurts their bottom line. So, these people really worry about globalization and citification, and the change in America.
So, when they talk about Los Angeles to me, they picture homeless people. They picture people not knowing their neighbors. They picture people on their cell phones all day instead of on each other's porches, not going to church, not seeing each other every week at church and having a meal together. And they're not wrong.
Ryan: I mean, I can say that that actually sounds like LA.
Joel: It does. It sounds like everywhere I've ever lived, and it's dystopic. They cannot understand why anyone would want to live in Atlanta or New York, or any of these cities, and they fear that their way of life, which they find superior and in many ways is superior, is disappearing -- and it is disappearing. This town has been shrinking for decades and is continuing to shrink. So that's what they worry about.
Ryan: So, do you think they introduced the coronavirus to force us all to go back home and make friends with our neighbors?
Joel: No. It's interesting. I mean, from talking to the people in Miami -- they're social distancing. That's the other thing that drives me crazy about the liberal bubble I live in. Like, it gets real black and white real fast. “Those people don't believe in science, and they don't believe in the coronavirus.” No -- everyone in Miami is social distancing. They're having church in a parking lot -- like a drive-in church, even though it’s a tiny church. The minister is standing in the parking lot, and they tune into a radio station. They believe in the coronavirus.
Ryan: And they believe in ideas that allowed them to vote for a human being. Whatever you think about our president, I think they're pretty ‘eyes wide open’ about what kind of a person he might or might not be.
Joel: Oh, yeah. These people in Miami would not want to have him over to their house for dinner. The way they described him to me is, they see this existential threat to their way of life. And they would say, “Look, if you have, an infestation of cockroaches --” which is an unfortunate analogy, for many reasons -- but they would say, “And you hired an exterminator, and that exterminator’s butt crack was showing, and he was cursing, but he got the job done -- you would hire him again.”
Ryan: You’d even recommend him to your friends.
Joel: You might even go to a rally that he had. Maybe.
Ryan: Well, as long as the only rallying cry was “This guy will get rid of the cockroaches!”
Joel: Exactly.
Ryan: That’s my experience, too, with, like, people that I know that are more extreme right, and Trump supporters. They don't condone the man's humanity or inhumanity -- however you interpret it. But they are more fearful of what the alternative might be. So it's exactly what you're talking about. It’s hiring an exterminator. I mean, the analogy is kind of scary, but it's hiring somebody to deal with a bad problem.
Joel: Yeah. And I think I horribly disagree with them on the badness of this problem. I definitely think I learned a lot from them and their way of life. And I got reassured that they weren't horrible, racist people. But I think that their plan for a society of 300 million people -- or for a globe, because this kind of populism is going on everywhere -- is truly dangerous, and can send us back to the dark ages. So, even though I think their hearts might be in the right place, I think your heart can be in a good place and you can be advocating for an overall policy that can be very, very dangerous.
Ryan: Well, that's fear-based, right? I mean, each of us have our own anxieties, and when anxieties that are maybe misguided gather in a group, and that group gets power, then you get really frightening things in every microcosm of humanity -- whether it's in Miami, Texas, or in the United States of America, which is a tiny little dot in the populace of the world. All kinds of crazy can happen when people get afraid.
Joel: Yeah. That's the other thing that drives me crazy -- this has nothing to do with what we're talking about. But I do wish Americans would take foreign policy more seriously. Like, if you're going to have this giant army and nuclear missiles, you need to pay more attention to the rest of the world. Because they're really interested in us. But yeah, that that drives me crazy, too.
Ryan: Well, would you advocate for America taking some more imperialistic kind of position? Because a lot of what you described, I think of as America's natural isolationism.
Joel: Yeah.
Ryan: Right? Most Americans think we have nuclear weapons to make sure that nobody screws up our lives, you know?
Joel: I just watched ‘War Games’ with my ten-year-old son, so yes, that is the mutually assured destruction theory. It’s explained very well by Matthew Broderick.
Ryan: It makes me think of an interesting vignette. I spent a summer in Russia when I was young.
Joel: Was that with a church?
Ryan: Yeah. We were on a bus one time, and we were sitting there, speaking in English. And this woman, this Russian woman, turns to him and says, “What language are you guys speaking?” He says to her, “We're speaking English.” She says, “Are you students at the university?” He says, “Well, I'm a student at the university, but this guy here -- he's an American.”
She said, “He's not an American. Americans don't come to Russia.” And he says, “No, no; he really is an American. Wouldn't you like to learn English?” he says to this woman. She says, “Why would I want to learn English? Everyone speaks Russian.”
And I thought to myself, “Wow. Americans and Russians aren't that far apart.” The egocentrism that goes along with being a huge country, and then living in the center of that country where you're farthest away from your neighbors and your enemies, et cetera, can create a lot of delusions about your place and about what other people think when they interact with you.
Joel: Yeah, but what year was that?
Ryan: That was 1995.
Joel: The amount of people now who speak English, partly due to the Internet, is crazy. I mean, you go to Paris -- Paris, of all places -- and the subway, the metro, is full of ads. “Wall Street English,” you know; “English is Freedom.” And I think that's very true right now, because of the power of America.
And so, yeah. I'm more dove than hawk, but I do think that if America doesn't fill a power vacuum, other countries will -- probably China. Their kind of ideology then becomes dominant, and then you have to deal with that reverberation in your own country. So, you know, the idea of privacy would probably disappear. The idea of democracy could be weakened. So yeah, I actually do think it's important for America to have a leadership role.
Ryan: That sounds like the kind of ideas that would come out of a conservative think tank.
Joel: Yeah. Well, it’s a very centrist idea, I think. I think Madeleine Albright or Joe Biden or Hillary Clinton would all argue that same thing.
Ryan: I agree.
Joel: It's not something that Bernie Sanders would probably say. But Bernie Sanders scares me, too. I get into Bernie Sanders a little bit in the book. Again, I try not to make it all about politics, although it's hard not to. But I talk about how he wanted to put a farmer on the board of governors. You put a farmer on the board of governors, and then there's two reasons we no longer eat. His ideas are very, at some points, anti-intellectual -- and very anti-expert. Right now, I'm worried about the far-right populism, but there’s far-left populism in Venezuela. It can be far, far worse. So I'm worried about populism and nationalism in general.
Ryan: Yeah. I'm with you. But it sounds like what you're advocating for is maybe more of an intellectual imperialism. I mean, it's going to require the wielding of power to maintain. But really, it's about maintaining power in order to have influence in the world of ideas that ultimately shape all societies. Is that it?
Joel: Yeah. I mean, I think that that democracy is in trouble right now. And I don't know if this pandemic is going to make it worse, and authoritarians are going to take more power -- like they are in Hungary and Poland during this -- or if people are going to flip the switch and think, “Oh my God, I don't want a person in charge who thinks he can solve a pandemic through his gut, and through isolationism.”
That's what happened during the Depression. People started to really hire intellectuals in the FDR cabinet. Suddenly there were a lot of economists and professors. So, it could go either way. It’s just weird to live through history, right? Like, everything in the last four years has been shocking. This is not something I had any predictive model for, even though I probably should have, because this stuff has happened before. Just like if you told me a few months ago that we'd be all sitting in our houses for months on end, I wouldn't have believed that could happen right now.
So, I don't know what's going to happen. And I think the intellectual elite makes a lot of mistakes when they go outside of their area of expertise, which is what happens when you go on any news show, right? Like, you sign up to be a talking head for a subject on CNN, and you get to that green room, and they're like, “Actually, the news has changed. We're talking about this now.” And they send you on. I remember being in the Bill Maher green room and being given a packet of information that we were going to talk about in a few hours -- because the news had changed, and I was going to talk about the telecommunications bill.
Ryan: And you're like...?
Joel: Oh my God, I'm a humor columnist. I should not! Let me come up with a couple jokes, because I'm not going to advocate for this. There was a Democrat -- Paul Begala, I think -- and some Republican, and they had their talking points, because the party has their opinion on this stuff. And I don't really belong to a party like that. I don't know anything. I'm not going to.
But you get sucked into those situations. I try and avoid that. And I try and avoid predicting, because I just have no idea what's going to happen. I barely know what happened. My book isn’t to tell people how to fix this. My book is just trying to figure out what happened. And people really jump to “How do we solve this?” before they even get to “What happened?” And I think that's not so smart.
Ryan: Well, what do you think is happening right now? Not in a predictive sense -- but what do you sense? You're a very intuitive person; I can tell.
Joel: No.
Ryan: You’re not?
Joel: No, my whole book is against intuition, for sure.
Ryan: Well, tell me about that. Why is it against intuition?
Joel: I’ve done a poor job of communicating what my book is about.
Ryan: Because you seem like an incredibly intuitive person. So, tell me why your intuition has led you to be against intuition.
Joel: Okay, so the one thing, as David Foster Wallace said, that my intuition definitely tells me beyond a shadow of a doubt, is that “I am the exact perfect center of the universe and the most important person in it.” That's the basic information given to me every second. And I'm pretty sure that intuition is wrong. And probably everything after that -- including “I do more work around the house than my wife.” That’s wrong, too, because I'm only seeing my perspective.
So I think intuition sucks. I know intuition sucks. And, look -- everyone's intuition is that they can go outside and hang out with people, right? But that turns out not to be true right now. Like, there's a virus that we can't see, and it's doing things we can't understand except by studying it. So I think intuition definitely sucks.
Ryan: Alright. so then what's going on right now?
Joel: The argument of the populace is that all the elites who claim to have expertise are corrupt. They’re bending the rules to help themselves once they get control of them. What we need are people who don't have any expertise and just have a good heart -- and can make decisions from their gut that aren't corrupted by their ability to bend the rules in their favor.
That's the populist argument, and I've spent enough time, I think, with people who run things to know that they aren't horribly corrupt, and that they aren't doing things just for themselves; they really do care. I mean, I've rarely met a politician from the left or right -- whether I agree with them or not -- who wasn’t in this to help people. I just haven't.
Ryan: So you think that there's more altruism than egoism driving politicians?
Joel: Egoism is tough. Let's talk. Egoism really drives so many things in our lives that I don't know how to put that aside. But I think they're more interested in helping other people than in gaining money, or tangible benefits for themselves. Is that it?
Ryan: What about reputation? I mean, in, my experience, oftentimes altruism is a cloak for egoism -- in the sense that they might not want to be the richest, or they might not want to be the most powerful, but they want to be the best thought of. They want to be the one with the reputation.
Joel: Lincoln talked about that. Lincoln said there is no altruism, because it's always about exactly what you said. So, it's hard to parse out in any situation what you're doing for ego; what you’re doing for reputation. Even, like, going to Russia to help orphans -- it's really hard, I think, to parse out how much of that you would do if it didn't increase your own thought about yourself, or your ability to get to the afterlife.
There's so many different motivations that I don't even know if it's worth parsing those things. Like, those things might be fine motivators. Maybe I don't care if that's what motivates you -- if it's your ego, or people telling you you're awesome, or, you know. But I think there's a difference between that and what the populace thinks -- which is that they're literally giving themselves material benefits and screwing over other people on purpose.
Ryan: There's no doubt some of that's happening in our society. Right? I mean, all you have to do is look at the latest bailouts and follow the train of those dollars, and you'll find that, shockingly, people abuse power -- which is, of course, not that shocking.
Joel: No, that's for sure. And it happens on every level.
Ryan: Yeah, there's there is no government, right or left, that doesn't have cronyism.
Joel: No. And our country is really -- I mean, people think we're so corrupt. And if you look at any kind of global ranking of corruption, we are really far down the list. All you have to do is go to Russia, or go to India, or to some worse country -- where, you know, you'll just get pulled over, and you have to pay off the cops, who then pay off someone else. You want to see corruption? Leave America and find out how you open a restaurant. You might think there's an imperfect system here, but it's pretty good compared to the rest of the world.
Ryan: I tell my friends who make any complaints about this, I say, “You know what? You're right. America is the worst country on the planet, except for everybody else.”
Joel: Except Canada.
Ryan: Right. We'll start with America. We'll say America's the worst, and then we'll go analyze. We'll find out everybody is worse than the worst. It is a terrible survival of the fittest, without rule of law, outside of this country. And I would say, in general, the English Commonwealth does pretty good job of protecting human rights -- and most of probably Western Europe. But in general, America is about as good as it gets from a corruption standpoint. I agree with you. I think it's about having context for what real corruption looks like.
Joel: You don't even have to have context. Just look at where a lot of people are trying to get into America. Not that many people are trying to get out.
Ryan: Truth.
Joel: That's what I heard. I was at the Politicon event, and James Carville was on stage with Sean Hannity debating. Carville is just getting creamed because Sean Hannity is a way better debater. I mean, it's what he does for a living. At some point, he was describing the kind of dystopic world of the cities, and how awful San Francisco is with its homelessness and crime. And Carville just looked at him and said, “You know, you're right. That's why you can get a two-bedroom apartment in San Francisco for $200 a month right now.”
I was like, “Well, there's your argument.” Like, you can argue that cities are horrible, but the cost of living in them keeps going up because people want to live there.
Ryan: Let's imagine a world where I make you the czar of California. You're above the governor.
Joel: Which is kind of what we have right now during the coronavirus.
Ryan: It's true. There is a little bit of czar-ship. Imagine you're the intellectual czar of California. What are four things that you say the state needs to change?
Joel: Well, I mean, honestly, that is the same thing as the telecommunications bill. Like, I'm not a politician. I'm not a problem solver. And everyone wants to put you in those roles, because even I have a tiny little platform. People want to assume what I would do to stop the coronavirus. I have no idea. I can maybe go out and find out, if I do a really good job, what the problems are in California. But that's as far as my expertise can take us. Like, I don't know.
Ryan: God, what I wouldn't do for more leaders like that. I mean, just the intellectual humility -- to start with “I don't know.” What an incredible starting point; that is very rare to find.
Joel: Well, that's why I should be the czar of California.
Ryan: That's what I was just thinking.
Joel: No, no way. That's the opposite.
Ryan: It's a Socrates argument. “I went to the world. I looked for the wisest man. I found many men who thought they were very wise. And I, of course, know that I'm not. And unfortunately, knowing that I'm not the wisest man makes me the wisest man on earth.”
That's what I'm hearing from you. I mean, listen to Socrates, right? At least he knows he doesn't know anything, which is an amazing starting point for leadership. What I wouldn't do for a president who just showed up and said, “You know what? I think there's a lot of stuff I just don't know. So let me surround myself with people that know, and we'll build a society based on what we know and to being honest about what we don't know.”
Joel: I'm not saying he picked the best people; I'm not a fan of the Laffer Curve. But that was a little bit of Reagan's attitude, right? He didn't claim to be a great leader. He didn't claim to know solutions to get rid of a virus.
Ryan: Philosophically, he was on the right page.
Joel: But he wanted to surround himself with smart people and let them make decisions.
Ryan: Yeah. Right. And so, now, if you choose the wrong guys, they're going to come with the wrong ideas. That's going to be the consequence. And so it's not that you always get it right.
Joel: Or if you choose all the guys.
Ryan: Yeah, right. Fair enough. The difficulty is, if you don't know, who are you to choose? So then, who even chooses who's going to be the expert that makes x, y, z decision? None of this stuff is easy. None of this stuff is clean. None of this stuff is perfect.
Joel: And that's the populist’s argument, which is, “Oh my God, the experts have screwed up. Why would they do such dumb things? They're dumber than the average person. This isn't that hard.” I mean, the whole argument is that they call a strongman like Trump the “Great Simplifier,” right? Because his argument is, “Gosh, this isn't so hard. You people are just all corrupt. Just let a normal person in here and he --” and it's always a ‘he’ -- “can just, you know, make common sense decisions, because these problems are very simple.” And he offers very simple solutions, whether it's the Middle East, or economics, you know -- “We just have to have higher tariffs and stop trading.”
Whatever his solutions are, they're so super simple -- and they're wrong, because everyone knows from their own industry, or their own lives, that things are complicated. And it just drives me crazy when people offer really simple solutions to things.
Ryan: So you obviously have a lot of curiosity about all sorts of things. Imagine I'm a 17-year-old kid, and I’m trying to finish up high school, and I come up to you and say, “Mr. Stein...”
Joel: First of all, I don't believe you're 17. Once you call me Mr. Stein. There's zero chance. So, we have a time machine, and we went to 1954, and there's a 17-year-old that calls me Mr. Stein. Continue.
Ryan: “Yo, homie, tell me five things.”
Joel: We've gotten to 1984 now. This is great. Okay.
Ryan: There you go. All right, well, that's as far as I can go. Well, tell me five things I should know about life.
Joel: Have you asked this question to other people?
Ryan: No, I'm making this stuff up as we go along. You just seem like the kind of person who would have philosophical ideas.
Joel: Alright. This isn’t philosophy. But what -- five things you should know about life?
Ryan: Yeah, five things I should know about life.
Joel: You should know that you should figure out the other person's perspective in every situation. Don't think about your perspective, and how to convince them that you're right. Just try and figure out what their perspective is. That's the key to empathy. That's the key to negotiation. That's the key to unlocking curiosity. Just figure out what their perspective is, and what they're thinking, and what they want. I'd say I'd say that would be number one.
Ryan: I love that. I’m writing this stuff down in my 17-year-old notebook.
Joel: Is it in a Trapper Keeper?
Ryan: Yeah. A three-ring binder. Yeah, yeah. You might say to this kid, “Listen, kid, you don't need five things. You only need to know three things.”
Joel: Oh, good.
Ryan: But it doesn’t have to be five. Whatever you can come up with. I love the first one. It's a great premise, which is, spend the time trying to understand your opponents, and the alternative view based on what this person's experience is.
Joel: I would say enter every conversation eager. Not just willing, but eager to have your mind changed. Even if it's a negotiation. I would say you can't win a negotiation unless you walk in willing to lose your initial desire.
Ryan: Right? John Maynard Keynes. “I don't know about you, sir, but when the facts change, I change my mind.”
Joel: Yeah, definitely that. You walk into every situation -- I mean, the fun of life is learning. It’s having your mind blown, right? The fun of life is walking into a situation sure of one thing and leaving knowing this other thing. So, if that's your attitude walking in, you're more likely to...
I just heard some negotiator talk about compromise. He's anti-compromise, because compromise is just giving up. Compromise is just like, “Ugh. They couldn’t convince me. I couldn’t convince them. This isn't worth spending any more time on. So let's just split the difference.”
Ryan: Isn't that the guy doing the Master Class?
Joel: Yeah. I thought that was super smart. He had been like a kidnap negotiator; a hostage negotiator.
Ryan: Yeah. Don't split the difference.
Joel: Yeah. That's something I'd never thought about -- that compromise is failure. But it rings so true. Somebody probably was right, and somebody probably was wrong, and you just couldn't figure it out. So you decided to stop arguing.
Ryan: It's not worth it to argue anymore. What's the number?
Joel: Well, I have a married couple of friends, and they have a song called “Compromise. Compromise. No one gets what they want.” And I was like, “Yeah, that’s it.” Nobody walks away from a compromise happy.
Ryan: Okay. So, the second one for my 17-year-old notebook is “Be ready to have your mind changed. Be open and eager to finding out new things that will change your mind.”
Joel: Oh, and if your 17-year-old lives in America, I would say “Build a global and historical perspective.” I just cannot stand when the president is like, “Nothing like this has ever happened before. No one could have prepared.” Like, really?
Ryan: It’s the greatest delusion we've ever had.
Joel: This is the first virus? I remember SARS. I remember.
Ryan: Yeah. It's not the bubonic plague. Thank God.
Joel: Yeah. That stuck around for a long time, by the way. Like, we shouldn't talk about that, because it's very upsetting. And this is not a virus; we have antibiotics. But for certain places, it’s been, like, 100 years of bubonic plague.
So, yes -- I get very frustrated when people make arguments that just dissolve if you've ever read about any other country. Like, when the election happened, and so many people I knew were saying, “Well, it's because we had a black president; therefore, people wanted this guy -- this racist guy.” I was like, “Well, we've got a Trump in many countries right now -- whether it's India or Brazil or England or Hungary or Poland or Russia. They didn't have black presidents.” So that can't be the main driver of this. I would talk to people about Viktor Orban or any of these leaders -- and these are people who know way more than me about what's going on with American politics, because they're probably watching CNN all day long, or Fox News all day long. But they didn't know anything about other countries.
That was like, “What? What is going on?” I cut my cable six years ago, so I don't get to see much of those shows. But what are they covering on these channels, that these people know the minute details of Amy Klobuchar’s plans, but they don't know anything about Europe? It's just weird to me.
Ryan: I don't understand that either. But I guess, if you're not intellectually curious...
Joel: But they are, right? They're willing to read Elizabeth Warren's plans. I tried that; I didn't get that far.
Ryan: Well, then, maybe that's a different driver than gaining a global and historical perspective. Maybe it's a different kind of curiosity.
Joel: Yeah.
Ryan: So, how do you instill curiosity? I mean, it's such an important intellectual trait, but how do you instill it?
Joel: It's cultural. It's educational; it’s cultural. We just don't, you know -- because, I guess, we're such a huge, powerful country that's far away from other countries. We just aren't fed that information very much. And if you're not fed that information, like I did -- we've barely touched on my nerdiness, but I did Model United Nations in high school, and that kind of forced you to learn whatever country you were representing. So, if I was representing Angola, like, I would learn something about Jonas Savimbi, whose name I can't pronounce anymore. But you would learn these. And really, if you learn a couple facts about Mozambique or Angola, the history reverberates, right?
People are fighting the same problem in the Middle East. Like if you don't know the difference between Sunnis and Shiites, if you don't know about the tension between Iran and Saudi Arabia, you really only have to learn that once, and you can really know a lot more about the region. So, I don't know. We're just not given that information. And I had an amazing American history teacher for two years in high school. So, I just read that three-part biography on Theodore Roosevelt, and I’m my son's American history and Spanish teacher right now.
Ryan: Right now?
Joel: Yeah. And I'm pretty amazing -- first, let me say. Which is really impressive, because I don't know how to speak Spanish.
Ryan: I was just gonna say, “Muy bien.”
Joel: I got “muy bien.” We're doing Duolingo, to be honest.
Ryan: Duolingo is actually a good app.
Joel: Well, I have no comparison, but it's working, I think. Like, we just do ten minutes a day. We're 40 days in, and we can say 1 or 2 sentences.
Ryan: If you guys are learning Spanish together, you're a Spanish guide.
Joel: I call myself a Spanish teacher. I call myself “Senor Stein.” But in reality, we're both students to “Senor Duolingo.”
Ryan: So, how do you like being a teacher?
Joel: I've always had this secret desire -- maybe because of my high school American history teacher -- to be an American history teacher, because I feel like it's taught in a really boring way. Like, it's really hard when you're 17 to have any perspective on the past, just because you haven't been aware for more than 7 or 8 years of time passing. Right?
So, if I tell you about something that happened in 1900, you can't even picture what that means. That's the same as 1400, or 1950. We're given no perspective of what that looks like, unless we literally watch a movie or something. We're like, “Oh, horses.” So, I think giving people some perspective on history and telling them, “This is when your great grandparents lived; this is what life was like in those days. This is what a typical person went through --” which is what Robert Caro does for hundreds of pages for no reason in the LBJ books. He will tell you, “This is what it was like to make dinner.” It was like, “Why are we talking about this?”
Ryan: I was just thinking. I've always thought somebody should write a book -- and maybe it's you -- that chronicles famous people of whatever age, so that when I'm 16 years old, I can go back and read about all the things 16-year-olds did throughout all of recorded human history. And then the same thing for 17, 18, 19 -- right? To where you have a book that, when you turn 50, you can get this book that’s like, “All right. These are all the things these other 50-year-olds were doing over the last 10,000 years, or 3500 years,” or whatever it is.
Joel: That's a great idea. Because especially -- teenagers, right?
Ryan: I agree. Yeah.
Joel: The whole notion of teenagers doesn't exist before 1950-something. And the whole idea of childhood doesn't really exist if you go much further back. You don't have to go much further back to see -- or you have to go to a different culture. There are still cultures like this, where if you're 15, you're getting married; you’re about to have kids.
Ryan: That's right.
Joel: I mean, I'm watching that show ‘Unorthodox’ right now, and that's kind of how it is in a Hasidic community. Right? You get sent off; someone teaches you how to have sex, and you have babies. So, yeah; I think that would be super interesting to know what it's like to be a 15 in different places and times -- which is basically, “It sucks.”
Ryan: Yeah. I mean, it depends. There's cultures like you're saying, and there's times in history when being 15 meant you might be going to war with the tribe. You might be going hunting every day. You might have to take up a leadership role, because your father died who was 30.
Joel: There's still places where being 15 means you're going to war. I mean, tons of places.
Ryan: Absolutely. So, being 15 might just mean being a man. But how cool would it be if you were studying history as a child, or as a 15-year-old, and what you were studying was all of what it's been like to be a 15 year old man, a 15 year old woman, a 15 year old African-American man, a 15 year old Asian woman. What does this mean throughout all of history? And what does it mean for you today? I mean, that's really kind of what you're studying history for in the first place -- to try to figure out what it means for you today. What's going on.
Joel: Yeah. I mean, you could profile some famous 12-year-old, like Joan of Arc or something.
Ryan: Incredible, right? I mean, who thinks of Joan of Arc as being as young as she was? She was probably Greta. Right? She was the Greta of her day; just showed up and started sailing around the world.
Joel: Who's Greta?
Ryan: You know -- Greta from Sweden.
Joel: Oh, sorry. Swedish. Yes.
Ryan: She’s Swedish, right? I think so. Greta Thunberg.
Joel: The climate activist. Yes.
Ryan: Right. She's an activist, but I mean, she's like Joan of Arc. She just has a feel; a calling from the universe.
Joel: That's true. Malala was a teenager. We could do a great series.
Ryan: See?
Joel: There are these books that are in a lot of elementary schools now, which are a little bit similar. They're called, like, “Who Was?” And they'll pick some famous person, like JFK or something, and they'll do a biography of that person -- but they'll spend a good half of it on their childhood, which I think really sucks the kids in. Relatable stories about JFK and his brothers -- and then they get to the PT thinking.
Ryan: All right, Joel. We're out of time. This has been fantastic.
Joel: I'm sorry I didn't give more to your 17-year-old friend. And I'm sorry if I didn’t at all communicate that my book is funny. But it is. I mean, I'm totally serious about the problems I'm worried about, but hopefully the book is also really funny, because that's what I do for a living.
Ryan: If somebody wants to buy this book, is it on Amazon? Is that the best place to get it?
Joel: They should go to the crowded-est bookstore near them. No; there's only one way to buy things anymore. I guess local bookstores also are delivering. I think people know how to buy it. If people are listening to this podcast and got this far, and they don't know how to buy a book, they should listen to a different podcast. Something much, much simpler.
Ryan: All right. So, tell me the name of the book, and if they want to follow you on social media or any of that kind of stuff, how would the people follow you?
Joel: God, just don't do that. Just read the book. It's called ‘In Defense of Elitism: Why I'm Better Than You, and You’re Better Than Someone Who Didn't Buy This Book.’
Ryan: All right. Well, Joel, thank you for being on the podcast with us. I'd love it if you’d do it again. I mean, we could talk about 100 different topics.
Joel: Believe it or not, I've got a lot of time right now.
Ryan: I believe it. Well, thanks again for being on the program. And we'll talk again soon.
Joel: It was nice meeting you.
Ryan: Nice to meet you, too.
Joel: Bye.
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Ryan: I'll leave you guys with thoughts, which are reflections that I write on Instagram. ‘Sit with the universe and you will find her batting her eyes and tickling your sides and playing footsies under the table. She's surprisingly seductive for the sacred breath of life. I think she's a love addict.’
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Thanks for listening to the Blackhall Studios podcast with Ryan Millsap. We want to hear from you! Find us on SoundCloud, iTunes or Spotify, and follow us on Instagram at @BlackhallStudios and at @Ryan.Millsap.
