How to Bury a Billionaire

Dogs don't tweet pictures of themselves.

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Back in the USA—but sadly not back at chez dingo—Jonah’s in a particularly exhausted state on today’s Remnant. It doesn’t help that his original plan for this episode—a fun, substance-free conversation with Sarah Isgur—was thwarted by the latest Trump indictment news, which forces the duo to engage in some actual serious discussion on the subject. They explore whether the indictment holds up to scrutiny, how the field of GOP candidates should respond to it, and whether Trump could rightly be convicted under criminal law. Then, as a bonus feature, Jonah taps into another area of Sarah’s expertise—she’s both the mother and wife of a male—to examine how we can address the challenges facing men in civil society. It’s an episode so informative, you’ll wonder why that niche legal podcast even exists.

Show Notes:

– The Collision, Sarah and Mike Warren’s new newsletter

– Sarah and Mike on the new Trump indictment

– The Morning Dispatch, three strikes edition

– Jonah: “Who Are the Real Kingmakers? Voters.”

– Nate Cohn: “Yes, Biden and Trump Are Tied”

– Christine Emba: “Men Are Lost. Here’s a Map Out of the Wilderness.”

– Jonah: “The New Right Is Neither New nor Right”

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Comments (47)
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  1. Avatar photo
    Kelvinktsang

    Why does Trump think/acts like he's a mob boss? Like, really, why? He's not in a mob/gang...so why does he have this stupid, act-like-an-8-year old mentality?

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  2. Sam19952005

    A good episode once they moved on from the person I wish no one would talk about anymore. The men boys etc … was interesting and good.
    My quibble is that while women did not have much independence (maybe none okay) and maybe no power (I am not sure I believe that completely based on my limited experience vs time) most (the vast majority )men and women had little power or actual freedom until about a hundredish years ago. Some of the rights given were not actually able to be realized either. The facts that law and rights have improved for most of the people (not all of course) means we are all safer and able to pursue more choices.
    Weak men are not rare in the history of humans after winning the battle over Neanderthals.

    Sarah remains in my 5 of smart media minds and voices and I enjoy her smart challenges and humor always.

    I would suggest the younger generation of men is more at risk for alienation based on anti social training ( parenting) and technology to distract them.

    The transactional nature of marriage and friendships has new distractions but not sure all will stick over time (leaning on Jonah’s overall ideas on conservatism).

    Thanks for the great product. And smart conversation.

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  3. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    I’m glad Sarah shared the brief story about Nate. Sometimes the sarcasm and “men are dumb” jokes come off as tone deaf given that all of the men who work at the Dispatch clearly don’t deserve it and don’t ever make “women are dumb” jokes or otherwise comment negatively about women as a whole. But it’s clear from the way Sarah talks about her son that she loves him and actually appreciates the things about him that make him different from girls. Good to see that side of Sarah.

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    Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

    "Small-C conservatives have EVISCERATED the Neanderthals."

    I believe, Mr. Goldberg, you need to be making up a new set of (temporary) tattoos for Ms. Isgur. But this one might get her into fistfights.

    (PS: Re Ms. Isgur's quip about 50 years ago when the Court was considering abortion: What Justice Blackmun THOUGHT he was doing and intended to do with Roe was protect doctors from interference in their medical practices — his viewpoint being not that of the woman wishing to get an abortion, but the medical provider like those at his multi-decade client before he was nominated to the Eighth Circuit, the Mayo Clinic, whom he served as corporate general counsel as well as litigation counsel. He was white-knighting not for women's reproductive rights, but for his old doctor buddies.)

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    Husker1740

    Didn’t know Sarah before joining the Dispatch a couple years ago and she’s catapulted to being perhaps my favorite out there in world of commentary. Incredible episode. Have her and Stirewalt on regularly and I’ll never end my subscription.

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      Bill Dyer (aka Beldar)

      She & Mr. Goldberg have a unique dynamic that comes across even, or perhaps exceptionally, in a podcast. I'm thinking William Powell and Myrna Loy in the Thin Man movies: They're a hoot, and create crackling dialog. It's quite a bit more cerebral than when Mr. Stirewalt is guesting and the topic is more likely to be whether corndogs should or shouldn't be twice-fried than constitutional interpretation. (Although if I know Ms. Isgur, she also has opinions on corndogs.)

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  6. Avatar photo
    The Bell Tower

    Yeah, I don’t have any trouble on the friend front. I have a similar group of pirates - even groups of them from various eras- with whom I stay in regular, often constant contact over text. When I see them, the wife will ask me the same questions.

    “Oh, how are so and so’s kids? How’s his wife?”

    *Gives wife the same look a drunken fraternity guy gives when you ask him why he just did that*

    “Well what did you talk about all that time?”

    “Um…. Baseball. Football. Farts. Girls. Scotch. Beer. Cigars. Golf. Politics.”

    I still forget the names, genders and even number of some of my closest friend’s kids. Guys don’t talk about that stuff. Anyway, I see Sarah made the same point I was making over at the GFile. Young, restless, ignorant, idle men. Bad.

    We can start our masculine rehab by reducing the number of penalties in football. Let ‘em play.

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  7. Avatar photo
    George.Skinner

    My wife and I have a lot of common interests. Heck, we met because of scuba diving! I don’t really understand the stupid war of the sexes stuff that a lot of the people indulge in. Why would you marry somebody if you have so few shared interests?
    That said, my wife and I have some definite divergences in interests. We both love classical music, but I come to it by way of jazz and she comes by way of folk stuff. She loves Russian romantic composers in a way I can’t get; I enjoy Stravinsky where she finds it a headache. She also isn’t into my love of ironic humor or Star Trek.
    My guilt and joy is that our daughters LOVE Star Trek. Guilt because I inducted them into something totally nerdy and out of step with their peers; joy because they really get it, and I get to enjoy it with them. We’ve got the same taste in movies too, and my younger daughter is a budding engineer.
    I get the idea that it’s hard for men to make friends, but maybe being a dad has its compensations.

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  8. Avatar photo
    Brett Myers

    Great chemistry. Fun and interesting. Please consider doing this on a (somewhat) regular basis. Stirewalt, too.

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  9. Acre00

    The conversation at the end is interesting. I'm not sure Sarah is correct that friendships based around activities and facts are less durable than those based on feelings; speaking anecdotally, I've had more feelings based friendships end than activity based ones. Activity based friendships need an emotional element as well, of course, but it's been my experience that if there's no "excuse" to get together to talk feelings, guys just don't get together at all.

    It reminds me a bit of the stereotype of how women shop vs men. Women will go window shopping just to go window shopping; men go shopping to for a particular reason. Getting together with friends is similar. Women will chat just to chat; men don't.

    Something else that I almost never see mentioned is that typical male behavior is increasingly demonized in society. Males are far less risk averse than females, and society is increasingly risk averse in nearly every situation. Whether it is in bringing a new product to market, making career choices, even what food we eat, it's all getting harder and harder and the risk tolerance in society is getting lower and lower. I read an article about why we shouldn't allow cell service in national parks because we aren't certain that it has zero effect on wildlife. Or we can look at the GMO debate. Even Biden's approach to arming Ukraine.

    Schools are another place where male traits are seen as negatives. Schools expect children to sit still for 8 hours a day, and they're expected to learn by reading and listening rather than by doing. This has lead to a generation of boys being diagnosed with ADD and ADHD and being medicated into fitting that mold.

    And that's not even getting into the social pressures at play. What was Jonah's name for young restless men? Young Nazis. And I know Jonah doesn't mean that literally, but it is an interesting window into how society views young men - as a problem to be solved, rather than an asset to be valued.

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    1. Richard Kennedy

      Pretty good summary there, Acre00. Personally, I kind of violate some of what you describe at the margins. To use Austin’s (male) relationship sources, I can see that, however, I disagree on theology with my best friends (both friends since early ‘70’s) and actually find my best friends who have opinions different from mine. Being from Detroit, sports haven’t given me much to crow about. I should say that I’ve lived here only since I got out of high school and have rooted for the Braves since before Henry Aaron amassed a mere 500 HRs. Same with my Tarheels. I’m Wolverines through and through until they play the ‘Heels in *basketball* and maybe soccer.

      All that to say that I’m still well within the male side of the Isgur facts to feelings spectrum. Delighting with my F1 friends (very few) over hated Ferrari’s mediocre record for more than a decade still has me talking facts and arguing as to why Hamilton may or may not be what he once was. Mercedes certainly isn’t. Sports, politics, film, history, and such are all facts based and where facts can be in dispute. Heh, warfare by other means and terrain.

      As to how to adapt learning for men and boys, The Dead Poet’s Society I think gives us clues. Williams’s lit instructor gave things a good start with his classroom management. Active, subversive pedagogy used for engagement. Scoffed by his peers in the faculty lounge, even the stuffy Latin instructor tries to make conjugation an active, kinetic exercise. Memorization while strolling about campus. It’s something. That might have helped me as I am a social animal who never learned much language from books, but after 18 months sounded like a garden variety Dutch kid from the Old Country while growing up in the Dutch Caribbean. And I still hear almost perfect French and Spanish pronunciation in my head taught at the same school.

      This and the conversation we all are commenting on gets me to thinking that the playground might be just the pretext for the teaching of boys in elementary school. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, etc, even the concept of sets could be illustrated by managing a large group of boys mixed and matched into groups. Algebra and geometry through analysis of direct kick blocking walls in soccer. An astute observer of the game at its higher levels will soon produce the observation that different distances and angles towards the goal must be the reason why some walls have two or three defenders, while half the team or more are required at other distances and positions relative to the goal. The pros figure this out almost intuitively with help from the goalie. Analysis of this sort of thing might get us thinking about the early steps of higher math. And while I bet girls pick up the basics of math pretty quick by reason of focus at least, with soccer on the rise everywhere, they might enjoy the penalty wall problems too.

      I could sit for long periods as a boy, but I drove chess and other board game players crazy with my restless legs, bobbing my knees up and down under the table. Orderly movement within the lesson plan might do well for many boys. And making the case for how much of what a boy is forced to concentrate on in school will help later on in life can inspire interest as well.

      I remember an anecdote concerning Madonna receiving her first royalty check (she grew up in suburban Detroit and we were fed a lot of press concerning her rise to stardom), she called out a math or algebra teacher for not really needing to apply what she was taught. Hmmm, figuring out how much of the money in her contract actually went to her after the agents, sidemen, producers and engineers got their cut might have helped. And how about the geometry of choreography?

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      1. Austin from Atlanta

        Thanks for these thoughts, Richard. One small clarification is that I agree with you that agreement itself is not a prerequisite. I also disagree on theology and politics with many of my closest friends, but agreement on theology is also a deep tie that binds me to other close friends.

        And, crucially, Go Braves!

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    2. Austin from Atlanta

      Social science is pretty clear that the heart of friendship is proximity. That would seem to indicate “activity” is the #1 basis for friendship. Regarding the idea of fact vs. feeling, I have several multiples the number of “ meaningful relationships” than the averages reported in surveys. What are two of the biggest themes in those relationships?
      1) shared theology
      2) arguing over sports stats

      Relationships are subject to inertia. If there is a catalyst, they keep going. If there isn’t, a new catalyst must be found or they will come to a halt. In my experience, texting a sports stats can keep satisfying friendships going for decades.

      Almost any relationship will engage emotion at some level, even bad relationships such as an employee who doesn’t like their boss. So while it’s a largely arbitrary distinction, I’d say fact-based relationships, to the degree such a thing exists, are doing just fine.

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  10. Avatar photo
    The Bell Tower

    Why frontload Trump from a legal perspective while letting the Rudys and company stew? I can surely explain the political reason for doing so but is there a good legal explanation here? Sarah said she disagrees with this but why would they do it?

    I want to believe these are all good faith actors but you can see how that decision will feed conspiracies. I’ll probably catch Advisory Opinions to see if there’s an answer to that one.

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