Offline with Jon Favreau

Elle Reeve, CNN commentator and author of the new book Black Pill, joins Offline to share her reporting on the darkest corners of the internet. For over a decade, Reeve has tracked the emergence of the alt-right, watched them radicalize on sites like 4chan and 8chan, and documented their migration off the web and into the streets of Charlottesville and halls of the Capitol. She and Jon talk about how this new brand of white nationalism feeds on male loneliness and white resentment, the schisms within the movement, and its implications for politics. But first! Jon and Max unpack the last few weeks of Dem Drama®. The guys critique the debate discourse, explain why social media forced this conversation to happen, and reveal why Jon is finally disabling some of his Twitter notifications. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.

14 Jul 20241h 5min

Chat GPT isn’t going to top the Billboard Hot 100 any time soon, but something is happening with AI and music—something’s BEEN happening. Unlike in entertainment and journalism, big music labels and even musicians like Drake and Grimes are cautiously embracing the latest in AI. And the results are not all bad! New Yorker writer John Seabrook sits down with Max to explain why the music industry has historically adopted new technologies, and how that Muddies the Waters around what is made by humans vs. what is made by machines. What does the future of songwriting look like with an AI Bob Dylan? Will a tide of lowbrow AI slop hurt artist payouts? And what’s really behind the record industry standing with artists? For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.

30 Jun 202454min

Has this pod saved America…from phone addiction?! We got Jon Lovett to take a rather extreme version of the Offline challenge in Fiji, AND America’s top doctor and friend of the pod Vivek Murthy is now calling for a Surgeon General’s warning label on social media platforms. Max and Jon bask in their success, then mourn the dismantling of the Stanford Internet Observatory, the nation’s leading mis- and disinformation research organization. Then, Max sits down with longtime tech journalist Brian Merchant to talk about whether AI development is slowing down, why workers should organize against the technology, and what good AI use cases and centaurs have in common. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.

23 Jun 20241h 3min

The kids are not alright, and the culprit is their phones. That’s the thesis of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt’s new book, The Anxious Generation. He joins Offline to discuss why he thinks smartphones and social media are fueling a teen and adolescent mental health epidemic, the evidence behind his claims, and the criticism his anti-phone crusade has received. Then he and Jon dive into the four recommendations Haidt believes will lead us out of this crisis. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.

16 Jun 202452min

Why are Republicans apologists for misinformation? How should campaigns respond to online trolls? Are Democrats still using an Obama-era digital strategy? Journalist Sasha Issenberg joins Offline to talk about his new book, The Lie Detectives, and to break down how to defeat conservatives in a truth-agnostic world. He and Jon discuss how today’s political class is adapting to a tumultuous and Trumpy social media landscape, and why controlling today’s narrative is more elusive than ever before. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.

9 Jun 20241h 7min

Critic Emily St. James and Crooked’s Halle Kiefer join Max to talk about “WALL-E.” The 2008 Pixar film depicts a future in which humans are so addicted to their screens that it takes a robot mutiny led by a mobile trash compactor to get them to log off. Why did the filmmakers opt for a trashpocalypse? How problematic is the movie’s portrayal of fatness? Why wasn’t there cancel culture aboard the spaceship? Find out in our last installment of Offline Movie Club (for now!). For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.

6 Jun 202448min

Birds Aren’t Real founder, Peter McIndoe, joins to talk about the impact of the satirical conspiracy that captured the imagination of Gen Z and what he learned about the appeal of false realities after spending years in character as one of the nation’s leading conspiracy theorists. But first: Is TikTok helping Trump win? Why is Google telling people to eat rocks? And what’s the story behind the “All Eyes on Rafah” image going viral across Instagram? Jon and Max break it down. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.

2 Jun 20241h 9min

Are we all living in The Matrix? Eh, probably not. But our tech obsessed, social media driven world is a lot closer to the reality The Matrix posed in 1999 than the Wachowskis probably ever dreamed of! New York Times columnist Jamelle Bouie and host of Hysteria Erin Ryan, join Max to watch the beloved sci fi film and break down the ways The Matrix inspired a generation of tech bros and why so many people — from the online right to the LGBTQ+ community to recovering tech journalists — see themselves in its allegory. For a closed-captioned version of this episode, click here. For a transcript of this episode, please email transcripts@crooked.com and include the name of the podcast.

30 Mai 20241h 14min