We discuss Trump's gross response to the Reiner murder, why anyone let Jeffrey Epstein handle their money, diversity mandates that screwed white millennial men (but not me), and pastoralist nonsense.
McArdle's strained analogies are starting to become my favorite parts of this podcast. Perhaps she should pack up her avocado and move back to the Grand Canyon?
Speaking to the law firm environment specifically (and I think the general situation more broadly), there were two concepts in this episode that were not explicitly connected, but that I think are intrinsically linked.
The "Moneyball" concept that firms could gain a competitive advantage by hiring higher-than-replacement talent at less-than-theoretical-market-rates for that talent doesn't work because the market itself at this point rewards diversity qua diversity (i.e., clients require diverse teams) at a rate that is higher than the return from playing law student Moneyball based on legal talent alone. I suspect that this is also the reason that the problematic hiring practices of the past (i.e., where the discrimination ran the other way) also were not broadly fixed by the market.
There's also a measurement problem, where real-world results are not as easily traceable to individual performance. It's comparatively easy to convert BABIP into WPA, whereas (despite the best efforts of many stat-driven clients) it's actually really hard to convert "briefwriting ability" into "settlement value" or "profit on deal." I suspect that there's a similar problem in writers' rooms between "joke funniness" and "profit from show."
I thought this quote from reddit about the pics in that Vanity Fair spread was really good, "Also chiming in as a photographer here- it’s just so delightful that all of his work was done in camera. The images are fantastically and subtly garish. Love to see it. He’s accomplished something great with just his lighting and framing to just stand back and show the true colors of all these slimy characters. Even the wider portraits each have a little something great embedded- an awkward body position or the inclusion of a shitty looking corner of a badly painted baseboard, a clunky old thermostat prominently in frame - frank little off-kilter details that would typically be erased or cleaned up in post he’s just deliberately included as part of the canvas. It’s just chef’s kiss Hats off to Christopher Anderson. Been a fan of his work forever but new appreciation for him!" /u/anniegggg
I don’t feel like Josh read the Savage essay well before this segment. He called out being hired by the New York Times as evidence of lack of discrimination, even though Savage specifically noted that — while tough to get data on — anecdotally many of the white men who were actually hired were gay, therefore checking a diversity box.
Which is to say, Josh thought he was undercutting the premise, while actually reinforcing Savage’s argument about diversity hiring. Sorry, Josh, you can be talented AND a diversity hire! No one is making the argument that the straight white male candidate was always better, just that they were systematically disfavored.
(Also just noting that I can’t imagine Josh levying similar disdainful criticism against an article written about women, especially accompanied by such startling stats. This is a bias issue.)
Props to Megan for engaging with the premise.
Two personal asides:
1) When I was getting my MFA in Screenwriting, my thesis advisor took me out to get a beer. He told me in confidence not to bother writing spec TV episodes. I would not be hired because I’m a white guy. He told me to focus on original spec scripts — if they wanted the scripts, they would HAVE to hire me, or at least pay me. This was 2010.
2) Josh misunderstands a lot of this, perhaps because he is gay. Straight white males were willing to eat a lot of shit, for decades. We didn’t deserve it, but we ate it. Why is this happening now? Because we have kids now! We want a better life for them! Pretty simple! Side note: this is why some white women are finally coming around to believing that this happened. They can now see their kids being discriminated against.
Nobody cares that I’m gay. The news media is full of gay men. We’re not even considered diversity — we’re like Jews. And what I said (were you listening closely?) was that the phenomena Savage describes weren’t in full force in prestige news media as of 2014, the year he identified as the pivot and the year I was hired at the Times. They came a few years later. Maybe if you listen closer next time you won’t get so offended.
First off, I’m not offended! I like your show! And I was listening!
But I will say, even here, you mischaracterize Savage’s argument. Savage absolutely would (and did) describe 2014 as “full force” in prestige media. Just… quietly so. This is his thesis line:
“The sharpest declines in opportunity for younger white men didn’t happen during the rolling crises of the past few years—they were baked in during the mid-2010s.”
You’re pointing at the rolling crises. He is not.
The pivot to aggressive preferencing of women over men in hiring started at the Times around 2010.
Or in other words, the Times didn’t get loud about ejecting straight white men until AFTER it had already undergone a deliberate 15-20 point swing in staff gender in less than a decade.
And look, you obviously don’t have to agree with my comments on preferencing diversity in hiring, but if only 40% of hires are male, as they were from 2010-2018 at the Times…
and gays are over-represented as you say…
be that for a checkbox or “culture fit”…
either way, that leaves even fewer slots for straight males.
Regardless, 2014 was pretty much the exact “full force” mid-point of the purge. Still not offended. Still like your show. Thanks for replying.
Re neurodiversity v neurotypical -I reject the overly simplistic binary. I think adhd and attentional issues for some people are indeed real. But I think the labeling of diverse (good) and typical (the privileged cognitive normies) is way to justify name calling , stigmatizing one party to elevate the other side and it goes both ways.
I admittedly left a similar comment about this on josh's substack, but as someone with a genuine lifelong history with ADHD, I feel like im also watching and predicting what josh is talking about but for him its "neurotypical pride (good)" and im looking at "neurotypical pride (bad and your disability is fake)"
I think a fundamental misunderstanding about ADHD is that if someone is bright and performing at a high level then the attentional and other deficits can’t be real. When in fact people who are bright and high performing with adhd have additional resources to draw on to compensate and then they are often exhausted. I feel that the binary of the neurotypical v neurodiverse was intended to educate people and build more understanding and has failed. It is sadly true that a lot of people get the diagnosis inappropriately and a lot of people who have adhd particularly bright and high functioning people are still under diagnosed/treated effectively because of stigma.
Great episode. Re Epstein -The way abusers work is to operate as if what they are doing is regular/normal. This is part of grooming and covering up.
Also seems from some photos and stories of his MO that the dynamic of getting away with inappropriate acts out in open or on a remote island but with others around was a big part of his draw.
Another informative and engaging episode--thank you!
Regarding the discussion around Epstein, "earning trust while being untrustworthy", and one's own ability to detect BS, allow me to commend this @shanelittrell post on the Toupee Fallacy:
McArdle's strained analogies are starting to become my favorite parts of this podcast. Perhaps she should pack up her avocado and move back to the Grand Canyon?
Speaking to the law firm environment specifically (and I think the general situation more broadly), there were two concepts in this episode that were not explicitly connected, but that I think are intrinsically linked.
The "Moneyball" concept that firms could gain a competitive advantage by hiring higher-than-replacement talent at less-than-theoretical-market-rates for that talent doesn't work because the market itself at this point rewards diversity qua diversity (i.e., clients require diverse teams) at a rate that is higher than the return from playing law student Moneyball based on legal talent alone. I suspect that this is also the reason that the problematic hiring practices of the past (i.e., where the discrimination ran the other way) also were not broadly fixed by the market.
There's also a measurement problem, where real-world results are not as easily traceable to individual performance. It's comparatively easy to convert BABIP into WPA, whereas (despite the best efforts of many stat-driven clients) it's actually really hard to convert "briefwriting ability" into "settlement value" or "profit on deal." I suspect that there's a similar problem in writers' rooms between "joke funniness" and "profit from show."
I thought this quote from reddit about the pics in that Vanity Fair spread was really good, "Also chiming in as a photographer here- it’s just so delightful that all of his work was done in camera. The images are fantastically and subtly garish. Love to see it. He’s accomplished something great with just his lighting and framing to just stand back and show the true colors of all these slimy characters. Even the wider portraits each have a little something great embedded- an awkward body position or the inclusion of a shitty looking corner of a badly painted baseboard, a clunky old thermostat prominently in frame - frank little off-kilter details that would typically be erased or cleaned up in post he’s just deliberately included as part of the canvas. It’s just chef’s kiss Hats off to Christopher Anderson. Been a fan of his work forever but new appreciation for him!" /u/anniegggg
I don’t feel like Josh read the Savage essay well before this segment. He called out being hired by the New York Times as evidence of lack of discrimination, even though Savage specifically noted that — while tough to get data on — anecdotally many of the white men who were actually hired were gay, therefore checking a diversity box.
Which is to say, Josh thought he was undercutting the premise, while actually reinforcing Savage’s argument about diversity hiring. Sorry, Josh, you can be talented AND a diversity hire! No one is making the argument that the straight white male candidate was always better, just that they were systematically disfavored.
(Also just noting that I can’t imagine Josh levying similar disdainful criticism against an article written about women, especially accompanied by such startling stats. This is a bias issue.)
Props to Megan for engaging with the premise.
Two personal asides:
1) When I was getting my MFA in Screenwriting, my thesis advisor took me out to get a beer. He told me in confidence not to bother writing spec TV episodes. I would not be hired because I’m a white guy. He told me to focus on original spec scripts — if they wanted the scripts, they would HAVE to hire me, or at least pay me. This was 2010.
2) Josh misunderstands a lot of this, perhaps because he is gay. Straight white males were willing to eat a lot of shit, for decades. We didn’t deserve it, but we ate it. Why is this happening now? Because we have kids now! We want a better life for them! Pretty simple! Side note: this is why some white women are finally coming around to believing that this happened. They can now see their kids being discriminated against.
Nobody cares that I’m gay. The news media is full of gay men. We’re not even considered diversity — we’re like Jews. And what I said (were you listening closely?) was that the phenomena Savage describes weren’t in full force in prestige news media as of 2014, the year he identified as the pivot and the year I was hired at the Times. They came a few years later. Maybe if you listen closer next time you won’t get so offended.
First off, I’m not offended! I like your show! And I was listening!
But I will say, even here, you mischaracterize Savage’s argument. Savage absolutely would (and did) describe 2014 as “full force” in prestige media. Just… quietly so. This is his thesis line:
“The sharpest declines in opportunity for younger white men didn’t happen during the rolling crises of the past few years—they were baked in during the mid-2010s.”
You’re pointing at the rolling crises. He is not.
The pivot to aggressive preferencing of women over men in hiring started at the Times around 2010.
Or in other words, the Times didn’t get loud about ejecting straight white men until AFTER it had already undergone a deliberate 15-20 point swing in staff gender in less than a decade.
And look, you obviously don’t have to agree with my comments on preferencing diversity in hiring, but if only 40% of hires are male, as they were from 2010-2018 at the Times…
and gays are over-represented as you say…
be that for a checkbox or “culture fit”…
either way, that leaves even fewer slots for straight males.
Regardless, 2014 was pretty much the exact “full force” mid-point of the purge. Still not offended. Still like your show. Thanks for replying.
Re neurodiversity v neurotypical -I reject the overly simplistic binary. I think adhd and attentional issues for some people are indeed real. But I think the labeling of diverse (good) and typical (the privileged cognitive normies) is way to justify name calling , stigmatizing one party to elevate the other side and it goes both ways.
I admittedly left a similar comment about this on josh's substack, but as someone with a genuine lifelong history with ADHD, I feel like im also watching and predicting what josh is talking about but for him its "neurotypical pride (good)" and im looking at "neurotypical pride (bad and your disability is fake)"
I think a fundamental misunderstanding about ADHD is that if someone is bright and performing at a high level then the attentional and other deficits can’t be real. When in fact people who are bright and high performing with adhd have additional resources to draw on to compensate and then they are often exhausted. I feel that the binary of the neurotypical v neurodiverse was intended to educate people and build more understanding and has failed. It is sadly true that a lot of people get the diagnosis inappropriately and a lot of people who have adhd particularly bright and high functioning people are still under diagnosed/treated effectively because of stigma.
Great episode. Re Epstein -The way abusers work is to operate as if what they are doing is regular/normal. This is part of grooming and covering up.
Also seems from some photos and stories of his MO that the dynamic of getting away with inappropriate acts out in open or on a remote island but with others around was a big part of his draw.
Another informative and engaging episode--thank you!
Regarding the discussion around Epstein, "earning trust while being untrustworthy", and one's own ability to detect BS, allow me to commend this @shanelittrell post on the Toupee Fallacy:
https://bullshitology.substack.com/p/how-bullshitting-is-like-a-bad-hair