The Interviews | Evan Gershkovich, Marlon James, CMAT, John Wilson

0:00You're listening to Comedy Central. Pfff. Oh, my God, tonight, a Wall Street Journal reporter, uh, he was imprisoned in Russia for 16 months on false espionage charges. He writes about his experience in this cursed, beautiful land, a Russian-American story. Please welcome to the program, Evan Gershkovich. Thank you for joining us. Thank you very much. Thank you so much. Beautiful writing. It, I'm telling you, it is there's an ancient axiom, an old saw, if you will.

1:01I don't know why they imprisoned journalists because you remember everything. When are they going to learn? You know, we'll see maybe if the book fails. It's a good idea. No! No! When you were working in Russia for many years. Five and a half years at that. Five and a half years. Your family background is Russian. And so you've always been drawn to this land. What drew you to Russia in the first place with that? I was working here in New York as a reporter. Like I said, as a news assistant, I was trying to become a reporter. And Russia, I think, has drawn reporters forever because of how fascinating it is. Danger kind of partly it, right? Things are always happening, developing. And so I was seeking out reporting opportunities. And I'd call exit. I was working at the New York Times and colleagues were like, you speak Russian. I spoke Russian at home. You know, go take advantage of that. And there was an English language outlet working back then in Russia called the Moscow Times. Yes.

2:02They needed a reporter. I went over there. And it was incredibly fascinating when I got there. In 2017, that was. The writing that you have, I think we obviously have a caricature in this country about what Russia is. Like in the way that I think you sort of anywhere you live in middle America, they think of New York as well. You can't even, well, I was stabbed four times. And then they get here and go, it's just musicals. Like. The caricature of the way you write about Russia in 2017, you don't feel necessarily the autocracy in the way this is pre-Ukrain invasion. Well, I mean, not really. Right. Because he already. Crimey had happened. Yes. And Ukraine had already happened. An opposition activist or politician called Boris Namsov had already been murdered. Right. In the streets near the Kremlin for speaking out against the decision to force to play annex Crimea. But it's a kind of, it's a kind of cosplay democracy at that point. So it's not a democracy, obviously, but they're trying to make it seem like it is.

3:04And so they would allow, you know, Russian journalists were facing pressure, but they could work. So independent newsroom still functioned. The late opposition leader Alexey Navalny was still drumming up protests when I arrived. That was kind of like the big news story when I was there. At that time, as an American Russian journalist, did you feel more in a protected bubble than maybe some of your Russian counterparts might have felt there? Did you feel more protected? Yeah, absolutely. So foreign journalists were treated as kind of like quasi diplomats at that point. Right. You know, the Russian government was trying to censor information for its own people, for its own audience. But it wanted to project an image of being a normal country. And so foreign journalists helped you do that. You know, you write for, you know, write for the world. The economy is doing fine. It's a normal place. Like it's a modern, you know, Moscow's modern. And so the worst that could happen then would have been your visas not renewed. Or, you know, your-

4:05And that's a three month of say in the book. Like every three months you'd have to get your permit. It was a year then. And then when the full scale invasion happened in 2022, they limited people to three month visas. So at that point, only one reporter for the BBC in 2021 had been kicked out. Right. But then they changed the rules. So it's three months. And so that we took that as a signal of kind of like, you know, if they don't like us being there anymore, they can let these visas, you know, run out. Right. Sort of the easy way of handling it. Was that for you? So now there's the full scale invasion. And they're doing these three month visas. In your mind, do you think, well, the worst thing can happen is, they'll boot me. And I'll go somewhere else. There was a really, you know, small percentage that we were considering and thinking about. I mean, maybe more than a small percentage. I mean, some, some bureau, some foreign newspapers closed their bureaus. The New York Times shut its bureau down. Bloomberg news agency did. We stayed. My bureau chief stayed in Russia. And others did. And then the New York Times went back. And part of the thing that we were worried about was that Russia had passed these censorship laws.

5:08Like incredibly draconian. Right. And we called the war a war and not what they were calling it a special military operation. You could go to prison for 10 years. Huh. Very special. Very short. Interesting. So you're saying they just changed the names of things randomly. And then penalized journalists if they don't go along with it. Very easy. How weird. How weird. Yeah. And obviously, look, I think it's easy to be flippant about this country. And maybe a certain authoritarian creep and all that. But it's also, I don't mean to be glib about what you're actually facing there. Which is really a different form of peril than here. Right. But, you know, since I've been home, my newspaper has been sued and reporters have been called out in public. So it's not like it's super hot. It's not happening. It's not not, you know, there's a little creep. But yeah, it was a very different situation then. Right. For what we were going through. I mean, so the, after these censorship laws are passed, the, you know,

6:08foreign ministry spokeswoman told the, you know, we were asking them, what can we actually report? Like does this apply to us? Do the rules apply? Right. And, you know, Russian journalists have fled the country. And she said to us, you know, you call women men and men women in the West. You can call this a special military operation. Are you, so they, they're literally just terminally on Twitter? Like is that? It seems like it. That's it. For X now. Since I got back, it's X now. Apparently. Oh, now, now I'm not aware of that. I miss that. I miss that. Oh, my goodness. I've been dead naming it all this time. Is there, in, in Russia, how aware are they of our cultural divisions? And how much is that? You know, you do write in the book that people would say things like Ukraine would have fallen if the United States was not behind them and doing these various things. They do seem to feel like we are playing a more intentional role in keeping Russia down.

7:14Yeah, absolutely. I mean, that's, I mean, if, you know, the most of the information that country, if not at this point, like 99 percent, is state-directed propaganda. And that's the, that's the drumbeat. That's the information that's being basically projected on the airwaves every single day. So it's what people are consuming, but I mean, it's also rooted in reality, right? Ukraine is being buttressed and supported by the West. Right. You know, Ukraine wouldn't be able to be fighting right now without it. So it's a very direct link. The grains of truth that lead to... Half truth, basically, is how propaganda works. That's right. You can't completely make it up. And so in that environment, you are still reporting really sensitive things when you're going to the front and you're doing all these really dangerous things. And a gentleman approaches you with what seems like a great story. Right. So I, you know, we were debating whether we should be there or not. And, you know, nobody was getting targeted at these censorship laws. I was even being followed outwardly at points, including when I was reporting near the border.

8:17And a couple of colleagues are there from the New York Times and the Guardian were there with me. But it felt like intimidation. So you're greeted when you arrived. You knew you were being watched. You know, you have two cars following you. You have a security agent with a phone, with a flash on. And that kind of thing has happened in other authoritarian countries before that can chime into. And the read that we had was that, you know, they're trying to intimidate us, or at least our sources who we're speaking to. At the end of 2022, Vladimir Putin addressed his domestic intelligence agency. You have a speed and he told them they need to catch a spy. Well, you said it and, you know, the terms were, next year you need to do a better job of catching traders, foreign spies, and saboteurs. Was that like a pep talk he gave at the FSB? He usually, so what he does is he addresses them at the start of the year, during the year, you know, when the World Cup was taking place in 2018, he told them that they needed to catch more terrorists and extremists to make sure that the party wasn't ruined. Right. So they went about arresting teenagers who were anti-fine and anarchists.

9:17They have anti-fot too. They have TNT, the TVG. Why? They got a lot of things. They're just like us. That's like us. It's a bit more fish. And so it's sort of the norm, you know, he gives them a signal that they go and do it. 2023, I'm no longer followed outwardly. And that's a signal that I clearly missed. Okay. You know, it seems to me like they were trying to make me start, you know, start feeling comfortable. Right. And you know, to call it... And they continue to give you that three-month extension. Yes, exactly. Right. Two days before I'm arrested, I get my last extension from my visa and the accreditation, the technical document you need to report in the country. And so, you know, Ukraine was saying that it was going to be doing this large counteroffensive in the summer of 23. You know, the West was saying the same thing and Russia was preparing for it, but there wasn't that much reporting on the subject. Right when Putin told his service to catch a spy, it also reported a story about how he was getting information from the front, making decisions about, you know, the war.

10:20So it seems like that wasn't... You know, maybe that was a signal for them about, you know, this guy's up to something perhaps too sensitive. Plus they were looking for an American as far as I can tell. Right. Because right around then, the Russians were telling the Americans that Paul Whelan was arrested on SBN out of Turkey. Right. So when you say they're looking for an American, it is in some ways like the NBA, matching trades. Right. So basically, they need a guy, they want to get a guy out of prison, so they've got a arrest a guy that's also like at a mid-level exemption, and they don't want to go over the second apron, so they want to get a report like that kind of thing. I mean, not to make it too cynical, but it's kind of like that because they have... So they have a person who's in Germany, a birderring a person in broad daylight, he works for the FSB's, sent their own assignment. Yes. They have an assassin. They have an assassin. A state, you know, a state assassin, one of the more elite ones, he worked in the alpha unit of the FSB, he was a bodyguard for Putin. Right. And Germany sent him to his life in prison. They have, you know, call him an asset, right?

11:20That's how they look at these ponds or rooks or knights, and they have Paul Whelan on SBN as charges, and they're telling the Americans he won't leave Russia, almost volume-cratic of leaves Germany. Right. And the Americans are... And they also have Navalny in their back pocket who they can also use. Could also use potentially yet. So what they tell the Americans is, this is the trade, it's one for one, make it happen. And the Americans say, well, that's insane. Germany's a third country, a sovereign country. Not going to do that trade. Low and behold, they catch me, and they say, you know, it's a two for one, like you put it. So then I think, you know, what they're looking for is a big, high-prote, you know, sort of target that will cause a lot, loud, uproar. That's right. Here, and it's also what you're saying, are they paying attention to what's happening at home? Here, I think they are. And there was, listen, the case was rightfully so, international news. And it got everywhere. And it was a guy basically just coming to you and saying, this is sensitive here. So it's seen, you know, in, it was slightly more tricky. So I think we were attuned to cases like here, take a flash drive.

12:22There might be something interesting on it. Right. I had a colleague who was, he had covered the Russian defense industry for years before the war started. Or I mean, the full-scale invasion. Right. And he had left Russia. And, but, you know, all hands on deck. Biggest ground invasion in Europe since World War II. Right. So he starts covering Ukraine, starts covering Russia, applies for a new visa to come to Russia. They keep denying him. I'm in the country. And so he has this old source from a union boss for factories and the world's for about four years or so. And so we start reporting this story and talking in different sources. And he reaches out to that source. They had kept in touch during the war. And the guy suggested he could meet. And my colleague can't meet. I can go meet. So I go to the first meeting. And he suggests that he can help us. That he can get some documents together. And that's really a, you know, that's the main signal that we missed. I mean, myself, but us as a newsroom.

13:22And he said that it would take him another, it would take him some time. Right. Basically. And that was the second meeting. Second meeting. At the second meeting, that's where I get arrested. And so my theory that I lay out in the book is that, you know, the big man's told them we got to go catch a spy. They start looking at their environment. There's a guy up to, you know, what we might call brave reporting. Maybe it's a little reckless. They don't like it. They need an American. Everything starts fitting together. Plus they have a way to lure me into a trap. Lo and behold, they do. And then I think the first meeting is a way to sell it to him. Well, we got one. And then he gives the green light to go ahead. Go ahead and get one. Exactly. And then they can go say we caught him red handed. And, you know, the rest is what was in the news for us. And you end up in this labyrinth for 16 months of really intensely harsh sort of concentric circles of hell that you, you know, you're on a wider one. And then you get further and further down into their system.

14:23But what I found so fascinating is the strange, the Russians seem to be very aware that they are all fatalistically role players in a play that they are putting on. And you would say to them, you know, I'm not a spy right now. They're like, what different? And we're all just, I mean, there's my favorite moment with the warden of the... Yes. When he comes to check in on me because he would check in on me before I see the US ambassador. And he asks me how I'm doing. And I told him actually, you know, like I'm kind of surprised that you even, you know, there's more care than I thought I would even have. Right. Like I heard my knee exercising. Prisoner has checked it out. But he even gave me some exercise. And he goes, well, of course, we care about your health. I say to him, well, yeah, I mean, the package needs to be whole and undamaged. Otherwise, the value is going to go down to our trade analogy. And he checks his shoulder, he gets all crave and really quietly. He says, you know, I didn't tell you this, but yes. So, you know, the big secret has been revealed.

15:25It's shockingly non-solent. But it's also, I think it's important to get for people, you know, people who don't know Russia that well. It's very calculating. So, Victoria Roscien, Ukrainian journalist at this, you know, around the same time gets taken captive in Russian-Hokyapard, part of Ukraine. And her stay in the prison system is much different. She gets killed and sent back in a body bag without her body organs. So, our family can't figure out what happened to her. And so, the Russians take me in this, you know, it's going to be a loud case. It's a global uproar. They want to say, we have due process. We treat prisoners well. Also, they're taking a journalist. He's probably going to write about it if they let them go home, right? And so, I think they want to create this, like you said, to play a mirage. And so, I, you know, you're talking about these circles of hell. Right. And so, you know, I had, you know, if they're not fun conditions, but some of the best conditions. And people have it much worse. Are you right about when they have Ukrainian prisoners and they're torturing them? Right, right. And they're getting. You end up not in the first prison that you go to, but the second one, I guess, central.

16:27Yeah, yeah, it's in Thrall. It's in Thrall. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And in that, it's sort of this almost dystopian blade runner-esque. Everyone sleeps during the day. And then at night, the highways come alive and the ropes. And everyone is communicating and sending contraband and communicating through the food vent. The feeder. The feeder. The feeder. Right. Yeah. It's this like, it's about the size of a human head. The window that opens in the cell door. Right. And it's kind of low. But in that, in that prison, it wasn't as, so I'm in two prisons, right? The first one's very high security. The second one. Right. You don't see anybody in the first one at all. At all. It's basically you and your roommate. And every now and again, you get to go for a walk in a very small room. On the roof of the prison, there's, you know, there's just this like netting about it. And this is left for Tova. The Fortovo and Moscow. It's pronounced left for Tova. Correct. Or, or, Le Fortovo, maybe.

17:27That's exactly right. I think maybe that's French. Exactly. That's right. And so, yeah, and they have this, they have this really, I mean, it's crazy. It's a wild system of, they move you around the prison, snapping their fingers or clicking this kind of like metal. Make sure you snap her in the book. Exactly to notify each other that they're moving people around. And in the second prison, they don't, you're sent back to where you're suddenly committed your crime for your trial. So I was sent back to the wereals. And as much more open and the guards are a bit more loose. And so these feeders, where you get your food through letters or whatever, they leave them open. So there could be air, because it's the summer. And so every evening we stick our heads out onto the hallway and chat. And you're kind of, you know, you kind of lean down and stick your head through. How long do you have to be in that prison before you trust that putting your head through a slot won't be the last thing you ever do in your life? I guess you're really lonely. You want a chat? You know, you start talking to yourself after a while when you're in the cell.

18:29And you don't even say you didn't do it for a while. And when you finally poked your head through the feeder, they were like, well, it's about talk. Exactly. Yeah, they were like, why don't, why weren't you out here? And I was like, why didn't I know how to do this in the last prison you didn't have? This is not that obvious. But here's the thing. So for the reader of the book, this is an extraordinary journey. And you write about it really with such great vivid detail and emotion and thoughtfulness. It really is a wonderful work. But like, I feel like you just do that I'd be like watching a giant scheme with. I kind of am. Right, I am. But what is it when the ordinary meets the extraordinary in these, how do you find within yourself the resilience to overcome what is you may think that it's not as bad as a bodybag wouldn't have worked? Right. But it is a gem, it's not fucking terrible. Right. I mean, I got, you know, again, the luck part of it or not the luck, it's sort of, you know, blessed with a few things.

19:30One I was working as a reporter for five and a half years. So when it happens, and they don't immediately torture me and subject me to the worst, you know, you immediately take that as signals like, oh, who's a setup? And a setup for a specific reason. Right. And that means it's not going to be an espionage case for, you know, 20 years. It's going to be. You can not fear you really were going to a gulag. I really feared at the beginning when they arrest me and put the hood over my head that they're going to be torturing me, trying to get information if they think I'm a spy, maybe trying to have me, you know, tell on other people or whatever it is. And none of that happens. Okay. They just hand me my charges and then take me to Moscow and they kind of, you know, treat me generally well compared, you know, in the system. So I had reported stories where somebody's sat on a chair tied to it, electrocuted. I mean, that's not, they do that. They do that. Right. And so that doesn't happen to me. And so I have this kind of relief. And that, you know, and then I also know how these cases go. I know how long they take. Right. There's no surprises in the penal system. You know, you know, it's fixed. And then, you know, that's one thing to, you know, a group in a Russian speaking home.

20:34So I have Russian. I can communicate with my cellmates, the guards, the prison officials. Right. Blessed with the sense of humor, luckily, that I think is pretty important. Pretty immediately. Right. You're tossing that out there. Although I imagine it can move into. Right. When you're doing that, there might have been moments where you thought, oh, not the time. Right. No jokes, huh? Okay. I mean, but you also get in this habit. I don't know if it's just natural that, you know, like generally oppressed people are the funniest. But it's the way to deal with the situation, right? Right. It's hard. So you make a joke. That's right. It's just what you do. And so, you know, the lock of the draw there. And then because they were treating me in a certain way, I had access to information. And I have this great, incredible newsroom back to me. My family back to me. Friends back to me. Right. And you're aware of the whole time that you're not alone. One of the things that I've seen in other countries is sort of in Iran in particular. They arrest you. They put you in isolation. And they want you to feel that the world has forgotten. Right. This was not the case. Jason resigned. Jason resigned. And Masjid Abahari is saying.

21:34Exactly. And this was the opposite. Right. I get into my prison cell and I have a TV. And on state TV, you know, it's my second night in prison. On a news show, on a panel, they say, you know, I think the quote, if I remember correctly, was like, you know, it might be cynical to say. But we just replenished our exchange fund. They call it. That's what they call it in Russian. There's a term for it. They said that publicly. And you know, my first 24 hours. And you have TV. You're watching that on TV. Yes. And so, I mean, again, bless them. It gives me a way to stay, you know, positive. You know, you think this is going to end much sooner than the term that you're actually going to receive. Would you go back to Russia? I mean, you clearly loved it. You loved the country. Yeah. You loved the people. I love, I mean, I'm of the people in a way. Right. I grew up in this kind of home. And that's some of the best friends all ever have there. I met my girlfriend there. I, you know, it's an interesting place to live and work. Now while he's alive, or in power, right? Or do you see a future for Russia without Putin?

22:34Two-part question. Yeah. Future in Russia without Putin. What might that look like? And in this country, do you, are we being overly dramatic when we talk about the clouds of authoritarianism gathering in this country? So, I mean, I think the Russia one is really complicated because these sorts of regimes kind of are, you know, Alexei Yorchuk, this Soviet historian wrote one of the best books about the Soviet Union called Everything is Forever in Toads No More. And it felt like it was forever and suddenly it collapses and disintegrates. And, you know, in retrospect, we try to connect the darks, but while you're living through it, it feels like that's it. You know, if he dies tomorrow, it's hard to imagine a more, a less repressive Russia right now. You know, global conflict, developing, and authoritarian accesses, kind of deepening. And in those kinds of conditions, it's hard to, for me, it's hard to imagine a country just deciding, oh, we're going to start reforming.

23:34We're just going to loosen things up sort of like the way when the Soviet Union collapsed. And the disastrous effect of what they thought that was, that we sort of tried to apply the purest form of capitalism over a system that was not ready for. And it- Huge poverty- Drug addiction broke the place. The same time, you know, throughout Putin's years, there was, you know, Boris Nemsov, there was Alexei Navalny. Right. The system does also produce people who- But if the people don't know that. If the people who live there are getting a completely separate story, then I guess even if he goes, they wouldn't understand why you'd reform it anyway, because it's all going great. I don't know if people actually think it's all going great. I think there's a sort, you know, it's really hard to pull in an authoritarian system. And also a system where people are so scared that if, you know, I met a guy in prison right amount in the book, he was protesting the war by spray painting for word anti-war words on a wall. Of a government building, he got arrested. He's ended up in double digit sentence. He was a 17-year-old kid at the time. And so if you're in a system like that, and you think, you know, a pollster calls you.

24:39Do they have pollsters? They have pollsters. They've independent pollsters. I mean, Putin just did- I mean, Putin's in- Or by the way, great in the midterms. Fantastic. Just perfect. I mean, his party, I think, captured 103% of- Couldn't do better. All the available seats. And the second part is, now that you're back here and you're feeling our country- Right. And you're on the ground. Is there a sense of dread? Is there a sense of impending danger in your mind? Because you are boy at heart that journalism is running through your blood. So where do you see this going here? I mean, I- You know, it's this odd moment at the end of the book when I start reporting about how the swap came together. Why I think I got arrested? You know, trying to piece it all together. And it's after the inauguration. And there's this sort of chill on DC. People are meeting far from their offices. They're talking to Whisperers, checking their shoulders, asking if I'm on signal. Which actually in the Russian system, they said, you know, one of the accusations of me being on signal meant that I was using CIA tactics.

25:43Even though journalists use signals to protect their source. Yeah, the topology reading your criminal record is kind of amazing. It actually is. It's amazing. That's all they have to do. But they just say there's these three sentences that- Say because- Yeah, I'll say it's that, you know, the US media is used by the CIA for intelligence gathering purposes according to an informed source. And then the Wall Street Journal's Moscow Bureau is used by the CIA for intelligence gathering purposes. According to informed source, Evan Gurishkovich belongs to that apparatus of the CIA. That's it. Right. Right. And so there's a kind of, you know, there's a fear, but I think direct comparisons aren't very useful. They're not always apt. They're not always apt, but you know, I think we can judge what's happening on its own. Right. You know, banning television channels from being in the pool just because you want to. Doesn't seem like the best way to, you know, uphold the First Amendment. Because it is, there's a lot- And the corruption that is now explicitly out in the open now is such a hallmark of the system over.

26:45I just wrote about it a couple weeks ago, because I'm back at work- Back to work at the journal and, you know, the- The Trumps just opened- Or launching a Trump tower into Blycy that we read about. And that just feels like now just sort of part for the course. Right. You know, when I was- Sure, they got a Trump company, they worked for the Pentagon, whatever it's all- It's easy. But when I was moving to Russia 10 years ago, it was- That was still- You know, we still had some sort of outrage on that. You know, we published that story and then the next day, pro-public blew us away with the Donald Trump Jr. wedding, right? So I know it's just- There's a story after- It's a story after- It's a non-stop. Yeah, yeah. When you're at work now, and like- One of your colleagues is like, Who took my peanut butter? Like, are you like- I was in f***ing prison for 16 months. I'm hungry. Like, yeah, do you- Do you lorde that over? I grew up in a- In a Russian immigrant home, so we didn't have peanut butter. So I wouldn't take it. Like parents hate a peanut butter. This first beautiful land, the nominal book, everything goes to this. My guess tonight is a book of prize-witted and New York Times best-selling author,

27:50whose latest acclaimed novel is called The Disappearers. Please welcome Marlon James. The Disappearers are on James James. The Disappearers are on James James James James. Mr. James James James. Ihr hat- Oh, my god. Welcome, sir. Oh, my god. A applause all around. I know. You had been getting your laurels. Yeah, still like it, though. It's nice, right? Yeah. I imagine a woodpeak. I'm like, people clapping, these people not clapping. Yes, this is what- This is what- This is what- this job is if they don't clap we just do it again for me. So you got to get into this comedy business. Well I thought it was like some sort of a blackmail thing if they don't clap. Well there's we do have the Social Security and Numbers of everybody. We will use it against them. This book is remarkable. Thank you. But people are talking about it because right out the gate it's shortlisted for the Booker Prize. And the New York Times had a wild review that's called it the Book of the Decade if not

28:53the Century. I mean we don't have to simplify more years ago. There's a lot of time but still 26 is pretty good. What is it pretty good? What do you do? I mean that's such a massive accolade to drop at your feet. What does that feel like? What do you do with that? Well what you don't do is impress your mother. No? Yeah. She's still like those goters not going to clean themselves. Yeah. Maybe she'll read it though. Has she read it? No but I figured best of the centuries she'll finally be impressed. She's like I don't know. Maybe last century there's a lot of good stuff. I know. Last century. You had to beat some pretty high praise in that sentence. I don't know. She's like I've cleaned your poop and I'll never be impressed. I've been talking with my mom about reading this book. This is a really yet well because of my mom. That's going to be a woman. It is. Well this book is for people who have not read this book yet.

29:55How would you describe this book? Actually it's a book that says between the 80s and 2000s. It's about a bunch of gay men who try to put on this sort of subversive play and secret in Jamaica, which is not the most open-minded place for gay people. And in the midst of it they're attacked. And pretty brutally beaten up. One of them dies. And some weeks after all of that attack, two of them end up just vanishing out the trace. And it's quite a alert. Sorry. They're vanishing out the trace. I'm not going to say if they're a phone or not. But what happens next is that the characters who are left behind are left to reel from it. And they make all these well decisions. Some race back into the closet. Some try to live a normal life. One spends 20 years plotting revenge. And then that's what happens basically. I mean, it is, I love this book. I find it very profound in, there are a lot of alliterative devices here that tell the story from a bunch of different angles.

30:58But you don't shy away from graphic violence. There's cruelty that you live in for a while. The sex in it is graphic. And it's discussed thoroughly throughout when I think a lot about my mom reading this. But I do think what is remarkable about this. And you ask a lot from a reader. It's a 600 page book that you don't shy away from any of these issues. And I found, as a reader, to be challenged in that way is something only an art form literature can do. You sit with these people. You know these people. But I do think about the mothers who read the New York Times, who might not know your work beforehand. I'm going to pick this thing up. And they're going to read the novel of the century. Do you want to hear what they've been saying to me? I want to know. Yes. So the mothers have been picking this up. Come to me and go, oh my god, your book is really so hot. They, yeah. And they'll go like, you know, I'm hot right now. And I go. And I go. My phone with you. I know. And I know.

31:58And I go. And if I played for that team, damn girl. And I haven't done the research. Yeah. So when I said when you're going to, you might have an uncomfortable time with your mom. I think you're going to be uncomfortable. Not her. Now you say my mom's going to leave my dad because she's going to read this book. Is that who's disappearing my mom? To the book I wrote two weeks, two books before this. I came up and go, dude, you're a book made me gay. And I'm like, I found it become what preacher said the gay is. You're a gay, huh? I said, there's, yeah. That's a testament to this book. There's times where it's not very end-of-eable to be gay in Jamaica. No, I was saying, I don't read this. And like, I should be gay in Jamaica. Yeah. I didn't think so. For a while, I went to the church because the church made me straight. But the valence and the sex, I think you just have to be really. You can't oversell it because then it becomes this kind of porn. And you can't undersell it either because then you don't get

33:00a sense of what's really happening and what's really going on. So you kind of have to like be a reporter and just get a story. And that's it. I remember somebody saying about gratuitous sex. And I remember thinking, if you're not having gratuitous sex, what are you having, boo? You know? That's what the valence, valence is valent. I was on the show once and they asked me about it. And I think I fed up. And I'm like, who are you kidding? You know you love it. But then I described the type of movies they'll watch where the hero kills 100 people. And it walks off, not even with his girlfriend, but with his dog. And I said, yeah, you didn't think of what any of those guys who died, did you? Yeah. I was like, you think I'm weird. But valence has suffering, valence, consequences. When I write for TV, I always ask them, so what gunshot do you want? Do you want a Hollywood gunshot or a real gunshot?

34:02Because if I shoot you in the foot in a Hollywood thing, it's a flesh wound. I shoot in real life. You're going to die. Well, you talk about writing for TV, you're right. I mean, this book I feel like only lives in, I mean, well, I hope it lives in another format if you can make money off of that and somebody buys it. I'm almost for making money. You're always for making money, so I don't want to take that away. But I think what is remarkable about this, unlike watching John Wick, where after two hours you watch 1,000 people die. Like this is a book that asks you to sit with it for weeks and spend time with it. Do you think about the rhythms of graphicness and how reader reads that I know you listen to music while you write and music is such a profound element throughout this story? Yeah. I think it really sets it at a time and a place. The characters reach out for not the reggae music of their homeland many times. They go to American music and Kurt Cobain and whatever. Yeah. Do you think about the rhythms of music when you write a book like this? Yeah. I think it comes, I came from that generation.

35:02Some of this stuff that, like, there are some passages about Bruce Springsteen which may have come from me. They're pretty, they're pretty erotic passages about Bruce Springsteen. That's a lot about that boring run cover. I'm telling you, you don't have to worry about your mom. Focus is more on him putting on jeans. Yeah, you don't have to worry about her. You won't have to worry about her. But music was, you know, I grew up with a generation where you listen to the smits in your bedroom. Yeah, right? So, so, music is constant companion. You know, we're the first generation to have like Walkman, Walkman. Whatever you pluralize that with. And it's, you know, it becomes part of your language. It's part of your vocabulary. It's, I think at one point, Jordan says in the book, music was the first thing to love him back. You know, which is always used to feel about a lot of stuff in there. Like, you know, I remember where I was in Kurt Cobain died. Yeah.

36:03And I remember where I was in Shini, Shini and O'Connor died. And these are two very, very, very important things to me. But also, you know, these characters are dealing with a music where their own country's music don't like them. Their own country's music sedation die. So they're going to reach for something that will embrace them. So they're going to listen to relax and don't do it. And I love it when like church ladies go, I love that little song. I'm like, you know, I know about that song so much. How did you talk about, you grew up in Jamaica. Yeah. You live here now, you wrote this here. I'm curious what the reaction has been back there. Where you are, you are, it's a harrowing tale of what is happening in the 1980s, 90s, 2000. And a lot of the laws that are on the books are still on the books right now. Yeah. Not supporting the LGBTQ community there. Yeah, there's a lot of that. But also, you know, the book engine in 2005. I remember going back a few years ago and there was a LGBT association for students,

37:04and I didn't even know it existed. And I'm giving them their, it gets better speech. Things are hard now. And you're like, we're not going to hear that crap. Do you know Beyonce? And I'm like, and I realize I'm surrounded by these teenagers who are like, you know what? We reserve the right to be superficial. You know, you're quarrel for us as Beyonce versus Reary. They're like, not what I'll get shot or a son. And there is that. There's a sense that the country has evolved and come a long way. But you don't have to go far to go. You're not having enough yet, though. Yeah. Because I moved back in a way, I have a house there. And you ask the taxi driver who's Marlon James? They go, oh, you mean the gay one? And I go, you're not a rota book. Yeah, I've ridden a few of them. So it is definitely different from the world of this book.

38:04But I still think when you enter a room, you still kind of make a threat assessment. What's going to happen here? Can I even swish or not? Right. I mean, I think that's remarkable. There's so many passages in here that get inside the mindset of like the threat assessments wherever they walk into spaces. It's curious. I believe you say in the acknowledgments that I'm paraphrasing. But it's a work of fiction, but all of this is true. Yeah. You also, I heard you said this is an act of record keeping in some ways. And I think we are in a curious time right now, where you see institutions like the Smithsonian, which has been rewritten. How do you see literature's role in record keeping and keeping the stories alive for the future? Well, one thing literature does, and that is, I write, or like Edwin's down to Carraids, is your respond into erasure. So the stories aren't there in the first place. So you're writing them into being. And that's the first thing. Eventually, history catches up.

39:06History changes every day, depending on who's writing it. So sometimes the stories that we need, or the stories that reflect on people who are not leaders, who are not famous, have to come from fiction, has to come from the books. There are certain things you're going to learn about yourself from Hokeberg, and you're not going to learn from Shelby Foot. And what fiction does is that it starts to create this sort of internal history of how things were and how things could be that becomes very important. I think when you read history through how people actually live it, which is what I think a novel can do, then it becomes more important to you and you realize why you need to keep it, why you need to preserve it. Tell me about the act of disappearing, what that means in a novel like this. It means a lot of things. One of the reasons why I could write it is that was a pretty good disappearer. I remember the kids who would call me names would take like the six o'clock bus to school. And I realize if I take six, 15, I still get to school.

40:09Or if I leave school later, or if I just don't talk. And I remember, and you had pulled this off when the next day they were came over to my mom's house and asked for recommendations on schools in America because clearly Marlin has gone to school in America. And she's like, he passes your house twice a day every day. And I was like, damn, I did it. I vanished. I was reading a lot of X-Men at the time too. So I really thought. I like. I conscious choice at the time that you... I really thought that a superpower. Yeah. And no, it's just called being rude. But every now and then, people go, weren't you at my party? I'm like, I was. But... Do you see that as an act of choice or an act of necessity? I think it's both. I think when you're in the margins, sometimes, you know, in order to not have the light turned on you and in order to not have the oppressors come and knock in your door, you find ways. And you know, jump into it. It's small. So you have to learn how to vanish right in front of people.

41:11And sometimes it's to give them a reason to not look. And I think you just want, which is what some of the game men did. It was like, how normal can I look? So like, going into the closet is disappearing. So I did it by going into the church. And that was wild, because they necessarily did by church gays and they were a bunch. You talk about the church gays. That's a movie in the book. So there's a scene in it. There's a scene in it where I altered one of them because this movie came out and the church, the other church gays was like, oh my god, I'm going to do a dance tribute in praise of the crucifixion. And I looked at him and go, you know what? Don't just stand here, let's get to it. Strike a pose. There's nothing to it. LAUGHTER APPLAUSE And the horror on his face. When I'm like, mm-hmm. I see, you're trying to disappear, but I see you. Yeah, I see you, girl. LAUGHTER It is a remarkable work.

42:12Congratulations. It was on it and all of the accolades. The Disappearers is available now. Marlon James. MUSIC My guest tonight is an Irish musician who's acclaimed, third album is called Euro Country. Please welcome Seamatt. MUSIC Seamatt! Welcome to the Daily Show. Thank you. I am so excited here. I got to meet you and see you at the Newport Folk Festival this year. Yeah. And that is such a beautiful festival. But what's amazing about that festival is it sells out before they know who's performing. So the audience is there just to see music. Yeah. But they don't necessarily know what they're going to see. Yeah. And watching you walk out on that stage and just own all of Newport was incredible.

43:13Cudos. Thank you. Yes. Thank you. What? APPLAUSE I wanted to know what is it you've you're embarking, you've been on an international tour. Who has the worst audience? Is it America? No. No. Americans are amazing. Yeah. Americans are amazing. APPLAUSE No. America's never let me down, except for Los Angeles sometimes. Except for Los Angeles sometimes. And to say a crowd is bad is not a very nice thing. So I don't want to say bad. But maybe the crowd that I have the most difficulty with is Sweden. Is that right? Yeah. What are the Swedes? They see... So whatever bit of festival, right? The festival people are paying for the festival. They're not there to see you. So if I'm like, let's do it out to the festival. And they don't react. I'm like, okay, fair enough. You want to see someone else. You want to see someone else. But, you know, in Stockholm they're paying to see the sea match on.

44:16They're paying for the headline show. And they look angry that I'm there almost the entire time. They're kind of like this. And they're like, put your hands up. Woo! And they're like... But then you meet them afterwards and they're like, that was the best show I ever saw in my life. I'm like, okay, great. Thank you. To be fair, in Sweden it's a very cold country. They might just be paying to be inside for a lot of these festivals. It's not against you. They just need warmth, right? But they're fabulous. You know, this is the thing. That's a very different culture than what I'm used to coming from Ireland. Woo! And it's just so different. And you know, everywhere you go is different. And I think America is amazing. I think like the fans are so good here. But also, you know, we're talking... There's 20, 30 different cities that we play regularly here. And they could all be their own country.

45:16The way that they go on. You know, it's very different. Playing a gig in Chicago, which is probably my favorite city to play in America. Is that right? Yeah. Yeah. You even slid into the Chicago. Oh, Chicago. I got all. I love playing Chicago. They're amazing crowds. They're very music city. Playing Chicago is just so different to playing in like, you know, Pioneer Town in California. Those are two... That's two entirely different types of people. I didn't even know that was a town in California. Yeah! Pioneer Town? I wasn't like a Wild West, were you playing? Was that Epcot Center? Were you an Epcot? It was... Pioneer Town is a fake western village that was built in the 1930s, because I think Gene Autry paid to build it, because there were filming so many westerns at that time. They were like, well, we'll just build a functioning town. That works as a set. That's a two-hour drive from LA. And the people lived there and they know, because all the actors are gone. And the mayor is a Chihuahua that wears a cowboy hat. Okay, that's it. Okay, let's see Matt. No.

46:16I really got it. I don't think you should be mad at Pioneer Town. No, it's amazing. I love it. I think your booker is at Palterra. I love it. I played part of the best show in my life, but I love it there. I'm like, give it a... I'm Lauren's Kansas as well. You know, it's like... I've seen a lot of this... I've seen every knock and cranny of this country, so I come kind of on the ground all the time and experiencing how different everyone is to each other. And it's fabulous. Like, oh, you don't have a bad gig here, honestly. I mean, you grew up in Ireland, but you had images of American pop stars as sort of what you hoped to be, is that correct? Yeah, I thought it was going to be Britney Spears. Yeah. I thought it was going to be Britney Spears. I had stickers over all of my window and I was like, yeah, great. That's what I'm going to be, obviously, when I grow. And, you know, my family were like, you're delusional. And they were actually right. They were actually right there. They were right there. They were right. But...

47:18You're not far off. You achieved some pop stardom here. Yeah. On a dealist level, I reckon, for now. Well, you know, we'll see what happens. But you're getting gosh darned close to what this dream as a kid is. How does it compare to what you imagined it to be when you were little? I mean, when I was small, I assumed I was going to be singing and dancing and doing all these things really well. And then I became obsessed with country and western music. As a lot of people in Ireland actually are like, we really love it and we really take to it. And... Why, why is that? I think depression. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. That's correct. That's correct. Okay. I think, you know, and also we love stories and we love storytelling and we love a song that's like the man walked down the road one day and then got shot by his wife.

48:20Like, that's the best. That's... Whatever song that is, I don't know, maybe... I think I have a word. I think it's every country song. It's every country song. You know, I think there's something in the psyche that really likes to read and hear a story and listen to someone talk about something from a very specific point of view. And what I love about country and western music is it is so simple. Like, it's tree to five chords, maximum. Anything else is overdoing it because the only information we actually want is the lyrics and the lyrics, right? And so, yeah, I just... I don't know. I became one healthily obsessed with Johnny Cash when I was like, nine. I thought... I thought he... I, in my head, I thought Johnny Cash was a still alive. And... And, and be that he was gonna like... I don't know, turn up and play the jingle bell ball or something. I don't know. Like, I thought he was a contemporary of Justin Bieber

49:21at some point in my life. I don't know. Like, I can't... Because you know when you're... The education system in Dublin, not strong? No! LAUGHTER You know what? You don't have to weigh in on that. You don't have to weigh in on that. You don't have to weigh in. I'm saying none. I'm saying none. You talk about the lyrics being very important. What's so interesting about your album and your performance is... Your lyrics are great, but they're also subversive. If you're like, you use this pop sheen and performance mixed with these country melodies. But also, the lyrics... You're not... You don't shy away from political topics, emotional topics. How is that balance? I think that that is a part of my own personality that has then been extended out through my songwriting. I don't think it's like a choice that I ever made. I don't think I was ever sitting down going, I know what'll get them. LAUGHTER I think that, in general, when you're very sad about something

50:24or when something terrible happens, you don't want to double down on the misery and I think funeral humor is like a really big part of my whole songwriting process. You know when you're on a funeral and it's absolutely the worst thing ever and you're absolutely devastated and then somebody farts. And then the whole place is like, A-ha-ha-ha! I kind of think that's what songwriting is. You have that song that's just a long fart on this album and I thought it was a very bold move called, it's called funeral dirge, I believe. There's something in the body in the human psyche that wants to get through hard times and I think humor is one of the roots, right? So it's like, yeah, it feels, I don't want to be the type of musician who doesn't say anything and doesn't have anything to say. I think I'm a very low-dobby in opinion, it's ginger woman.

51:26And so if I wasn't expressing myself through music, I would be lying. But at the same time, I don't want to be standing on a soapbox every single show and be like, let me tell you, it can't be. I think I want to wrap it in this accessible, beautiful, melodic forum that is, you know, country, pop, alternative, whatever the genre of music I make is I don't know, actually. Yeah. Whatever it is. I think it's country music and then I come over here and they're like, it's not country music. That's not what that is. That's not this. This is not Johnny Cash. No, it's not. No, no. It's curious you talk about, there's a big conversation that's happening right now with what happened with Ed Sheeran and what musicians should do on stage and riding that line between being revolutionary in your performance and your, and the things that you say there and also being acceptable to play at Robert Kraft owned facilities.

52:29Yeah. How do you see that playing out? Is that a pressure you have to deal with? I don't feel that pressure. I mean, I'm in a very different position to Ed Sheeran. And... Look, I actually, my heart take is that I actually feel bad for the guy because I don't think he knew what he was getting himself into. I think he could have absolutely said, no, cancel the tour then if you're going to cancel the tour. I want Mac and Morton to say I'm on my spot act and I don't think anything would have happened, right? I think you can be a very, very famous person and a very, very rich person and a very, very celebrated musician. And actually, I don't think you have to bow to those structures. But I think that people are... I think that famous people are often surrounded by a massive team of people who are making endless amounts of money off them that are putting loads of pressure on them to do the thing that upholds the capital value of their artistic product.

53:31So I think he was given really bad advice by some of it in the very future. I think he was a given really bad advice. And... And I also think that maybe his problem was that he started identifying as Irish recently. Right. So... So he... And this is the point I want to make. I don't want to rag on them because I think everybody's been gone from and I don't think it's like super fair. And the reason I say is this is like, this is a man who surrounded himself by Irish people. His band was Irish, all his support acts were Irish. Mac and Morton is even Irish, apparently. He is from... Where's he from? I don't know where he's from. The suburbs, I think. He has a song called Irish song. Is he really? Or Seattle? Is he a Seattle? I thought he's maybe a West Coast guy? Yeah. Anyway. Okay. I don't know where he's from. But, you know, I think that if he wanted to identify as being Irish,

54:39he wanted to reconnect to his Irish heritage. And he wanted that to be a part of his personal brand and a part of his music. So he heard all these amazing Irish musicians with supporting Irish musicians was really in there, like on the ground level in the Irish music scene, which was amazing. The problem then is that if something like this issue, and if something like the issue of what I would refer to as a genocide happens, then, you know, Irish people are going to hold you to account for that. What I think the actual issue is is that there are so many other musicians playing in massive stadiums that are not surrounding themselves with people that will hold them accountable so it doesn't get shown up. And I actually think that this is the problem. He's a guy that maybe got a bit unlucky by his choices. I actually think there's a lot of people who are doing much worse than him. And that's why I think maybe a lot of the criticism is a bit unfair. I think there's a lot of people who are not saying anything or doing anything

55:39to help the Palestinian people right now that are just not getting it in the neck because they refuse to be surrounded by people who would make an issue for them. So you're saying the major problem is here, he's hiring Irish people, so don't do that. That's your advice to the music industry. I think I can. The title track from Euro country? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, what do you love about this song? This song is, I promise it's really fun and good. But it's about the economic crash that happened in Ireland in 2008. And I was a kid when that happened and I was about 12. And it had a really, really devastating impact on the country. And I've been thinking about it a lot recently. I've been thinking a lot about how politicians make decisions. And we don't really feel the repercussions of those decisions until about 20 years later.

56:43And my generation of Irish people have all more or less emigrated because there's no work and no housing for them. And I think I was really ruminating on this around the time that I was making the record. I wanted to make a song about it, but I really didn't want to be hand-fisted in it. And I wanted to just be like, look, this was what I experienced as a kid. And I know that if we start making the right progress now, and we start helping people with housing and helping people find employment and making the country a little bit more socialist, then in 20 years' time we will reap the dividends. And there is still hope to be had and hope to be found. And it doesn't have to be this big lost cause that everybody's making it out to be. So I really, yeah, I just wanted to have a song about how much I love Ireland, I guess, I don't know. It's...

57:43We're going to get to hear it's a beautiful song. It might be the most well-timed, far-ded-of-futoral home I've ever heard. I can't wait to hear it. Euro-country is out now. See you then! My guest tonight is an Emmy-nominated filmmaker whose new documentary is called The History of Concrete. Please welcome John Wilson. I totally forgot there was an audience here. What were you expecting? I don't know. I was like a black box situation. We're going to get into it. No offense, yeah. Yeah, are you celebrating right now? Oh no, no. I'm not. Wow. I totally forgot there was an audience here. What were you expecting? I don't know. I was like a black box situation. No offense, yeah. Yeah, are you celebrating right now? I'm celebrating right now. Like, oh no, now I got to play out to it. I got to come with some jokes. I need to make these people love me. Yeah. Don't worry. They're going to love you.

58:43Yeah. Doesn't, doesn't, doesn't. Oh, love you. Well, okay. History of Concrete. Why Concrete? I'll bite. Oh, why not? You know, I think it's funny stuff. It's a bedrock of humor that is there, right? Yeah, I think, yeah, I was dodging puns the whole time. I think. You see, even talking about this movie with friends, like, you can't help but constantly make Concrete jokes all the time. I know. Did you have internally a number of Concrete puns you could make in the film? Yeah. And I think the one that I landed on was Rocky Mentary. Yeah. I think that became the most enduring pun that I decided to keep in. And I think it ended up doing kind of interesting things in the film because it was the film was in serious trouble at one point of being uninteresting.

59:45Yeah. It's not funny. Were you aware of that moment? I mean, what is it making you think about your work and what you do is you're very articulate about the process that you're going through. Yes. I leave very little to the imagination. Where is the fear of like, oh, shit, this is uninteresting. You know, after a year of filming, cracked sidewalk, I think. You kind of, you know, what's that definition of insanity kind of line? I was like, I need to change something because this isn't looking down isn't getting me anywhere. I need to kind of get back to eye level. Yeah. Yeah. We have a directional standpoint. You were making mistakes. Yeah. I should make things up. I'm not surprised that, you know, it was a little hard to finance at first. Well, you talk in the film, you go to Rome and you spend your entire budget in Rome? Yes. And to be clear, that makes up about 30 seconds of a set of the By-Rook Golf.

1:00:47It didn't even look like you went into the Coliseum. It didn't seem like it was much to spend it on. I went to a nice wax museum, though. You did your own wax museum. I talked to some police officers and I went to a wax museum. That was the main activities. But yeah, there was a nice wax figure of Anthony Hopkins. Yeah. That's sort of your vision when you were like, can I dream to make a feature like film? I hope I would capture something just like this. Yeah, I was like, you know, I may have something, though. I don't know. But you know, they had these, you could, there's a QR code next to the wax figures and you could scan it. And it would give you a video of an AI mouth speaking through this wax sculpture, which was, it was very creepy. Yeah. But it didn't seem to be something that anyone else was interacting with at the wax museum. Yes. And it seemed like kind of an afterthought. But yeah, on their website, you can just download all the videos that they have of those wax sculptures.

1:01:52And I just use them in my movie. Is there a fear when you're seeing people not interact with something in your mind or you're thinking, oh, this is not at all interesting. I shouldn't film this. Or is that like, I need to run towards a fire. No, yeah, it's like, if the room is empty, I know I'm in the right place. That part of why you were so freaked out when you walked out here, right? Yeah. Oh, yeah. Well, you have to, I mean, people are familiar with your work. How to, John Wilson, a fantastic show. Thank you. It was just named one of the top 100 films of this century, correct? Chose. Chose, shows of this century. Yeah, I, it's been a short century so far. It's been short, yeah. Right. Was there anybody out of you that you were like, screw that show? Mad Men, really? SIGARETTS? Yeah. People smoking, looking cool. Mad Men, I know. You know what? You know, I like that show. I know. You're right. I shouldn't bait you into that. No, no, no, yeah. You're actually going to talk shit about my other 99 brothers.

1:02:53Yeah, what's going to say? You're on a text chain, no, I'm sure. Yeah, yeah. Well, part of the fun of, I think watching your work is that you start out with a premise and then we follow you tangentially to see the kind of the world around you. I would say what I love about watching your stuff is that there's the serendipity that you experience in New York of what you stumble on and the people you meet is a beautiful thing and feels very resonant about people who live in New York and people just experience kind of life in that way. What I would be curious is, is like, you seem to go out into the world with a camera in hand looking to find something beautiful. Sure. I'm curious what happens when you don't go with your camera and you see those beautiful things. Does it, have you unlocked a way to see the world that is helpful or are you just furious that you're missing something you can do? You're missing something you could put into a piece of work. I mean, it's a bit of a curse at times and a bit of a sickness, I think, when you try to train your brain to look at everything a certain way.

1:03:53It's like, you know, I was only thinking about scaffolding for a long time, you know, when I made this. So I don't know what's so funny again. We all go through that phase. Don't act like you haven't been there. Yeah, we've all had it. Yeah, we've all had scaffolding fetish dreams. Yeah, we have tied up. Yeah, I know. But anyway, but you know, that becomes the way you see the world for a while, but then you kind of give yourself a new objective and that kind of washes out the old stuff. But that doesn't stop people from continuing to send you stuff for years and years after that. I'm sure. But yeah, and then you just talk to people on the street. And I don't know. I try to treat every person like their celebrity and celebrity like their person. I don't know. Just like kind of a trade everyone on the street like their, you know, Michael Douglas or something. Yeah. I'm curious. Do you have trouble getting people to talk to you on the street?

1:04:55Are people open to you when you're walking around with the camera? Do they want to be to be interviewed? Yes, I was yesterday. I was in Midtown and I was just going up to different people that weren't wearing ties. I was trying to find someone with a tie and I found it was hard to find someone wearing a tie. So I was trying to ask people why they weren't wearing ties, but people not wearing ties are usually going to rush. And they didn't want to talk. Yeah. Is that when you walked out of your trip? When you walked out of your apartment that morning? What morning? Yesterday morning. Oh, yeah, yeah. Was that your intention where you're like, I got to go film some people with ties? Or was it... You know, this is what's, yeah, this is what's going to happen when AI takes over. Everyone's just going to be on the street trying to fill their time with stuff like this. And you're telling me with ideas like this, you had trouble financing this film.

1:05:55Yeah, I know. This is the thing. That's the thing. You know, whatever. You capture it. Here's a moment I love it here too, is because you captured a moment you were at what looked like a very fancy private dinner for GQ. The food wasn't very good. Was that very good? But people are toasting Kim Kardashian, who you're sitting like a cross from. Yes. I don't know why. Well, it's like, I think Dwayne Wade was next to her. Yeah. You're filming. I'm wondering, are they noticing you filming at this moment? Are you like a pariah in this moment? Or are they... What do they think of you? I mean, I'm filming. I mean, I'm like this far away. And I'm like... You're right there. Like this, you know. But it feels like a private moment and everybody's celebrating Kim Kardashian. And there's John Wilson sort of like, I'm like, use this. I... Yeah, I don't know. I never know what anything's going to be for. But I knew it was a rare environment that no one else was... I mean, there are other people from GQ, I think, covering it.

1:06:56But I haven't seen any of that material. And I just... I don't know. I just had never seen an uninterrupted shot of Kim Kardashian before. And I just... I had to have it. Do you... Yeah. We got it. Did you have to decide a release after that? I mean, I think, you know, this is a public figure. Right. I mean, anyone in public is a public figure is how I... Is that how it works? I feel like we... I don't know. You know, we... Yeah, we don't got to talk about that. All right, here's another one I want to talk about. I'm curious. You collect all this footage, and then you sit with an editor, multiple editors. Do editors love working with you? Do they... Do they... Are you two? What are you setting me up for? I'm just wondering. I... I can see you are... You have a singular voice. You capture the world around you in voluminous amounts.

1:07:59Sure. And then I'm sure you sit with an editor and be like, Hey, we need to make something of this. And I'm wondering if those people are secretly... If they secretly despise you. I may never know, but I don't know. I work very closely with my editors. You know, my editor Corey and Sasha Stinten-Craven, most recently. They are amazingly talented, and they find stuff that's funny in the material that I may not realize is funny, just as like the person recording it. And there's a lot of awkward moments and pauses they know how to play up. And I don't know. I think it's... I can be a bit of a... Like what they call like a frame. Sometimes. Where... Because I am... Sorry, I... And it's between you and I. They're gonna get used to it, right? Don't worry about that. Don't worry about that. Where I'm like, you know... Because I work doesn't editor for most of my life. And so I'm like... And it feels like I enter a bit of a flow state when I'm cutting stuff.

1:09:01So I will like audition a bunch of stuff, and then I'll give it to the editor. They'll put their twists on it. But then I'm also recording the narration. So it has to be like down to the frame, like where the joke hits sometimes. It is like a shot by shot calculation, but it is super fun at the same time. Because I like to do stuff that I'm not... I wasn't allowed to do a work. You know? So if someone tells me like, oh, you can't use that shot. Of that guy, because there's a big tree coming out of his head and the way you frame it in the shot. That's kind of what I want to use. I want to... Even, I don't know, you can't do here. Yeah, the writer's becomes the beautiful thing that you highlight. Yeah, just because... Yeah, it just feels like yours. Yeah. And then... That's nice. You have such a unique style.

1:10:01I went to see David Byrne performed here at Forest Hills last week. And we're watching, I was there with my wife, and there's video happening behind David Byrne. My wife looks like... Oh, this looks like John Wilson video. And then I see your name at the end. It's like, oh, this is John Wilson. Yeah. How is... How is working with David Byrne on a project like that? He's great. We've collaborated a few times at this point. I made a tour documentary about him in like 2015. And then I did a couple of other small things with him. But yeah, this was just kind of a music video with clips harvested from how to... That was like put to this song that he did. And yeah, everyone's been texting me, and everyone seems to like really love it. But I actually saw him a couple nights ago, and he apologized for not having seen the concrete movie yet. Were you filming him while you were talking to him? Yeah. You are? Yeah.

1:11:05So he gets his own a gotcha, yeah. That's kind of my thing, Jordan. You talk it about. Again, I mention what you capture in New York feels so New York. New York is a strange, beautiful, challenging place to live. And I think it's often like... It's often best summed up in the weird characters. The other day, literally, I saw a man in front of my home on a city bike balancing a tire on his head as he went down the street. Oh, wow. And it was like a beautiful, strange thing, because he had to move this tire a long distance, and he's on a city bike. He had, he had to. I assume... I start telling the story that he needed to do this thing. He used a city bike, and then... Or he's just showing off and flexing. Yeah. You were able to find so many of those things. I wonder if somebody who has captured and seen New York for quite some time. Like, what sort of on your mouth rush more of New York moments that you've captured? Oh, I mean... Oh, there was a bit of a scary...

1:12:06I mean, a lot of the great moments in the show. My favorite moments were captured by the second unit team, just because we had like four or five different teams at a time going out during the day and just like capturing whatever, just like throw a dart at the map. And, I don't know, there was one like dog on a really high-up ledge that was like caught up there, and it was really tense, and the whole crowd outside was really worried about it, and it was like a big public scene, but then the dog got back inside. That was... Yeah, I think Britney shut that, but the... But I don't know why that comes to mind. There's a lot of good stuff in the concrete movie, too, that I don't want to spoil either. That's good as hell. Yeah, you're pitching this thing. I was like, is he going to talk about your favorite moment being when a dog died on camera? No, no, no, no, the dog lived. The dog lived. There was tension there. Yeah, it's tension. Yes, I mean, that's the thing. You can show a dog doing anything, and that will give you all the emotion you need

1:13:06for like a... If you say something over it, you know, if you show a dog in the rain, it automatically makes people sad. Before I let you out, I will say that is true. But this documentary, it goes to such beautiful, strange places, but also doesn't let go of the idea of concrete being this ubiquitous substance that we are constantly surrounded by. It's sort of humans need to feel comfort by reliving things over and over again, and these things around us. Like, earnestly, I have to live in this and making this film. What is your relationship with concrete? How do you see it differently? I think I'm so glad you asked. I mean, I'm trying to work on something new right now, so I kind of forget about it, but I also... I don't know. I feel like concrete is... Yeah, it is everywhere, and it's kind of... It's like cyclically, you know, like renewed for sidewalks and everything,

1:14:10and I don't know. I think there's an existential kind of terror there about the fact that we're running out of a lot of the materials we need to make it, and we may not be able to make it for, like, another century, like, as we know, as we do it now. So, I don't know. I mean, you were saying backstage, what, I mean, break is cool, I think. Yeah, I was still... I mean, break is cool, man. Yeah, don't I think it. Break is cool. My dad was a brick salesman, and we were talking backstage. Everybody was like, what happens backstage at a TV show? I'm like, there's cool shit going on backstage. I'm talking about break, you're talking about concrete. Yeah. Like, we get into some stuff. Let me tell you. It's a real Hollywood stuff, but that my dad sold brick for a very long time and understanding, like, the brick industry and the artisans who create something like this, this piece that is both the work of art, and that is functional, and also it is an industry that has seen the erosion of big tech and big companies as well.

1:15:11Like, you have such an American story in the materials that we use. I heard people giggling, f*** you guys. I know, I know, feel you, John. I feel you. No, no, no. You will feel like what you care about with these substances that we see. Yeah. This is who we are, all right? We are the stones that we build upon. We are the ground that we stand upon. These are the things that lift us up. We go beneath them when we die. Why shouldn't we not expose these things, investigate these things, live in these things? Am I right? Yes. Yes, it is. Exactly, yes. Yeah, I mean, I don't know. It's all a political decision in one way or another. I think what we use, and I think brick is cool. I just, I don't know. Yeah. That is it. You don't have to make the focus of your next piece, but I'm not going to tell you it's there if you're interested.

1:16:11Yeah, all right, thank you. I'll, yeah, I'll let you know. John, it's a great film. It's a unique film. I laughed, I cried. I tried to wedge my brick side into the conversation. Yeah. But I'm glad you're here. Yeah, yeah. The history of concrete. The history of concrete.