Money Talks: Is 'Your Friends & Neighbors' Aspirational?
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Hello and welcome to Money Talks, a special extra podcast from Slate Money where we chat with brilliant and interesting people. I'm Emily Peck. I'm a correspondent at Axios and co-host of Slate Money. And I am here today, Hilary Fry, the amazing editor-in-chief of Slate

Former executive editor of HuffPost, where I had the opportunity also to work with you, Hillary, which was so great. You have been in charge of many other things in newsrooms, NBC, Fusion, where you intersected with Felix. I feel like that's a subject for another podcast. That could be good.

So welcome, Hillary. Welcome to Money Talk. Thank you so much, Emily. I love to see you. And I'm so happy to be here to talk about television with you. Yay. We're talking about the Apple TV Plus show, Your Friends and Neighbors. This is the show in which Jon Hamm, who we all know from Mad Men as Don Draper, in this show, he kind of parlays his Don Draper-ness, his handsome getaway with murder almost kind of personality. Yeah.

He portrays a wealthy hedge fund guy whose life is basically crumbling all around him. And he turns to petty crime to keep the money coming in. Specifically, he steals from his friends and neighbors.

The show is set in a fictional suburb called Westmont that kind of looks like Rye. It's probably in Connecticut or maybe in northern Westchester. We're going to dig into whether or not the world portrayed in the show is something we aspire to or something we don't like and just so many other things. I'm so excited for this. And just a heads up, we're going to spoil everything we know. We'll get into it all when we come back on Slate Money Talks. This podcast is brought to you by Progressive Insurance.

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I was so excited when you started talking about this because you brought this up. We were taping these other slate money shows that people will soon listen to. And you were talking about how your friends and neighbors is the one show or one of the one shows about rich people where you don't covet the lifestyle. So that was sort of the inspiration for this podcast.

Yeah, I have to say when I started watching it, I couldn't help but compare it to The White Lotus. And I'm not the only one who's made that comparison. Ross Douthat basically stole my idea for a column and wrote it in The New York Times a couple weeks ago. You know, when you watch The White Lotus, you have this feeling of, wow, these people are miserable, but the trappings are so beautiful. They're in these Four Seasons resorts and the wallpaper and the ocean and the sea and all that stuff. And

So even though you may not want to be those people, I wouldn't mind going on that vacation. That seems pretty nice. Seems like a nice vacation. But there was something about watching your friends and neighbors where the creators have kind of made everything flat out.

and a little more banal. We're not really getting a texture inside of the homes or even outside that make me really like crazy about them. Yeah, I'd love to have a big kitchen, but they're kind of just these rooms that we see Jon Hamm navigate through and these rooms

these social gatherings where there's nothing glamorous about them. Even though everybody's in designer clothes, everything feels so de rigueur that it just seems like regular life in a different setting that, yeah, the houses are bigger, the cars are fancier, people have expensive items that we will talk about their thievery, but it doesn't feel aspirational. And I

that's clearly intentional, right? That's what they're trying to do with the show. You don't think, you think that there's something aspirational about, I mean, the other thing I'll say is I think they're very deliberate and I, you and I may disagree on this, but this idea that all these folks are kind of over leveraged, even though they have all this money, they need more money. Their housing extensions are add-ons. I don't know. I live in an apartment in a rental, so I don't know anything about owning a house and building an extension, but

the construction costs get out of control or they lose, John Hamm loses his job and embarks on this career of crime and all this stuff. So, you know, this idea that you get more and then you spend more, everybody's in private school. And that frankly, because I was raised in a conservative family where, um,

My parents didn't even have ATM cards. They wrote checks for everything or had cash. This idea of this kind of debt is actually terrifying to me. And the show has done a very good job of tying together the risk of getting used to a kind of lifestyle that if you're depending on who you are, could slip out of your fingers at any moment.

I see where you're coming from, but the house is big, beautiful, so clean. Like they make a point of showing, you know, how the cleaning women get to the Tony suburb, taking like multiple buses and trains and like, it's like a huge schlep, but they're, you know, picking up every like spare piece of lint and like no garbage can is full in any of the houses in Westmont, right? Because they're constantly being emptied.

And just the houses are so clean and the kitchens. They're not just big, Hilary. And they don't just have the Viking stoves like you said you did in fact covet when we talked earlier. I do. I really want a Viking stove. So, okay. But also like the big...

like marbly looking kitchen islands, just like the abundance. Okay, I hate marble. Okay, fine. But like, it looks so good. Like living in a house, you know, people compare like the mortgage payment to the rent, but there are so many other expenses. And just the fact that all these people in this Tony suburb, they can afford like all the little niceties that make life so luxurious. Yeah.

I think is appealing. And I think most people would think looks appealing, like people out in the suburbs who are just like, you know, trying to get by day to day and like sweep their kitchen floor or whatever, like seeing just how easy and good these lives are. I feel like is like jealousy worthy. Like it's not white Lotus go to Thailand resort or whatever Hawaiian resort. I didn't see the latest season. I'm sorry, but it is something that I think a lot of people enjoy.

I feel like the show is trying to tell this morality tale of you get in over your head and this lifestyle is really gross, but it's not resonating with me. These people have a nice lifestyle.

They're going to parties with their friends where they learn martial arts while like eating pot brownies. Like that's fun. Okay. They didn't do the pot brownies while they did the MMA class. Some people did eat them. They did? Yes. I think I missed that detail. Oh, yeah. They were like high and drunk and like hitting each other. And that seems fun. And also good fodder for a TV show, obviously. I'm struck by what you were saying about the houses being clean. Yes. And.

And I do think a clean house, especially when you have children and a busy life, is very aspirational. Thank you. I feel that. I really do. But as somebody and look, part of it's like I really I'm not a house dweller. I've been in an apartment forever.

I don't want a big house. So that's just, that's just true. I would like to have a house sometime, but I don't want a big house. You know, Dan Coyce wrote this great piece for us about the white houses, the big white houses. The big white houses are my nightmare. And that's not the houses that these people are living in. One question I had for you is actually about this milieu. What percent are these folks?

Are they like five percenters? Are they three percenters? Do you think they're one percenters? I think of one percenters as like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos. But maybe we're so stratified that this show is also about one percenters. I just couldn't quite figure out.

where they fit because they have jobs. They work. They have to go to work. At least one person in the family has to have a good paying finance job or a lawyer job or an agenting job or whatever. But it's like,

How much money are we talking about here? Are they making $20 million a year? Are they making $5 million a year? I don't know. Yeah, I think the Jon Hamm character, he's hedge fund money and he's making millions a year is my sense. But his lawyer, Kat is her name, I believe. She partnered a law firm also like me. These are people making millions a year. I think that puts them in the 1%. Musk and Bezos, I would think, are in like the 0.1%. They're like...

top five rich people. There is so much inequality that there's stratifications of rich people. The top 10% is going to be struggling in this area. 5% is going to feel a little nervous. Anyone depending on

annual income, like the Don Draper character is like going to be a little bit struggling. And they do kind of touch on this. There's like a difference and Ross Douthat in the column you were mentioning before, I think he talks about this. There's like the meritocratic class now, like the people who grew up middle class in the eighties, nineties, and then got law degrees, or they went to work at a hedge fund and they're making like so much money, but they've sort of like

scrabble their way to get there, like climb the ladder to get there. And they want to get their children in there too. And it's not like understood that it's going to happen. There's this just like overwhelming, like class anxiety, even among these people who are in like the top five to 1% who are like anxious about holding onto that status. And I feel like that's like the Don Draper character. And you mean the Jon Hamm character, right? The

The Jon Hamm character? You keep calling him Don Draper. Oh my God, Andrew Cooper. The Andrew Cooper character who is played by Jon Hamm. We know Jon Hamm is Don Draper is Andrew Cooper. It's okay. Coop. We'll just call him Coop. Just call him Coop. Can I just sidebar that the actual Jon Hamm was on the Amy Poehler podcast. She called him and he...

called in to her show like from Zoom and he was wearing a tuxedo and in the background was a hot air balloon and like just the idea of Jon Hamm he's just like always in a tuxedo is just...

Sure. Chef's kiss. Perfect. Perfect. What I was saying is, oh, there is some of this in the show where it's like levels of rich people, the meritocratic kind of striver, anxious people, and then the people who have inherited a lot of money and just aren't anxious. Like I see that in Coop's best friend in the show, Barney, who is portrayed by Hoon Lee.

He seems to be someone who like worked to get where he is and to make his money. But he married a woman who has obviously inherited wealth because this woman's mother gives the Barney character a check for a million dollars, which he burns, which I have a lot of thoughts about because that's crazy. Well, and part of Coop's mythology is the Stryver mythology, right? And his wife played by Amanda Peet, who, you know, I think you look like.

If anybody doesn't know what Emily looks like, just picture Amanda Peete. But the show is really intentional, showing their backstory as these young, in love, tiny apartment, New York City. We're supposed to relate to Andrew Cooper and to Amanda Peete. I should say Mel is her name on the show. Mel Cooper. But I'm not sure if we're supposed to also sort of turn on them. I can't quite figure out how we're supposed to feel about Coops.

Coops? The Coops? The Coopers? Because I struggle a little bit with some of Mel's choices in the later episodes. But, you know, they're clearly trying to contrast. Jon Hamm is so good at playing an underdog or this antihero, not really an underdog, but an antihero. Like he watches the TCM and he knows the artists and all this stuff. And he's supposed to have this depth

that we understand from like him coming up a different route. But it's, it's like, I'm not convinced that they've yet. You know what I mean? Like it's, it's like, there's some real weird moral stuff going on in this show. I'm not sure how we're supposed to feel about it, but,

But definitely, I mean, do you want to talk about the burning the million? Yeah. Okay. So this guy, Barney, his business isn't doing well in part because Andrew Cooper, who is a big client, has been fired and isn't making any money. So he's not doing well. He's overextended himself with this home expansion. And so his in-laws come. They clearly don't like him. They don't like him. They don't think he's good enough for the daughter. The mother-in-law is like, I sense trouble, money trouble. Here's a check. Okay.

And then we see it's a million dollars, a million dollars. And then this Barney character, he gets drunk and sets the check on fire. Hilary, you have thoughts? Yeah.

Well, I have a few thoughts. One, he's drunk and he sets the check on fire. Okay, that's ridiculous. I guess it's ridiculous. I mean, who... It's ridiculous. I would at least hold on to the check for a couple days while I figured out what I wanted to do with it. And then I definitely would take the money. I mean, let's just be clear. I would like to have a million dollars. But him setting it on fire in the midst of the construction zone, I mean, we all saw where this was going. I have to say, I'm...

I don't know why he had a fire extinguisher standing right there to put out the fire that could have burned down his whole house. I mean, on the one hand, I kind of wanted his whole house to burn down because I thought, well, that'll be interesting. But he was able in his incredibly inebriated state to grab a fire extinguisher, which I don't know how to use personally. And I don't think I have one, but my apartment is a former bread factory. So it's very fireproof everything in here, but yeah,

Yeah, he can't save the check, but he does save his very expensive home extension that's in progress, right? Like the check is gone. Yes, the check is gone. What would you have done? Would you have burned the check? I would have immediately figured out how to deposit the check.

First of all, my online bank won't take a check for a million dollars. There's like a $50,000 cap. So I would have immediately ran to the bank and opened a new account. He's a money manager. He probably could do it much more easily. Second, I was just thinking as you were talking and it occurs to me, a million dollars is

is nothing, is not enough to get him out of his troubles. His house is probably worth like 15, 20 million. He's probably overextended on it. And he's in the hole for millions more for the renovation. So to him, getting the million dollar check is like when my aunt used to mail me 50 bucks and I was like, I'll get to this. You know what I mean? So maybe that's why he felt like he could set it on fire. Right. And they would have known, like the parents would have known, his wife's parents would have known that the million dollars

is just like kind of a throwaway. Maybe. Like maybe. No, you're right. And it should be noted also that, you know, Jon Hamm loses his job, doesn't have an income, takes up stealing. That's the point, right? As you pointed out at the beginning. Yes. From his friends and neighbors. And when he steals from them and trades their fine quality watches and other items, he's

he just gets cash, right? And so he's trying to give Barney like bags of cash and his wife a bag of cash. I keep wondering what everybody is doing with their cash because it needs to go in the

I guess, to pay the bills or maybe like the one neighbor, they just keep it in rolls in their sock drawer. Yeah. You just take it out. Yeah. And you're like out on the town. You just kind of spend it around. A couple of 10 grand. I've heard some speculation that maybe season two is like how we launder the money kind of a thing. Cause there's going to be a season two. So yeah, that's kind of the,

the big question we've been talking about in my house, like, what are we going to do with Jon Hamm? Is he going to like Walter White it and become like a criminal mastermind and then like enlist Barney to like help him do the money laundering perhaps? Because you're totally right. What are you going to do with the cash at some point? It's like you can't, yeah, you can't just spend it around town. You need some sophisticated arrangement of some sort to wash it. And we're going to take a break right here. And when we come back, we'll get into some more friends and neighbors talk.

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There's a murder in the plot of this show. Thank you so much for bringing up the murder. We should talk about the murder. Do you think the murder is important? No. I think the murder, first, doesn't seem important. Seems really random if Olivia Munn isn't the one who's done the murder and Andrew Cooper isn't the one who's done the murder. There's no other suspects on the table. So then...

Why is that interesting to the show? No, the mob, the deceased was part of. But it's such a MacGuffin. Like, we don't know anything about that. Like, so as like just from a pure like TV drama, like 101, that's not good TV. If it's just some random person that did the murder, it's like, why did you make this a pivotal part of the plot? It's upsetting. It's really a distraction, though. I guess the show starts with Jon Hammett.

with Andrew Cooper in jail, right? So it's kind of like, okay, that was like the motivating start for the show and they have to come back to it. Yeah, so in episode eight, he is in jail and he is bailed out of jail by his father.

Who, by the way, drives a Mercedes. Okay. Maybe he's not so working class, this guy. He went to Princeton, tennis star, father drives a Mercedes. But it turns out that the father cashed out his retirement or his 401k or something to get him out of jail because the bail was so high.

That's a bad move. So to get back to the question, do we need the murder? And I'll take you, I'll one up you and answer both these questions. Do we need the murder for this show to work? Do we even need Jon Hamm stealing from his neighbors, Andrew Cooper stealing from his neighbors for this show to work? Would this be a good show if it was just about fucked up rich people in this weird Connecticut suburb? I mean, I would watch it. I don't, I,

I want to be honest. I don't think this is a good show. I think the show is fine. It's missing weirdness. The only character that we're really getting close to is Jon Hamm, who is by his own nature unknowable. Like this is what makes him a compelling actor is his

his head is cut like a 50s matinee idol. He will forever be Don Draper, and he's Don Draper in this show. It's just that his name is Andrew Cooper, and he's doing different kinds of subversive acts, right? I was talking to somebody who was like, oh, you know, this is like his big kind of return to television, and it is in a main role, but he was

in Landman, the Tyler Sheridan show. He's showed up in The Morning Show playing these kind of like curmudgeonly rich guys. Like he's really good. He looks rich. I mean, this is, he just looks like a rich guy. But, and I, you know, we know a little bit about Olivia Munn and a little about Amanda Peet's characters and these women who surround him. But I think that we would need to really figure out

who and why we're rooting for somebody in this show, because that is not resolved for me. And a couple episodes back, when the Coopers go to Princeton with their children so that the oldest daughter can look at the campus...

Andrew and Mel get trashed during the day. Now, can I tell you, my first thought was, don't they have to drive home tonight? Well, thank God they didn't. They were staying in like a B&B. But I was really traumatized. I was like, how can they be this drunk? They live like an hour and a half away. What are they doing? They had a hotel room. It's okay. They had a hotel room. It was okay. But they snuck into the campus chapel and were like hooking up basically like in this church and

And again, I don't think of myself as a particularly socially conservative or sexually conservative person. But I was like, this is rude. Like, this is a really rude thing for these two people to do in a way that and also Amanda Peete freaking out about, you know, their son gets in trouble and they basically have to pay off the school to the tune of $250,000 to not get their kid expelled. Right.

And I was a little like turned around because I thought these two who are supposed to be the more salt of the earth, like strivers who like got here, we're going to be like, okay, it's somebody's got to learn a lesson here or just be like, this is ridiculous. He's going to a different school. Like he, you know, the whole thing is pretty contrived, but just like the rush to like pay people off the, like hooking up in a church. Come on. That's not cool. I thought I don't know why I was

I guess it's because I went to church on Easter and I'm just feeling like, yeah, I go to church on Easter in Washington with some friends every year. And it is nice. And I, but I was like, I'm like, oh, I,

I don't know. Maybe I don't like these people at all. I'm not sure. And maybe they're keeping us on our toes with who they are and nobody's perfect and the fist fighting and all this stuff. But to answer your question, the murder is stupid and is unnecessary. And I'm sure that the writers are figuring out how to dispense with it as soon as possible. So I would expect that part of the problem with Andrew Cooper getting resolved soon. But the stealing...

And I think when we were talking earlier, you mentioned, you know, it's not just coop stealing, but like it turns out Amanda Peet's a little bit of a shoplifter, probably not her first time shoplifting, you know, in her life when she does it on the show.

And there's I think that the thievery is interesting and the cavalier way that Andrew Cooper's character does it. I mean, just like walking into these people's houses, not moving fast, taking his time, looking around kind of, you know, with his internal monologue going is interesting.

I don't think we know exactly why he's so comfortable doing that yet, but I think it's interesting. And it is the little twist that maybe if this show keeps going by season three, he's not...

He's going to run out of people to steal from unless they move. Right. That's why he's got to go Walter White. That's why he's got to go big. Yeah, he might have to start his own ring and full bling ring. But for middle-aged adults, that would be interesting. You know, Barney's in trouble. Maybe he pulls Barney in. I think to pick up on what you were saying, like, these are not good people. Yeah.

Like that, that is sort of like the bottom line here. I mean, I kind of want somebody to be good, but maybe I don't. Maybe. Yeah, I think. Well, I think the show tries to do that with the underclass, the people that are traveling, you know, three hours to work in their Tony neighborhood. But then they undercut that by having one of,

those people help Andrew Cooper do his stealing. So it's sort of, it's interesting because the stakes for that person, she lays them out pretty blatantly. They have an argument and she's like, this is, you know, life. She says all the things that you're supposed to just know between the lines, like Elena stealing, the housekeeper stealing is putting like,

our whole life on the line. Like she could be deported. She could be arrested. She says like, you would probably just get off, you know, because of who you are, you don't have to spend any time in jail, but I'm really life on the line here. And yeah, the fact that he's stealing and his ex-wife Mel is stealing, although on a lower, like more Winona Ryder kind of level. She doesn't do that anymore. No, no. It just shows sort of how careless she

They are. And so did that example about, you know, how much money do we have to give you to keep our kid in school? Just like sort of like careless and cavalier they are. And maybe the show is trying to say something about the 1% and how they steal from all of us in some way, some deeper meaning. I don't know. I don't know. So I did want to bring up to close out the Ross-Douthat loop.

he has like three broad spirits of presenting the rich in television. One is aspiration, judgment, and reassurance. Aspiration, do you want what they have? I feel we've covered. The judgmental spirit condemns them for what they've done to get what they have.

So we're doing that now, I guess. And the reassuring spirit tells you, you don't want what they have anyway. So where are we on all this? So judgmental condemns them for what they've done to get what they have. I feel like the show does not do that, except perhaps showing that Andrew Cooper's boss is very bad guy and like,

manipulated him. Something is really rotten with that guy. And it's too bad that that thread of why Coop really lost his job really hasn't been pulled. I'm sure that's a season two thing, but it's so backgrounded. And I do think it's interesting. I want to know what that turn was that caused this. Yeah, so do I. And sort of the lawyer he turns to kind of stabs him in the back.

Also, like clearly there's something rotten there. Clearly, like the judgmental spirit condemns like that. There's possibility there, but hasn't been explored. And then the reassuring spirit tells you you don't want what they have anyway. I guess I have a strong reassuring spirit, Emily.

I guess I don't. We didn't talk about Coop's car, which is one of my favorite things in the show. So Coop has a Maserati Gran Turismo, I think is the model. It retails for about $150,000, maybe a little more depending on where you look.

Again, look, that's a pricey car. It's not a $400,000 car, but it's a Maserati. It's not a Honda. In an early episode, a boyfriend of their daughter slightly bumps the car like they have a little car crash in the driveway as things go. And this damages the Maserati so that if anybody taps the bumper, it seems, or there's any sudden jarring movement, the hatchback flies open. I actually find this

hilarious. I think it's a really funny comedic element in the show that just also shows you like, okay, that's cool. You have like $150,000 Maserati and still it will malfunction like any other car. Like the slightest tap

means that it's like Hatchback is going to fly open spontaneously. And the writers use that. I think it is funny. It might be slightly overused, but it's like when you've gone, you know, a little while without the Hatchback flying open at a very inopportune moment. I think it's quite funny. But it's another one of these kind of like, oh, maybe they're just like us in some ways. I think so. I can really relate because I have a Volkswagen Jetta and it's more than 10 years old, but I'm always too busy to like

properly care for this car. Like I have still my snow tires on. We're recording in May. I haven't gotten them off yet. Like I relate to this guy. His life is falling apart at such a level that like he does not have time to get his car repaired. Totally. I feel that too. I was driving yesterday and there's like this like strip of foam that like runs along the top of my car and it just flew off the top of my car and I'm like,

And one of my tires needs a patch. And, you know, I'm going to get to it eventually. You get to it. You're going to get to it. Yeah. I'm going to get to it. He'll get to it. It is kind of like you have someone coming in to clean. Couldn't they like help you out or somehow take the car in for you? Doesn't Maserati, the dealer, have a service where they could? There are a lot of like, why aren't you getting this fixed? Like your life is obviously falling apart on many levels. Yeah.

The car is his life, Emily. Yeah, it looks good, but it's flawed. Big flaws. Broken, even. And a lot of earned credit for the brand because we have that little earned kind of liking for this Andrew Cooper only because he used to be Don Draper, who we liked despite the fact that he was a terrible person also. Totally. Okay, we probably have to wrap up soon. Where are the Ring cameras is one of my questions. Maybe unanswerable.

It's the suburbs. It's the 2020s. Everyone has a ring camera. You got to tell me because I don't live in the suburbs. Everybody has a ring camera. Well, not every, I don't have one, but I want kind of want one, but every, I mean, most people have a ring camera, so they would see John Ham breaking into their homes pretty easily. So that's like conspicuously absent for me. I find that, I find that a little weird.

But okay. The show falls apart if everyone has them. So, okay. Right. So no ring cameras. I also just, as you know, we would know he was breaking him. We'd also know, I guess, if he committed this murder, if people had ring cameras. Yes. But I also found myself wondering, as Jon Hamm wakes up bloody next to a corpse and then cleans up, I thought, has this man ever watched...

law and order or any show involving a crime where, you know, actually if there is blood, even if you bleach it, like you can't clean it up. Like they're going to find you, which, which they do. That's how they, they did. Yeah. Cause he, he could have just gone to the police and be like, look, I'm sleeping with the wife. I went to the house, like whoops, fell in the blood. Like I find this like hiding of, of him sleeping with Olivia Munn's character, Sam, um,

Why? I mean, I get anyway. Again, why? A lot of questions. A lot of questions. A lot of questions. A lot of questions unanswered. Perhaps they'll be answered in the finale, which we haven't seen. We don't know. Oh, one thing I want to make sure to mention. You wanted to talk about Christian Thomason, who plays the art dealer. So, yes, there is in the ridiculous subplot.

which actually I love, where Jon Hamm's character, sorry, I want to just call him Jon Hamm. You want to call him Don Draper. He's Andrew Cooper. Jon, Andrew, Don, Draper, Cooper. Cooper. Where Coop is, okay, we're going to steal some art now instead of some watches or like a diamond necklace. So he targets this Roy Lichtenstein character

painting in these people's house. And he, there's a whole digression on how terrible pop art is and how it's not, you know, real and all, you know, because we're supposed to have, Coop has gravitas, right? Of course he knows, of course he knows about art and modern art and American art and all this stuff. And he, you know, he, he has to pawn this to get the wads of cash to put in the brown paper bags to give to, to Barney and, and Mel. Yeah.

And he hooks up with this art dealer who's played by an, well, he's born in Connecticut, but Icelandic actor named Olafur Dari Olofsson. I think I'm saying it right. Olafur Olofsson. No, but Olafur Olofsson is a different person. I found this out today when I Wikipedia'd. That's why he has Dari in his middle name, clearly, because Olafur Olofsson might be a very common Icelandic name. We don't know.

But this guy, he is huge. He is a giant man.

Some listeners may know him from Severance, which I don't watch, but I've been told he's very evil. Oh, yeah. He's a henchman in Severance. Yes. And anyway, if you're he's really over the top on your friends and neighbors. I was delighted to see him, but dismayed by his totally outrageous performance as this gallerist, like this nefarious gallerist who also has a

bunch of dudes who will beat people up on command, which they do to Coop. But if at all you're compelled by him, I just have to recommend he was the star of an incredible... So my real passion is Scandinavian crime dramas, and I could talk about them forever with you or anyone. Hello? A lot of them are about rich people, by the way. So...

Slate Money, Scandi edition. I'm here for you. They probably have beautiful homes, well-designed. Okay, I'm sorry, but I just watched this Danish show. It's the number one show on Netflix right now.

well, maybe not. It might only be number one for me. It was called Secrets We Keep, incredible Danish miniseries, rich people, the homes, incredible, designed, minimalist, full walls of glass looking at anyway. That's what I'm talking about, right? Like that is aspirational. That is aspirational. So anyway, this guy, Olafar Dari Olofsson, was the star of this incredible, I

Icelandic crime drama called Trapped. The great thing about Scandi crime dramas is unlike in America, there are no heroes. So everyone is deeply, deeply flawed. And he is just this big bear of a detective trying to sort out his own life and crimes in, not in Reykjavik, in like a rural town in Iceland. And it's wonderful. The sun never shines or maybe it shines all the time. Depends.

That sounds amazing. It's called The Tourist? No, it's called Trapped. This one is Trapped. He was also in a show called The Tourist where he plays like an evil truck driver. Oh. That show is interesting. Oh, also I love Australian TV. Anyway, this is the rare American show, Your Friends and Neighbors, that I watch because mostly I watch things with subtitles in foreign languages. Good.

Gotcha. Well, the only other thing I want to say about Olaf or Dari Olofsson is that he was on the Severance podcast.

And they talked about him and they talked about Icelandic actors because, you know, Iceland is a very small country. And apparently, like, if you are an actor or if you are Bjork, they all know each other. And so he was talking about he was at a party at Bjork's house because, of course, because all the famous actors in Iceland, there's like 20 or a dozen, I don't know, a few dozen, and they all know each other and go to parties and sauna parties.

with Bjork, et cetera. That's all I have for you. Wow. That sounds great. That's the true life you aspire to. There's this resort, like crazy resort in Iceland that was used as the set in this great Brit Marling show, A Murder at the End of the World. And Clive Owen plays this billionaire who builds this bunker and basically kills

mysteriously invites a handful of people to come to this place. Oh. And it seems like it's like a secret mini-

Davos or something like very tiny, you know, kind of like we're going to be the people who carry on humanity and the apocalypse. That doesn't happen at Davos, I guess. I don't know. Ask Felix. I've never been. But like major cultural figures, et cetera. And anyway, we don't need to talk about the show, though. The show is fantastic. But the setting is like incredible, like this place. And I was like, well, obviously this is a real place. So I look it up and it's like this hotel in Iceland.

in like a major middle of nowhere. And then I'm like, huh, I'm turning 50 this year. Maybe with my German husband, we'll go to Iceland and stay in this place for a night, right? Yeah. No, no, no, no, no. No, it's like $7,000 a night or something. Yeah.

It's like cuckoo bananas. So expensive. Okay, so bottom line, you don't covet the sort of bland suburban world of your friends and neighbors. You covet a more $7,000 a night Icelandic kind of dreamscape kind of glass walls and sleek.

modern look? I don't think I want to live in it, but I like, I want a vacation in it. Okay. Maybe. Yeah. I mean, Emily, you raise a great question. What do I want? You know, I don't know. Some days a Scandinavian glass and

natural wood, blah, blah, blah. And the next day I want like a busted farmhouse in upstate New York. Yeah. Well, that seems more doable. Right now I just live in a Brooklyn apartment. Okay. Well, last thoughts. Who did the murder? We're coming into the finale. Hopefully we find out who do you think it is? I...

Doesn't matter. Well, we already said it doesn't. But who do you think it is? I don't think it matters. But you know what? Why not? I'm going to say Olivia Munn somehow arranged this. I agree. I think it's Olivia Munn. I think she might have used the mafia people to arrange it.

I think she's, her parents are just like giving her a fake alibi. That's my theory. She wasn't really there. She snuck out. That's why the kids are in Boston. Yeah. Boston's not that far. You could drive from Boston, kill someone in Connecticut and then get back to Boston at all in one night. It's, you could do it if you tried. And she knew his trunk was broken, you know? And her DNA would already be everywhere in the house.

Boom. And she didn't even call him after that when the cops were like, we know that you're sleeping with him or whatever. She didn't even call him to give him a heads up. Nothing. Nope. All right. We're going to leave it there. Email us if you have any thoughts about this show or Iceland, Icelandic actors or the architecture of the suburbs. Scandi dramas, Scandi noir. Yes. Any other shows we should, we should talk about. You can email us at slate money at slate.com.

Thank you, Hilary, so much for joining us, taking time out of your busy editor-in-chiefing to come on and talk about TV with me. Thank you to Jessamyn Mollie and Shaina Roth for producing. Ben Richman is Senior Director of Podcast Operations, and I'll be back on your feed on Saturday for a regular episode of Slate Money. Until then, thanks for listening. I'm Leon Nafok, and I'm the host of Slow Burn Watergate. Before I started working on this show, I was a

Everything I knew about Watergate came from the movie All the President's Men. Do you remember how it ends? Woodward and Bernstein are sitting with their typewriters, clacking away. And then there's this rapid montage of newspaper stories. About campaign aides and White House officials getting convicted of crimes. About audio tapes coming out that prove Nixon's involvement in the cover-up. The last story we see is, Nixon resigns. It takes a little over a minute in the movie. In real life, it took about two years.

Five men were arrested early Saturday while trying to install eavesdropping equipment. It's known as the Watergate incident. What was it like to experience those two years in real time? What were people thinking and feeling as the break-in at Democratic Party headquarters went from a weird little caper to a constitutional crisis that brought down the president? The downfall of Richard Nixon was stranger, wilder, and more exciting than you can imagine. Over the course of eight episodes, this show is going to capture what it was like to live through the greatest political scandal of the 20th century.

With today's headlines once again full of corruption, collusion, and dirty tricks, it's time for another look at the gate that started it all. Subscribe to Slow Burn now, wherever you get your podcasts.