The #NeverAgain movement, Facebook and the Russian Influence Campaign, Should Pornography Be Banned, and Oscar Picks
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Welcome to HBS After Hours. I'm Youngmi Moon, and I'm here with my buddies, Felix Oberhalter-G and Mihir Desai. Hi, guys. Hey, Youngmi. This is exciting. This is our premiere episode. We're ready. Did you bring your best game? Yeah, we'll see. The premise of this podcast is, you know, we're trying to do something that sits right at that intersection between business and society. And the idea is that every week,

Each one of us will bring in a topic that is weighing on us, and we'll just talk about it. So today, I want to talk about the NRA. I will talk about Facebook. Okay. And we'll talk a little bit about porn. Okay.

Excuse me? Porn. Porn, indeed. The first episode, we'll talk about porn. Well, really? When Youngmi suggested After Hours, I thought I had to push the envelope a little bit. So we're going to try to push the boundaries and talk a little bit about porn, but seriously about porn and what its effects are. Okay, so how's that for a promotion? We're going to do the NRA, we're going to do Facebook, talk about pornography. We're also going to do some recommendations. Yes.

And we'll do the Oscars. Does this actually combine up to sex, drugs, and violence? Sorry, so I think I got the sex. I think you got the violence. I've got the violence. If you can work on drugs, that would be good. I'll try my best. Okay, guys, I'm going to get us started. I want to talk about the NRA. Obviously, this topic, the catalyst for this was the Parkland shooting. Typically, when there is...

I mean, I hate to say the word typically, but when we have a mass shooting, that these things sort of follow an arc, a very predictable arc where we are grief-stricken and then we're outraged and then the whole topic sort of subsides.

And I want to believe that this time feels a little bit different. And there are three things about the post-shooting that feels just a little different. One is the extent to which students...

have really tried to seize the narrative and become real agents in how the conversation unfolds. The second is you do see some of our political representatives bending a little bit in how they talk about their willingness to even consider some gun control regulation, which I think you haven't seen before. And third, the amount of corporate activity you're seeing with corporations beginning to distance themselves from

So I guess the question that I would open up with is whether it's overly optimistic to think that this might be a true tipping point for how we think about gun control. Look, I certainly hope we are. I think there's reason to be cautious about that because, you know, often we've said this time is different. But I think you're right. This time is different for all those reasons. Yeah.

And in particular, we have a president who changes his mind every day and we don't actually know what he's going to say. And so today, for example, he said these really remarkable things. Like he's willing to do things that Republicans have never been willing to do. And I think there's like a Nixon goes to China thing going on, right? Which is if anybody can get it done, maybe he can because his base believes in him so much. So I think it is actually different. I'm a little less sure. And part of my...

not being overly optimistic is just think back to how he felt about the shooting in Las Vegas. It was so big. It seemed that the remedy that was on the horizon and that at the beginning, everybody seemed to agree, Oh, maybe a good idea not to allow people to transform their weapons into even more powerful weapons. It seemed very natural. And today, uh,

There's not even a conversation about revisiting that issue that seemed the low-hanging fruit after the Las Vegas shooting. And so it's exactly what you said at the beginning. In the moment, it always seems like this time it's going to be different. If you think of democracy as...

a system that is supposed to bring about policies that are close to what people want. Here we have this really big, puzzling observation that most people want restrictions on firearms and we don't seem to be able to get them. I'm kind of curious if you think, if the students came to you and they said, you know, you're really good at marketing, like you're really good at strategy, what should we be doing to ensure that this time is different?

I mean, are there principles that we're not using? One attitude is, well, they're just too powerful and NRAs are going to stop us.

What would you do to make this time different? So I think it's the persistence with which you are able to sustain passion around the issue. To me, that is, and that's something I think the NRA has done so effectively. I think there's a little bit of a myth around why the NRA is so effective. And the myth involves, well, they just give a lot of money directly to our politicians. Right.

When, in fact, if you look at what they actually end up giving to our politicians, it pales in comparison. It's almost nothing. It's almost nothing. Yeah, yeah. What they are able to do is mobilize a small – and by small, I mean, you know, it's a few million people. And they're able to activate them. And, you know, this is a country that we are just stunningly reluctant to vote in.

Yeah.

You know, on the other hand, for the vast majority of people on the other side of this issue, there are just a lot of things that we care about, not just this one thing. And so our ability to sustain any kind of impassioned outrage about this is, I mean, that's a challenge. Yeah. You know, did any of you guys see the CNN town hall about a week? I saw chunks of it, yeah. Did you see chunks of it?

What was amazing to me about that town hall was it was the first time I had seen an event where the audience...

had so much power. Even through the television screen, you could feel the pressure that the audience was putting on the people on that stage. And it's that sort of collective energy. You could almost feel Rubio being sort of bullied by the audience into saying some things that he never planned. I'd say that was my impression. I don't know if you guys have this same impression. What would it take for us to bottle that?

to bottle that and to be able to unleash that at strategic moments, I think that's what it's going to take. I think one of the things that is great about what is happening right now is speed. Yes. Because bottling the passion is so difficult. Yes. One of the things that makes me really optimistic about Florida, this is happening now. Yes. And we're not going to wait and it's not going to be next month. It's not going to be after an election. It's,

It happens now. And I think what really helps there is if I can tap into an issue that people feel passionate about.

I think, as you pointed out, the NRA has done a beautiful job making guns something that is very special to America and Americans and American values. This is my interpretation why we were able to move so quickly on the gay rights front, because we connected gay rights to marriage.

And we have very special feelings about marriage. And so not giving access to something that we hold as dear as marriage didn't seem right to most people. And I think that's what the other side, the opposing side lacks. We have not other than the tragedy in the moment. We don't have a big issue that we connected to.

And as a result, people are critical of guns and the role of guns in American society. For them, it's always going to be issue number 21, and issue number 21 doesn't decide elections. I think the point that you made about speed, there's a thing called momentum now, and you really saw that happen with gay marriage. To the point, nothing happened, nothing happened, nothing happened, and then something happened, happened, happened, happened, happened, and then boom, you know? Yeah.

And so if I were a strategist sort of coaching the never again, if I had all – Yeah, exactly. One of the things that I would be trying to encourage them to think about is what's the thing that happens today? What's the thing that happens tomorrow? So, for example, there's just been a ton of corporate activity around this issue over the last –

And can we make sure that that continues? And then what's the next thing that's going to happen? And what's the next thing? And making sure that we create almost a crescendo-like feeling around this. I think on that, I think on speed and on momentum, the most powerful thing that I saw was the walkouts. Because what can these kids really do, right? So their voice is going to be heard now, but in a month it may be gone. But I mean, I think if you're really serious about this, you stage walkouts. Yeah, yeah. And you...

you create a movement of walkouts because that's going to get CNN. I mean, that's going to get the coverage. You know, without that, it's going to be really hard. There's something so compelling about seeing youth in action. I mean, I know that we love to make fun of millennials and we love to make fun of post-millennials, but I'm in love with this generation for many reasons. But I think there's just something so deeply, deeply compelling about their inflated sense of empowerment. Mm-hmm.

When channeled in the right direction, I think. It also creates a bunch of conflict, too, because they're so young. So right before I came here tonight, I was talking to my son, who is a senior in high school, about those kids at Parkland and the ones that are really leading the charge. And I said, what do you think of those kids? He said a few things. One, he thought they were awesome. He said he hoped that if something like that ever happened at his school, that his school would react the same way. And he felt pretty confident that his school would, you know. Yeah.

But his third reaction was that there are moments when he winces. And I said, give me an example. And he said, I mean, they were on Ellen, Mom.

And they were kind of giggling and, you know, and he said, I had to win. So he goes, I get it. I get it. I mean, they're getting deluged. It's, I think that's the complication. They're not unlike us. They're complicated human beings and they're experiencing a lot of different emotions right now. But that means it's risky. I mean, it sounds like going on Ellen to you or into him is risky. Like there's a risk of overexposure or overplaying your hand. Yes, I think that's right. But on the other hand,

It's hard. Number one, it's hard to do this elegantly. Yeah. And number two, I don't believe you have to do it perfectly to still be effective. There are a lot of voices in there and there's a lot of noise. But I think as long as directionally the momentum continues to build, it does give me a little bit of optimism. And to me, one of the most sort of fascinating

fascinating little threads of this particular story is to watch the stock market. So if you look at the stock prices of the big three gun manufacturers, historically, they've always followed a pattern. And whenever there's been a mass shooting, even after Trump, so after Orlando, after Las Vegas, their stock goes up. I mean, with such reliability, because there's, for all of the obvious reasons,

In this case, it hasn't. Remington went out, you know, has declared bankruptcy last week. And the other, all the stocks are flat to slightly down. And-

I think the stock market is like a really unreliable barometer of corporate performance, but a much more reliable barometer of sort of the emotional tenor of something. And it makes me, everyone's skittish. We've all gotten really skittish now. I love that you're using an event study to think about this problem because it's like exactly what we do in finance. Let me give you my finance version of this. Okay. And you can tell me I'm crazy. So here's a couple of facts.

The market capitalization of Sturm Ruger and American Outdoors, which is Smith & Wesson, they combine to be around $1 billion, $1.2 billion. The Remington bonds are trading at 20 cents on the dollar. There's about $1 billion of bonds outstanding. Here's the basic calculation. You can pay a control premium to all the shareholders of 15%.

you can take out the Remington Bonds. For $2 billion, you can control all the capacity. You can control the big three, which is, by the way, 40% to 50% of capacity. I think to myself, I'm not sitting on $2 billion, but there are people who are sitting on $2 billion.

And you could control all three companies for $2 billion. And just as a metric, there's like $400 billion of charitable contributions every year. So this is like a drop in the bucket. And again, I don't have $2 billion. But you know people who do. For sure, we collectively do. So you can go on to interactive brokers and you can buy the Remington Bonds. So this is my story. I wrote a little piece on this that I'll send to you, which is

What did I call it? A socially responsible hostile takeover. So let's do a socially responsible hostile takeover. And let's just control the capacity. What about the European supply of...

So the big three do our 50 or 60. You're right. This is a windfall to the Europeans. It would be the best day ever for them. Absolutely right. So can you tell me before you spend the $2 billion and I'll invest in the European stock? Well, you're right. So there's Beretta and there's a couple of other manufacturers. It's a total windfall to them. And by the way, this does nothing for the existing stock of weapons out there. Yeah, of course. It doesn't help with that part. Yeah.

Having said that, once you control that capacity, it's hard to build that capacity back up. I don't know, would you as a European manufacturer invest in new capacity if you thought the tide had kind of moved against guns? Maybe, I don't know. You're right. It's a windfall to European manufacturers. You're totally right. I guess I'm hoping that, man, if you're running Beretta, you're going to say to yourself...

They're coming down pretty hard and they're doing pretty crazy things. I'm not going to jack up capacity. And also, it would be a huge order of magnitude capacity for them because these guys are so big. Anyway, so that's my finance take on it. Okay, so Felix...

You're up. What should we talk about next? Let's talk about Facebook. So as you know, we often ask the students at Harvard Business School to think about what it's like to be in the role of a case protagonist, of an executive who runs an organization. So I'll ask you this. For the next couple of minutes, you get to be Mark Zuckerberg.

You just read the report, the government's report about how exactly the Russian government and Russian intermediaries try to influence the US election. What do you do? What do you say to people working for Facebook? Well, God, that's a great question. I think the first thing you say, you have to adopt an attitude of, I'm not going to fight this. I'm going to acknowledge it. And the first thing is acknowledgement. We played a role. It was an unwitting role.

and we're going to cooperate. I think, in fact, what he did right at the time of the election was the opposite of that. And I think you have to acknowledge and you have to be cooperative. The deeper thing is, what are the steps you take to kind of actually address this problem? And that is what I don't know fully, right? But here, wait, wait, wait. What if he doesn't believe in...

that Facebook had a significant role, at least with respect to the Russian influence, which is a different question than did Facebook have an influence on the election? I think that's a different question, right? And I think on that question, I think there's general agreement. It didn't swing the election.

It was too little money, too little influence. I think most people would say... With the Russian thing. The Russian thing would not have changed the election outcome. It's a drop in the ocean. Okay, so let's assume that's what you believe. Yeah. So would you still...

Oh, I think if you fight it, you're dead. I think if you fight it, you're dead. I mean, you look like, A, vaguely unpatriotic, you look, B, disconnected from reality, and you look like a money-grubby guy who wants to defend his business model at all costs. I think that's a very tough way to go. What do you think? Does it matter at all that parts of the report that I found so interesting is...

just how careful the interventions happened. You know, it's not just that you open an account, possibly from an IP address that we can trace back to Russia. You had stolen identities. You had bank information that came from somewhere else. So if you just think, what would it take for Facebook to actually detect? Suppose this happens tomorrow. What would it take for them to know this is an attempt to,

of foreign agents to influence a U.S. election. If I'm Mark Zuckerberg, it's inconceivable to me that there would be an expectation that I would have somehow been able to filter this content. Facebook has 6 million advertisers. They processed $12 billion worth of advertising last quarter. This was an $800,000 advertising campaign. This was...

I think you're letting them off the hook. You're letting them off too easily. Facebook has this position, oh, we're just a platform. And you can't accuse us, we're not a publisher. I think that's the way they think about it. And I think that's wrong. I think they're publishers, and they should understand that. They get it both ways. They're like, I am just a platform, I can't do anything. I don't think that's tenable for them any longer. Let me ask you this. So one...

common response among publishers in response to the difficulties of managing content that you don't produce yourself is to either heavily, heavily censor or completely shut down the public comment sections on their websites. Why? Because they say, we just can't do it. That is not an option that Facebook has. Shutting down the public comment section on Facebook is shutting down Facebook.

If I was running...

Facebook, I'd be really genuinely worried that just what you said, but maybe in reverse, which is actually, God, they're going to the core. They cut to the core of who we are, which is highly optimized strategies for advertising, and they're pushing up against it. Yeah. So it's really interesting. I mean, the traditional publishers have found it enormously difficult to manage online conversation. Yeah.

Even the White House homepage, what you see as public comments, is highly, highly edited in labor-intensive ways. And we now get a whole suite of products where there is automatic editing.

you take out any sort of comment that includes particular swear words or particular words that people feel are offensive. Are you saying we're giving up on the idea of the internet as a public square? I'm giving up on the idea that these people can have their cake and eat it too and be agnostic about what's

what's going on on their platforms. I think your publisher's point is right. They own it, right? They're owning the content and they're policing it. But as a result, the public square function of those comment sections in newspapers are basically... No, no, no, wait a second. Look at the New York Times. There are like thousands of comments on hot stories. The New York Times is one of the few papers that can afford to do this.

Facebook can afford it. Go to smaller publishers. They've shut down their comments. But this is what I think. Facebook has got to invest in this and they've got to do this. They've got to do what the New York Times has done. And that's expensive and it's okay. What puzzles me about...

I understand all the legal questions regarding the way the Russians tried to influence electoral activity and that it's not, it's not legal and they, you know, stole identities and so on and so on. So, so obviously that's not something we want. Uh,

But if I'm thinking this is ultimately about safeguarding the quality of the information that will lead to people making electoral decisions one way or another, I'm mildly confused why we're worried about some claims by some people that are frankly no more or no less outrageous than 90% of what gains popularity on Twitter.

these people are masquerading as not being Russian. That is the problem. They go to great lengths to masquerade as Americans. And that makes it highly problematic. I mean, I think, look, I think you cannot minimize this. I mean, this is a deeply worrisome thing, at least to me. Look, I mean, what's going to happen with the next election outcome? Are we going to actually believe it? What happens when you stop believing election outcomes? I think that's massively important.

Anyway, that was your puzzle. I still want to hear what you think we should do. But I think the puzzle, I mean, God, I think it's a massive deal. So, yeah, we can agree. I'm as puzzled as I was two minutes ago, but that's fine. Let me just give you an analogy so I want to understand your position. Let's just go to old media because I understand old media better than I understand new media. The New York Times publishes an ad that says Hillary Clinton is terrible.

This is in 2016. It turns out that's paid for by Russia. Okay? Isn't the New York Times responsible to figure that out? Who the advertiser is? Yeah. So, I mean, that is exactly analogous. And I think we should hold the New York Times to that.

The New York Times should not take an ad against Hillary Clinton paid for by Vladimir Putin. And that's exactly the same thing on a very tiny little scale. I think the scale issue is, I mean, even for the New York Times. So this ad was bought by someone with an address in Baltimore. The person is an American citizen, has pays from a bank account.

But it wasn't. It wasn't. So it wasn't, but how would you know it's the New York Times? Here's a better analogy, I think. Imagine that the New York Times had a huge classified ad section. A huge classified ad section. Okay, good, I get your point. So you get my point. We'll keep going. So it's a huge classified section. Right, a huge classified ad section. And they get an ad from somebody whose address checks out, whose everything checks out.

And they take the ad and they publish it. And then later it comes out that they were totally, totally spoofed. Totally. Now, that to me is a better analogy. I agree. I mean, it's slightly different in the sense that those classified ads are typically not, don't vote for Hillary Clinton. They are, I got a used car for sale. So I get that. But God, it feels like we have to hold them to something, right? I mean, you can't just let anybody advertise and say anything in your newspaper. Can I ask you a somewhat different question? So the U.S.,

in other countries' elections all the time? Well, I don't know. I mean, I think the fact that the U.S. does it, I'm not proud of that. I think it's kind of terrible. And of course, we have a terrible history with the CIA of intervening in elections around the world, and I don't condone that at all.

But just because we've done it and it's something ugly that we did doesn't mean that it's okay that other people do it. I also think, you know, it's small now, but for Russia to spend $10 billion on this is a drop in the bucket for them. They can do it. And maybe it's not effective now, and maybe it's $800,000 now, but it can be, you know, it can all be these little classified ads, but it can be thousands and thousands of them. So the scale can get big, and it can get big fast. So is the idea...

American democracy somehow depends on isolation of the electoral discourse from opinions that foreigners have. Not at all. Not at all. But it is the idea that if we have countries that have the worst interests of heart, our interests at heart, and are decidedly trying to subvert our elections and our democracy, and they're doing it in covert ways...

Like, I think, look, if Theresa May or Emmanuel Macron wants to say something about the election, bring it on. I think if like Vincent Fox wants to say building the wall is stupid, bring it on. I think that's great.

But this is not like that. So I was going to make the point that this distinction between what's the responsibility of the individual business and the individual business person, and what's the responsibility of the regulatory framework to get this right. Right now, we're treating all of these issues as essentially corporate issues. Mark Zuckerberg has to figure it out how to deal with Russian influence. And I was going to

I was going to come back to my original question. It's like, is the question the right question to ask? Okay, here it's your turn now. What do you want us to talk about next?

Let's talk about porn. So this is going to be tough, but let's try to think about this. And I think it's interesting and it's a really important issue for reasons that are not immediately clear. So the reason to talk about porn is twofold. One, I think it is at the really frontier of thinking about what the Internet is. The UK has recently started to implement rules that will ban porn.

That's from a Wired article.

That's one reason. The second reason is the Me Too moment. There's this terrifying article in the New York Times Magazine about how much porn young boys consume. And the statistics are crazy. They consume an enormous amount of porn. The real interesting part to me was two people who I really respect from totally different parts of the political spectrum suggest that we should ban porn. One of them is David Simon.

produce The Wire and then did The Deuce, which is this HBO show about the porn industry. And he, I think, makes this really compelling case. And by the way, he's totally left of center, you know, completely not conservative anyway. And he says...

Pornography has affected the way men and women look at each other, the way we address each other culturally, sexually, he says. I don't think you can even look at the misogyny that's been evident in this election cycle and what any female commentator or essayist or public speaker endured on the internet or any social media setting and not realize that pornography has changed the demeanor of men. Just the way that women are addressed for their intellectual output, the aggression that's delivered to women, I think is informed by 50 years of the culturalization of the pornographic.

And the final thing I'll just say is in Ross Douthat's column in the New York Times, he says, he's a very conservative guy. So if you want better men by any standard, there's every reason to regard ubiquitous pornography as an obstacle and to suspect that between virtual reality and creepy forms of customization, its influence is only likely to get worse.

But unlike many structural forces with which moralists on the left and right contend, porn is also just a product, something made and distributed and sold, and therefore subject to regulation and restriction, if we so desire. So the question becomes, how do we think about porn? Is it just content like any other content, and that we should just allow it to be free? Or is it really something that has to be controlled? Is it destructive? And is it a product that has to be regulated, like nicotine, or like other kinds of things?

And is this a moment in the internet where things are changing? So I don't want you to share your personal experiences with porn. Thank you. But what do you make? I really appreciate that. But is this, I mean, for me, it's made me rethink the nature of content. And this is really maybe very dangerous. And I think if the Me Too moment's about anything, it's about power. And I think they're right.

When men absorb these images, they think about women differently. They think about women as things that they can control. So I'm finding myself in favor of banning porn, and I want you to tell me that I'm crazy. Or am I right? Here's what I don't quite understand. Pornography is still heavily stigmatized. And so the consumption of pornography is still pretty much kind of closeted behavior.

And I'm wondering if – is it because of that stigmatization and that we sort of still keep it sort of over here in this corner –

that the nature of the content itself is of a certain kind, right? So, and if it were, in other words, I find myself being pulled in two very different directions. One, we should either ban it altogether, or two, we should completely destigmatize it and we should require every adult citizen to watch one hour of porn every day.

In which case, which is an interesting thought experiment. Yeah, exactly. Because if every – If time-consuming, but – And productivity decreasing. But if every adult had to watch one – like was forced to watch one, then my sense is that the kind of content that would be produced would change dramatically.

pretty dramatically to appeal to a much broader set of folks. And so then you would have, you know, kind of a distribution of content, all of which would be labeled porn, but it would be a more appropriate distribution and a healthier distribution. And the extreme ends of the continuum would be labeled as such and would be subject to the same kind of sort of public criticism and scrutiny and all the rest.

But here's the other thing that's hard to reconcile. I mean, I think I said this earlier. It's hard for me to buy into the notion that men today are worse. In other words, that there's a degradation somehow.

the mores of young men today as a result of having watched a lot of pornography. I don't know if I buy that. I don't know that things have gotten worse. I had a similar reaction to yours reading the New York Times article and

What struck me as particularly interesting is so over here in this one corner, we have a particular type of relationship between the genders, highly sexualized, of which we fear that it has detrimental effects on

young people's view of what sex is about and what's appropriate and how they should relate to the other gender. And then you would think, okay, and then we have on the other end, we will have all this content and we have all these conversations around

how do you give someone pleasure? How do you, like, what are the things that you can do that are going to be experienced as particularly tender and as particularly nice? And that part of the conversation doesn't take place because all we teach is abstinence. And so...

I didn't think of it as the solution to porn being more porn. But in a way, it is okay. But the normalization of pornography. Yes. And then I think if I had to emphasize...

immediate action. We have to have narrative. We have to have, you know, even why isn't there a teen show where the not so great looking guy who's not the smartest in the group but knows how to give girls incredible orgasms and he's everybody's hero. Why isn't there that show? Here's the point, I think.

This goes back to debates in the 70s and 80s between feminists, some of whom said porn is evil and others whom said is no, no, we just need the right kind of porn. Right. Like we if there's once we are all sexually liberated, there'll be all this stuff out there, which is actually better porn. And we'll be talking about feelings. We'll be talking about pleasure. Here's the reality. It's like 40 years later.

And we have a pretty liberal atmosphere. And that kind of content is not being produced. And it's not being consumed. And the reality is, I think, because the not-so-nice-looking guy who manages to pleasure women very well, I don't know if people want to watch that. The market is delivering us violent, really misogynistic porn. That's where the weight of the market is. So I would love it to come like you're describing. And my reaction to it is, yeah, if that were true, great. It ain't happening. And it hasn't happened.

And part of this is obviously, you know, I'm conditioned by having three daughters. Yeah. This is terrifying. Yeah. The kind of stuff that is terrifying. And I think they're watching it. The data in the article is pretty compelling. Oh, it sounds like everybody's watching it. I mean, it sounds like you can't avoid it. And you can't avoid it because your friend shows you a video even if your kid is a good kid, right? Yeah. So I don't know. I'm coming to the point of view that it would be great if we lived in the world you suggested where there's more content and some of it's nice and some of it's lovely and everybody has to watch some so that we're all sexually liberated. Yeah.

We're pretty damn sexually liberated and that content do not exist. So in that sense, I feel more and more that, God, maybe we should. So how is this different from other business problems where sometimes we get private provision of what we love? Exactly the right kinds of services, the right kinds of products and the business sector just delivers. And then we see, oh, okay, there are these other issues that the private sector for one reason or another doesn't do.

And there we have government finance provision. So if there was a market for... Subsidies for the production of more liberal and more tender foreign...

I love it. Okay. Hear me out. If every school program in the United States would have mandatory sex education that is built around the idea of what is good for both partners in a sexual relationship, there will be content. There will be lots of people who will produce and lots of schools that will buy, and that will give us the balance that we need. But what we do is we oppress...

actively through policies a normal, regular conversation. And we banned the conversation to cell phones where we watch things in private. And then we're totally surprised that the nature of content that we get is skewed.

Fair enough. But just to be clear, I would love better sex ed in schools, but that might work in other countries. But in this country, there's huge reactions against that. We're teaching abstinence. I mean, that's the reality. Here's the part that is really resonant for me. I mean, I started out by saying I could imagine advocating for either extreme. Where we are today—

where it's still stigmatized consumption behavior and so skewed content production that everybody has access to is maybe the worst of all possible worlds. Let me try it by analogy. What do we do with smoking?

What do we do with tobacco? We put boundaries around it. We put boundaries around it, and it seems to be somewhat effective. And if anything, it's actually been extremely effective. For alcohol and tobacco, we do things. We have age limits on them, and we restrict content, and we keep it away. So let me ask about alcohol. What is it about the lessons of the prohibition that don't apply to the benefit? That's a great point.

So let's just unpack that. I take that by what you mean that, if anything, the lesson of prohibition was that alcohol was distributed widely and, in fact, there were underground markets. Even horrible, horrible. Fair enough. Fair enough. But just to be clear, we ban child pornography. We do ban a lot of things. We were just talking about banning assault rifles.

And we do that because we worry about their social effects. And we do it all the time. Now, alcohol was silly because the social effects were not nearly as bad as people advertise them to be. But we do it. We ban things. We should ban assault rifles. And we were talking about prohibition in other settings. We can talk about it here. If we deem pornography to be so bad, which is the kind of point of view I'm coming to, to be so corrosive that we want to ban it. Yeah, I think that to me the difference is

smoking it was problematic because it led to lung cancer and the cause was smoking and the only way to interrupt that causal chain was to reduce the incident of smoking. I

I am not convinced at all that the most effective means to get people to treat one another better and to get connecting it back to the me too moment, the way, the way you did it at the beginning. I think there's a million other things we can do before we ban porn that I think are much more, that are much more important. I am, maybe it's a little similar to you. I'm unconvinced that say, uh,

all the things that are wrong with gender relations in the workplace. I'm not, no one is saying that. No one is saying that, Felix. No one is saying that all the things that are wrong in the workplace are reflective of porn. That's an extreme argument. What I'm saying is when men consume that content and they see women subjugated in that way, then they go into the workplace. You ask them to behave differently than they absorb in that content.

You're dreaming if it doesn't have an effect. No, no, no. But even in the evidence that is presented in the New York Times piece, I think the argument that people are making is that particular sexual practices and among a group of people who don't have much experience with sex.

they tend to imitate what they see in film. And that sounds completely plausible to me because no one's talking to me about sex in the first place and I have no idea what this thing is. And then, you know, I do what I see other people. But that to me is a million miles away

Because I watch people have anal sex on my cell phone, then I go to my workplace and I treat women differently? No. There's no plausibility in that argument. Well, let me just, I want to say two things. One, I totally concede the point, which is there is no scientific evidence that watching the pornography leads to this workplace. That has not been proven. I don't think it's a stretch to the imagination at all. Yeah, I agree with you. It is not a stretch to the imagination at all. But here, going back to that article, there were as many...

teenagers, essentially, who were uncomfortable with what they were seeing and questioning it as well. Absolutely. So the distribution of teenagers and how they kind of absorb the content was, in my mind anyway, you know, there was quite a bit of variance there. Absolutely.

Which, you know, sort of goes back to something I said earlier, which is I'm not convinced that this generation is worse off as a result of the consumption of all of this content. Yeah.

And in fact, you could argue that they're better, marginally better. Yeah, I don't know. That's a good point. I don't know the answer to that. Is it possible that as we age, we're just getting more conservative? Totally. No, I mean... That's true. You know, and... This is your point about the new generation, that maybe we're not giving them enough faith. Enough credit. Fair enough. You know? Okay, well, so this... In the spirit of this segment, if you are all satisfied...

I think we can come to an end. So it's time for my favorite part of the show when we make some recommendations for something cool, something interesting that you saw in the last week that you want to share with us. And then we have a special version of it with the Oscars. I just finished reading probably the

best book I ever read in my life. Oh my god. Which probably also has to do with... The best book in your life. Now I'm already feeling bad about my recommendation. And I had a book and I'm no longer doing a book. I'm changing my... This is like a very high stage now. I should also say I have forgotten many books that I have read and so maybe there was an even better one that I don't recall now. But this was really quite fabulous. The book is called Don't Say We Have Nothing.

And it's, in a way, it's the story of China in the last 40, 50 years.

And it's told through the history of a family of musicians grow up in Shanghai and they experience everything around the cultural revolution. Is this fiction or non-fiction? It's fiction. Okay. But you will recognize down to quotes of famous politicians, down to lots of historical events that feel very real. And

It has lots and lots of footnotes where actually it refers to actual historical events. But the story itself is a fictional story and it's told through the eyes of a girl who has to leave China after the Tiananmen Square massacre. And she then goes back. The author is a Canadian writer, Madeleine Tian. And she goes back to China

where does this come from? How did the parents of the child grow up? And how did she end up participating in the Tiananmen Square protests? And part of what I really loved is it brings home these just unspeakably horrible events in China that we now tend to forget a little bit because China is prosperous and so successful.

But it also gets at how is it that perfectly reasonable, nice people sometimes do really horrible things to one another. And some of the most touching parts of the book have to do with this human dynamic. How is it possible that a person like Mao got millions and millions of people to buy into a vision that

That is, you know, not pleasant to say the least and murderous for very many people. So, the second thing that I really like about the book is the economy of language. She has this amazing ability to

to describe big feelings and big events in these tiny, tiny sentences that just package so much of what people feel or know in almost no language at all. So, highly recommend it. Wow. It's Madeline Tian. Don't say we have nothing. Don't say we have nothing. Youngmi, what's yours? So, I was going to do a book, but it's a smaller book, and I don't, I'm not,

able to be quite so effusive about it. So I'm on the fly doing a dramatic left turn and instead going to ask you guys if you've seen Black Panther yet. I have not. I have not. No. I'd love to. Did you see it already? Yes. You're so hip.

You're like cutting edge. Thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. You like my Naruto shirt, by the way? I didn't know what that was. With the runes? Anyway. So here's the context for me. There are kind of two kinds of movies right now. There are movies that are way too simplistic and there's just kind of text. And they're not that interesting because we're just jaded consumers of content now. But then there's the other kind that has text and subtext and subtext and subtext. And this is the latter. Okay.

But as opposed to feeling heavy and pedantic, it's also really cool and fun and entertaining. And it's that combination of things.

There's not a moment that's not cool. There's something cool on the screen all the time. And it could be the particular vision, how they've executed this vision of Wakanda that is just so cool. It could be the fashion. Right. You know, it could be the characters themselves are immensely cool. The protagonist and the antagonist are both cool in very different ways. Every...

Everything about it is cool. It's highly entertaining. And yet there's a lot going on in terms of messaging as well. And I think it's rare to encounter a piece of popular culture that can pull all those things off. There's a lot going on. There's a lot going on. I would recommend it. The music is really, again, very cool. Fantastic. Everything about it is cool. All right. So I'm just going to have to go very lowbrow.

in response to your very, very good suggestions. And so I'm going to recommend an app. So I'm going to give a shout out to my brother-in-law who is like a very tech guy and he's cutting edge. So I hate weather apps. I think the current weather apps are terrible. And I want to know the weather and I want to know when I'm traveling.

And so if you think about the Apple Weather app, terrible. If you think about the Weather Channel app, it's terrible. So this is so good that I actually paid for it. By the way, I like it very much. Your first app that you ever bought? Pretty much. Pretty much my first app that I ever bought. And it is called Dark Sky. Okay. And it is spectacular. And the primary reasons it's spectacular is...

I'm actually not connected to the internet here, so I can't show you this. But the interface is spectacular. The presentation of information is really, really crisp. The front screen gives you the current temperature. Then you scroll down and there's a bar that goes through time, so you see how it changes. You swipe right, you get the next five, seven days. You swipe left, you get radar. It's awesome. And it's only $2.99, and it is going to make your life complete.

It is what's been missing in my life? Pretty much. And only for $2.99. Think about that. I like good weather apps. The graphic interface is stunning. So it's called Dark Sky, $2.99, available in your app store. That's a good pick, actually. Thank you. Wait, before we leave, so next week is the Oscars. I need to know what film you guys are rooting for.

and what film or films you're rooting against, which is a different question than what your predictions are. I want to know what you're emotionally rooting for. If I just think about the film, like no context, no this is 2018.

I think I would love to see three billboards win. I think it was just a capture something about that way of life and these kinds of interactions that I just absolutely loved. But because this is 2018,

I think we need something more romantic and more uplifting. Oh, no, don't say it. I will say it. Don't say it. The Shape of Water, I think, is the movie that ought to win. You had me for a while and you just lost me. Oh, my God. I gave him a hard time about this movie. I know. She said sex with a fish was her thing. Sort of the animating tension element.

in the movie revolves around sex between a woman and a fish. I'm sorry. I just, I can't, I can't support it. I can't watch it. I think they, I've heard they even show them having sex. Yeah. So a, I think fish is a mischaracterization. You're doing a lot of violence to the film. I think. Yes. No. So it's, it's really, if you're a romantic soul, that's your movie. Wow. Yeah.

Are you rooting against anything? I can't say that I found anything so annoying that

Maybe I would be pretty unhappy if Dunkirk wins. It seems like that. God, how many times do we have to see that same movie? I agree. So, but I don't know, actively rooting against it. So I'll just jump in because, so I, you had me until you went on your little shape of water thing. So first off, I think three billboards is just fantastic. It's just,

It's about, I think, the cycle of violence in our lives. And it's just so interesting. It's so well done. Francis McDormand, it's absolutely amazing. Wonderful. The way you went wrong is when you said, because it's 2018, we should have The Shape of Water. Because it's 2018, we should have Get Out.

That's my vote too. It's an amazing accomplishment. First time director. It captures this centrality of race in America. It captures it in a totally entertaining way, a la your Black Panther comments. Genre bending. Genre bending. Totally creative. Blows your mind. Lady Bird is also, I think, very, very good. Yeah.

And then I just want to add on Dunkirk. I don't even know why it's nominated. It's like violence and it's like the same thing we've seen again and again. And Kenneth Branagh isn't even very good in it. Anyway, so I'm rooting for Three Billboards or Get Out and then no on Dunkirk. But you know that I will win, right? No.

No. So I'm, well, I'm rooting for Get Out as well for the same reasons. I'm rooting against The Post. I'm sorry. I haven't even seen it. Oh, I kind of agree. Good point. You know, it's such a tired...

I agree. Definition of quality. And it's one of those movies you don't have to see to feel like you've seen. It's just, it's. Oh, that's a good call. So true. So, and by the way, on that late night with Seth Meyers, Seth Meyers, the comedian, he has a great parody of like every newspaper movie you've ever seen. It's always the same. Like there's this like chain smoking editor who's like, and then at one moment he's like, run it. And the crowd goes, it's great. You should watch it. Yeah.

They did a really good job producing a trailer that gives you 100% certainty that you don't want to see. That's fantastic. That is good. Okay, that does it for the week, I think. This is After Hours. This is After Hours. Yes. All right. Thank you. Take care. Bye.

Hey, it's Mark Maron from WTF here to let you know that this podcast is brought to you by Progressive Insurance. And I'm sure the reason you're listening to this podcast right now is because you chose it.

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