YouSaid · the spoken record

Dave Eggers

lines on the record: 101
first: 2020-02-03
most recent: 2020-02-03
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“You know, tolerate or live with just these polar opposites. But Trump is different. If Mitt Romney was elected, I would not be so confused and feel so betrayed because he's a rational person, you know, that would bring dignity to the office. And I have no problem with... The fact that we do live in a country where there's more than one party. You know, we have to recognize that. But this was different. I just felt like it was such a debate. Admirable flawed Know maybe, you know, one of the best democracies the world has seen. And I'm like corny about that. Yeah.”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And all throughout Michigan, I had friends that were canvassing that always said they kept coming across households that had voted for Obama twice, and then they went to Trump. Actually, they went to Bernie in between. So I'm fascinated by that malleability of a vulgar that can really sort of just swing so far right and left. And we do have a weird bipolar kind of thing that happens, go from Bush to Obama to Trump. We look Like we're insane as a people. Because how can the same people”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I felt betrayed. Because again, we had eight years of Obama where. The same guys, the same people. Like I said, this guy voted for Obama.”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, for sure. I think that en masse we can do very bad things, but I think so much of it is the three people inciting and activating the violence and then the 10,000 allowing it to happen.”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know what I mean? Which is interesting that you find that attractive. I just know exactly. I think we get, I think the liberals get played by the right almost every day. Played, played, played, played, played, like all the time. Well, for sure. Because we go, okay, everyone can't be that bad. I'm like, they actually can be that bad.”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You know, as groups much more impressionable, I think, than we want to be, and all it takes, all it would take is like a few people to get going and this young woman not to be protected and something really bad.”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Just about everybody. That's your problem, Dave. I do, but then there are real ways to activate deep-seated hatreds, resentments, and violence.”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But they have, and it's really weird, so it's such a bizarre mix. You can tell I'm still wrapping my head around every one of these experiences. But I think that at the core, I really do believe in the inherent decency of...”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Of course, they do that. Christians to the lions kind of thing, and they walk her all the way out. And I remember in the moment thinking, okay, this is a little unsettling, but watching it. After I filmed it, it was terrifying, and I remember showing my kids, and they were like, oh my God, that's really, because they're all yelling and booing. This young woman is being protected by secret service people who have to really fend off people from, I can't say that they were going to hit or kick her necessarily, but...”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And then when she was escorted out, and they parade them all the way through the rally, they always do this. I don't know why they can't take the closest door, but they go.”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But at the same time, individually, you meet people, they're all like, People you'd trust to babysit your kids. You know, like there's just a reasonableness. But together, I was looking at. I filmed one part of this rally when a young protester was being escorted out. And everything seemed kind of like very casual and just fine, people dancing to YMCA. There's always a lot of village people music at these rallies.”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They are a little, it's like a cross between a circus kind of a country music show. Maybe high school sporting event, and then with a little bit of tinge of imminent terror, where something could really go wrong. You light a match and something could”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's a parallel there, and then they gleefully hold events for him and cheer him on and parade him around all while wearing feathers and stuff. And so there's a similarity there in that. Know when I go to these rallies, they're silly.”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“There's never a disadvantage to trying to humanize anybody, any monster. And in this way, he's not Trump. I mean, I don't know for sure that Trump spends his days under a bed, listening to a voice in the van. I'm not sure. That this happens, but I wrote it my own way and tried to create like a parallel universe that might outlive this presidency. I'm hoping that the book still makes sense and still has a message when we get through this. And I think it does. I think that in a way, I was trying to examine what happens when we don't take ourselves, don't take our country, don't take our ideals very seriously. And in this book, the supporters of the captain, they call themselves the most foul, as somebody said, don't vote for the guy most foul. So they dress in chicken costumes or any kind of”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“No, I think that we have to. I mean, I just saw JoJo Rabbit, you know, where Hitler is an imaginary friend of a young brown shirt. And I think...”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's funny you voice that because I voiced that someone, oh, this is awful. I'm like, no, this came from something. Or maybe he's just born. Some people are just born bad. They just are and they just have no, you know, like the destruction of cultural artifacts, which he's done a million times. What makes someone a real liar, what makes someone despicable? And I was like, I would love to figure out his parents. I need to meet them. They're dead. But something happened that was just took a really troubled person to start with genetically troubled or something and twisted it in a way that just is fascinating. And it's not just narcissistic personality disorder, which is clearly in evidence here, but not a doctor, but I talked to people. No, I'm not a doctor, but I play one on podcasts. But there is much more complexity to it. Do you worry about getting pushback from making someone who many people love and other people really, truly despise?”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I give the captain a little bit of a soul here, and he's painted as kind of a very fragile and fearful. Guy who spends most of his time under his bed Where he feels most safe and where he can listen to a voice in the vant who feeds him paranoid theories about everything and comforts him and is just as scared. The world as he is because I do think that Trump has never shown courage in his life. I think he's a very fragile and very, very scared guy with just like a fear of so many things. And I think that it's in a weird way.”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, and then there's horror. I mean, you know, the two. Are living in close proximity in the book, too. It's like, I try to get at and heighten the comedy that we live with every day. At the same time, anytime that somebody doesn't seem to belong on the ship in this growing list of enemies and undesirables are thrown overboard. Put in cages on the deck to thwart any other refugees and other people from coming aboard from vulnerable vessels all over the ocean. Like a lot of satire, it has like comes from outrage. And I hope to sort of highlight the horrors that are actually so many people are living with in these last few years. But at the same time, there's a catharsis in being able to laugh at a lot of this, and especially laugh at...”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Apathetic in a way that's driven by prosperity, and we haven't, you know, we do have a very stable democracy. I do think we do. And so people take it for granted. And so often, especially in 2016, so many voters thought, well, it'll turn out okay. I mean, the Hillary voters and the Democrats and all the people that chose either a third party or to sit out because they didn't like Hillary. I hope now they see the consequences of, you know, well, I don't want lemonade and I don't want or soda, so I'm going to drink bleach. It's like this very weird. Calculus that I think people have been okay with, and maybe now they've woken up and thought. But this book is more comedic.”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I like Australia's mandatory voting, actually. Well, that's another way to do it. Yeah, I think it's, again, we don't educate ourselves well enough. And I think it starts from kindergarten on and family to family. I think we're so passive about it. And we”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“You just said something interesting. I've just been thinking about this a lot about voting. A lot of the thing is blaming the voter for not voting. Only 30% of people vote. That's always been the thing. Someone put it to me in the way that if it was a product. And only 30% of people bought it. It means you have a shitty product. Right? So, why not make the product better? People are not voting because they don't feel like they have anything to vote for and it's not a really good story. And so why should they? I like Australia's”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Playing a rich guy and having catchphrases. The work of governing, but we've conflated these two things for so long. Whether it's electing Reagan or Jesse Ventura, or you name it, we don't really see these as being two different tracks.”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Then eventually you might be deemed worthy of this High office that matters so much and impacts so many lives. Instead, here we think it's anybody that's been on TV. Can be president. And so we undervalue the office. We don't take our votes very seriously, I don't think. I think we have a lot of work to do to re-educate ourselves just about how serious an election is and how there's a difference between somebody who's been on television on a show about”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I guess it's like we misunderstand it. It's meant to be a democratic thing if you work at it, if you, no matter from whatever background, you can be born in a log cabin, if you study the law and rise up through the ranks like Lincoln.”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, so you know, it's a silly setting, it's broad, it's tacky, it's gaudy. And so I thought, well, that's sort of a perfect place for this guy. Who wants to be captain suddenly for no reason whatsoever? They elect him captain out of this sort of gleeful sense of like what if. And this idea that anyone can be president, which is like a real terrible idea in so many ways that we misunderstand here.”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And, you know, yeah, you can't outdo what we see every day, but if you move the venue and you limit the cast a bit, so you set it, I set it on a cruise ship, which has all kinds of comedic elements inherently. It's a ludicrous setting to begin with. I've never been on a cruise, but from what I know. Yeah. It's ludicrous. The photos. And so anyway.”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“The idiot party. All right, we're going to talk more about his new book called The Captain of the Glory. We're here with Dave Eggers, who needs no introduction, obviously. We're going to take a quick break now. We'll be back after this.”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And I think that, again, one of the many facets of our electorate is like that kind of weird subversive glee, the same way in high school you elect”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“And instead of a country of 320 million, it's a few thousand disparate peoples living on a ship that they are stuck together, but they stuck with each other, but they've chosen to be there and they've gotten along for generations and generations to some extent. And when the previous captain, who's sort of a combination of McCain and Obama in this book called The Admiral, he retires. And instead of choosing one of the many people on the ship who has captained a ship and knows how to sail and they choose the one person who has no interest, has never expressed any interest in even the sea, doesn't like boats, and he's just known as hanging out near the women's locker room looking for hoping to get an upskirt photo here and there. They choose that guy. In part, just to sort of see what would happen.”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“While I was working as a journalist on this side, I was sort of creating this alternate universe that instead of the government as it is and the president as he is, it all takes place on a cruise ship, which is inherently comical, I think”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, on the one hand, covering it journalistically sometimes seems too sane. Compared to just how ludicrous it is. And so we are living in a cartoon. That defies all belief. And is embarrassing, you know. The president wears makeup, you know, full body makeup and dyes his hair. And I mean, just on the very most superficial physical things, it defies all. Any kind of the broadest comedy. Would never pass mustard. But then we forget this for hours or days or weeks at a time because we do have real consequences of so many horrific policies, especially towards immigrants, minorities, and the poor. And so I thought.”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Which these things I truly believe, but I come away thinking like people are really sometimes they vote emotionally and stuff, but a lot of times they're saying, well, I have $2,800 more in my pocket. This year than I did last year, which is one of my”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, it's hard to beat, but I think that if the Democrats tell a better story. And offer realistic policies about continuing economic growth, continuing wage growth, which we're actually seeing now for the first time in a long time. And not just focused on how crude and corrupt his administration is, but also working with pocketbook issues. And then he's definitely beatable, but they have a lot of work to do, and it's not going to be about... That he is a monster, or that he's a pig.”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“They just wanted to see it. The narrow majority of the crowd was Latino, it was more than 50 because this is an overwhelmingly Latino city. And people wearing MAGA hats and people having various reasons, mostly economic, for supporting them. And I talked to all these people. And again, I came away thinking, A, people are much more complex than we give them credit for, the electorate. Be if he has this broad of a support, even if it's passive, these were not fanatical supporters across the board. But on balance, they saw the economic benefit of his policies. They had employment. 401ks were going up, all of that. So I came away very scared about 2020 thinking. If he can attract 15,000 people in El Paso after insulting it for weeks. Going to be hard to beat”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“His rally was very small. Maybe 3,000 people cross the street. Trump's rally was about 15,000. And so that right there thought made me doubt the viability of Beidou's. Candidacy, and it wasn't being reported as such. I looked for everywhere the next day, and nobody was reporting it the way I saw it.”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Fellow Americans and try to sort of listen and understand them. And then there's always such surprising things. I want to rally in El Paso and I thought this would be a bloodbath for Trump because he'd been insulting the city, calling it the most dangerous place. And it's also 80% Latino the city. And Beta O'Rourke was rallying across the street.”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“But we both come away with, I think there's a real gratifying effect. There's Dave Isay, the story core guy says, listening is an act of love, right? So after every interview, it's very kind of... You feel like you've some bond that's been created. And even though I cannot stand their candidate. I like them. And we've had a discussion and we've heard each other, I've raised points and devils advocate, and I said, what about this? And what about that? And they answer, and we come away really. Agreeing on a lot, I think. And so for my own kind of therapeutic almost to go and to meet.”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“I think sometimes some of the deep dive journalism does get into, they've done a better job over time of like identifying all the nuances of a Trump voter, for example, and all the different, it's such a broad, diverse coalition you'd be surprised. And I think that every time I talk to somebody, there's a different reason why they support him. And so I almost never hear the same thing from two different people. And I think that that's so important. And so I go out and I just want to talk and I just let people talk. I mean, I just want to listen and I let them talk for a long time. Average interview is like 20 minutes sometimes. It's standing in the rain in the parking lot after a rally, for example.”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“We'll talk about that a little bit because the media is always beating itself how it covered Trump in the beginning, how it doesn't, you know, like how it covers now. Now it's going the opposite direction it feels like they're overcovering the fringe parts of our society.”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, I think so. I mean, for me, so often it's just for my own curiosity too. I learn, I really only learn if I ask questions and listen to people. And so I read a lot and then... I don't see what I find when I talk to people, I rarely see it reflected in the media that I read, the subtleties.”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Picking a city council person the same way we choose an accountant. You know, with reasonable sobriety Like, really, we want the most stable. Most intellectually nimble and reliable person. Instead, we always go for”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Decision. When it's an emotional decision for so many people, I don't think it should be. I think that this is a A part of our miseducation as Americans is that we go for charisma. Calculation”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Worked for Obama in 2008 as a volunteer. And before that had liked Reagan. And so you see a sort of a pattern of like a lot of voters want this disruptor or somebody out of nowhere. They don't trust career politicians in any way. The monarchical sort of Families, I guess the Clintons or the Bushes, because this guy also couldn't stand the bushes. And so I came away always, and I always come away from these things thinking the electorate is more malleable than you think. And I could easily see this guy vote him for Bernie because he did like Bernie. And so it's so interesting because I think the Democrats outthink themselves so often by trying to come up with some scientific, you know, perfectly calculated approach to”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, I'm hopeful because the guy I interviewed, he seemed like a dyed-in-the-wool kind of just spouting all of the usual Make America great again. Well, and also Hillary's a crook and the Bidens are crooks and on and on and on. And then deep into our conversation, he said that he had voted for Obama in 2008 and 2012.”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Always sort of gratified or hopeful because I have yet to meet like a googly-eyed fanatical, unthinking kind of drum zombie. Usually they have reservations, they have things they don't like. But on balance, they see that. Trump is good for them in one way or another, especially in Pennsylvania these days, economically, you can't deny.”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Boyfriend who has threatened her life. And so we used to have protections for such people and those were removed by Jeff Sessions and she never got a day in court even. And so I talked to her on one day, the next day I go to Hershey, Pennsylvania to see Trump in his favorite milieu, you know. And to talk to Trump voters, which I always do and I always enjoy doing. And so you see this incredible punitive cruelty on the one hand, and then you talk to the people that voted and continue to support him, and they're all... Deeply human three dimensional, reasonable people, but they often have a very narrow focus of support or a narrow reasoning for having voted for them or voting for him now.”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Well, last time when the articles of impeachment were handed down, I went to Hershey, Pennsylvania. Because he had a rally that night. He did. So, the day before I visited a family that I've covered a couple times that are living in a basement of a church in Richmond, Virginia, in sanctuary, and they've been doing that for over a year now because the mother is under a final order of deportation, and she's trying to wait out until there's some opportunity or if she gets real due process or there's maybe a change in administration. So in the meantime, her children are growing up in a church basement. This is more country. She's from Honduras. And she, if she goes back, she expects to be killed by an ex...”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“Yeah, sometimes. Yeah. Yeah, a little bit. Yeah. Yeah, when there's vacillating these days between the satire, like the captain and the glory, and then I still, you know, I'm still covering the Trump administration and the effects of his immigration policies as a journalist. So I sort of toggled between those two sides, like trying to get at the towering absurdity of the moment. And then at the same time going into the nuts and bolts of policy and its consequences. And so weird duality, I think we're all living with.”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“It's expanded now into the Tenderlawn neighborhood in Mission Bay nearby from where we are right now. And, you know, it started out as a small neighborhood writing tutoring center for especially kids who are English language learners. And the need has just, you know, we knew that the need was there, but it continues to grow and the demand is there and so that executive director Bida Nazarian just keeps opening new centers and growing into new neighborhoods. And we find that that one-on-one attention for kids who are learning the language and also sort of Trying to engender a love of writing and creativity with them, and that one on one sort of that's our special sauce, I guess, is attracting volunteers and putting them next to young people and that sort of electric combination between those two yields pretty incredible results. Yeah.”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT
“So everyone does know who you are, but why don't you go talk a little bit about yourself, like where what you've been doing in recent years, obviously McSweeney's is such an amazing thing, but you also run a writing workshop in San Francisco on Valencia Street. Talk a little bit about what you're up to right now.”
2020-02-03 · Decoder with Nilay Patel · Recode Decode: Dave Eggers · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT