Kurt Andersen Has a New Book Out (and it's amazing)

Kurt Andersen has spent four decades chronicling America’s culture and politics in both fiction and nonfiction. In 1986, Andersen co-founded Spy Magazine, which became a cultural zeitgeist and influenced a generation of journalists. Andersen then co-created and hosted Studio 360, a Peabody Award-winning public radio show and podcast about art and pop culture which aired from 2000 to 2020. He is also a former editor-in-chief of New York magazine, columnist and staff writer for the New Yorker, Time magazine critic and columnist, and has written for television, film, and the stage. Andersen appears regularly as a commentator on MSNOW, and continues to contribute to The Atlantic and the New York Times. In addition to his work in print media, Kurt Andersen is the author of the New York Times bestsellers Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America, A Recent History and Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire, A 500-Year History, as well as the bestselling novels You Can’t Spell America Without Me, True Believers, Heyday, and Turn of the Century. See omnystudio.com/listener https://omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Speaker 00

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• 0:47Alec Baldwin?

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• 2:39Alec Baldwin?

  This is Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing from iHeart Radio. My guest today is a novelist, a journalist, and a radio host who has spent four decades chronicling and satirizing American life. In 1986, Kurt Anderson co-founded Spy Magazine, which became a cultural zeitgeist and influenced a generation of journalists. Anderson went on to become editor-in-chief of New York Magazine, as well as a columnist and critic for Time and The New Yorker. For 20 years, he hosted WNYC's Studio 360, the Peabody

• 3:18Alec Baldwin?

  Award-winning public radio show about art and pop culture, which Anderson also co-created. He is the author of the New York Times bestselling fantasy land, How America Went Haywire, and Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America. Anderson has also written five novels. His latest, The Breakup, takes place in the year 2045. The book details a country and a marriage falling apart simultaneously in the wake of a civil war in the 2030s. When tackling such a vast topic, I wondered about Kurt's writing process and if he usually has an ending in mind when he sits down to write a novel.

• 4:00Speaker 03

  I don't have an exact ending in mind. I have a kind of, you know, stick-figure child's story of like, this happens, this happens, this probably happens. But the thing I never realized until I started writing novels is this thing that I always read novelists saying, well, sometimes the characters take on lives of their own, and they take the story in ways you can't plan. And I sort of really thought, really? But once I started doing it, it happened. And I think I've written some screenplays, you know, and I think more than it happens in screenplays, because screenplays are more about engineering, or at least the ones I've, you know, you, this happens, this happens, this happens. And they're,

• 4:45Speaker 03

  at least as people tend to do it, more outlined. Whereas with a novel, you have room to have the characters interact and react to new facts. And, and yeah, so there's, there's a bit more of surprise. And, you know, I get to places I don't anticipate.

• 5:03Alec Baldwin?

  Your thing about the screenplay versus the novel, a screenplay is presumably of length, meaning your book is over 500 pages long. And a screenplay certainly should not be 500 pages long. So when you write a movie, but when you write a movie, it's like, we would do 30 Rock, and people complained to Tina and Lorne about the cost of the show because they shot everything. It was their school of show, don't tell. So Tina's sitting there with a friend, having a sandwich, and someone says, how was your date last night? And she says, well, whip, and we show the date. We filmed the date. Tina doesn't talk about the date. We film it, we show it, which was very expensive. We filmed everything.

• 5:43Speaker 03

  Yes, yes.

• 5:43Alec Baldwin?

  We showed everything. No one was telling. Go ahead, I'm sorry.

• 5:46Speaker 03

  Well, no, as I have had one long talk with my agents, my brilliant agents, my team, as you Hollywood people say, about how this might become a, this might become a show or a movie. And, and she said, well, you know, basically, the first half could be done in seven minutes, a setup of here's the deal, here's the setup, here's the, you know, country breaking up, all that. So they are different media, right? And so there's this thing that one does or can do, and I think it's the beauty and virtue of narrative fiction, novels, prose, is you set up characters, and you get inside their heads in ways that in a film, you just see this person, you see you being this person, you say, okay,

• 6:29Speaker 03

  I get it, he's this, he's that. Whereas, you know, you spend time in people's, in characters' heads, in fiction.

• 6:36Alec Baldwin?

  Now, is it Natalie and Asher in the pas de deux throughout the novel, throughout the book?

• 6:42Speaker 03

  Well, it remains that pas de deux, except there's another character. And then there's, there's a giant tortoise who also has a role. And, and his thoughts, its thoughts, her thoughts, actually, are.

• 6:52Alec Baldwin?

  Lewis Carroll, the giant tortoise shows up.

• 6:55Speaker 03

  A giant tortoise, a 200-year-old giant tortoise, yes. The chapters go back and forth. The, the main characters are married, separated, Natalie and Asher. But there are, and this is in 2045, whereas there are these regular, not exactly flashbacks, but effectively they are that, these news stories from the war, the civil war that took place in 2036, 2037. That's the parfait of this novel.

• 7:21Alec Baldwin?

  2036, of course, is only 10 years from now. That's what you wanted. You wanted the civil war that we're experiencing to be right on the heels of now.

• 7:31Speaker 03

  Well, I wanted everything, both this war, this uprising, this terrorist uprising, and the future in which the main book is set, 2045, to be close enough that a lot of things could happen between then and now. So it's not like the year after next, but not so far away that it seems, especially if you're, say, your age or my age, not so far away. 10 years, 20 years, there's like, nothing, you know, right? So it's, it's, there was a, I thought about it a lot. And there's a, there was an optimal time for me where, you know, politics could have changed, and Democrats come back, and then this and that happens.

• 8:10Alec Baldwin?

  The Democrats are in charge in the book, correct?

• 8:13Speaker 03

  They are, they, they, yeah, they are, they are back. Yes, in 2045, because as due to this war, the Democrats came back in the normal way they do, post-Trump, in my backstory. And again, I, I don't go like day by day from now till 2045. But what happened is the Democrats come back, and the right wing is unhappy that they're suddenly out of power. And then we get this civil war.

• 8:37Alec Baldwin?

  And Trump has died, I think you said? He was 87? He had a stroke while he was going up an elevator? Is that?

• 8:44Speaker 03

  Well, he's going, he's going to the 20th anniversary of his announcement of his first candidacy in Trump Tower, going down the famous golden elevator in Trump Tower. And yeah, he's an old man.

• 8:56Alec Baldwin?

  Are they going to 4547?

• 8:58Speaker 03

  Exactly. His bar. No, and that's where his gatherings, a bunch, a bunch of people, many of the people he, or a whole crowd of the people from January 6th whom he pardoned are partying there. And then they go, they get drunk and go crazy once he dies because of course, it's a conspiracy.

• 9:17Alec Baldwin?

  Having worked with you on the Trump book, you know, I can't stop lobbing suggestions to you. That's all I'm worth is suggestions to you that you filter. And one of them was that we, we, anywhere in the book, does Mar-a-Lago become on the National Register of Historic Places? He doesn't have to pay for it anymore? Does the government pick up the tab?

• 9:35Speaker 03

  Well, you know, it's funny about Trump. I, I, I didn't want, I minimized how much Trump is in this book, you know, because

• 9:42Alec Baldwin?

  Good.

• 9:43Speaker 03

  A, he's in our heads and the news every hour of every day. Who needs it in, you know, 10 years, 20 years? And I think that will be true. I think he will, you know, he is this historic figure, God knows. And, you know, he won't be forgotten, but you know, as soon as he goes, he's going to be gone. And so I, I didn't want to make him hover over it as though it was written today. Do you know?

• 10:07Alec Baldwin?

  Exactly. Now, there's some things I think about, and this was triggered in an odd way by your reference to her. She was proximate when she went to Tennessee to Oak Ridge, Tennessee. And she's near Oak Ridge?

• 10:20Speaker 03

  She grew up near Oak Ridge. She was, her family, her parents were Cubans and her older brother, her whole family was. She was two when they immigrated to the US and they ended up in Tennessee because her father worked at the nuclear laboratory there.

• 10:33Alec Baldwin?

  And is there some projection by you at some point of what energy policy is 10 years from now, 20 years from now?

• 10:40Speaker 03

  Not exactly. You know, I don't do every, you know, you know, I couldn't

• 10:43Alec Baldwin?

  You can't cover everything.

• 10:44Speaker 03

  I couldn't make it encyclopedic, right? And so I actually, it's not so much about the economy, you know, or, or what AI has done to the labor force. You know, I wrote a nonfiction book about that. So it's, that is not my focus. My focus is this war, this breakup and this family, this love story, this problematic love story that's set against this because these people, you know, these, my main characters are Gen Z people. They're kids by our standards still today. And yet they're in middle age when this book happened. So they, they have grown up entirely with their whole adult lives has been this

• 11:18Alec Baldwin?

  This backdrop.

• 11:19Speaker 03

  Yes, backdrop of polarization, divisiveness and all that. And, and so that's been their whole life. And so that, that's what interested me more than how many robots will there be? But, you know, I have a lot about robots and AI and all that.

• 11:31Alec Baldwin?

  When I think about them doing the things that we feel are too dangerous, you know, you're going to send the robots into the coal mine. And now, now we have robot law enforcement and robot soldiers and robots that are going to die doing what we really would prefer not to do.

• 11:46Speaker 03

  Well, in my, my civil war, first battle of this civil war that takes place in 2036 involves a whole troop of US Army, US Army robots.

• 11:57Alec Baldwin?

  That's the Oklahoma City insurgency.

• 12:00Speaker 03

  Correct.

• 12:00Alec Baldwin?

  And do they, and they do that? Do they do that? Is it a tip of the MAGA hat to just make they?

• 12:05Speaker 03

  Well, no, the, again, MAGA is kind of done, but it's, but they have their own organization. It's called the Well-Organized Armilitia for Freedom of America. And they're out there having banners already and having branding. So, you know, that, that's how and where it starts. But it is, yes, of course, in some significant ways, it's an air of MAGA extremism, sure.

• 12:28Alec Baldwin?

  So when you cross a border in the book, what's that like? You got to show papers? And is everybody, are these borders very, very tight? What's the experience of entering into another part of the country?

• 12:37Speaker 03

  It's one of the reasons I conceived of this, most of the second half of the book, being this tour across the eastern United States, looking at colleges with their kid. Because it's, it has just, it has taken six or seven years to figure out the incredibly complicated logistics of how you do this and how you, you know, you don't just like, it's not 1861. It's not just, oh, all these southern states and all these northern states. You know, you have to, they have to figure out how metropolitan areas are going to remain part of the United States of America and how, how that works. And so it's really complicated. Anyway, so the, the international border crossings are, have just been, have all been established and they're starting to have, you know, both machines and robots and border guards checking

• 13:20Speaker 03

  your papers, which since almost all of the big cities are still, as I say in the book, a blue archipelago across red America. You know, to go to almost any metropolitan, any airport, if you live out in the sticks, requires crossing international border, going to sporting events. I mean, and so it's constant. You know, it's, it's because it's so, I mean, we're seeing in a certain way, the gerrymandering today is a, is a precursor to that. It's, it's, it's these crazy borders that exist in my future.

• 13:52Alec Baldwin?

  So people continue to live the way that they lived, but in this new reality, I'm going to go to the Sox game and I got to cross a border now to do what I did handily a few years back.

• 14:03Speaker 03

  Or I got to see my doctor or to see my, my, my girlfriend. You know, I mean, yeah, it's a, it's a, it's a, it's a huge hassle.

• 14:11Alec Baldwin?

  How many sections did the country carved into?

• 14:13Speaker 03

  Well, there's, again, they didn't know, will it be three countries? Will it be four? Will Alaska be its own country? Will Texas, all that? And they finally settle and it's two countries. But it's, it's 39 US states and 21 free American republic states. It turns the United States of America into, you know, like, like one of these crazily gerrymandered congressional districts, right? With tails and things in order to encompass, to get people who want to live together to live together. So, you know, two countries and the capital of the free American republic is in Abilene, Texas, and the capital of the United States of America is in Washington DC.

• 14:50Alec Baldwin?

  Right. Well, no, the reason I'm so focused on this is because you and I joked about how, over the years, how things that you wrote in the Trump book, I will mention

• 14:59Speaker 03

  That we wrote, Alec, that we wrote.

• 15:01Alec Baldwin?

  Well, the reason is because we would joke over the years, that book came out in 2017. Can you believe that? I can't believe it was that long ago. We looked it up and I said, that can't be true. But my point is, is that we used to joke periodically about how it was predictive. You'd send me a little quote from the book and say, now this is happening.

• 15:18Speaker 03

  I don't mean it to be predictive. What I mean it to be is a plausible possibility. And I'll tell you, Alec, it has become, since I started writing in the fall of 2022, ChatGPT and all the other AIs didn't exist yet. You know, like they came along a month or two later. Donald Trump was out of office. And suddenly, as I was writing this future, the, my future suddenly sort of moved toward reality, right? So it's not predictive, but genuinely, I think has become more plausible in the course of my writing of it.

• 15:50Alec Baldwin?

  What's your assessment of how it's going in this second term? I mean, obviously for me, it's far worse than the first term, but.

• 15:57Speaker 03

  Oh, it's undeniably, inarguably worse. You know, it's, it's funny. I was, through 2024, I thought the worries and the political fears among Democrats certainly, and the large anti-Trump independent cohort in America of like, oh my God, he could, he, he, this time he's really going to, it's a threat to democracy, all that. I sort of thought, eh, that's kind of hyperbole. I don't really believe that. It'll be all right. It won't be any worse than the first time. Well, I was wrong. It was as bad as every over the top seeming

• 16:34Alec Baldwin?

  Hyperbole.

• 16:35Speaker 03

  Yeah, it wasn't hyperbole. It was, it was a correct prediction. Everything that was said during that election is true. It has been stunning. So he wasn't normal the first time. It wasn't, you know, there was the challenges to the norms and, and yes, the foundations of democracy, rule of law were there. But, you know, he was kept in check by the people he hired, by not really understanding Washington, by not going full bore. I'm going to destroy you, big law firm. I'm going to, I'm going to take a billion dollars from you, big university. All that stuff that he did and, and more and, and mass deportations, all that stuff. He made good. You probably remember back when we were writing that book and back

• 17:17Speaker 03

  early in the first Trump administration, people would say, his supporters would say, well, yeah, you should take Trump seriously, but not literally. Well, now we got to take him literally. And it's all, you know, the dystopia is not so much what I'm writing about in 10 or 20 years in the, in the breakup. We are in the dystopian moment, I would say. And with the possibility of it becoming worse, always right around the corner.

• 17:44Alec Baldwin?

  I think what keeps rattling me is this idea that I never dreamed there were this many bad guys waiting in the bushes to staff this administration and to carry out these policies. Was that a surprise to you?

• 17:59Speaker 03

  It was somewhat. I, my last book was this big nonfiction book, history of the last 50 years called Evil Geniuses, about this very thing, how in the seventies and eighties, they began setting up the Federalist Society and, and Heritage Foundation and set up this whole right wing counter establishment. So I was aware of that and seeing that and the Koch brothers funding and all that stuff. And the, and the, you know, any, of the constitutionality of election funding restraints and all that. So I wasn't entirely surprised, but yes, I was too. And I was surprised beyond the, the people in waiting to take, to actually staff the executive branch in this term. I was surprised, and it's, you know, my Midwestern

• 18:43Speaker 03

  Pollyannaism or something, that, that every Republican, you know, the whole Republican establishment in Washington and beyond, as soon as he was going to get the nomination, they flipped 180 degrees, the Ted Cruzes, the Lindsey Grimes, all of them, and said, no, no, no. Yeah, I know. I said he was a con man and a terrible person who will ruin

• 19:00Alec Baldwin?

  But what I meant was.

• 19:02Speaker 03

  What I, what I meant was, he's great.

• 19:03Alec Baldwin?

  He's a seer.

• 19:06Speaker 03

  That I'm over it now, you know, 10 years later, nine years later, whatever it's been. But that shocked me more than anything. And it's the same thing. It's like, I didn't know that there were so many just completely craven, cowardly people in high positions, whether it's elected officials or running the big New York law firms.

• 19:25Alec Baldwin?

  I've been involved with campaign finance reform for decades and do believe that campaign finance reform is the linchpin of all the problems in this country domestically.

• 19:34Speaker 03

  No, it's a huge, I don't disagree with that. And I do think it's, for a long time, and maybe the rest of our lifetimes, a lost cause. Which is, I mean, it's what those things that are like, well, maybe someday, somehow. But on that, you need either a vastly different Supreme Court, which isn't going to happen anytime soon.

• 19:56Alec Baldwin?

  Or a constitutional amendment.

• 19:57Speaker 03

  Constitutional amendment, which, which hasn't happened much in the last 50 years. So those kinds of things that like, well, how do you, how is this going to solve itself? Is the kind of real world data points that kind of led me to think like, oh, yeah, this, this could happen. My scenario, my fictional scenario, speculative future and the breakup. And it might not be all bad. And it may be as horrible as it would be, as sad as it would be, as tragic as it would be in so many ways. You know, I have the president, my president who was president during the war, who was injured in Afghanistan, President Im, and lost his leg.

• 20:36Alec Baldwin?

  A Korean American.

• 20:37Speaker 03

  There you go. Yes, he is a Korean American.

• 20:39Alec Baldwin?

  But he's not a foreigner, he's not from overseas.

• 20:42Speaker 03

  Who lost his leg in the war. It says to his people, when, really, you're going to, we're going to break up the country. He says, well, you know, sometimes amputation is horrible, hard and painful and difficult as it is, is the only way to go. We could get there. I mean, and I don't think we're going to get, I mean, you know, the Marjorie Taylor Greens and Lauren Boeberts of the world and other people, more and more people on the right, the last 10 years have talked about a national divorce. We need a national divorce. People on the left don't much talk about that, or Democrats. You know, and that seemed to me 10 years ago when that started, like, oh, come on, they're just figuring out another way to get on television. But, you know, given things today, and the nature of the internet and social media and, and the alternate reality bubbles that people can

• 21:26Speaker 03

  now live in, I find it harder and harder to imagine how this resolves itself. Now, I'm old enough to see like, okay, things change, you could be surprised. But if I had to rate the plausibility of the future I've depicted in this, in this novel, it has gotten higher.

• 21:42Alec Baldwin?

  You know, the Democrats don't throw any punches. The Republicans are throwing all the punches and the Democrats are always counter punching. They're just a bit weaker as far as I'm concerned. And I'm hoping that the lawsuits have been already briefed, prepared, come to his opportunity to impact the midterms, his attempt to try to extend his term to a third term. I really firmly believe the Supreme Court would not allow that. I don't think the Supreme Court would allow him to claim some martial law, what have you. But I hope that those people, because this is all legal now, and it's all, you know, tens of millions of dollars worth of lawyer, legal fees, is people for the American way, who I'm on the board of, so I can just call them, are groups marshaling

• 22:24Alec Baldwin?

  themselves to fire the litigation in place to stop these things from happening.

• 22:29Speaker 03

  They are. And I'm reassured. I happen to have a couple of friends, one a very, very senior lawyer, litigator in New York, named Kerry Dunn, who has a pro bono firm called Free and Fair, which is all about being part of that apparatus of, you know, let's save democracy and the rule of law. Another young Justice Department guy, former Justice Department guy, purged Justice Department guy, named Brendan Blue, who has his own thing. And they're just two of 50 or more of these groups who are constantly talking, meeting, planning for just such, you know, eventualities for the midterms and the 28 elections. So regarding the Supreme Court, you know, if we have five or a six, if, when we're lucky, that can defend the rule of law and be the bulwark against this, the

• 23:13Speaker 03

  madness of King Trump. It's funny about the madness of King Trump. And, and a guy who, ever since I started paying attention to him and writing about him 40, god knows, years ago, he was always the person who wanted more than anything else and anyone else I've ever seen. And I've known a lot of narcissists and actors and all kinds of people who want attention and want nothing but attention. I'd never seen anyone who wanted that like an addiction, more than anything. You know, once he's done, I think it will be a new ballgame in many ways. So I'm hopeful. That, my big glimmer of hope is that he will be done, and it will be done. And, and the cult leader that he has so successfully and brilliantly

• 23:54Speaker 03

  been, will cease to keep this diffuse bunch of confused people as a movement.

• 24:00Alec Baldwin?

  Writer and author Kurt Anderson. If you enjoy conversations with authors whose work travels from the page to the screen, check out my episode with Lawrence Wright.

• 24:13Speaker 04

  When people go into Scientology, they don't, you know, they don't go into it because it's a cult. They go into it oftentimes because they're looking for something.

• 24:21Alec Baldwin?

  Such as?

• 24:22Speaker 04

  Well, you know, sometimes they're spiritual seekers, or they're, you know, you might be one of those people that goes down in the subway and someone says, would you like to take our personality test? And, you know, well, we see that you have a little trouble of communicating with people. That's true. Well, we, you know, we can

• 24:39Speaker 03

  They know what to say.

• 24:40Speaker 04

  We can help you with that. We have a course that can help you in your relationships. And the truth is, oftentimes, they can help. It's like going into therapy. People do benefit from it. So this initial exposure to Scientology is often very positive to people.

• 24:57Alec Baldwin?

  To hear more of my conversation with Lawrence Wright, go to here's the thing.org. After the break, Anderson shares why he still considers himself 51% optimistic about American politics, even after writing a novel about the next American civil war. 911, what's your emergency?

• 25:27Speaker 07

  Please help us. They're everywhere. We think they're murder hornets.

• 25:33Alec Baldwin?

  911 Nashville returns.

• 25:36Speaker 04

  What's a homicide detective doing here? Three bodies on the ground.

• 25:39Alec Baldwin?

  With emergencies of biblical proportions.

• 25:42Speaker 03

  Hell, since swarms upon you and upon your people.

• 25:44Speaker 04

  That's one of the plagues of the Bible.

• 25:46Speaker 03

  And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville.

• 25:49Alec Baldwin?

  Brian Phillippe joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 25:55Speaker 06

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  to help turn your future home into a reality. Because someday starts today. Visit zillow.com/today to get started. Hola a todos. Soy Jamie Lynn Sigler. Cuando me diagnosticaron tenía veintitantos años y todo mi mundo cambió por completo. Pero con el tiempo decidí que no iba a permitir

• 27:01Alec Baldwin?

  que eso frenara mi vida. Quise tomar las riendas y después de hablar con mi médico sobre mis opciones, la elección para mí fue obvia. Boom. Eso es KISSIMTA. Obtenga más información sobre KISSIMTA o fotumab en kissimta.com. I'm Alec Baldwin, and this is Here's the Thing. Kurt Anderson has a long history of writing about American politics, beginning with Spy Magazine, where he coined the nickname "short-fingered vulgarian" for Donald Trump. Anderson and I even wrote a satirical political memoir entitled "You Can't Spell America Without Me" that parodies Trump's fictionalized

• 27:45Alec Baldwin?

  account of his life in office. On a more serious note, Anderson has examined American society and politics in his books Evil Geniuses, The Unmaking of America, and Fantasyland: How America Went Haywire. As Kurt and I discussed what America may look like in a post-Trump world, we considered the White House inner circle. I asked Anderson who he thought might be the first member of the president's team to speak honestly about their experience once his term has expired.

• 28:18Speaker 03

  It will be like the rats all jump off the ship and they'll create their own raft, the rats altogether, talking about, yeah, I hated it on that ship. It was never safe.

• 28:27Alec Baldwin?

  Oh, my God. Yeah, I was. I was wrong about him. I gave him a chance. I thought it was best for the country.

• 28:33Speaker 03

  Yes, exactly. And it would have been worse if I hadn't been there, which, you know, I mean, many, many people who have worked for him and whose lot, whose reputations have been destroyed, said that. Yeah, I mean, that's why, I mean, again, my fictional view, as I say, I am not dystopian in my, in my basic temperament. I, I've said, and it's true, I, I'm sort of temperamentally 51% optimistic. I mean, I'm close, like, I'm aware of all the reasons of despair about, you know, and fear and all that, and more than ever than I've been in my life these last dozen years. But, you know, we, we can all get to those depths of despair every day, reading the news. And, and so I don't want to create a fictional

• 29:17Speaker 03

  future that just says, yeah, you ain't seen nothing yet. It gets even worse. There are possibilities of happier endings. And for all, for all of the gassiness and ugliness that are depicted in this book, and how this couple, one that's more conservative than the other, Natalie is somewhat more conservative, and she's an immigrant and all this, than, than her husband Asher, how their life and how their intimate life and their married life has been not ruined, but badly affected by this, this political polarization in the country.

• 29:49Alec Baldwin?

  Well, these people, these two people, so people know in the audience when they read the book, and I encourage everybody, please, read any of your books for that matter, but read this book and his latest book. They're not Carville and Madeline, so to speak, but they're, they're opposites politically, to a degree. These people, they're back and forth, they're sparring verbally. It's clever, because it's you writing it, and it's interesting, but, but it's not super nasty. They're like, when they come apart for a little, to take a break, she has a lot of comments about that phrase. I don't know, what am I doing? Am I taking a break? Am I this? Am I this? Am I this? She's always second guessing herself. Do you, but you felt it was necessary for them to separate, like, seriously? She goes to Tennessee and he's in San Francisco.

• 30:29Speaker 03

  Yeah. I mean, part of that is that it's not just politics. She, the difference between them is not that she's left and right. It's not like, as you say, Carville and Madeline, if, if young people remember who they are. There's some of that, but they're not, it's not like Queen of MAGA and, you know, Mamdani. He is very far left, and she, A, is more conservative and is anti-abortion, but she just doesn't care about politics that much, which is true of half of America, or if not more, right? She just doesn't care as much. And to him, that's like, oh, you just, you know, that, that's the problem. Not that she's this right wing or doesn't hate all billionaires or whatever his problems with there are. It's that, like, what? How can you be in our generation, which is to say,

• 31:13Speaker 03

  you know, Gen Z and millennials, and not care about politics? So it's that, it's part of it. She is terrified of and loathing of AI and the sort of technology mania and all of it. And he is much more down with technology. So that, that is equally a big part of, of their, of the reason they break apart or are separated. She doesn't like the modern world. You know, she doesn't like the politicization, the polarization. She doesn't like, you know, tech, tech, tech, everything. She just wants to, like, live in the country and have a nice life.

• 31:48Alec Baldwin?

  If you're a Democratic candidate who can win the nomination, who is pure, I don't know.

• 31:52Speaker 03

  There's not a human being, I mean, maybe Barack Obama was pretty pure, I guess, but, you know, but, but, you know, it's not a good thing, but it's a thing that Donald Trump, in all of his ways, has, has changed that bar. I mean, you know, we are no longer in the day where Gary Hart would be thrown out of a presidential campaign for having an affair. We're different than that. So I think the bar, sadly, but truly, is different. Where more things are, are permitted, so there's less things that can ruin a, a candidate. I'm not unhopeful about your comment earlier about Democrats not punching and being aggressive. I think, I think there's, there is an understanding and a new aggressiveness. And it's not just

• 32:36Speaker 03

  being old. It's being old and somehow not giving up the idea that it's still like it was in the 1990s, right? I mean, Chuck Schumer, fine person, but like, these people who just are so baked into the old days, right? The 80s, 90s, even the aughts where, you know, Democrats and Republicans compromised, got along, governed somehow, to this dysfunctional, politically polarized time in which it's all about show business, right? It's all about being on TV, being on the internet, and getting your hits, you know, getting your clickbait. And, and it's a different world. Whether they are socialists or not,

• 33:16Speaker 03

  people who understand and say, like, the, the problem is not too many people from Guatemala in your neighborhood. The problem are these people who are getting all the money and all, and, and taking all the jobs and doing all the things, by the way, speaking of Donald Trump, which we can't avoid. If you go back to his first time he ran, and he had his final big two-minute speech in 2016, I, I never forget, and I've looked back at it more than once. It could be a Bernie Sanders speech. It's, it's not about immigrants and stuff. It's about Wall Street, how they've ruined your towns, and how they've taken you for a ride, and, and we're going to stop that, and, and we're going to have Medicare

• 33:55Speaker 03

  like it's never been before. And that's what he, being a promised anything liar, ran on and won in 2016. That was brilliant, you know? And the fact that he hasn't delivered on any of that, and worse, started a war that people don't like, and, and didn't solve inflation as he promised and all that. The reality is seeping in. I'm hopeful that people, that more people are understanding, like, no, no, this is BS.

• 34:23Alec Baldwin?

  Writer and author Kurt Anderson. If you're enjoying this conversation, tell a friend. And be sure to follow Here's the Thing on the iHeartRadio app, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. When we come back, Anderson shares his research process and whether or not he would ever use artificial intelligence while writing. 911, what's your emergency?

• 34:58Speaker 07

  Please help us. They're everywhere. We think they're murder hornets.

• 35:04Alec Baldwin?

  911 Nashville returns.

• 35:06Speaker 04

  What's a homicide detective doing here? Three bodies on the ground.

• 35:09Alec Baldwin?

  With emergencies of biblical proportions.

• 35:12Speaker 04

  All sense swarms upon you and upon your people.

• 35:15Alec Baldwin?

  That's one of the plagues of the Bible. And somebody's unleashing them on Nashville. Brian Phillippe joins 911 Nashville. All new Thursdays on ABC, next day on Hulu.

• 35:25Speaker 06

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• 36:52Alec Baldwin?

  I'm Alec Baldwin, and you're listening to Here's the Thing. Kurt Anderson started writing his latest novel, The Breakup, in the fall of 2022, before the advent of AI assistance and when Donald Trump was out of office. In the three years it took him to finish the book, the future Kurt Anderson was inventing started to resemble the present. With a resume that includes seven books, an iconic magazine, a radio show, screenplays, and a play, I was curious about the projects Anderson did not pursue. I wondered if there were any ideas he abandoned, or books that he almost wrote.

• 37:31Speaker 03

  Not quite. I mean, when I lose interest or decide I can't do this, or I don't want to do this, for whatever reason, it happens much earlier.

• 37:38Alec Baldwin?

  You don't dig in?

• 37:39Speaker 03

  No, but it's still, as I said, I start any book, really, and certainly any fiction, with a, with a simple idea. I have never written a hundred pages, or, or much, other than notes for a thing, and then say, nah, that's not, and then they go into a, you know, drawer, and maybe five, 10, 20 years later. Like, this idea I had for the CIA in the 1950s and 60s comes back in some form, in some fashion later, and, and, you know, so things come back to life, as long as you don't, you know, as long as you recall them.

• 38:10Alec Baldwin?

  Now, are you, as a researcher, because I'm assuming, obviously, that books like your last book before this one, The Evil Geniuses, when you do that, that involves significant, endless hours of research that you have to do for that book?

• 38:24Speaker 03

  No.

• 38:25Alec Baldwin?

  And are you someone who, when I close my eyes and think of the Kurt Anderson I know, is it like, a combination of Jack Nicholson in Chinatown ripping out pages out of the Waterboards book, and coughing while he's doing that? Is it Woodward and Bernstein flipping through boxes of pitways? Is it all on-the-ground, hard research, or is a lot of it just online these days?

• 38:43Speaker 03

  Or is it Jack Nicholson in The Shining, just typing the same sentence over and over again? It is, it's, no, it's, I'm in my first back, you know, I mean, as the internet has become more and more and more useful for research, I have used it more and more, obviously, as any writer has, so, no, I'm not Robert Caro typing on a typewriter. You know, my first novel, for instance, was not, it was not, you know, Google barely existed, so I didn't do that, but more and more. And it's funny, given a book about AI, or partly about AI, because it's set in the future, or it could be set now, it'd be partly about AI, but the last year and a half, really, I'd finished the book, and my, one of my daughters, who's a big AI aficionado, and

• 39:25Speaker 03

  helps her with her work a lot, said, you gotta, you gotta look at this Claude thing, you know, the Claude AI made by Anthropic. And the critique it gives her of her work as a graphic designer, because she works alone, she, so it says, oh, are you trying to do this and this? And so she has, you know, useful conversations with it about, let alone the encoding websites she builds and things. So I started to think, okay, I'll take a look, because I, I thought, no, I, I don't want it, I don't like it, I don't want it to write for me, and, oof. So I'd finished the book, but I wanted to fact-check a certain thing. And again, you gotta be careful with fact-checking AI, it gets things wrong, as, as it admits when you bust it on something. But, for instance, a thesaurus. I never was a big thesaurus user, like, ooh, what's a better word for this, or a bigger

• 40:10Speaker 03

  word, or whatever. But with Claude, the one I use, you could say, okay, this is the paragraph I've written. I, I wonder if there are alternatives that I'm not thinking of, that mean this, and with this connotation? And you have this whole conversation, useful conversation about this very specific thing that's incredibly useful. And, and so, I have found, it was ironic to me, this, I'm writing this character who despises all things AI, and, and, and really reluctant to start using it in her writing. She's a writer, she's a poet, but she also writes nonfiction, Natalie. And, and using AI myself to, to figure out if, do I have the right word in describing something here or there, was interesting. And, and back to your original question, do you know exactly what you're gonna do when I started?

• 40:54Speaker 03

  No, because, among other things, I didn't know I would have AI as a tool in 2025 when I was finishing this book. I started in 2022.

• 41:01Alec Baldwin?

  On the book we did a while back, and, and your successive books, you know, my admiration for you knows no bounds. I missed that podcast of yours, as I said, you had Infinitum, but it's still online, correct? You can still listen to that, correct?

• 41:13Speaker 03

  Studio 360, all thousand episodes are available online.

• 41:17Alec Baldwin?

  I understand there might be some theatrical work for you in the near future. You've decided to maybe work with a down-and-out, washed-up, fading, leading man in the movie business to try to work on a project with him in the theater. Is that just yes or no? True?

• 41:32Speaker 03

  That's definitely true. If he, if he can be taken up and, and shown that this is how he should, I should spend my next year or so, and he should then have his once glorious Broadway career revived.

• 41:47Alec Baldwin?

  My thanks to writer and author Kurt Anderson. This episode was recorded at CDM Studios in New York City. We're produced by Kathleen Russo, Zach McNeese, and Victoria DeMartin. Our engineer is Isaac Kaplan-Wulner. I'm Alec Baldwin. Here's the Thing is brought to you by iHeart Radio.

• 42:30Speaker 00

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• 43:05Speaker 07

  This week on Game Recognized Game with Breonna Stewart and me, Miles Turner, we talk with two-time WNBA All-Star and current ESPN analyst, Cheney Agumike, about tearing her Achilles tendon while playing in China, and how a deep connection with her sister Nekka helped the recovery process.

• 43:21Speaker 02

  Nekka claims to have felt something while she was sleeping, and that's why she was up when I called, and I was like, oh my gosh, Nekka, I'm hurt, and I think this is a problem.

• 43:29Speaker 07

  Listen to Game Recognized Game with Stewie and Miles on the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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• 43:37Speaker 04

  My fresh detector.

• 43:38Speaker 02

  Uh, your what?

• 43:40Speaker 04

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• 43:41Speaker 02

  What is it detecting?

• 43:43Speaker 04

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• 43:45Speaker 02

  Okay, what happens if it detects something really fresh?

• 43:51Speaker 04

  Apparently, we celebrate.

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