00:21 Gia Tolentino Why is there this mass de-skilling experiment at a time when with the skills we have, we're already not doing very well, like living in contemporary reality. 00:32 Like we are already kind of psychologically unequipped to live in this contemporary reality. 00:37 And our response to it is like further de-skill ourselves by handing over ideas. 00:41 basic kind of questions of comprehension of reality to chat GPT. 00:47 It just seems like, yeah, on a very pragmatic level, all of this aside, it's like on a selfish level, I can't de-skill myself any more than I already am because I'm already not doing well. 01:04 Chris Hayes Hello and welcome. 01:04 Why is this happening? 01:05 With me, your host, Chris Hayes. 01:13 In the last, I would say like week, I've had three interactions with unreal portions of the internet that have really kind of shaken me. 01:23 The first was a TikTok video fed to me by the algorithm of homeless people in Chicago pitching tents on buses. 01:31 And it was not, it was like photorealistic. 01:34 Like it looked like a local news package. 01:37 And at first I was like, what? 01:38 And then as I watched, I was like, this is not like the physics don't actually work here. 01:41 Like none of this works, but it took me, I had to watch it. 01:45 Then I watched it again to be like, oh, this is an AI generated image that looks a lot like a local news package that doesn't look rendered and surreal. 01:55 It looks crisp and like it would actually look like the tents had cinder blocks at the corners to like weigh down the place that the posts would have gone into the soil. 02:04 Yeah. 02:05 And I was like, well, that's weird. 02:07 Like, this doesn't exist. 02:08 Someone is trying to make it as if it is does exist to get engagement, I guess. 02:12 Then I had another video I saw that was like this crazy incident happening on a plane. 02:19 And it was just it looked real photorealistic as a person like holding their phone and they're like to sort of see other other people on the on the plane gasping and someone's getting thrown out. 02:31 And it's like this big scene. 02:32 But there's something off about it. 02:34 And then it turned out it was generated by some content farm that like makes these scenes on purpose to go get engagement. 02:41 And then the third thing that happened to me was that someone that I love in my family, we were just talking. 02:47 He's like, oh, did you see Nikola Jokic's press conference after they lost that game? 02:51 The Denver Nuggets MVP and star and center who's Serbian. 02:56 And I was like, oh, no. 02:57 And he played it for me. 02:58 And it was it was very funny. 02:59 It's it looked exactly like Jokic. 03:01 It sounded exactly like Jokic. 03:03 I know what Jokic sounds like. 03:05 But it was clearly AI generated and it's him kind of starting off talking normally, but then starting to like slag all his teammates. 03:13 Right. 03:13 And I had to be to this person like, no, that's that's AI. 03:17 But I understand why you don't. 03:19 And I just think the line is getting very thin very quickly between what is real and what's not. 03:27 And then at the same time, what is real is. 03:30 the images we see of parts of the world, particularly the images that come out of Gaza come to mind the most sort of acutely feel surreal, like are horrific and hyper real in a way that feels almost like it can't actually be of this earth. 03:45 And the distinction between the two is getting harder and harder. 03:48 And this 03:50 Brain-breaking aspect of the modern internet was a subject of an essay that has really stuck with me that was published like a little more than a month ago by Gia Tolentino and The New Yorker called My Brain Finally Broke. 04:01 Much of what we see now is fake. 04:03 The reality we face is full of horrors. 04:05 More and more of the world is slipping beyond my comprehension. 04:08 And as someone who just wrote a book about the attention age and about the information environment we live in, this really resonated with me. 04:15 And I thought... 04:16 as things have only gotten more insane, it would be a good time to talk to Gia. 04:21 So Gia, welcome to the program. 04:27 Gia Tolentino Thank you for having me to talk about my favorite subject, the incomprehensibility of the world. 04:32 Yeah. 04:33 And my broken brain. 04:33 Yeah. 04:34 It's not gotten better. 04:35 Chris Hayes Have you had any moments like that recently of the, is this real? 04:39 Oh, it's not real. 04:40 Gia Tolentino Well, I... 04:45 I don't even know, really. 04:47 I mean, I will say, when I was writing this piece, I was further into the valley of the, you know, homeless people pitching a tent on top of city buses in Chicago. 04:57 Like, I have since... 04:59 I was like, okay, let me try to see less fake things. 05:01 But it's still... 05:02 The fake things that I see right now, I think I wrote in the piece that my like it's mostly my like it's mostly just Instagram and it's like AI images of celebrities, just AI people that look, you know, and it's mostly semi benign things like it's like fake beauty influencers or whatever. 05:21 But, you know, I thought the images coming out of the protests in L.A., 05:26 you know, they're real. 05:29 The real sort of watermarked, you know, newswire images coming out of them. 05:34 I have the like, wait, is this fake news? 05:37 Totally. 05:38 But they are real. 05:39 But yeah, it's like you were saying, the things that are fake look extremely real. 05:45 The things that are real are... 05:49 are almost unbelievable. 05:50 And then the result is this slurry in our mind that causes this kind of, like when I was writing about it, it felt like a permission structure to detach from the material reality of the world. 06:02 Like it all adds up to, you know, you see the sort of the literally starving children in Gaza 06:08 But there have been viral AI images of starving children in Gaza on Facebook for a year now. 06:15 That are not real. 06:18 That are not real. 06:19 That are engagement farming. 06:21 Just like there are images, you know, there's the whole sort of AI slop category of people. 06:27 engagement farming images on facebook where it's like emaciated children next to like birthday cakes hooked up to ventilators like on a beach and it's like like because it's my birthday or whatever and then a lot you know and it's like these very like some of the children some of the children have eight legs you know and it's it's and it's but you know and then alongside of those are image are images of 06:48 AI generated images of starving children purportedly in Gaza. 06:52 And then there are real ones. 06:54 And it all just kind of, it felt when I was writing it, it was like, I realized that I, it was unnerving to me to feel like there was a permission structure to detach from reality when, you know, the entire world 07:04 felt purpose of my existence is to cleave to it harder. 07:07 But there was something about this year where I started to feel like, uh-oh, you know, like I'm not only having the response of like, wait, is this, I'm feeling a slackening of my reflex of like, wait, is this true or false? 07:19 Like sometimes I don't even ask, which is terrifying. 07:22 Like sometimes I'm just like, well, I'm not going to look at that any longer, you know, and that's terrifying to me. 07:27 And then sometimes just to not know is, yeah. 07:31 Yeah. 07:31 Chris Hayes The not knowing to me, like one of the things that I've been struggling with, and I think it's like a, it's sort of a generation and age thing, which is that I was, obviously there's been fake stuff on the internet forever. 07:44 And I've always been like the people one generation older than me had a harder time telling it apart. 07:52 And I always knew what was fake and what was real. 07:54 Because you do, it's one of the skills you build being on the internet. 07:59 And feeling my own ability to make that distinction, like, I don't know if it's age and younger people are better at it, but I don't think they are. 08:08 Like, that's the thing is that I think if you look at the data and you look what people are posting and stuff like they're not any better. 08:14 And in fact, it's partly that the technology is just getting better and journalism is shrinking enough such that 08:23 the way that I used to orient myself to is this real or not, it's gotten harder and harder to orient myself. 08:31 Gia Tolentino Yeah, and there's also, right, I mean, it's like everything you wrote about in your book. 08:34 It's like none of the dynamics are new, none of the vectors are new, but there is kind of meaningfully new, there are meaningfully new aspects to the technology. 08:43 And the fact that like with images and with words and with video, there was this thing, like 404 Media does really good reporting on the sort of, 08:52 this realm. 08:54 The slop realm. 08:55 The slop realm. 08:55 And there are scammers that can deepfake in real time. 08:59 They can change their age, race, gender, and they can pose and speak in real time through these filters. 09:06 I remember two years ago being like, well, AI doesn't interest me. 09:09 And now it's not just inescapable, but it is palpably, rapidly, whether we like it or not, whether we consciously engage it or not, it is reshaping the entire texture of lived reality for many, many people. 09:21 And 09:22 And I think there is something to the fact that like, I mean, I still don't really understand this fully. 09:27 I'm still like, because my brain is so broken, I'm thinking through this out loud, but it's like, there is now like an unprecedented possibility to have no human hand, almost no human hand in, you know, that like chat GPT generates the prompts that are then used 09:42 to prompt the AI video makers, right? 09:44 And so there's a human hand, but it's so far back. 09:47 And like that human hand in generating the prompts that then generate the video, like probably came from like this ecosystem of like web seminars, teaching people in, you know, Southeast Asia to just, you know, farm more. 10:03 And it's the... 10:04 any sort of human touch on it is so far removed from the actual thing in a way that is world historically new that I think this bounces back onto the realm of the real where these things such as like ice raids, you know, all over Los Angeles, all over New York, in the subways, at clubs and restaurants, like the very real human hands and all of that that cause the actual structural reality of our world. 10:30 It's almost like we lose... 10:32 Like, we lose our sense of the fact that actually much of the world, there are human hands on it. 10:38 There are like real material chains of people making decisions that can be broken where the sort of endless realm of the machine can't really be stopped in any way. 10:48 Chris Hayes because the to me the line so there's two things happening here I think like IRL we used to call IRL back in the day quaintly right in real life and online are there's not really a distinction anymore partly because the way that we understand and live IRL is through our phones so yeah and so because of that 11:07 What I'm hearing you say is there's like a weird displacement that happens where it's like it all feels like content or everything feels like a thing that started in the phone. 11:17 Yeah. 11:17 Like as opposed to a thing in the world where the phone is the device that's transmuting a reality in the world, that it all just popped up from in there. 11:25 And I do think that's partly the experience of the algorithmic feed where you're just going through. 11:30 It's like AI slop, celebrity influencer. 11:34 Ice raid in Great Barrington, Massachusetts, where a desperate employer is pleading with armed agents who are in masks to let her employee go. 11:43 And that's all just in the exact same cycle of in the content carousel. 11:50 Gia Tolentino And I also think, you know, this, I started to feel like, like 2016, I was like, okay, the internet got Trump elected, you know, like the worst parts of the internet. 12:02 And then in 2021, it was like January 6th, I was like, okay, this, like, I have like high watermarks in my head of like when the phone enlarged to eat the world, kind of. 12:11 And like the election in 2016 was one of them, January 6th, I felt like I was like, oh, 12:17 you know, a conspiracy theory jumped out of the phone and stormed the Capitol. 12:22 You know, like that felt really, you know, that felt like, oh, like something. 12:26 And this year, you know, there's some quality to it, like the Hootie PC small group thing, right? 12:32 Chris Hayes Like it's like the, we're like- The Pete Hegseth signal chat that accidentally included Atlantic editor Jeffrey Goldberg. 12:40 Gia Tolentino Yes, yes. 12:41 And, and like, you know, Trump, Trump tweeting like a, an obviously photoshopped photo of Kilmar Albrega Garcia's like fake, you know, and it's like, he's tweeting it and it's obviously fake and it's justifying like all of these, like it's the, the, I think what I called in the piece is sort of like cognitive tendrils of phone based insanity are, feel like the thing that are, it's like increasingly driving policy in so many ways. 13:04 Like, yeah. 13:05 Chris Hayes Yeah. 13:06 And that that idea that it right, that the phone that the world sort of comes from and goes into the phone. 13:13 And that also that like, yes, that the most powerful person in the world is also just as addled and pickled. 13:19 I mean, Elon Musk being another example like that. 13:23 This is actually shaping the reality of the people that actually do have the force in the real life. 13:27 I mean, you saw this, you know, we talked about you and I are speaking in the second week of June. 13:33 There's protests in California. 13:36 over ice raids. 13:37 The president has called, has federalized the National Guard over the objections of the governor, which hasn't been done since LBJ did it to George Wallace in Alabama to integrate the University of Alabama. 13:47 There are 700 Marines that are deployed there, all for 13:51 What basically was about five Waymos that got lit on fire in a one block radius of downtown L.A. And there were like two stores, I think, that got their windows smashed and people stole some stuff. 14:01 That's like the sum total, like far less or fewer arrests than, say, the parade after the L.A. Kings won the NHL title. 14:09 Like this is like this is a true drop in the bucket. 14:13 But the reality is. 14:15 And here we have to say that this is actually anterior to the phone, like on Fox News, good old-fashioned cable news, the medium I spend a lot of my time in. 14:23 The reality is... 14:25 full RoboCop, like Verhoeven film, dystopian LA on fire. 14:31 And that is not just scrolling online and not just on the television sets in the White House. 14:38 It is how the president of the United States, I think, genuinely understands the reality. 14:43 Like when he talks about LA, he says, we saved it from burning. 14:47 And maybe that's a cynical lie. 14:49 It might be. 14:51 But also, I think he probably thinks that's right because the place that he's getting his information is the distorted, refracted reality of what is the most dramatic image and the most attentionally grabbing. 15:03 Gia Tolentino This is a really bad analogy for this. 15:06 But like in six years ago, I wrote about this thing called Instagram face for the New Yorker, which was where like women would digitally alter their faces to look more whatever perfect. 15:17 And then they would go to plastic surgeons to get the alterations to match the digital face. 15:22 And then they would further digitally alter the physically perfected face and then go. 15:26 And it was just this back and forth till everyone. 15:28 I remember that essay. 15:29 And it's why everyone looks the same now. 15:31 Like it's why everyone was like and but there's something about what you're talking about where Trump perceives Robocop reality in L.A. and then he has the ability to produce it adversarially. 15:40 Right. 15:41 Yes. 15:41 Like the sort of like he he can create that. 15:44 He can he can bring the National Guard. 15:46 Chris Hayes He's his own plastic surgeon. 15:47 Gia Tolentino Yeah, like he can he can send in the people to trample protesters underfoot on horseback and then people will, you know, like and then he can produce the response. 15:56 And it's yeah. 15:57 Chris Hayes And he and he it's what he wants, you know, that and the idea that what we will get like the you know, the images we're seeing of the protests, for instance, or the images I saw, you know, I just referenced it before about this sort of desperate employer in Great Barrington, Massachusetts pleading with these ICE agents or federal agents. 16:12 I don't know which they could have been from the constellation of agencies and DHS. 16:17 You know, to let this person go, who's been a gardener working for over years, who is not a criminal and not suspected of anything is just there working. 16:24 And the uncanny of like the visual grammar of that that moment through the phone is also so much of a structuring grammar of how we under visual grammar for how we understand the world. 16:41 That to go back to the point we started with, if you put something in that shaky vertical video, I'm like immediately inclined to believe it. 16:51 Even if it's fake. 16:53 Yeah. 16:53 So like there are these visual cues of authenticity that were produced by the shaky camera of the handheld witness. 17:02 Like I just grabbed my phone. 17:04 That signal authenticity so reliably or had until now. 17:10 Right. 17:10 That it's very hard to overcome my visceral desire to believe what I'm seeing if you just put it into that framework. 17:18 Gia Tolentino But that video was real, right? 17:20 Chris Hayes That video was real. 17:20 That video was real. 17:22 But but but this is treacherous territory. 17:24 I run like a news program, you know, like we're constantly doing this. 17:28 Like, is this real? 17:28 Is this not? 17:29 And we have luckily we have resources and we have a staff and we could take time and like burrow down. 17:34 But average citizens don't like what is being asked of people now on this front to me seems totally impossible for people. 17:47 a person who doesn't do this professionally like I do to begin to sort through. 17:52 Gia Tolentino Right, right. 17:53 You would just simply detach. 17:55 You would simply like be like, oh, I have to text my children and go back to work. 17:59 You know, like you wouldn't like that's the thing that I have found so scary about this year. 18:03 Like the spidey, the instinctive sense of real or fake that we have people in our field have from combing through real or fake for so long, or in my case, being like vaguely young enough to sort of feel like I understood the 18:16 the latest vagaries of the internet. 18:17 I'm like, I'm just perhaps like aging out of, you know, of, but, but you're right. 18:21 I don't think younger people, I think younger people perhaps have even a less like, like, like, I think the fact checking impulse might seem kind of old fashioned, you know? 18:29 It's like, like you, you, you would perceive the entire world as sort of surreal, not just surreal, but almost like at an arm's 18:37 Like that it's all just like a flat plane of indistinguishably like untouchable madness, you know? 18:44 And I think that plenty of people do experience it like that. 18:49 Chris Hayes And you think that has a politically, I think, you know, there's a politically enervating effect to that, right? 18:54 Massively. 18:55 Yeah, you think that's happening. 18:57 Or you're feeling it yourself? 18:58 Gia Tolentino Well, you know, you know what I was thinking recently? 19:00 So I was at the ICE protest yesterday, like in Foley Square. 19:04 This is June 11th, the one on June 10th. 19:06 And I was there with my little kid who's almost two. 19:09 And and today I was texting with a friend of mine who is a public defender who had to bring like she has a client who she had to accompany to immigration court. 19:19 And she had her client bring her three year old daughter to 19:21 in the hopes that the presence of a very young child would hold off the detention, the scooping up of her by ICE in her court appearance. 19:31 And all of that, and I was just thinking about this and how we are processing, because it's interesting in New York, the protest response, it has, for a variety of reasons, and I think it's been indicative of the way that I think the court system and the subways both are kind of rendered in the minds of the average New Yorker kind of 19:51 almost invisibly lawless spaces. 19:54 Like there's something like, like ICE has been sweeping subways for a while now here, but there's kind of, there's not the, the protests here have just not been as militant in the same way that they have been in LA. 20:06 And I think they probably will turn into that at some point because the sweeps will get more intense here. 20:11 But I was thinking part of this is because for, since October 7th, 2023, we have been 20:19 There's been this really unprecedented tsunami of images and videos of what is fundamentally U.S. state-sponsored violence, I would say, funded by us. 20:33 And... 20:34 like, unbelievable, like, suffering in front of us. 20:37 Chris Hayes The worst things you've ever seen. 20:39 The worst things I've ever seen. 20:40 Gia Tolentino The worst things you've ever seen filmed on shaky video. 20:44 Yeah. 20:44 You know, and there have been plenty of fakes about Gaza, too, but, you know, like, filmed on real shaky video by humans transmitted on platforms directly to our phones. 20:53 And it has had an effect that, 20:57 And like taking that all in as the web fills up, you know, as we fill up to our necks in fake images and fake text also has had a real effect on how I think many people, maybe myself included, have processed what is happening with these ICE kidnappings. 21:16 You know, like I think there's been a deadening effect of just like, oh, a horrific thing on my phone. 21:23 Yeah. 21:23 A horrific thing on my phone. 21:24 A horrific thing is happening to a family on my phone. 21:27 Yeah. 21:27 You know, and I think that there has been this, I mean, certainly it's had an effect on me in terms of like, you know, watching everything in Gaza happen and watching like very, very few members of Congress even say anything about it really. 21:44 Like that has had a really alarming effect on my understanding of the civic process. 21:50 But yeah, I think that the images have something to do with it too. 21:53 Chris Hayes Yeah, I think you're right. 21:54 And I think it's created a very, yes, I think it's had a really pernicious deadening quality on people. 21:59 And I think the instinct behind it is the opposite. 22:02 It's to produce like empathy. 22:05 And I think instead it has produced some empathy, but 22:10 But I think largely one of the main effects, and it has, you've seen it in the politics of particularly younger people who are on algorithms like this the most, are the most sympathetic to Gazans and to Palestinians and the most opposed to Israel's conduct there. 22:26 That said, I think it has had a kind of deadening effect on people. 22:30 It's so much, it's so constant, it's so awful that there's a part that people turn off. 22:36 And then the other thing that I constantly wrestle with specifically on this, because I think you're right to pinpoint like this specific barrage of images from Gaza since October 2023 as a kind of key part of this experience of online life and sort of horror and surreality is, 22:54 I have to tell myself that in the same way that I look at Fox's depiction of L.A. and I'm like, you, Fox viewer, are being totally misled and snookered about what's happening in L.A. 23:08 There are millions of people who think I am being misled and snookered by the images on my phone of Gaza. 23:14 Totally. 23:14 This is propaganda that this is. 23:16 And I have to constantly. 23:20 get myself to figure out how to touch back home base because I need to retain skepticism of my own reality in this respect. 23:30 And it's like, again, I have talked to people that have been in Gaza who are not making content, who can tell me, yes, it is as horrible as what you've seen. 23:39 I have been there. 23:40 I just came back. 23:40 Like, I have the ability to do that. 23:43 I'm a reporter. 23:43 I talk to folks. 23:46 But most people don't have that. 23:49 And so, again, like this sense that you're getting the reality stream to your eyeballs with the danger of the fact it's not actually reality. 23:58 And the inability to have the resources to do the thing that I get to do. 24:02 And still feel fucked up about it. 24:04 And still feel, yes. 24:05 And to constantly be doing the checking in. 24:08 Like, I do need to do that. 24:09 I do have to remind myself when I see an image, I don't know where this came from. 24:12 I don't know who took this. 24:13 I don't know the context. 24:14 I don't know what happened before this image. 24:16 I don't know what came after it. 24:17 Like, this is the thing that we, like, drill into producers on the show, right? 24:21 Because, like, sometimes... 24:22 You know, everyone is like, you know, the viral shark image that's swimming around after every flooding. 24:27 You know, Ted Cruz posted it and so and so. 24:29 People fall for it every time there's a flood or a tornado. 24:31 It's like, no, that's not actually what you think it is. 24:34 That I feel defeated by it. 24:38 And I have to do I have to work full time to keep me touching reality as my full time job. 24:44 Gia Tolentino Yeah, right. 24:46 And I think like. 24:48 Like, it all amounts to, like, this can't be real. 24:52 Like, I think that sort of horseshoe that we were talking about at the beginning, it's like, it can't be real because it is so unbelievably horrible. 24:59 It just can't be real. 25:00 One's brain flinches away, swipes to the next thing, is like, I can't, this can't be real. 25:07 And then it's like a video of a guy in Antarctica riding a ski-doo. 25:11 And I'm like, this can't be real. 25:12 You know, and then it's an image, you know, and then it's like... 25:15 We've talked so much, all of us who have written about the internet, it's like we've talked so much about context collapse, about like individual pieces of information. 25:23 But there's also something to me about, there's kind of context collapse that's happening with like a simple idea like this can't be real. 25:31 Like there's... 25:32 The two different ways to think this, this can't be real because it is obviously fake and this can't be real because it is so horrible that my moral and civic sense cannot allow that this is being produced by the same political system that I am purportedly invested in. 25:48 that those just kind of collapse on one's phone into just like, this can't be real, this can't be real, this can't be real, this can't be real, you know? 25:54 And that really scares me. 25:56 Like, I feel like the indistinguishability of like two very separate emotions and ideas that are all just flattening into this can't be real is like, I think maybe more than anything, like that was this alarm. 26:08 Like if I, if I myself, someone that kind of 26:13 I feel like I write a lot about currents of emotion and if I can't even clearly distinguish those two things in my own self, that scared me in the same way that not being able to fact check whether this is a real person in an advertisement for a baseball hat that I might buy. 26:30 You know, like it's the deadening effect of like, yeah, it's like, oh, I'm going to buy like swim goggles for for my child to wear to the YMCA. 26:37 And I'm like, is this a real child wearing the swim goggles? 26:40 You don't know. 26:40 You click, you know. 26:41 And it's like, what? 26:44 And there's overall that accumulates into something. 26:46 Chris Hayes And amidst it all, like there's also the fact that. 26:50 like this sort of seriality and the deadening. 26:52 There's also like the fact, and I think to like, this has been particularly true in the Gaza context, but it was true in the Ukrainian context before that, like where it does still retain this ability to produce this sort of sense of human closeness, intimacy, and connection. 27:05 Like there was a, you know, there was this meme that started during the Ukraine war that was like, 27:12 this sort of Italian American song that was in the Godfather wedding scene. 27:16 You know, and it's, and it's people like being like things in my Italian grandparents house that just makes sense. 27:25 Right. 27:25 So it was like this sort of like Italian American, New Jersey meme. 27:28 And I saw a young woman from Ukraine. 27:31 Like being like things in our bomb shelter that just makes sense. 27:35 She's doing the same meme because she's watching the same content, right? 27:38 Like, so she's getting fed like Southern Jersey, Italian American memes too. 27:43 And she's doing it. 27:44 I felt so close to her in that moment. 27:46 Like it's so funny to me. 27:47 She's in a war zone. 27:48 She's a bomb shelter. 27:49 There's another guy who's like, who's like a workout nut who lives in Gaza, who does like these incredibly funny posts about like, got my 30,000 steps in today because I had to go get clean water from the, 28:01 Right. 28:02 And like sort of doing these very funny, sly send ups of like influencer culture because he's also. 28:08 Right. 28:10 Like the other side of the seriality is like this dude is living in a war zone on his phone is this portal of a world being like, you got to get your protein in. 28:19 Gia Tolentino Totally. 28:20 Chris Hayes We're all looking at the same little box feeding us the same insanity. 28:24 Right. 28:25 Yeah, it's nuts. 28:27 But that ability, that ability to me is like the thing that I want to preserve or that I cherish about it. 28:32 You know, I think the reason I first fell in love with the Internet is like when you do feel like you have moments of human connection across geographical distance, which is really precious. 28:42 And like both of those, like the gym influencer guy and the girl in the bomb shelter, like 28:49 It did give me empathy or insight for a sliver of a moment into the human experience that they were going through in a way that like a news report on the BBC wouldn't have, you know, like it just did. 29:01 And I think there is inside of all this madness and surreality there. 29:06 It does retain that ability. 29:09 Gia Tolentino It retains that ability person-to-person, but I think we're kind of experiencing that there's quite a hard line between that person-to-person, you know, democratized, we are fundamentally the same people watching the same things in my house that just make sense video— 29:27 And then, but it doesn't, the person, like if anything, like you think about, you know, especially let's say like in November, December, 2023 and early 2024, there were all these videos of children being like, like, you know, delivering these, 29:44 heartbreaking pleas for their life. 29:47 And them thinking quite reasonably, I think, surely if they see us, if they see that we're here in our school, that we just want to not be bombed, and that we just want to eat and live, surely if these people will see us on their phones, and it will do something. 30:04 And people watch those. 30:05 And there was like an enormous, you know, like I feel like, you know, the videos that I'm talking about, like there were like the one specifically the earliest one where it was like they're literally children pleading for their life on camera. 30:15 And they thought they hoped that it would do something. 30:18 And it didn't. 30:19 It enormously. 30:20 I think there were many people that were moved by that video that that it's lodged in their brains in the same way. 30:27 Did it do anything wrong? 30:29 to decrease or end the amount, the billions of dollars that we're going, you know, no. 30:34 And, and so it's like those things have to, like, it almost makes it worse in a lot of ways because our hearts are cracked open and the system is as whatever as it always was. 30:44 And, and I think that's part of what is giving everyone that feeling of madness, like where it's like there's connection and then where do we 30:51 put in GoFundMes to bribe Egyptian border guards. 30:54 Like, what else do we do, you know? 30:56 Chris Hayes But I also think that what you're identifying, I know exactly the videos you're talking about, 31:02 Again, to go back to that sort of Fox News example, it's like there also is just this enormous, vast cultural distance between the people who have been experiencing those videos nonstop since October and those who haven't. 31:14 Absolutely. 31:14 And it's almost unbridgeable. 31:16 It's totally unbridgeable. 31:18 So the U.S. senators have not been, you know, people that are in my life who I love, who have very good politics, even on this specific issue or politics I agree with, I should say. 31:28 and are empathetic people. 31:30 I know people like that who aren't, who haven't been experiencing it the same way. 31:34 Like that specific experience is so distinct in the same way that like, you know, the distance between how people who are just getting, and again, it's not the same because I think it's like the reality is different, but what is the same is that there's an unbridgeable distance between people watching Fox 16 hours a day about what they think is happening in Los Angeles. 31:52 And us, yeah. 31:53 Gia Tolentino And us, like, it's just like- 31:55 Well, I think, yeah, this was also, I don't think it was, like, maybe it was 2020 when I started to think, like, there was a point within the last five years where I was like, there is no chance that I could convince anyone that 32:11 That's something I am seeing on my phone is real. 32:14 That if what they see on their phone is a different mix of fake and real things. 32:21 Chris Hayes They have a different mixture of fake and real than I do. 32:23 Gia Tolentino They have a different equation. 32:25 But you know, I was like, there's no... 32:27 There was a time, you know, like I'm I'm from Texas. 32:30 I grew up around actually exclusively around people who believe things that are like antithetical to the things that I believe. 32:36 Like I I feel pretty skilled in the or I did feel pretty equipped to bridge those gaps or have conversations. 32:46 And bridge like a totally different reality, totally different set of priorities. 32:50 Like a friend of mine in Houston who might be like, well, what about the kitty litter in schools for the trans cats or whatever? 32:56 And I'm like, ah, you know, and I would like have an ability to say like, okay, let's walk. 33:01 But there came a point in the last five years where I was like, actually... 33:05 Like the language itself, like there's an unbridgeable divide. 33:09 I could not convince someone that is even five shades more liberal than left than I am that like something I'm seeing on my phone is something they need to pay attention to. 33:17 Which again is like quite alarming given like the profession, you know, that I like I'm in and believe in. 33:23 But yeah, it's like there's the... 33:26 In 2020, I think was when I started to feel the real palpable absence of a shared civic reality. 33:31 And it does feel like, it's even like someone would say something that's very important to them, the way that, you know, the things we're talking about are important to us. 33:42 And I would be like looking at them, you know, like it would feel, they'd be like, oh, but did you read this latest study about like vaccines and seed oils, you know? 33:48 And I would just be like, oh. 33:49 what? 33:50 You know, like, what? 33:52 Yes. 33:53 Chris Hayes No, I know exactly. 33:54 Like, a stray sentence from someone in your life that opens a portal into the what kind of 34:02 videos they've been served on the algorithm, you know? 34:05 Gia Tolentino Yeah. 34:05 And like, and maybe there's some truth in whatever they say. 34:08 And I would just be like, I would just be like, uh, like, you know, be like a tin can me to the person directly in front of me. 34:14 And it would feel like I was speaking across a mile over like a mile long rope bridge over a chasm. 34:19 You know, I could just be like, well, we're just going to go live in our other, our phones, you know, like, let's just go back to our respective phones, you know? 34:28 Chris Hayes More of our conversation after this quick break. 35:13 To me, you mentioned the fact that, you know, the profession that you're part of. 35:17 I mean, I think we're both journalists, you know, in different ways, different relationships to it. 35:22 But we both came up as writers. 35:24 And, you know, you work in a magazine where like famously there's fact checkers and I've worked with New Yorker fact checkers and they're like... 35:30 They're hard asses. 35:31 They're hard asses, man. 35:32 It's like wild. 35:33 It's amazing. 35:34 It is amazing. 35:35 I mean, it's like a really great painful massage is how I feel. 35:39 Gia Tolentino I love it. 35:40 Oh, yeah. 35:40 Chris Hayes It's like, ah! 35:41 So it's getting a knot, you know? 35:43 It's agonizing, yeah. 35:45 And all of this is, you know, I've ended up in this kind of, I'm curious if you feel this way. 35:50 I have ended up in a, and I think it's partly age. 35:52 I mean, I'm 46 years old, so I think this just comes with the territory of aging. 35:56 In this kind of fuddy-duddy, fusty place of like, 35:59 A lot of this old-fashioned technique craft stuff about the professional ethos of the thing that we do that I care about, which is like, it's really important to me that I get things right. 36:09 It's really important I not show videos that are decontextualized or not right. 36:14 Or, you know, it's really important that we are the ones that touch down in reality has become more and more and more important to me in the work that I do professionally. 36:25 It's always been important to me, but also... 36:27 If I have any hope of anything civically, because like when it comes down to when I do see a viral video or I do see something, what I do start to do is like, oh, was there a local news report about this? 36:37 You know, like did some reporter go to the door of that employer in Great Barrington who took this video? 36:45 And did they talk to a look? 36:46 And it's like, oh, yes, they did. 36:47 Oh, OK. 36:49 This person exists. 36:50 This person is real. 36:50 This is not AI. 36:52 This like I can now read the reporting. 36:54 I could read the journalism. 36:55 And that ends up being. 36:58 the only anchor left. 37:00 Gia Tolentino Like, that's it. 37:01 I think that matters like on a, like it, it matters on a, like a literal material structural sense that like you need human hands on something. 37:08 Yes. 37:09 Like you need human hands on something to ensure that it remains real and something real is produced by, like, this is just a thing that is true of like anything that you could possibly think of. 37:19 Like, 37:20 a pillow, a bed, a piece of food, a news report, like it's human hands are really important. 37:25 But I think it's also, it's like insane to even be having this conversation. 37:29 It's like, it's important for people to do that. 37:31 But I think emotionally, that's also true. 37:34 Like I think, 37:36 I don't think anyone really likes the sense that we have that we don't know that the text that we're reading, like no one wants that. 37:43 Everyone wants the experiences that are maximally, that are entirely contained within the realm of like the human, like the literal physical human. 37:52 And- 37:53 You know, I was thinking of, did you see that thing where like the, some Chicago paper published an AI list of books, like summer preview books, and they were all, you know, it's like you just can't, you actually, you need the human fact checker to call the person and say, did you say this thing? 38:09 Because if they, and if someone is doing the quick shortcut and being like, hey, chat GPT, like did, is this quote from this book real? 38:16 Chat GPT will say like, 38:17 hey, genius, like it is real and it won't be, you know, like we physically, you know, like there was that whole thing where, you know, for like a couple of weeks, ChatGPT was like, you'd be like, hey, ChatGPT, like I had an amazing business idea to like cut off my head and sell it for $2 million. 38:33 And they would be like, 38:35 Fam, like, you know, many people in this world are afraid to take risks, but not you. 38:40 You know, and it would just like say, you know, like if you asked it, should I stop taking? 38:45 Chris Hayes Yes, they had to basically just the story was that the model was too flattering because the training, what had happened was basically like the training data had shown that like users like that the most. 38:57 And so the model had gotten too flattering and they had to like go into the guts of the model and like turn down how flattering it was. 39:03 Gia Tolentino Yeah, like people would ask it. 39:05 Like there were screenshots like all over people being like, Chai GPT, like should I stop taking the lithium that I've been prescribed for 25 years? 39:11 And it would be like... 39:12 Girl, absolutely, you know? 39:15 And it's like, it's really funny, but it's also like, oh my God, you know? 39:19 Like someone probably murdered their whole family because of like a system update into LGBT, you know? 39:24 And it's like, and it is funny finding myself like, it does feel kind of fuddy-duddy, but it also, I don't know, it like makes sense. 39:32 Like you- 39:34 you simply need people rather than machines trained on endless loops of increasingly incorrect data to determine your world. 39:44 Chris Hayes I think this idea, this sort of ethos that I think is like an emerging ethos that I do think is a kind of exciting to me, an exciting sort of, I think, political and ideological movement of like the primacy of the human. 40:00 Like, and again, like, 40:04 Has real resonances with the Industrial Revolution. 40:06 And, you know, Brian Merchant has a book called Blood and the Machine, which is sort of about the origins of the Luddite movement. 40:12 Yeah, they were right. 40:15 And how and he writes a lot about this and he's got a sub stack that's that's that's very good. 40:20 I recommend to people. 40:20 But. 40:22 this idea and Ezra's talked about this and, and D Graham Burnett, who's a, a attention theorist who I really respect and activist on this, like as the kind of machinification of intelligence happens as, as we sort of, the sort of product, the industrial, the industrialization like reaches into our very consciousness and minds, like reasserting the primacy of human, of humanness and humans doing stuff. 40:52 I think is actually a kind of emerging priority politically, personally, spiritually, ideologically. 41:01 Gia Tolentino Yeah, right. 41:03 I mean, it's like sometimes there are posts on Reddit that are like, wait, before Google Maps, what did people do? 41:10 Chris Hayes Yeah, how did they? 41:11 No, I saw that one the other day. 41:12 Gia Tolentino How did they get around? 41:14 Chris Hayes How did they navigate? 41:16 How did people get to an address? 41:19 Gia Tolentino Yeah. 41:20 And like, and it's like, you know, I like, there are so many things that I've outsourced to the phone, such as like the storage of visual memories, right? 41:27 Like, like there, and, and, you know, like there are plenty, but, but it's, yeah, it's like, it, I mean, the thing about the whole thing, it's like, I think I wrote about this in the broken brain thing. 41:38 It's like, why is there this 41:42 Why is there this mass de-skilling experiment at a time when with the skills we have, we're already not doing very well, like living in contemporary reality. 41:52 Like we are already kind of psychologically unequipped to live in this contemporary reality. 41:57 And our response to it is like further de-skill ourselves by handing over... 42:02 basic kind of questions of comprehension of reality to chat GPT. 42:08 It just seems like, yeah, on a very pragmatic level, all of this aside, it's like on a selfish level, I can't de-skill myself any more than I already am because I'm already not doing well. 42:22 Chris Hayes I also think there's a real... 42:24 I do think, because I think that there is some light at the end of the tunnel where I think there's some reasons for optimism. 42:29 I also think that the experience... 42:32 The experience of online life, which again is life. 42:35 Again, this is not some other quadrant of life, right? 42:40 Is generally understood to have gotten worse and people don't like it more and more. 42:44 And I do think there's a huge, the 404 piece that you referenced before about AI slop, 42:50 There is a huge spam problem coming for all of these platforms, which is we've all experienced both email and text spam making both of those mediums harder to use and less enjoyable beyond. 43:05 There is now spam at scale for content. 43:09 You could just automate it all like you were saying before, like the chain of like a chat GPT prompt to a mid-journey video to a, you know, Google VO, you know, it's all can be automated. 43:18 And 43:21 you know, you're gonna have more and more slop and more and more spam. 43:24 Which is going to make, I think, the user experience worse. 43:27 I mean, the user experience got worse in email when spam blew up. 43:30 It's gotten worse in text as spam has blown up. 43:32 It's gotten worse in old-fashioned regular mail. 43:37 You know, why do all of us ignore our mail? 43:39 We ignore our mail. 43:40 I mean, I'm speaking for myself, but I feel like everyone does this. 43:43 Ignore the mail because 90% of it is not actually for me. 43:46 If it was all for me, I would be like stoked to open letters to me. 43:50 You know, but that's not what's happening. 43:52 And I think... 43:53 If you're ignoring it, like, I do think there's a real problem. 43:56 I think they have created a bit of a Frankenstein's monster for themselves. 44:00 Gia Tolentino You don't think that we will just, like, accept the garbage? 44:04 Like, you don't think that the titration of increased garbage will be slow enough? 44:07 Chris Hayes We're just like pigs. 44:07 We're like, feed more... 44:10 Gia Tolentino I think you're right. 44:11 But I think like, I don't know, like the internet, I mean, we've both talked about this with each other. 44:16 And, you know, I think so much of it, it's like the experience of the internet has lost the sort of, you know, the magic has been diminishing every, you know, it's getting less and less funny and it's getting worse and worse and worse. 44:29 My screen time hasn't gone down, I'll say. 44:31 Do you know what I mean? 44:32 Like, it's like, it's never going down. 44:34 And this is like, again, someone that like over and over writes about how important it is to like. 44:39 Chris Hayes Same, same. 44:40 Gia Tolentino You know, and it's like, my screen time's not going down, you know? 44:43 And so I think you're right. 44:45 There's like a huge problem. 44:46 But I think what is also just as likely to happen is us being like, well, the world's just worse now. 44:55 Yum, yum, yum. 44:55 You know, like it's, and that, you know, and arguably I've already been doing that. 45:01 Chris Hayes I mean, the one thing that I do, I think that's true. 45:03 The one thing I kind of, I've been circling around this idea about how, because this is an idea that came, 45:10 became clear to me as I was writing about social media and in the sirens call about attention. 45:14 But I actually think it's sort of broadly true of our version of capitalism. 45:20 If your consumer is too satisfied and happy, you are leaving money on the table like the optimal the optimal experience of the consumer is to be like annoyed and hassled, but still using the product. 45:35 So like, it's like if the airplane seat is super comfortable, then you could shrink it by an inch and a half. 45:42 And it will not be that comfortable, but they'll still probably buy the ticket, right? 45:47 But it also feels like there is some point at which people are like, I'm not flying that airline or I'm not using that service. 45:54 And it's a weird thing that businesses are always aiming for. 45:57 It's like, how much can we extract out of our customer? 46:00 How much can we annoy them? 46:01 How much can we create hassle where they're still attached to the product? 46:05 And at what point does it tip over where they're like, I'm done? 46:07 And clearly to your point, like they're still in the... 46:11 with both of us and with a lot, you know, at scale across 2 billion users, which is what Meta has, they haven't tipped over into the I'm done. 46:18 But like there has been steady. 46:20 They have kind of declining active users on all these platforms. 46:24 And there are changing behaviors of younger people who basically don't kind of use public social media anymore in the same way. 46:33 They're all doing sort of private messaging. 46:34 So like, I do wonder if there's a, if there are sort of turning points where like people do say I'm out. 46:41 Gia Tolentino Yeah, I think that's right. 46:43 But I do, you know, it's like even something like Reddit, which I think has thrived because it is for a while it was like relatively, it was, you know, I mean, it's the fifth. 46:52 Yeah, it's pretty human. 46:53 And it's like famously while like Google did AI on its search and now everyone, you can only find human information if you add Reddit onto any search term, right? 47:01 But now already like Reddit is flooding currently with 47:05 chat gpt text and that's you know but but yeah you're right there is i mean i don't mean to downplay the exercise of human agency that we do every day but yeah we'll be right back after we take this quick break 47:47 Chris Hayes I think that to the degree that these people... 47:51 To the degree that you keep seeing these sort of pockets of rebellion with like phones out of schools and the sort of like little bit nascent and burgeoning attention movement and like people, you know, talking about this experience the way they talk about air. 48:06 They used to talk about air travel or they talk about traffic as like, you know, the like universally bummer aspects of modern life. 48:15 That I guess what I'm saying is there's potential there. 48:18 There's like real to me, there's real. 48:20 The discontent produces potential. 48:23 The thing that you're writing about in the essay is like the checking out that happens, which I totally agree, like is also part of what's happening. 48:29 And people are kind of fed up with politics and people feel overwhelmed by it. 48:33 But to me, on the other side of that, and part of that, too, is like. 48:38 I do think just in our lived reality, like the primacy of hanging out with people, this is a huge thing that I keep coming back to. 48:47 And I think COVID broke something in all of us. 48:49 And I think it reset our level for digital companionship way higher. 48:55 And we're having a hard time getting it back. 48:59 But I do think a huge thing to reclaim in contemporary life is people being around other people. 49:07 Gia Tolentino Yeah. 49:08 I mean, I wonder what you like, I have wondered how this will be when my kids get older, where this like becomes, you know, are your kids old enough to have phones? 49:16 No. 49:16 Chris Hayes Yeah. 49:17 So yes, the eighth grader. 49:19 Gia Tolentino Yeah. 49:20 And it's like, I mean, you know, I will have to ask you at another time, like, or maybe now, like what, I mean, what do you do? 49:25 Like, it's like, I have kind of thought that my, you know, as a person that is addicted to my phone, like the only pitch that I will have 49:34 you know, to mitigate all the incentives to just like be an adolescent girl and like lock onto it is just like you, your human experience of living in the world will suffer if you are not faced, if you are not getting messy face to face, like, you know, like it's, it's, it's not like an ethics thing. 49:50 It's not a, it's not a virtue thing. 49:51 It's not a whatever. 49:52 It's like literally in, in my, like, I want you to experience pleasure and contentment in the world. 49:58 And the only way that 49:59 we can kind of protect the ability for that to be possible is to like put a guardrail on here, you know? 50:05 Chris Hayes I mean, one of the things I think, I'm not going to speak specifically about my daughter is because I want to like protect her universe of privacy. 50:11 But one thing that has struck me about kids that age, and I do think there's a lot of displacement of our own anxiety about our own phone use onto younger people that happens. 50:24 Yeah. 50:24 Understandably too. 50:25 I mean, 50:26 One thing that is really different about being 13 is that you are IRL with your friends all the time. 50:32 Yeah. 50:33 Which is awesome and is something that adults don't have. 50:38 And in some ways, I think that that part of it, this is part of why I think, you know, remote schooling was so brutal for so many kids. 50:46 13-year-olds do have a thing that is, as far as we can measure it empirically, diminishing for adults. 50:56 Which is just like time with their homies. 50:58 Yeah, totally. 51:00 So that actually, I do think acts as a little bit of a ballast. 51:04 Yeah, totally. 51:05 You know, because if you're interacting with people, like I used to hang out with my friends all day, come home and talk on the phone for three hours. 51:13 Back, this is pre-internet, right? 51:15 So I'd like seventh and eighth grade, I would like get on the phone and I would just talk. 51:18 Same. 51:19 And I think to the extent that kids are using phones in that way, I think is way less insidious than some of the other ways they might use phones. 51:29 Like when you're in this world where like your social world is so huge and important and it's kind of everything and the phone is one more vector to that, but it's still all smashed up against like IRL. 51:42 Gia Tolentino The primacy of the real world. 51:43 Chris Hayes Yeah, I think that that actually weirdly has a kind of 51:48 a little bit of a mitigating effect on it. 51:50 Right, right. 51:50 I think. 51:51 I mean, again, I'm sort of projecting here from a sort of sample of one and also not wanting to, like, get into the details of her life. 51:59 Yeah, right. 52:01 You know, one of the things I'm jealous of as I look at the life of an eighth grader is like you do spend a lot of time with your friends. 52:09 And that's really awesome for your soul. 52:12 You know, like that's a really, really important and good thing. 52:16 And as far as we can measure this in America, Americans spend a lot of spending. 52:21 We spend less time doing that than other countries. 52:24 And we're spending less time doing it year over year. 52:27 Gia Tolentino Totally. 52:28 That Atlantic piece that was a while back that was like, Americans need to party more. 52:31 And I was like, that's right. 52:32 That's right. 52:33 Chris Hayes And even like, I don't know if you've looked at the data on like nightclubs and like, you know, there's a whole nightclubs have been, you know, really on the decline. 52:42 I have a whole thing about, I mean, I'm going to dig this tongue in cheek, but that like the youngest generation needs to drink more. 52:52 Which is a controversial take that I'm sort of saying, like, I am joking, kind of. 52:58 And I understand there are all sorts of people have all kinds of relationships with alcohol. 53:01 So, like, I am mostly saying that tongue in cheek. 53:05 But what I am trying to get at is, like, I do think more, it doesn't have to involve alcohol, but I do think occasions for people to be together and partying and congregating, which, again, are measurably all kind of on the decline, is a real issue. 53:23 Gia Tolentino Yeah, I think, well, I just filed a piece for the New York, like reviewing a couple of books about like why Gen Z is having less sex and, you know, does have to do with the fact that they're drinking less. 53:32 And it was like, you know, these traditional, if like wildly imperfect methods of attempting to establish human connection, which is like getting wasted and taking someone home. 53:40 Like, it's like, yeah, it's not necessarily great, but like what the intention was to stumble in the dark and find something, right? 53:48 Yeah. 53:48 The idea was like something would be found, maybe not tonight, but maybe the next night, you know, and like it's not it's not necessarily like a yeah, it's not we're not neither of us is saying it's an exemplary sort of paradigm, but the idea that human connection was out there to be, you know, to be groped towards. 54:05 you know, was real. 54:06 And, and, and it feels like that, you know, that is the kind of end goal that you chase imperfectly is kind of corroding for younger people where it's, and that, and that's, and I think, you know, I mean, back to what I think one of the only ways that we sort of 54:24 re-establish a neural pathway to the idea that like the world is made of humans that we want to relate to differently and the world is full of actual situations that we want to change or improve like the only way to re-establish that instead of the like that can't be real that can be like the only way to remind ourselves that the world is in fact 54:45 unbelievably real. 54:46 You know, like, I feel like, I mean, it's, it sounds like something my dumb ass would say, but it's like, yeah, maybe fucking going to a nightclub like is an important part of that to like, it's, you know, I mean, it kind of is like the reason that going to a protest is useful. 54:59 It's like, it's just like, it's just a simple, simple reminder that there are actually humans that care about the same things and that there are humans actually responsible for the things that you hate. 55:09 And it reorients you to that rather than the like hypermediated, like, you know, untouchable hall of mirror thing. 55:15 And I do think that, like, hanging out with your homies is a good way of, you know what I mean? 55:20 Chris Hayes Yes. 55:21 You know, there's all kinds of different ways that people do do this. 55:24 Like, I, you know, was biking home along the west side and I saw people, like, in run clubs and playing pickleball. 55:31 And there's this group of people that get together in this, like, big cavernous space somewhere in Brooklyn. 55:36 They all sing together. 55:37 Of course, I know this because of their social media videos. 55:39 Gia Tolentino Yeah. 55:40 Great social media. 55:41 Yeah. 55:41 Chris Hayes Of course, I know because they're social media, but I actually know someone who's done it with them. 55:44 And like, you know, there's a million different ways to do it that that, you know, obviously don't need to involve alcohol or anything. 55:51 But, you know, creating the structures and choosing to do that again, all the incentives push against it, you know, and so. 55:59 Finding ways to reclaim the human and I think you're to end on this point on protest. 56:05 I mean, that is a huge part of why protest is so important and so powerful. 56:09 Because it shows you there are other people who care about the same things and that you're not alone and that people haven't all checked out from like, this doesn't matter. 56:17 This isn't, this can't be real. 56:19 You meet people, you feel the sort of physical feeling of being with other people. 56:25 And that's like nourishing to your soul and to your politics and to your sense of collective strength. 56:32 And all that stuff is really important right now, I think, because the sort of sense of individuation and alienation and my brain is broken and nothing is real is so, so overwhelming and powerful. 56:45 Gia Tolentino is a writer for The New Yorker. 56:47 She's got an incredible book of essays called Trick Mirror, which I highly, highly recommend. 56:51 It's a 56:52 It's a really great piece of work that you should check out. 56:56 And the essay we were discussing in part here is called My Brain Finally Broke. 57:00 That's available on the New Yorker website. 57:02 Gia, thanks so much. 57:03 Gia Tolentino Thank you for having me. 57:11 Chris Hayes You can always email us at withpod at gmail.com. 57:13 You can get in touch with us using the hashtag withpod. 57:16 Follow us on TikTok by searching for withpod. 57:18 You can follow me on Threads, Blue Sky and what used to be called Twitter with the handle Chris L. Hayes. 57:23 Be sure to hear new episodes every Tuesday. 57:25 Why Is This Happening is presented by MSNBC and NBC News, produced by Donnie Holloway and Brendan O'Neill, engineered by Bob Mallory and featuring music by Eddie Cooper. 57:34 Our associate producer for video is Joanne Kong. 57:37 Aisha Turner is executive producer of MSNBC Audio. 57:41 You can see more of our work, including links to things we mentioned here, by going to NBCNews.com slash Why Is This Happening.