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This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit maxread.substack.comIn this conversation--joined by Jay Caspian Kang of The New Yorker and Time To Say Goodbye, and about 7,000 confused viewers expecting discussion of Venezuela--we talked:Trump’s comments on Rob Reiner (covered by Ganz here)The fever-dream of rumor and conspiracy emerging on Twitter/X in the wake of the mass shooting at Brown University (and what’s changed from the panic that set in after the Boston Marathon bombing)Jacob Savage’s Compact magazine piece about white men in Hollywood and the media Charlotte Klein’s New York magazine piece about Bari Weiss. We also fought with a number of commenters on the livestream who arrived via a misleading Substack app push notification. Enjoy!

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit maxread.substack.comGreetings from Read Max HQ! Every other Wednesday at 2 p.m., John Ganz (author of The Year the Clock Broke and proprietor of the Unpopular Front Substack) and I host a Substack Live chat about politics, tech, culture, and the pieces we’ve been working on.While the chat is free when live, and a short preview is available above, only paying subscribers ca…

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit maxread.substack.comThis week, John and I talked about the journalist Olivia Nuzzi, an excerpt from whose new memoir American Canto ran this week in Vanity Fair; her ex Ryan Lizza’s follow-up; Ganz’s annoyed response; the publication of Jeffrey Epstein’s emails; why Epstein would have loved the A.I. age; and what this all has to do with Machiavelli.While the chat is free when live, and a short preview is available above, only paying subscribers can access the archive of these chats as video and podcast audio!

This is a free preview of a paid episode. To hear more, visit maxread.substack.comGreetings from Read Max HQ! Every other Wednesday at 2 p.m., John Ganz (author of The Year the Clock Broke and proprietor of the Unpopular Front Substack) and I host a Substack Live chat about politics, tech, culture, and the pieces we’ve been working on. Paying subscribers can access the archive of these chats as video and podcast audio.This week, we w…

Greetings from Read Max HQ! This week’s newsletter is a video-slash-podcast-slash-Substack Live with my friend John Ganz. Among the topics discussed:* The Epstein birthday book and the unbelievably creepy tone of the messages* The “tech summit” between Silicon Valley executives and the Trump administration last week* The “A.I. Bubble”: What it is, whether it might be bursting* Why A.I. slop is bad for the soul and not art* Why old Sony electronics from when we were adolescents are good for the soul in the same way that art isYou can watch above, or listen to the audio version on any of your favorite podcast platforms.A reminder: Read Max is a reader-funded endeavor. Practically speaking, what that means is that producing Read Max newsletters and associated audiovisual products is my job, and in order to do my job well, I need to make money from it, so that I can exchange it for essential goods and services such as food and housing and vintage Sony electronics. If you like the job I do--if you find my writing (and recording) enlightening or entertaining, or even if it just helps you numbly pass the time such that you can put off the anxiety that accompanies awareness of mortality--please consider becoming a paying subscriber, for the bargain price of $5, or about a beer a month. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit maxread.substack.com/subscribe