Alex: we can get into this on Nation's Dumbest, but there is a kind of like young influencer idiocy- Yeah ... that is a very particular brand of idiocy Naomi: Are you talking about Little Huddy? Alex: Who is that? Naomi: Chase Hudson? Alex: Let's figure out who that is. Naomi: Uh, so he is a Tik- Alex: knows how many fingers he has on his own hands. Naomi: he rose on TikTok. Alex: I guess we should wait for a second until we get into it, Naomi: much to Alex: much to say. Good. I know. I Naomi: know, I can't wait to hear it. It's Little Huddy Alex: Apparently, now he's just known as Huddy. He's not Lil anymore old is Huddy? Naomi: How old is Huddy? Huddy is 23. Yeah. Do you like that Alex: He dropped the, he dropped- Do Naomi: the answer at the ready? Alex: he's 24 I'm seeing because his birthday was in May. Naomi: Huddy's birthday. Oh, no. Alex: You must have missed Huddy's birthday. Naomi: know, Alex: This is Critics at Large, a podcast from The New Yorker. I'm Alex Schwartz. Naomi: I'm Naomi Fry Vinson: And I'm Vincent Cunningham. Each week on this show, we make sense of what's happening in the culture right now how we got here. How you guys doing? Alex: Doing great Naomi: well Vinson: I am, I am talking to you from sunny and, and mountainous Sun Valley, Idaho. It's all, it's all happening here in Sun Valley, I got a question. Do you guys watch Jeopardy!? Is that part of your diet? Naomi: Uh, over the years, sure. I mean, not really recently, but familiar with the format and have, have enjoyed it, Vinson: Imagine if you were to design the exact opposite of Jeopardy!. It might look something like a new game show called Nation's Dumbest. CLIP - Nation’s Dumbest Vinson: the format of this thing, a cast of 12 celebrities, and they're tested on some very basic skills, general knowledge, uh, logic. And if you perform well on these tests, you're eliminated. And so the last person standing is, you guessed it, the nation's dumbest. this show got us... Thinking might not even be the word for the int- level of intellection here, but it, it got us pondering idiots in the culture more broadly. Because, I mean, let's face it, there are a lot. Are there some iconic characters that come to mind for you guys? Iconic idiots Naomi: I mean, uh, I, uh, I don't know, like Austin Powers? CLIP: Austin Powers Oh yeah, a beloved a beloved idiot- A wonderful idiot ... who makes me laugh and laugh. Alex: Yeah, there's so many. I mean, what is society without idiots? Bill and Ted, idiots, CLIP: Bill and Ted Naomi: Cher Horowitz in, in Clueless, a beloved, lovable idiot. CLIP: Clueless Vinson: I'm an El- I'm an Elmer Fudd man myself, CLIP: Looney Toons today it feels like we're almost in the midst of an idiot renaissance I don't know, maybe a golden age. Do you guys see it that way? Naomi: I mean, I will say that I recently went to see the most recent iteration of the "Jackass" franchise, um, "Jackass: Best & Last," which was just in movie theaters. CLIP: Jackass trailer And, you know, the warm reception this ragtag bunch of, of dummies has garnered even from the critical community has, you know, seems to me to be pointing to the fact that, you know, we s- we love idiots. Alex: I do think the idiot is at an interesting inflection point, let's say. Certainly, cert- certainly Naomi: certain- Alex: it's a time, just thinking about "Jackass," Social media, I think, has created its own genre of idiot. People who would be embarrassed to be seen engaging in a certain kind of stupid activity, there's now a premium on that kind of stupidity. It could bring you great fame, or it could bring you great failure, 'cause some of this stuff is really dangerous. Part of stupidity is engaging with danger sometimes. Naomi: Yeah, I mean, I think Alex's point about social media is really true, the kind of like people doing stupid shit for attention on YouTube or on, um, or on TikTok. You know, the extreme popularity of like MrBeast or the Paul brothers, or, you know, just kind of like people pushing themselves to the limits of like, Vinson: Yeah, good you know, anti-wisdom, let's call it, uh, in order to kind of like gain material, uh, spoils, or gain just, uh, clicks, eyeballs. Naomi: I think that's kind of like a huge thing right now, you know? And it's like It's very much kind of like who can act the fool in a, in the most entertaining way. Vinson: There it is, that’s all going to be in the mix today. Today is all about, that's right, idiots. As we've established already, in art, as in life, stupidity is everywhere. The idiot, c'est moi. And I'm gonna crib a question for us today, once posed by the great Naomi Fry. You may have heard of her. Are we living through the world's stupidest era I mean, maybe. We'll discuss. That's today on Critics at Large, The golden age of the American Idiot. ________________ The suspense is killing me. Can we get started with Nation's Dumbest? This is a new game show, hosted by, um, Jack Whitehall. Um, does anybody wanna venture, uh, uh, an outlay of how this show works? Naomi: Alex, do you wanna synopsize? Alex: I was about to ask if you wanted to do Naomi: Oh. Well, I, I could. Okay. So we have 12 contestants, members from the worlds of, uh entertainment, you know, sports, even politics. Alex: Random famous Naomi: Random famous-ish people- Yeah ... some of whom are m- more kind of immediately familiar Jojo Siwa or, like, the TikTok influencer, Chase Hudson, Lil Huddy, which, you know- like a- Yeah. Sorry. It's true. And then some, some, some, you know, kind of like aughts mainstays, like Carmen Electra, um, and, uh, Napoleon Dynamite. Yeah. The, the actor who played Napoleon Dynamite. Like, for the '80s kids, we have Anthony Michael Hall, who was on Breakfast Club and a lot of John Hughes movies. He's, you know, he's now a full man, and has been for quite a while. Quite a while, I would say. For quite a while , yes. Vinson: seems like a cool guy, by the Naomi: And so we have these contestants, and the idea is that they all participate in a bunch of, um, kind of like challenges, either kinda skill-based, logic-based, or just simply kind of, um, fact, fact-based, you know, kind of trivia questions. But of, of a very... The bar is very low. The bar is very low of the questions. And so the idea is that one by one, these contestants will be picked off, but the one who will be picked off is the one who solves the most of these questions and m- you know, kind of bests these challenges. So the smartest get to leave one by one until the very last person who remains wins the title of Nation's Dumbest. So basically, You win the least you know, right? And so this creates a lot of I guess tensions, I guess. Or like I think some of the people, one time presidential candidate Andrew Yang for instance, uh, it's very important for them to leave as soon as possible, CLIP: Nation’s Dumbest - Andrew Yang And it's very kind of anxiety producing when in fact, uh, you know, that doesn't necessarily turn out to be the case. Like what if he's suddenly America's dumbest, you know? But then there are other contestants like Jojo Siwa for instance, who seem more relaxed about not hitting the, the intelligence marks or the, at least the, the knowledge marks, right? And so they're kind of like we could call them maybe the happy, the happy quote unquote dummies, right? They're like, "Eh, you know, I didn't remember like what the capital of like France is." I mean, I'm making this up. It wasn't... But that is sometimes the level of the questions, right? Vinson: I mean it’s I wanna hear what people thought of it, but The whole thing is like a humiliation ritual. I don't know if that's how you perceived it, Alex. seems Alex: America's Dumbest, yes Nation's Dumbest ... There you go. Nation's Dumbest. Of course, humiliation is a huge part of it. Um, so here's what I thought. It's Naomi: a dunce cap in the form of a game show. Alex: Here's what I thought. Loved it. It is, um, and also I think it's absolutely beyond stupid and dumb. Naomi: So what do you love about it? Yeah. I'm, I'm eager to Alex: it may just be that I've been starved for the game show format because it's not my usual go-to. It may be that as I've been wending my way through Widow's Bay, I- ... what I really needed was to actually sit down and for half an hour watch some people get mildly humiliated while being asked to complete a bunch of dumb, stupid challenges that have nothing to do with intelligence, and here is what I mean. The thing about this show is that it itself is stupid. I am old enough to remember games like Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader?, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, let alone Jeopardy!, which of course has been a mainstay forever. And the point of game shows like that was that, especially the, um, Are You Smarter Than a Fifth Grader? from the early 2000s, was that it actually was testing various skills you had. You know, like an easy question might be something like, um, what is the fewest number of coins to get to 99 cents? Something like that. You have to think for one second, Naomi: I would've failed that, by the way. Alex: You... No, no, you'd be fine. You'd think it through. Whereas something like, um, Nation's Dumbest, in the lightning round at the end where they're under the bright lights and Andrew Yang is, after having- Made a fool of Naomi: sweating up a storm. Yeah, Alex: the middle of a storm. Yeah, They're being asked random bits of trivia that have nothing to do with if you're dumb or if you're not dumb, like who's the creator of Fenty Beauty? Which pop star created Fenty Beauty? Either you know that's Rihanna or you don't, but it doesn't say anything about you in terms of intelligence. It, it's not an, an im- an important or meaningful base of knowledge. So the so, show itself is dumb, and the other thing about the show that I think is very of our moment is that, of course, it's all celebrities. Those older shows used to be about kind of the average schmo, and the fun of it was Naomi: Hollywood Squares. Alex: Not Hollywood Squares. Not Hollywood Squares, that's very true. But the older kind of like Are You Smarter, Are You Dumb? games were about average people and seeing the stuff that they had, and the premise here is that celebrities are supposed to be stupid. That's why they have like an Andrew Yang type to be the representative smart celebrity. They have Hilaria Baldwin, who's a celebrity just for being a celebrity, who's not dumb. Um, she's a lot of things that are maybe not worth mentioning. She's a very confusing figure. Yeah. Vinson: Kind of a weird fraud, made up weird things about her ancestry and past and heritage, et Alex: But like, Do I think she can identify an animal who lays eggs when given a board of options? I do. Can Carmen Electra? Like, probably not. So the show I did find to be entertaining. It's also kind of a spectacle. You know, they're, they're at one point dangling them in, in a, a kind of padded airplane suit over a map of the world. Naomi: JoJo Siwa and Steve-O. I forgot to mention Steve-O is one of the celebrities from Jackass. Alex: Such a blessing. So I, you know, I didn't think it had much to say about whether any of these people are smart or dumb, but I did think it said a lot about how smart or dumb we as a culture are, and the answer is that we're dumb. What about you, Vinson? What'd you think? Vinson: that's, I think what you just pointed out is so important because it's like one of the questions it brought up what do we even mean when we say dumb? Like, or to turn it around, what, what in here is like, what, what is the substance of intelligence? And is that sort of, is that, are those notions, can they be national? I love the fact that it's nation's dumbest. You know, it's like do, do Americans think that intelligence is about a kind of, uh, trivia knowledge or whatever we, uh, think of as, quote-unquote, "common knowledge"? Um, what do we mean when we say smart? And, and, and what are the anxieties that we face when we are put on the spot about our intelligence? I thought it was really fascinating because, like, watching people judge themselves, uh, based on these Uh, there's one where they ask Andrew Yang in this little, um, pre-K classroom, uh, "What is a, an exercise that, that includes a jump, a plank, uh, a, this, a that?" The answer was burpee. Andrew Yang had never heard of burpees. But he had already messed up the challenge before, and you could just see him become physically smaller because, you know, he thinks himself intelligent. It's like, another question. Does going to Columbia or whatever he was talking about, does that make you smart? I don't know, man. So all, all these things that are markers of intelligence, whatever it is, common knowledge or knowledge of the past, trivia, all these different things and how they make us feel, that's what I was watching. Like, what kind of humiliation can be brought to bear by different sort of fields of knowledge? Uh, I always like Ice-T, so I was glad to see him introducing himself as Ice to people. stuff like that was cool. There was something interesting in this Naomi: Yeah. Vinson: Is anybody here playing up their stupidity? Is anybody here trying to create a new lane for themself as America's idiot in chief? Alex: I really think that people were sweetly trying to do their darned best Naomi: Yes, I agree. Alex: I think that came out most obviously at the first challenge, CLIP: Nation’s Dumbest - pendulum Naomi: I would've failed that, by the way. Alex: it's, it, it wasn't immediately evident unless, unless you have experience with pendulums. Let's just say that. Let's just say that. none of us, none Naomi: none- I was like, "I don't know." None Alex: None of us need to know the answers to everything. It's okay to be idiots about some stuff- Thank God ... and not about other stuff. Thank God. And it's also okay to hugely enjoy the anxiety of former presidential candidate Andrew Naomi: He's still wearing the math button, by the Alex: Yeah. I mean, this is just... And he only brought one pair of clothes 'cause he was so convinced he was going to leave the first day. So he really has become the heel, I think. Vinson: In a minute, Idiots Through the Ages, Critics at Large from The New Yorker will be right back. :: MIDROLL:: Vinson: so as we've started to get into, of course, idiocy is not just a fact of human life. It also informs recurring characters. It's a kind of trope in our culture. Do you guys have favorite idiots? Alex: So many. Naomi: I was just rewatching Austin Powers with my daughter, Nina, and it's about just, like, an absolutely happy idiot who is constantly, you know, grinning his way through a variety of disasters, mostly caused by him. he's a cheerful dummy, and it's the funniest thing in the world. And there's a line we keep repeating to each other. There's a scene in the first Austin Powers, where, he pours himself a cup of coffee CLIP: Austin Powers And of course, he takes a, a big sip anyway And it's just, like, the complete happy obliviousness of this character. I mean, I just, I c- I just can't stop laughing. I could laugh and laugh. Alex: The happy idiot is a very important figure. We need the happy idiots, and I think many of us, you know, who are unhappy wish that we were them. It's just what a simpler life, what a wonderful way to be. And of course, the happy idiot often exists to bring the kind of subtle, sly, but miserable person into sharper contrast. Mm-hmm. Um, there's another happy idiot I love. Um, David Puddy from Naomi: Oh, Puddy. Alex: wonderful idiot. Yes. Just, he's just stolid. He just has nothing that he's thinking about, and he likes it that way. There's a great, uh, Seinfeld where... and Elaine is dating him, Elaine, who is hypercritical but sexually attracted to him, It's a great pairing of neurotic unhappy and dumb happy. It's fantastic. Puddy is great. Um, another more recent idiot who I very much enjoy, and I know I'm not alone, is the Jennifer Coolidge character on The White Lotus as Tanya. good one. a a true simple soul who is so enervating because she exists in this bubble of privilege where she really thinks that everyone's job in life is to facilitate hers, but you can't really hold it against her because she's stupid. CLIP: The White Lotus I think the definition of stupidity here is just being totally unquestioning about the world around you and the way it works. Naomi: I think the lack of curiosity is... where it's like you could know more Uh, you have access to know more with this character, with the Jennifer Coolidge character. You know, she has all the privilege in the world, and yet she is locked into her dumbness and her suffering as well because she's not a happy idiot. She's an unhappy idiot. Alex: Yeah, that's true. Naomi: And she can't figure out why because she can't see anyone else, so she can't even see her own privileged existence. Vinson: One of my favorites, and I think, uh, this goes to, like, the types of of taxonomy we mentioned Dr. Drew from "30 Rock," I was thinking about Tracy Jordan played by, uh, Tracy Morgan, who I, I wrote about in The New Yorker a couple years How he's, like, kind of just, part of it is just a zaniness and a nihilism, and part of it is, like, we're, we come to know kind of, like, trauma. CLIP - Tracy Morgan I often have thought that it was a really interesting way of playing around with, like, one of the great types of American idiot, which is, like, also a woeful type, which is, like, kind of the minstrel. Um, one of my-- A, a book that I've always been fascinated is, um, it's called "American Humor," and it's by, um, this wonderful writer, Constance Rourke, and she was trying to sort of, um, again, achieve a, a taxonomy of American comic types. So she goes into, like, the, the Yankee peddler, the backwoodsman, you know, the Davy Crockett type. Um, and one of those is the sort of, let's face it, a lot of American comedy is built on this idea of um, almost nostalgically stupid Black person, you know? And I always thought that that was a really sensitive thing of, like, here, this guy, part of why he's apart from everybody else is 'cause he's Black. Part of why his jokes don't land or his ethos doesn't match other people is because he's Black. And this actually, you know, has something to do with Tracy Morgan's real experience on "SNL." He talks about bringing his, trying to bring his, uh, castmates to the strip club and all this weird stuff, and everybody's just like, "What is wrong? Is Tracy okay?" Um, and Tracy Jordan does stuff like that. Um, and thinking about him makes me think of other, other types as well. I mean, there's also, uh, you mentioned, Jennifer Coolidge. She's, like, a, a type of, like, a, a great American type is also, like, the dumb blonde, right? That being stupid in American comedy is not just about race, it's also about, uh, about gender as well, right? Alex: Oh yeah. The dumb blonde is a fascinating archetype because very often if you look more closely at those stories, it's really about how the dumb blonde is not that dumb. And very often those stories are about revealing the cruelties or the pettinesses or the stupidities of other people around that character. Um, my mind r- immediately went to Born Yesterday, the George Cukor movie. Have you guys seen that Naomi: Not in a long time. I, Alex: I actually grew... It's a 1950s movie, and I actually grew up with the remake where Melanie Griffith plays the dumb blonde role, and used to watch that movie over and over again, this movie from 1993. But the original stars Judy Holliday as the kind of woman who talks like this and is not that smart, and is with a man played by Broderick Crawford, who is a businessman who wants to use Billie, as her name is, to get in with various politicians in DC. He's going down to DC. Um, he wants to marry her so that she can have spousal privilege and nothing that she knows of his ill doings can be revealed. And she wises up. She, she gets educated, by a man in this case. CLIP: Born Yesterday Um, but you can see this archetype elsewhere. You can see it of course in Clueless, the fantastic Amy Heckerling movie where Cher Horowitz starts out as a total ditz and ends up getting a bit of backbone and smarts. A bit, we can say. Um, and you see it in Legally Blonde with Elle Woods, who is such a great character. I was rewatching Legally Blonde the other day. The archetypal sorority girl who gets into Harvard in the most implausible possible way, and then proceeds to be really good at what she does. CLIP: Legally Blonde So the dumb blonde thing, um, is, yeah, its own kind of hero's journey interestingly. CLIP: Legally Blonde Like this early aughts, there was like a sexually dimorphic kind of stupidity happening. On the one hand, you had the dudes of "Jackass" in 2000 who were, like, setting their penises on fire and jumping off of tall buildings and catapulting themselves out of various devices, and it's amazing that any of them survived with their lives. And then you had the trussed up to the nines ditz who's performing that to the nth degree on, like, the female side of things. Mm-hmm. This kind of very, like, masculine/feminine visions of, uh, also of specific kind of American stupidity- Mm-hmm ... where, like, the world kind of doesn't... It's a myopia. The world isn't existing outside of your own pleasures and entertainments. Naomi: Yeah. I think, you know, the era, the George Bush, the George W. Bush years, I think, were kind of, we could say, a heyday for this particular type of stupidity, Alex, that you're, that you're defining here. You know, on the one hand, the kind of like, um, masculinist shenanigans of a bunch of dummies or seeming dummies. Uh, and on the other hand, yeah, the kind of like sexualized ditz, and on MTV as well, Carmen Electra, just who we just saw in "Nation's Dumbest," or like Jenny McCarthy, you know, these kind of scantily clad hostesses also on MTV. Um, yeah, I think, I think MTV was a hub you know, kind of like these early reality experiments, uh, and game show experiments that were exactly about like, can we not look at what's going on outside of this bubble? Uh, you know, these were years of war and, uh, but, but we don't, but we don't wanna look at that. Uh, and instead we're gonna kind of like look inward into our kind of like hyper-gendered games in which certainly learnedness doesn't matter. Alex: Well, idiocy was also at the height of-- It's interesting you see it as a remove from, um, the political realities at the time, because idiocy was a huge part of political discourse in the early 2000s. Mm-hmm. A big liberal, smug liberal talking point was the dumbness of George W. Bush. Yes. His mispronunciation of words. It was like Dan Quayle potato- Nu-CULUAR... on steroids. Yes, exactly. And- Choking Naomi: on pretzels and on and on, Naomi: and on. Yes. And on Alex: Yes. It was-- There was this idea that a, a, a dumb man was in charge, and then you had stuff like "American Idiot," the Green Day song, which was railing against the culture and railing... We talked about protest songs on our, um, our American music episode a few episodes ago. I think "American Idiot" has a little asterisk place in the, in the protest song genre of this kind of emo cri de coeur about the stupidity of American politics and mass media and pleasure culture, and what it's like living in the midst of that, and that kind of encapsulates the whole situation. CLIP: American Idiot Vinson: Yeah. it's almost worth it to, to quote some of those lyrics. "Don't wanna be an American idiot. Don't want a nation under the new media. And can you hear the sound of hysteria? The subliminal mind fuck Welcome to a new kind of tension, all across the alienation, where everything isn't meant to be okay. Television dreams of tomorrow. We're not the ones who are meant to follow," et cetera, et cetera. I think it's interesting because it does follow a pattern anxiety about what is the source of It's not... It, it's something about education and, Naomi: It's about the media, the new media Vinson: it's about the media. It's about propaganda. It's about the sublim- the quote-unquote, "subliminal mind fuck." That, that something about the structure of our society incentivizes idiocy, and idiocy becomes like a handmaiden to all other kinds of malfeasance. It's like a necessary condition for all, all the rest of the things that we hate about Um, speaking of Jackass, Nomi, you recently saw the newest Jackass, poignantly titled Jackass: Best & Last. What'd you think about it? Naomi: Guys I don't know what it was. I mean, I, I went to see it. at 11:00 AM on a Thursday. It was me and two other people And it might have been too early. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know what it was. It might have been my Alex: don't blame yourself, Naomi: Don't blame yourself, Nomi. Okay, I have to say I remained stone-faced in terms of laughs. I just didn't, I just didn't feel it. And the thing is, the gap between me totally not feeling it and then the collective laughter of all the guys- of the Jackass crew as, um, Steve-O gets, uh, his prostate examined by a robot, you know, with, like, a metal finger with, you know, uh, smeared in peanut butter for some reason, stuck up Steve-O's rectum. I'm like, "Okay, I think, I think it's time to wrap it up. Like, I think we've had enough. I'm sorry." Alex: Well, it kind of comes back to what we were talking about, about- now she laughs. Naomi: Well, it kind of comes back to what we Alex: laughing. She's... Now look who's laughing now. Naomi: I feel like people who grew up... Okay, so actually, this is interesting. the night of the morning I went to see Jackass: Best & Last bright and early, I had dinner with our colleague and friend Eric Latch, and I told him I went to see Jackass: Best & Last this morning, and he was like, "Wasn't it amazing?" It turns out he had gone to see it- Alex: What a response Naomi: as well. And he was like, "I thought it was so funny. I love it." But- You know, Eric like was, you know, a sweaty teenager with his fellow, you know, six other like sweaty teenage Alex: But he's not alone. I mean, Naomi: it. But he's not alone in this. Like the rest of the world Alex: In the TImes saw it as a beacon of healthy masculinity. I think we are in such a state now in the culture I honestly ... well, that men spending time together and enjoying each other's company, even if they're doing it while getting prostate exams from a robot, does count as some good bonding time. Alex: Yeah. The bar is, the bar, the bar is low. Naomi: as Nina says the,the bar is in hell. Vinson: When we're back, are we living through the world's stupidest era? That's in a minute on Critics at Large From the new yorker :: MIDROLL:: Vinson: We've been talking largely about one genus of idiot, one species, the American But of course, the American idiot is not alone, and of course, uh, that, that, that species h- has plenty of predecessors. I was thinking, you know, while preparing for can find them in the Louvre, you can find them in the Metropolitan Museum of Art in along the edges of Bibles and other books or in, in picture frames. This, this little impish-looking guy with flappy ears and a, a yellow and red hat, and often with, like, a donkey puppet next to him. The mid- the, the medieval, uh, fool who sort of plays and jests at the edges of the life of the court and can kind of mutate in terms of class position uh, make fun of rich and poor alike. Um, the fool more broadly has been with us for a long time. Do, do you guys have favorite sort of places in history where we've had orientations toward stupidity that, I don't know, appeal to you, gall stand out to you with regard to our conversation? Alex: Well, I'm big on the Shakespearean fool, I would say. the one who is guileless but actually full of guile and can express things freely that others cannot express precisely because the premise is that he is speaking from a position of ignorance. Um, and there are many examples, but one of the more famous examples is King Lear's Fool. King Lear divides up his kingdom into thirds. Two of his daughters say hooray. One says, "No, thank you." He freaks the fuck out, and the fool right away points out that the real fool is, of course, the king. This was not a wise and intelligent thing to do. This was rash and vain, and disaster is forthcoming. So the fool who speaks the truth is a very appealing figure, I mean, this makes me think of another genre of fool that I enjoy, that I came to as a kid through, Nomi, you probably did, too, through the stories of Chelm, the kind of Ashkenazi- Yeah Jewish tradition of- Of course ... the fools from Chelm. Ursula. Or as they're called, the Wise Men of Chelm. And this is... It's not even that old a tradition. I think-- I was looking into it. I think it dates to the mid-19th century, and it comes from a much older German and even English tradition of the idea of a town full of fools. An angel is passing over, distributing one fool to each town on Earth, and then the angel's bag gets a hole in it, and all the fools drop in Chelm. And they do a bunch of really silly, foolish stuff. And we clearly need these stories. We need, we need them to express our own sense of foolishness and to have an outlet for that, I think, and to be able to localize it and place it and make it safe in some ways to, to confront. Um, perhaps that's, that's more of a modern psychological take on it. They're also just really funny. The antics of them are really funny Vinson: Yeah, I think, you know, to take it quickly back to who, at least in my understanding, updating and revivifying the idea of the sort of the, the medieval My favorite fool never appears in a Shakespeare play. And to your point of needing this figure, um, he's, he's, he's already dead when we come to know of him. He's, uh, Yorick. Hamlet picks up the skull of, of Yorick, the, the dead fool, or at least, you know, in the por- portrayals, he And he says, you know, "Alas, poor Yorick." He was, his guy of what he says is infinite jest. And there's something about Hamlet's permanent grief that won't allow And so it's almost like the sorrowness of, of his state, uh, as permanent mourner is almost symbolized by the absence this absolutely necessary quantity, not just stupidity, but as he says, jest, uh, we don't have it, something is wrong. There's a permanent shroud over to your point about like the necessity of these figures calls out to me. Alex: Yeah, I think, I think there's also something about being able to laugh at yourself, Like, you know, even going farther back, I was reading a bit of, um, this book called "A Short History of Stupidity" by this British critic, Stuart Jeffries, and our own Josh Rothman, who's appeared on the show, reviewed it, I think last year for The New Yorker. And it's very interesting because Jeffries talks about the ancient Greeks who distinguished between being ignorant, which is normal, you just don't have the information. Maybe you don't know who created Fenty Beauty, and that's okay, and that's fine because you can learn it. And being stupid, which is not wanting to go on any kind of discovery, not a journey of discovery, not, not wanting to improve your understanding of the world, not wanting to gain information, just wanting to stay in the dark. So there is a kind of... There can be a real joyfulness in being dumb. Like, "Oops, I can't believe I did that, and now I've learned from that, and now I have a different perspective than I had before." Naomi: I mean, I, I do think, just to go back to "Nation's Dumbest," I do think it's enjoyable in some ways to watch maybe because of this very reason, right? you know, I mean, the bar again is quite low, but, like Little Huddy has heard about Darwin for the first Alex: He did learn about Darwin. That was good. Naomi: good. Alex: That was very good Vinson: So like that's when I was wondering whether this was a put on. Like Naomi: I kn- I don't think so No, I truly think so Alex: I truly think, Vinson- I Naomi: think he didn't know Alex: truly think not. And this does bring us back to the question of if we're living in the stupidest time, Naomi: Yes. Vinson: Well, I mean, this distinction that we've laid down, okay, there is an educative stupidity through which we all must pass, right? We can't know before, uh, until we don't know kind of thing. But there is a stubborn stupidity which, you know, I, I think we've all been kind of skirting around the edges of this is on flagrant display vis-à-vis politics, you know? That there is a, stubborn an idea that to be an intellectual, the assault on the academy premised on precisely this, that to sort of continue in our quest for knowledge is a uh, elitism that has to be punished and eventually stamped out. Um, It does seem that so much of what we see in our politics sadly does revolve around a kind of that other thing, the willful stupidity that will admit no learning. Naomi: Yeah, I think that's really true. I think part of what I've been feeling, In 2019, I wrote a piece kind of for like, uh, that towards the end of 2019, I wrote a piece that was kind of like summing up the year, and it the year in stupidity, right? And it was kind of a piece where I listed a bunch of instances of stupidity, some of which involved Trump and the Trump administration. Rudy Giuliani was his right-hand man then, and, and so on. there have been many, many examples of stupidity since I've written that thing. everything that's happening with the White House, you know, the ballroom renovations, of course the reflecting pool, the, this absolute stupidest thing where it's like, "I'm gonna..." Trump is like, "I'm gonna renovate the, you know, the, the Lincoln Memorial reflecting pool. I'm I'm gonna paint it American flag blue in, for a mere $16 million." And of course, immediately it starts peeling and looking like shit, and like algae develops and, and et cetera. Like, I, I can't even say... At, at this point, I kind of feel not phased by it. You know, if in 2019 I would've been like, "I can't believe this is our reality," now I'm just like, "Another day at the office," you know? Vinson: so given all and we mentioned maybe the sort of post 9/11 era as a heyday of stupidity in our culture, would d- are we living through another one? At least in terms of has our, have we fallen back in love the, smooth brain figure? Uh, i- is it doing something special for us today that it maybe had been dormant for i- in, in a recent past? Alex: Yeah, I mean, I th- I, yes, yes. We're absolutely at a peak of stupid. Do I think it's the highest peak? It's not. The, it-- we can always climb the mountain, a little bit higher. It's there for us to climb. But yes, I think there, I think a lot supports the idea that we're in a bit of a stupid moment. Um, we're outsourcing a lot of thinking to computers and AI. Let's just start there. People are using such tools for basic conversational purposes and basic communication purposes, and the errors and mistakes appear everywhere from term papers to legal briefs to what have you. There, we're just kind of littered with s- we have terms for this: slop, brain rot, the experience that we all know so well of your brain just kind of vibrating wordlessly as a stream of videos and images, often of people doing some very amusingly stupid things, parades in front of your eyeballs. This is, this is stupid. This is st- Do I enjoy it? Sure, but it's not great. That's going on. We have the end of reading. Like, everybody's telling us about it. People are reading less. Put, they, remember that whole thing with Columbia professors from a few months ago, Columbia professors saying that their freshman students don't know how to read? We hear this, I hear this anecdotally all the time. That's a problem. So there's a kind of, like, critical thinking ability that does seem to be atrophying on a cultural level, and I'm not pointing fingers outside myself either, pointing them right at myself. I feel the rot. I think we all feel the rot Naomi: I know. I do feel stupider myself, I have to Alex: Do you? Naomi: I think I do. I'm just like... I, I think, you know, that, that kind of vibrating brain thing you were pointing to, It's not that you're necessarily hearing that much new information. You're just hearing like versions of the same thing over and over again from a variety of reels, articles, bullet points, ai summaries, you know like, there was a, a recent article in New York Magazine. New York Magazine, in fact, had an article by the writer Lane Brown, um, who quoted data that suggested that Alex: The average Naomi: is going, uh, used to be going, used to reliably go up over, over the course of the 20th century, and now it's going down, my friends. And part of the reason, at least, that, uh, uh, Brown, uh, is suggesting for this is the kind of assault our senses are receiving from various informational iterations that are often getting degraded as they, as they kind of like recap each other and get compressed more and more. And so we are getting all of these voices, but basically we're receiving ultimate emptiness. Alex: Yeah, it's too much. It's too much input. This is something I feel regularly. Vincent, are you feeling stupider than you used to? Vinson: Uh, n-no, but I do feel, I feel that it is h- I feel that there are many hurdles set up to staying as, as smart as you know, you feel the drag, uh, you know, if you wanna put yourself into a book, you feel the many other things tugging If you want to, to your point about AI summaries, Nomi, if you wanna Google something real fast, you get the stupid AI summary first, and you have to train yourself to just, like, let your eyes not cling to any one of those words and instead go find an actual Um, so Alex: they're so often wrong Vinson: yeah, I, I feel the weight of all of that to stay smart, it Or, you know, and whatever smart is, right? I mean, I, I'm, I keep going back to this, this question of what is it that we smart? What is it that our culture exalts, uh, and also casts aside? IQ, for example, we, we, we cited IQ is, you know, famously problematic. it, it corresponds with all kinds of whatever, frankly, eugenic ideas, et cetera. But what is, you know, whatever it is to be smart, um, I'm doing this, like, Sisyphean thing of continuing to kinda push it up the hill, and, and the rock feels heavy Alex: That's good. The rock should feel heavy. I mean, I, I, I think that's good because if the rock doesn't feel heavy, you're either in denial or you are, you know, you're, you're up in your tower looking down, not even looking down, and, and that's not fun. Y- you have, you have to stay sharp Vinson: right, right. The question is, does the society support your contest with The Rock, or is it, um, so-called friction maxing? Is it, is it, is, is, is it actually, is every other current in the, in this, in the culture going against this pursuit - So it should always feel heavy, but the question is, is the, is the society a wind at your back or going in the opposite direction? Alex: Hmm. Vinson: Okay. Well, before we leave, What does stupidity in your life do What are the benefits Alex: Humor Naomi: Yeah, humor, Alex: For sure Stup- There's nothing better than stupid humor When it hits, it hits Naomi: hits Ugh, God. I would like to recommend something Alex: Oh, good Naomi: The new Naked Gun movie, uh, that came out last year. Vinson: Did you like it? Naomi: I loved it Alex: What a recomendation Naomi: Oh my God, you guys, it's so funny. I'm telling you, it's the funniest movie I've seen in, like, the last, I don't know, five years maybe. Alex: And what makes it stupid? Naomi: Oh, it's so stupid Mm. It's like the classic slapstick kind of '80s Airplane type, uh, you know, Zucker, Abrahams, Zucker movies. Like, Stupidest humor. Incredibly funny. Incredibly funny. Go see Alex: Love Vinson: heard it here first, Naomi: Well, I don't know first, but yes Alex: Many, many months later Vinson: Not that, I wasn't saying that. What I meant was stay funny. Naomi: Stay funny Vinson: stay funny with the stupid. This has been Critics at Large. Special thanks to James Tooley at the Sun Valley Writers' Conference for helping us out this week. Alex Barasch is our consulting editor, and Rhiannon Corby is our senior producer. our executive producer is Steven Valentino. Our show is mixed by Mike Kutchman, and we had engineering help today from Pran Bandy, with music by Alexis Cuadrado. You can listen to all of our episodes anytime at newyorker.com/critics.