[speaker001:] hi uh um
[speaker002:] hi
[speaker001:] I I should say something
[speaker002:] uh-huh
[speaker001:] that I'm the uh least informed this is totally accidental that I have to talk about this topic but it's I'm the least informed person in the whole United States this has not been determined yet but I I I've never read a newspaper in my entire life and I've I I never watch TV news nor listen to the news on the radio unless I'm just happening to be listening to music and they slip it on in the car radio before I can turn it off but
[speaker002:] any particular reason
[speaker001:] well no I I've I've explored that with lots of people uh they've tried to lock me up and uh things like that but um um I'm basically not interested and I also find the um everything is so slick and superficial and misguided and misguided and off the um  um what am I trying to say uh I do learn about things largely largely from friends and I occasionally will read something like the New York Review Of Books you know someone will write a book about something and then I'll learn all about this thing that was in the news two years earlier
[speaker002:] uh-huh uh-huh
[speaker001:] but it and somehow and anything I participated in or know about when I read about it in the paper is always so uh covered from such a funny and superficial perspective that I don't have much confidence in it but I mean I don't think it's just that I'm lazy
[speaker002:] I really don't I mean I I like to refer to this as sort of Consumer Report phenomenon which is everybody that I know
[speaker001:] uh-huh
[speaker002:] reads Consumer Reports so the people who do feel that Consumer Reports does a a wholly inadequate job in their area of particular interest but assume that they do a reasonable job in other areas
[speaker001:] uh-huh uh-huh
[speaker002:] uh without thinking that there were people in who think each other areas area of of specialty and uh I guess you could explain it two ways and and the cynical view is well these things aren't doing a very good job at all and the view that I'd rather take is that
[speaker001:] uh-huh
[speaker002:] there's a different amount of information you need when you're particularly interested in a topic or uh particularly interested in buying something as a you know as a hobbyist versus when you want to go out and buy a blender because you need to mix things
[speaker001:] right yeah
[speaker002:] and I think the same thing is true with news if you want to just have an idea as to what's going on most papers and and especially the better papers the the Times the Wall Street Journal the Washington Post give you a reasonable idea
[speaker001:] uh-huh yeah
[speaker002:] if you were deeply involved in it then you immediately realize that what they print is stuff that you probably knew already and the stuff that you want they're not printing because the average person doesn't need or want to know that much
[speaker001:] right doesn't want let me ask by the way just for the record I I'm I totally concede that intelligent people read these things and intelligent people write them so I mean I'm not being elitist in that sense I hope uh
[speaker002:] well I mean there's there's a reasonable question as to whether it's worth the amount of time it takes to keep up on things
[speaker001:] yeah what
[speaker002:] and most people think it is and I can I can you know accept that some people think it's not and can find better ways to use it
[speaker001:] yeah by the way when you say most people think it is I think it's like ninety nine point ninety nine think it is percent
[speaker002:] I don't think it's that high I know a lot of people who may watch the TV news in the evening but don't spend the time to actually read a newspaper
[speaker001:] but you don't right
[speaker002:] and I think they're saying well if something's really important I'll at least find out that it happened
[speaker001:] yeah
[speaker002:] and and that's a that's is a reasonable start and for awhile I didn't read a newspaper when I came out here because I didn't find one that I liked um and if something important happened it was covered on TV and I could then go and and pick up newspapers if if it were important enough to read about
[speaker001:] uh-huh
[speaker002:] and I imagine you get the same level of thing that if somethings that you cared about happened you'd find out from friends or other channels
[speaker001:] yeah uh I did on the uh the Supreme Court hearings uh the for um uh the whole business of uh see I I actually have a a
[speaker002:] Clarence Thomas or
[speaker001:] yeah the Thomas and Anita Hill business I I mean that's that's the closest thing I deeply cared about that um
[speaker002:] right uh-huh
[speaker001:] and I sort of had planned to have dinner with a friend of mine and when I arrived at her house she was engrossed in that we ended up watching it for a couple of hours zooming out and grabbing something to eat and then zooming back and eating watching it some more and I thought that was terrific because she actually helped me understand what was going on but even then I didn't end up doing it on my own um uh
[speaker002:] yeah I stayed as far away from those as I could I decided I didn't want to waste the time I had I guess five years ago now wasted that kind of time with Oliver North hearings and afterwards decided that
[speaker001:] uh-huh right right yeah
[speaker002:] what I had gotten out of it just wasn't worth the time I put in and that these things are just very slow ways of seeing information come out think
[speaker001:] uh-huh yeah do you ever read