Rick Rosner: I do believe in magnetic personalities, though, because I live in a town of schmoozers. Do you know what a schmoozer is? Jacobsen: Yes. Someone who basically kisses up—a kind of social smooth-talker. Rosner: It’s Yiddish. Jacobsen: I wasn’t sure if it was in the general non-Jewish lexicon. Rosner: It is. My stepdad …
Rick Rosner: You should be aiming for people like Cate Blanchett and Tilda Swinton. When celebrities have projects coming out, they’re open to interviews. You’re a seasoned interviewer with an impressive track record. If celebs become part of your regular beat, you could be known as the interviewer who asks them questions that highlight their …
Rick Rosner: What made American Republicans so bad compared to broader times? How did they get so bad? And that leads to related questions: How did Democrats get this way if they did? And how did things, in general, get so bad? Are today’s Democrats akin to the Republicans of the nineties or 2000s? Has …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1202: Propaganda Models in the States and Russia
Rick Rosner: What’s going on? Let’s talk about Peanut the Squirrel. Have you heard of Peanut the Squirrel? Scott Douglas Jacobsen: No. What is it? Rosner: This is the latest weird, but oddly unified, Republican push to make people angry at Democrats. Here’s the story: a guy runs an unlicensed wildlife sanctuary—it’s not a big …
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: So, it looks like it was a complete slaughter against the Democrats. Rick Rosner: As far as I know—and I haven’t checked in the last half hour—Harris isn’t even leading the popular vote. I thought it was impossible for Trump to win the popular vote. I assume that when the West Coast …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1200: The Slaughter of the Dems
Rick Rosner: So, it’s the day after, and Trump has won. You noticed during our chat before we started taping that I was nodding off because I didn’t get much sleep last night. Carole was freaking out, grabbing me, and asking, “What are we going to do? What’s going to happen?” She was also telling …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1199: The Day After Blues for the Blues
Scott Douglas Jacobsen: What do you think Trump’s first moves will be? What do you think the people around him will do first? Rick Rosner: There have already been reports that Trump is talking with Putin about the Ukraine war, which would be against an Act, I believe. Anyway, it's against the law for someone …
Continue reading Ask A Genius 1198: Trump’s Likely First Moves
Rick Rosner: So, I know the election was a bummer. Many people, mostly liberals, think Trump will be even worse and more unrestrained this time around. Carol is nervous that the country will become unlivable for us, possibly due to all the critical things I said about Trump on Twitter. She’s been actively researching how …
*Interview conducted in November, 2024.* Rick Rosner: So, here’s a story from high school. In high school, my friends Lon and Dave were cooler than me. They were good-looking guys—so good-looking, in fact, that one of them has a daughter who grew up to become a fairly major movie star. So, in high school, I …
*Interview conducted in November, 2024.* Rick Rosner: I’ve been feeling bad about our recent conversations because it’s mostly me complaining about Trump. So, I tried to think more philosophically or metaphysically for a moment. We’ve often talked about the principles of existence and things that can exist, but that made me wonder: what about things …
Rick Rosner 