Some Corrections and Additions
Hey, readers! I still need to go back and update/supplement my recent extensive post about Jon Stewart’s dogs. That will be long and ongoing process for a while still, and I may ultimately make a standalone page on my site for that particular project. But for today, this post is going to take a look back at my own story—the adventure I covered at length in my book, Parasocial Activity: A Memoir in the Key of Science Fiction—to try to address a few items that don’t quite fit anymore. In short: I think I got a few things wrong. Or at least…I missed a few things that I could have seen pretty early on, during this whole process of trying to reconstruct what happened to me.
Recap: The Long, Strange Train Ride, and the Crazy Plan
For those who haven’t read my book, here’s a quick recap of some key points relevant to this post: On January 14th, 2024, I walked into the lobby of CBS in New York, and I asked to talk to a writer for a show made there. The studio unjustly called the cops on me. I was not amused. Later that day, I drunkenly emptied my soul to a couple of complete strangers on the train, who identified themselves as Josh and Tamara. I told Josh and Tamara everything about myself that day—the good, the bad, the hilarious, the depressing, the traumatic, the hopeful—in what amounted to a public therapy session of the highest order. Along the way, we talked at length about late-night television, and I told Josh and Tamara a great many of my thoughts on the assorted shows, including:
Offering a new format for The Daily Show (reactivating Jon Stewart as a Monday host, with the Correspondents rotating for the other days);
Suggesting that John Oliver could use Last Week Tonight for a particular legal stunt (openly bribing Clarence Thomas a million dollars a year to retire from the Supreme Court),
Proposing that John Oliver and Jon Stewart could investigate the mental health system by embedding secret messages for me into their shows and online videos. If those messages were sent, I suggested, I could then honestly walk into a hospital and tell the doctors an extremely strange, but true, story—so we could all find out what happened, in all likelihood, to a patient wrongly disbelieved.
In any event, in the days and weeks after that long, strange conversation, everything I said on the train began to come true. Jon Stewart returned, but only for Mondays. John Oliver made my offer to Clarence Thomas. And, unlikely as it seemed, I started to see secret messages for me in videos released by both shows. Soon, I ended up in the hospital, and my book, Parasocial Activity, was my attempt to make sense of that experience and to put back together what exactly had happened.
I did my best in the book, but I now think I missed a few things—as I acknowledged at the time of writing was likely to be the case. Each of these topics might well merit a standalone post or even separate page on my site, as I come back to elaborate in the future.
Josh and Tamara: Their True Identities
As I’ve said, on that very strange train, I spoke for several hours with two complete strangers, who gave their names as “Josh” and “Tamara.” Gradually, over the course of that train ride, I realized that those were fake names, and that they very likely worked in television in some capacity (probably for CBS-Paramount). I determined that they had come to follow up on that morning’s incident at CBS headquarters. That day, and in my book, I landed on the understanding that Josh and Tamara were most likely to be CBS News reporters (given that CBS News would have been taping a show that very morning, just a few yards away from the incident as it unfolded—and given that I’d left a rather distressed voicemail on the CBS News tipline shortly after the incident). I now believe I was wrong in that conclusion—but only just. At present, I believe that Josh and Tamara were employees of The Daily Show, specifically: Matt O’Brien and Jen Flanz.
I base that conclusion in part on a fairly thorough (though obviously not exhaustive) review of available video and photo evidence, looking through the roster employees of CBS News, The Daily Show, and Last Week Tonight. O’Brien and Flanz visually match my memories of the physical appearances of Josh and Tamara. Now, admittedly, my memories of that day are more than two years old at this point, and I was drunk the day in question, so we should be somewhat suspicious of my ability to make a positive ID (and I’d not at present be willing to testify to their identities in a criminal trial or something). And I went through a pretty drastic mental health crisis that further destabilized my memories shortly after the incident, so there’s another reason to be skeptical. It’s certainly possible that my memories have shifted over time (though I remember seeing clips of Flanz shortly after the incident and noting the striking similarities). However, it’s still possible that, as I have searched through video and photographic records of employees of the various shows and of CBS news, I have seen enough of O’Brien and Flanz to build up an inaccurate affiliation for them. To be clear: I’ve assembled a list of a few other possible candidates, who also generally match the physical profile. But O’Brien and Flanz seem to fit the best based on my memories.
In addition, beyond appearance, O’Brien and Flanz would both seem plausible candidates based on their professional capacities. If my memory of that police interview outside CBS is anything approaching accurate, then I was hilarious, intelligent, insightful, and clearly deeply versed in the intricacies of their genre and of The Daily Show’s strengths and creative needs. So, it would certainly make sense for someone at CBS to have alerted Daily Show staff to the incident, especially after my voicemail. The whole thing would have been recorded on CBS security tapes, and they could easily have cross-checked the video to see if I was being truthful in my voicemail. If all that indeed happened…well then O’Brien (a writer and now producer) and Flanz (the longtime showrunner) would be two people who could plausibly have been sent to follow up with me.
I have other reasons to suspect these two, based on certain statements in videos in which they’ve featured over the past two years, which I’ll spell out at some point in the future.
Again, to be clear, I might well be wrong here. But that’s what I presently think.
Additional Early Clues: Trevor Noah.
I also think I missed several early messages from the shows, including via interviews, public statements, official videos, and podcast appearances by various staffers. It appears to have started almost instantly, with Trevor Noah himself, at the 75th Primetime Emmys, the day after my long conversation with “Josh” and “Tamara.” Examples:
At the ceremony, The Daily Show won the Emmy for its category, and Trevor Noah accepted the award (remember, this ceremony had been delayed several months due to the writers’ strike, so even though Noah was no longer the host, the time-frame covered by the ceremony was his last season). In his acceptance speech, Noah used the word crazy four times, including referring to Jon Stewart as a crazy genius(a term I had actually applied to myself in the conversation with Josh and Tamara the previous day). Noah thanked Stewart for calling him up and asking him to join the whole crazy journey. Noah also called specific attention to Jen Flanz, referring to her as the woman who “rode with him through the trenches” (which is an odd phrase, but could have been a reference to our long, emotionally trying ride the day before).
During his post-Emmys interview: Trevor said: “There’s no denying the genius of Jon Stewart, that basically laid the foundation for every single Emmy winner in this category for decades…” That specific phrase, “laid the foundation,” is of particular significance to my story, given that I used it during my interview with the police, and that it later appeared in another video that seemed to target me directly. In fact, I used it as the dedication for Part III of my book, in which I explain the secret video messages I found: “For those who laid the foundation.”
Later in that same interview, Noah describes his proudest episode of The Daily Show in terms that felt relevant to what I had proposed the previous day (likely to the showrunner standing next to him): “it was pretty wild putting that together and seeing a team of people who didn’t even know me that well rally behind me and say ‘yeah, we’ll help make this vision come to life; we’ll help figure out how we canhelp you tell this story that seemed crazy at the time…”.
In another video of a post-ceremony interview that night, Noah looks into the camera and thanks “those who watched from the beginning…those who didn’t believe, but watched anyway…the people who came on, the people who stayed on”. That described me, as I told to Josh and Tamara on the train the day before: I watched every episode of Trevor Noah’s run at the Daily Show, even though I was never a true believer of his, the way I was for Stewart.
There’s plenty more I’ve found in interviews and podcasts with Daily Show cast and staff in those first few weeks. This section, too, will probably merit its own post in the future, but that’s enough to show you the kind of thing I’m talking about here. I have a lot more writing to do on this subject, it would seem.
Insider Journalists:
I also now believe that, even if I missed it at first, The Daily Show and Last Week Tonight appear to have made sure to loop in at least a few different journalists before undertaking this whole crazy scheme, so that there would be people who could confirm the whole thing, once it all started to come out, or in case I got into too much trouble. In fact, I think I can point to at least three specific journalists who were informed, fairly early on, of the crazy scheme, possibly in its entirety. Specifically:
Peter White, Executive Editor for Television at Deadline. I was not familiar with White or his work prior to this whole thing, but they seem to have improbably excellent sourcing. White appears to have been an insider from the very beginning. For instance, on January 17th, three days after my adventure in New York, Peter White revealed the general outline of the new Daily Show format, before any other outlet had it. Now, admittedly, I’m not sure what all White knew and when he knew it, but I very much suspect that White and his staff speak regularly to showrunner Jen Flanz behind-the-scenes, given how frequently Deadline has had exclusive scoops on The Daily Show over the past two years. Seriously, there’s a bunch of them. I’ll make a list at some point, but a quick search will turn up quite a few. (Also worth noting, Flanz and White follow each other on Instagram.)
Gayle King, at CBS News/CBS Mornings. King, too, seems to have been looped in pretty early on. I suspect that it happened on January 31st, the day she interviewed Trevor Noah for CBS Mornings about his upcoming Grammys-hosting gig. In the interview, Noah looks directly at the camera and very slowly, deliberately says: “Gayle King has an ability to pop up everywhere in the world where a thing is happening, interview the people that it is happening with, have a full understanding of what’s going on, and then somehow still be back here at this show the next morning…”. That seems rather pointed, given what all I believe was going on. There are other explanations, sure…but I read that as Noah’s attempt to make clear to suspicious viewers (including me) that Gayle King is aware of the whole wild scheme involving secret messages for me (and potentially more). Worth noting: in that interview, King also excitedly reminds Trevor that she’ll be there at the Grammys, too (which she apparently was, based on press coverage, as a central figure in CBS’ planned coverage of the event)—which is odd…given that just two days prior to this interview with Trevor Noah, King did another Grammys-related interview, during which she clearly stated that she’d be watching from home. What changed? (Again, yes, there are reasonable explanations. Still, I wonder.)
Willie Geist, at TODAY/NBC. Willie Geist at NBC also seems to have been an insider from the early days. I sort of suspected this last year, after a particular video aired, but I didn’t realize quite how early he’d apparently been looped in. My suspicion here emerged initially from the interview he did with John Oliver, which aired February 18th, for the Sunday Sitdown, a segment of the TODAY show. In my book, I go into detail about that eight-minute interview video, covering a whole slew of elements from this video that seemed to track with my adventures. However, I didn’t really realize at the time that the interview had been recorded weeks prior, on January 24th, which gives us an approximate timeline for Geist’s inclusion. We can make that guess because a clip was immediately circulated on the 24th, of John Oliver apparently finding out the news about Stewart’s return during the taping. Worth noting, there’s also an extended fifty-five minute version of the interview that aired as Willie Geist’s Sunday Morning Sitdown podcast, which was actually plugged at the end of the main video I linked above, but which (for some reason) I didn’t follow up on and listen to at the time. However, having listened to it, there were a few additional elements that seemed applicable to my adventure. For instance:
Oliver explains that it’s usually a six-week process to produce an episode, including legal review. Oliver also says that he knows what they’re doing for most of the first few episodes, but wasn’t quite sure at that point what they were doing for the season premiere. That’s a little odd, and it would fit with a production timeline that involves checking with lawyers to make sure that the Clarence Thomas offer was, in fact, legal.
Oliver makes a reference to potentially not being able to “give the precious up,” which is a concept/reference I made multiple times during my conversation with Josh and Tamara.
Quite late in the episode, there’s a strange exchange that involves John Oliver apparently having prophetic powers while watching a Liverpool match. They use phrases like “unless you had a premonition…” and “you saw that coming!” and the whole thing seems implausible for a real conversation, if they were indeed watching a live match. This part of the conversation would track with my extensive discussions on the train of the nature of prophecy, and of the feeling of being able to see the future. Even though, to be clear, I don’t have supernatural powers, that was a topic of conversation, including as a literary metaphor for understanding the feeling of inspiration, as my book covers at length.
Anyway, I’m sure there’s a lot more that I got wrong, or simply missed at the time, and no doubt I’ll come back to these topics and make more extensive stand-alone posts. I just wanted to get these out there into the world, since they’re on my mind. Before I expand too much on these, however, I probably need to go back in and flesh out my whole story about Jon Stewart’s dog.
Peacefully,
Chip.
