What You Don't Know About Farron Cousins

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*This transcript was generated by a third-party transcription software company, so please excuse any typos.

I get emails all the time. I even get phone calls. I don't know how the hell they find me, but they'll call me and they will say, how did you and Farron get together? They love you, Farron. I say it all the time. I really, honestly believe you're the best progressive commentator in the business. You know why? Because you're not all one side. Now, every day, if you go to our site that I started, how long ago did I start that site?

That was in May of 2004 is when Ring of Fire started.

I started Ring of Fire back then. It's been a long time. But I remember that you came in just wanting to, can you work as a co-producer or can you just do research?

Yeah. Really just research.

Research. You just graduated out of.

Well, not even yet. I was still, I was waiting tables, putting myself through college and Scott, the head producer here, reached out to me and said, hey, look, the guy we've had for over the summer, he's gotta go back to school. Is this something you'd be interested in? I know you like politics. So I said, yeah, sure, I'll come in and do an interview. And you tasked me in that interview, it is very short, and you said, all right, listen, I want to do a story about, it was candy flavored cigarettes and the marketing to children.

Yeah, wow.

You said, pull me four to five pages of research on that and bring it back up here. And I went home super excited. I did it. Got it back up to you the very next day, and you went through it and that was it.

It built our case. Do you realize it built our case? Did you know that?

I did not.

And then we did stories about it. And so, I meet you, you're a kid, at that point, you're a kid.

Yes. Barely 21.

Virtually a kid. I'm wondering, I've never really asked you some of these questions. You and I have been friends a long time. We've done this together for all the way back to the Air America days, right?

Yeah.

Janeane Garofalo, Rachel Maddow, Al Franken, Cenk Uygur, Thom Hartmann. Oh my God. The lineup was unbelievable. And then Bobby and I had this show called Ring of Fire, and then we did this site called Ring of Fires all the way back then. But I've always wondered, as you, when I listen to your commentary every day that you're beating the hell out of Trump or beating the hell out of Republicans, but you're still saying, I don't just do that. I can cross the line, I can go to the other side and I can talk about what Democrats do wrong. I'm not a one trick pony, and that's always interested me about you. Where did you pick that up? I mean, was it something in school where you were somehow influenced by a professor or what?

No, honestly, none of my professors are anybody that I would write home about. But it really just came from years of experience here and growing up understanding that, listen, there's no good good guys. There's no bad bad guys. There's something worthwhile about everybody. There's something not worthwhile about everybody. And you've gotta focus on the bigger picture of everything and that's what I try to do.

Why do we do that? Why do we do that thing where it's almost like we think we're following a football team. This is my team, and you know, I'll beat your if you don't agree with my team. What is that? I know the term tribalism, but is it an insecurity? Is it an inability to completely critically think? What is it? Because it's more and more prevalent. I've seen it getting worse and worse over just the period that we've done Ring of Fire for decades now.

It's these people have attached their identity to it, their personality to it. Just like you see somebody who's a fan of the Alabama football team. Right? The Crimson tide. Everything about that person is Crimson Tide. Yeah. They've got the stickers, their outfits.

Tattoos across their face.

Right. That is the only part of their personality that exists. And now for some reason, that has worked its way into politics. And so you see these people who say, well, I'm a Democrat, so everything about my personality, I'm totally one dimensional. I'm just Democrat or I'm just a Republican and that becomes all that they are. That is the only way they can feel self-worth. So when their team loses, they feel bad.