The A.R.C. of Disney: Tim Disney on the Virus That Kills You When You Lie

00:00:31 Andrew Keen: Hello, everybody. Back in March 1965, Martin Luther King made a famous speech in Montgomery, Alabama. "How long? Not long," the speech is entitled, and it included one of his most famous phrases about the arc of the moral universe. It might be long, but it bends towards justice. I'm not sure that's the case with the book we're—talking about today. It's called The A.R.C. The moral arc, of course, is something that's been developed since King's speech. But today's book is called The A.R.C., A-R-C. It's a very different world from the arc of moral justice that Martin Luther King was talking about in 1965. One of its coauthors is our guest today, Tim Disney, and he's joining us from Albuquerque in New Mexico where he's on book tour. Tim, congratulations on the new book. I'm guessing perhaps that the title of the book has one eye, at least, on biblical references to the Ark and Martin Luther King's notion of the arc of moral—the arc of history bending towards justice. What's changed in the last seventy years [ed.: sixty-one years] since Martin Luther King made that speech?

00:02:01 Tim Disney: [unclear] Thank you for having me on. I really appreciate it. And to frame it, with a Martin Luther King quote is daunting, to be sure. What has changed in the last seventy years? Well, I have a saying which is that the good old days weren't. So I'm not sure, that we're doing anything, other than continuing the struggle to try to make sense of, you know, the conflicting, impulses we have, on one hand to engage with other people and be prosocial and live in, peaceful communities and the other to get over, by lying and, deceiving and so forth. But, you know, to take a step back, the book, the source of the book came to me during the pandemic when I was sitting at home, watching the parade of madness on TV like everybody else. So I'd see the ivermectin people, the Chinese lab people, the bleach person, the other stuff, and it struck me that there is a pandemic killing us all. It's a pandemic of dishonesty. That we've broken free from something, that where the normal correctives of personal shame or public opprobrium are no longer any—seem to be no longer any check on just rampant, blatant dishonesty. And I thought that was an accurate diagnosis of the world, and a fertile premise for a story. And, I thought of it as a movie idea originally, and I took it to a friend of mine, to pitch it to him as a movie. And he suggested treating it as a graphic novel because he said it would be faster and easier that way. It was neither fast nor easy. But he introduced me to my co-writer, JC Lacek, and the illustrator Vincent Jolas Dubourg. And, that's how it became, a graphic novel in the first place. And, you know, what a fun experience it was. It was something that we worked on very much as a side project, for quite some time. And then in the last year or so, decided that we had to bring it to a close as the world was changing pretty dramatically, here in the United States, if you hadn't noticed. And so we put a lot of urgency on it and brought it, as much into the current world as we possibly could. It is a political satire about the current state of affairs is how we would describe it.

00:04:53 Andrew Keen: So, Tim, you mentioned your coauthors JC Lacek and Vincent Jolas Dubourg. How would you present yourself? Is this a, so to speak, Disney production, this A.R.C.?

00:05:09 Tim Disney: It is, you don't wanna get me in trouble with the company. So, it is not an official Disney company production. The idea is mine. I'm the creator of the story. And then I am the co-author of it with JC, who is a very talented, storyteller. And, he is also the creative director of the book. So he's the person who produced the book itself, and he had worked in the past with, Vincent and brought him into the project. So, it was a great collaboration. Anything that might be good about the book is due to their talent and, collaborative spirit.

00:05:52 Andrew Keen: Tim, again, I'm sure most people will have guessed that you're connected with the Disney family. You're the great-nephew of the great Walt Disney and the great, and the grandson of Roy Disney, his associate, and brother. Is this a contemporary Disney production? I know. I'm not trying to get you in trouble with the company. I'm not suggesting that Disney made this. But given the way America's changed, I mean, we talked about Martin Luther King in 1965, given that, your great uncle and your, grandfather or your, yes, your great uncle and your grandfather, were creating work back in the beginning of the twentieth century. Is this the way that creative work has to go almost in America? I mean, we've gone from Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse to the kind of satire that you're presenting in The A.R.C. Is it an inevitable reflection of the way in which America's changed?

00:07:06 Tim Disney: I don't think so. This was a, you know, as a lover of my country and its mad energy and, diversity and, you know, watching what's been happening here over the last few years has been deeply troubling. And I asked myself, what can I contribute, to what positive thing can I put out there into the dialogue that's different, and hopefully constructive, in into the mix? And this is what I came up with. So I don't know what conclusion you could draw from that, but, the book, I think, has written with a serious intent, within the wrapper of something that is funny, aggressively satirical, but based on something real, you know?

00:08:08 Andrew Keen: And what is that, reality? The book, of course, deals with this pandemic of lying, lies and truth at the heart of the book. Is that what's changed? Is that the satire at the heart of the book, the way in which, lying, the telling of untruths has become the pandemic, which is destroying the world and particularly America?

00:08:32 Tim Disney: That's the premise of the book. And, for folks who live in the United States and maybe people observing from outside, that feels pretty accurate to most people who live here now. You know, there's something very fragile, you know, something that precedes politics, that's upstream of that, some cultural thing, some basic measure of, some tacit understandings that we operate on in our daily lives, even as we just simply walk down the sidewalk and shift a little bit to the side to allow other people to pass, these are the sort of the norms of civilization that we rarely question, but without them, we'd be in big trouble. And so, you know, when it comes to, honesty, truth, lies, no one is perfect in this respect. And I certainly don't present myself as a virtuous person in this way. I don't know that it's possible to tell, the whole truth or, to be strictly truthful. In fact, I think we live in a gray zone all the time of things that are less than true. Often we say things that are not true for which we are considered polite or kind. And sometimes we do that as a means of manipulating other people. We know the difference unless we're sociopaths. We know the difference, what our intent is. So I think what's happened is that something has shifted over a line or beyond a reasonable line now where if you do not behave in this disgraceful way, you're a chump. And so people look around them and see people getting away with this and they're like well then I have to do it too because these are now the new rules of the road. But what happens is that lies are only useful and effective in the context of the truth or some or at least some commitment to trying, to adhere to some truthfulness. So that is the hell that we live in now. And it doesn't end in a good place. No.

00:10:49 Andrew Keen: It certainly doesn't. I wonder why, we did a show recently with the writer Steve Rosenbaum, who had a new book out on truth in the age of AI, and the New York Times found that half the quotes in the book or some of the quotes in the book were made up. So we entitled the show Artificial Lies. Is this a tech thing, Tim? Is that what's changed in the last five, ten, twenty years in America to make lies this contagion, this pandemic?

00:11:22 Tim Disney: I think that there's a—I think this dynamic has always existed, and we can look at, Genesis in the Bible is all about this. Odysseus is a liar and a trickster. This is our, how we navigate this as individuals is probably the test of our moral character, I suppose. So no, I don't think the dynamic is new. But I do think that, the nature of some recent technological development has accelerated this to a crisis point, for sure. I mean, every Instagram post is fake, is phony. You can't fake—

00:12:17 Andrew Keen: Can you—

00:12:18 Tim Disney: Yeah.

00:12:18 Andrew Keen: —post in Instagram an honest opinion, an honest photo? I mean, that's possible, isn't it?

00:12:24 Tim Disney: Yes. I suppose it's possible, but the very nature of it invites you to present what you would like other people to believe about yourself. I mean, the correlation between time spent on social media and happiness is negative. It's the more time you spend, the more unhappy you are. It is, it—there is something, profoundly, extractive and, demeaning about it. So it is not—it's banal to observe, you know, that every advertisement is phony. Everything is phony. It's—it—and it's all an assault on our personal dignity. You know? Like when you go to the store and you buy Colgate toothpaste and they say it's new and improved, it's not new and improved. You know, it's not new and improved. And we don't have the time or energy to battle against this all the time.

00:13:24 Andrew Keen: But this was, I mean, even before social media and the internet, you would go shopping, pick up a packet of—

00:13:28 Tim Disney: Yeah. So I'm saying this is just like—

00:13:34 Andrew Keen: —and they claim. But now who—who ever reads the label? Who ever believes that stuff, Tim?

00:13:40 Tim Disney: I think we have to maintain some defense of our personal dignity against this. Otherwise, we become subject to it. That—that's, I guess what I'm trying to say. But what I would like to say is that the main thing is that our book is funny, because all of this stuff is overwhelming. And the gateway to thinking about this stuff, which is so heavy and difficult, is humor. And, so I, you know, last year when we were finishing our book and into this year, the early parts of this year, when I was looking around, the country, the only people who were willing to, say something real were comedians. You know, they have essentially been the last line of defense here as everybody else either just shut up or, pretended to agree with what they were seeing around them. And so that was really an inspiration for us and we decided we wanna be among those people, and, get out there and try to, apply some shock therapy.

00:14:58 Andrew Keen: Tim, you've made some movies over the years. You're also a writer. You made A Question of Faith back in 2000. Why did you choose this medium of the graphic novel? Is the graphic novels, of course, are increasingly fashionable, popular, successful. Is there something about the writing of a graphic novel? You mentioned comedians being the only honest people left in America. I mean, not all graphic novels, of course, are humorous. But does the medium lend itself to the message here when it comes to the graphic novel and exposing what you at least believe is this, pandemic of lies in this country?

00:15:41 Tim Disney: Well, I was lied to, as I told you. I was told that it would be fast and easy. And it—

00:15:46 Andrew Keen: Who was lying to you, though?

00:15:49 Tim Disney: It was my friend, the movie producer. It—to me, it seemed like a different format than you would expect this to come in. So there are a lot of folks out there, commenting earnestly on the affairs of the world. And many of them do that fantastically well. And I listen to a lot of that. I see a lot of that. I engage in that to a certain extent. I don't know that I have anything in particular to add to that. It's very hard to be heard, if you're yet another earnest voice, holding forth about stuff. So it just—

00:16:25 Andrew Keen: Are you an earnest? Is that how you would describe yourself, an earnest voice?

00:16:30 Tim Disney: No. I don't think so. I think I'm a ridiculous voice. If I'm succeeding, I'm ridiculous. It, this seemed like an unexpected way, to put something out there, a format that it was, that I haven't seen it in before. And, you know, I've done some different kinds of creative projects over the years. This was a new form. I'd never done it before. I had worked in animation years ago, so I had some experience with visual storytelling.

00:16:58 Andrew Keen: The family business.

00:16:59 Tim Disney: Yep. I worked in the animation department at Disney when I was, in my twenties many years ago. Was a great experience. So I felt comfortable with that and, looked forward to the challenge of a new medium and trying to figure it out. And I learned a lot. It's a really beautiful form. It's a, it is primarily a visual form. It has some literary elements to it. There's a lot of subtleties in how you design the pages, how you layout the speech bubbles and, the page turns and all of that. And I really enjoyed that. I hope to get a chance to try it again.

00:17:36 Andrew Keen: Yeah. I have to say you were kind enough to send me a copy of the book. It's beautifully produced and very compelling. I wonder whether, I know my daughter in particular is a huge fan of graphic novels of one kind or rather particularly, Japanese, anime. I wonder whether it's coincidental that young people are so drawn to this form these days.

00:18:00 Tim Disney: I personally observe—I have sons who are 30 and 26 and my daughter is 15 and she's a big anime fan as well. They, I observe among young people. Tell me if you see this too, a nascent backlash to or response to, the social media phenomenon, the online stuff. They really value in person real time experiences. They get together and do card games, board games with their friends. They read physical books. They collect vinyl albums and have listening parties. And if you look at statistically, social media use is not falling on a cliff. I'm not suggesting that, but especially among young younger cohorts, it has peaked and is declining somewhat now. And I see that as a positive thing. And in fact, my sons would say, it's you old people who believe everything you see on Facebook that are the problem. And I think they're right about that, honestly. So graphic novels in particular do not translate well to electronic form. You can buy them as electronic books, but they, the readers of the graphic novel in that world are very, it's a very deep audience and they're very committed to the physical books. And, what a great experience it was to actually make a book. I mean, how much of what we do actually exists as a thing in the world? You know, not very much. So when the first box of galleys arrived, and we got the box—the books out of the box, it was just the, you know, one of the best days of my life, honestly. Because I didn't think I could write it.

00:19:47 Andrew Keen: I can imagine, especially because the book is physically so beautiful. I mean, even if you don't read it, just leave it around on a coffee table. Of course, it's not a coffee table book. It's an anti–coffee table book. It's designed to be read, but at the same time, it's beautifully produced.

00:20:02 Tim Disney: Thank you. I appreciate that. We worked very hard on it.

00:20:04 Andrew Keen: I wonder, Tim, given that this is such a sharp satire, how hard it is to remain fictional as opposed to factual. The book or one of the stories, the main stories in the book, the setting of the book, it takes place aboard a sustainable luxury cruise ship named the Veritas, of course, Truth. And recently, there was this case of passengers being stranded in Cambodia after one of these lifelong cruises was halted due to high fuel costs. So my question isn't so much about setting graphic novels on cruise ships, but actually coming up with something so ludicrous that it's unimaginable in the world. It seems as if one of the challenges of writing anything satirical, fictional about today's world is if it hasn't happened, it will happen.

00:20:59 Tim Disney: Yeah. This is a question I get a lot. How can you possibly satirize the world that we live in now? And I guess my only response to that is maximally, maximally. And so we realized that we had to go 100%, to have—make any dent in [unclear] folks' sensibility. And so we just went for it as hard as we could. The original version of the book when we started had analogs to real people in it. And that was another thing that we changed, because we thought that was too soft. So we repopulated the book with real people, which is a scary thing to do, in our world. In our country, we have very strong free speech rights in our constitution. There's all kinds of case law about, satire in particular, the right to satirize public figures. And so we went for it and, you know, maybe I'll get a call. I don't know. We'll see.

00:22:12 Andrew Keen: You may get a call certainly from, a certain RFK Jr., who you satirize in the book. Why pick on him?

00:22:22 Tim Disney: I mean, he's an extreme character. You know what, you know, I, folks can be extreme characters. I, it's not, you can do whatever you want. You can, but when you are making public health decisions for children, it's severe. So, you know, yeah. So it seemed merited to me. And besides, it's all in good fun.

00:22:54 Andrew Keen: Well, not probably from his point of view, though. I share your criticism of him. I wonder—the one thing you have in common with RFK Jr. is you're, like him, a scion of a very famous family, a branded family. Everyone knows the Kennedys. Everyone knows the Disneys. They kind of exist in parallel. Do you think if you come from one of these families, you have more of a responsibility or less of a responsibility to tell the truth? Or is it harder or easier to tell the truth if from—if you're from one of America's leading families? Or is that a meaningless question?

00:23:31 Tim Disney: I think we all have the same responsibility. I don't know. I don't know how to answer that. I will say that because of my circumstances, I've been—I've had the opportunity to meet lots of different kinds of people and be exposed to different kinds of worlds. And all of that was useful, when working on this book, you know, because I've served on corporate boards, I've served, I've, you know, been involved with not-for-profit institutions. I've worked with tax lawyers. I've done transactional law deals, things like that. And all of those things give you a glimpse into other people's epistemic worlds, you know, and you see that all of these folks are making rational decisions based on the world that they live in and the people that the rules of the worlds that they operate in. And, only if you could take a step back away from it, can you say having an entire multibillion dollar industry of tax lawyers who tell you how to legally cheat on your taxes is insane. But if you're a tax lawyer, you're doing good work based on best practices within the laws. You understand it. And like that these paradoxes are crazy making and it seemed, and they're funny in the darkest way imaginable. And, I guess one of the things we were trying to do was to pack as much of that into, one book as we possibly could. We just thought let's overfill this with as much information, absurdity, truth, misdirection, and make it try to reflect the world that we actually live in, which is just running at light speed, so fast that we can't even process all the shit that's coming our way all the time. Sorry. I just swore on your podcast.

00:25:53 Andrew Keen: No. You're encouraged to swear, Tim.

00:25:57 Tim Disney: Well, fuck yeah.

00:25:58 Andrew Keen: The way we're describing this book sound rather miserable and dark. It isn't visually, and even intellectually. It's about surviving this world of lying. So who are the survivors, in our—or how do we survive in this pandemic of lying? What's the narrative? What's the moral of the story?

00:26:23 Tim Disney: Well, I—you know, it's fun, and it's not that hard to make fun of people. And that is not enough. So from the beginning, we felt it was absolutely critical, core to the story, to build it around some hope. And at the end of the story, some people figure out, no, I think people should buy the book and read it. So I'm not going to give away the ending.

00:26:46 Andrew Keen: Yeah. Don't give away the ending. Although it's, even if you don't get to the end, as I said, it's so beautifully produced. It's an essential book.

00:26:55 Tim Disney: So there are a group of passengers on the cruise ship because of course it has to happen on a cruise ship, I should say, because every time there's a pandemic, there's a cruise ship.

00:27:03 Andrew Keen: Yeah. Especially one called the Veritas.

00:27:06 Tim Disney: Yes. So they kind of figure out what's going on and we get a little glimpse. They land, and find another tiny group of survivors and we get a little glimpse of a post-lie world. And I can tell you that was very difficult to write because what would that be, you know? And in the end, I think we represented it as a very quiet place because if such a disease did exist and you would die, absolutely, if you lied, you would probably try not to say much at all. Like, we're not very well equipped to survive in such a world. But it also looks like a pretty peaceful and happy place. You know? I—someone once said to me, and they meant it as an insult. I had just said something in a conversation. And, she said, "Does it need to be said? Does it need to be said now? Does it need to be said by you?" And I heard that I was like, ouch. Wow. And I—I'm referring to my ex-wife, of course. And she, you know, that struck me. That struck me and has stuck with me ever since as, and if I applied that criteria, I don't think I would ever say anything. You know? Yeah.

00:28:34 Andrew Keen: Do you think, Tim, ex-wives or husbands are capable of telling the truth?

00:28:40 Tim Disney: Yes. Yes. Very forcefully indeed. That's probably why we end up getting divorced.

00:28:46 Andrew Keen: Alright. Finally, you talk about this post-lie world. You've mentioned Facebook and social media, which is really big media. Do you think that in a post-lie world, there is a place for big media, whether it's Facebook or Google or X or for that matter, the Disney company?

00:29:10 Tim Disney: I do not have much hope that we will ever live in some absolute post-lie world. I do deeply hope that we make each make a personal decision to try to engage with, the difficult judgements we have to make about why we say what we say. And that is, I think is the, as I said, the cultural antidote that can only come from each of us as individuals to, set us back on not a perfect path, but a better path than we're on now. Yeah.

00:29:56 Andrew Keen: And I guess you're bringing us back to Martin Luther King, of course, whose 1965 speech, "How Long, Not Long," was all—also about telling the truth.

00:30:05 Tim Disney: Yeah. I also like to quote Gandalf, who said, "I find it's the simple acts of kindness of ordinary folk who keep the darkness at bay." [ed.: the line in Peter Jackson's The Hobbit refers to "small everyday deeds of ordinary folk"] So, you know, it really starts and ends with that ultimately. And we can have some fun along the way.

00:30:23 Andrew Keen: Well, we certainly have some fun along the way even if some of the truth telling is rather painful in The A.R.C., which is co-authored by my guest, Tim Disney. Wonderful book. Certainly, spectacularly produced, very entertaining, very sharp. It's not gonna be happy reading for everyone, but probably essential reading. Tim Disney, co-author of The A.R.C., thank you so much, and keep working on that, post-lie world. We need guys like you.

00:30:55 Tim Disney: Thank you very much. I really appreciate it.