Interview · moment 15 of 29
The Costco Chicken Bake as a Symbol of Decline
from #276 - The Squish | The Tim Dillon Show · #276
4 min
Guest
Tim and Ray riff on Tim skipping class to eat Costco chicken bakes and listen to Wealth of Nations audiobooks, framed as a metaphor for American decline, then Tim recalls his failed attempts at amateur filmmaking.
- Tim had a best friend named Joe Clark who went from Nassau Community College to Cornell, while Tim entered the mortgage industry and felt inferior.
- Tim jokes that Joe is now just a lawyer, and he's evened out the gap between them considerably.
- When asked if he felt inferior for not going to school, Tim says he had an over-inflated sense and would listen to The Wealth of Nations audiobook while cutting class at Costco.
- The guest describes Tim's Costco situation as a character that sums up the decline of the American empire: listening to economic theory while not feeding a family, interested in how systems work but not applying the knowledge.
- Tim admits he made failed feature-length films and turned down making short movies because he thought he was too good for them, maxing credit cards instead on projects that couldn't succeed logistically.
- Tim identifies his pattern of having grandiose ideas instead of putting in work and learning over time—reading The Wealth of Nations rather than attending economics class.
Cornell UniversityJoe ClarkUniversity of Austin