I'm Matt Bellini, founding partner of Puck News, and I'm covering the inside conversation

about money and power in Hollywood.

With my new show The Town, I'm going to take you inside Hollywood, with exclusive

insight on what people in show business are actually talking about.

Multiple times a week, I'll talk to some of the smartest people I know, journalists,

insiders, all of whom can break down the hottest topics and entertainment to tell you what's

really going on.

Listen now.

There's something I've been thinking for a long time that I've wanted to talk about

on this show.

It's the idea that modern culture is becoming more pessimistic, more cynical about both

celebrity and technology, more negative about authority, institutions, and the future.

In short, it's high status these days to hate something.

You see this in politics, obviously, with the rise of so-called negative polarization.

That's the idea that voters today are more likely to identify themselves as being against

their political enemy rather than for some positive agenda.

You see it with other institutions too.

Since the 1970s, trust has plummeted for churches, public schools, unions, banks, businesses,

congress, the presidency, the Supreme Court.

I personally see this a lot in my own profession, the media.

I'm very amused, for example, when polls show that trust has plummeted in the media,

capital T, capital M, the media.

...