Some More News - Office Holiday Party! Our Favorite "Some More News" Episodes Of The Year

Episode Date: December 24, 2021

Hi. SMN writer Katie Goldin (@KatieGoldin) and SMN writer/director Will Gordh (@will_gordh) join Katy and Cody to talk about some notable 2021 episodes of "Some More News." The crew also touches on Elon Musk not knowing how bills or taxes work and why Italy is horny for Jim Carrey's "The Grinch." Support SOME MORE NEWS: http://www.patreon.com/SomeMoreNews We now have a MERCH STORE! Check it out here: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/somemorenews Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/some-more-news/id1364825229 Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqegozpFt9hY2WJ7TDiA?si=5keGjCe5SxejFN1XkQlZ3w&dl_branch=1 Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/even-more-news Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/somemorenews Visit http://athleticgreens.com/morenews to take control of your health and give AG1 a try. Head to http://Policygenius.com to get your free home & auto insurance quotes and see how much you could save. That's http://Policygenius.com. If you go to http://GETQUIP.com/MORENEWS, RIGHT NOW, you'll get your first refill FREE. Visit my exclusive link http://ExpressVPN.com/somenews and you can get an extra 3 months FREE on a one-year package. Follow us on social media! Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomeMoreNews Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SomeMoreNews/ Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SomeMoreNews/TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@somemorenews    Support the show!: http://patreon.com.com/somemorenewsSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Hello and welcome back to even more news the Christmas holiday office party the first and only even more news Christmas holiday office party I am your Christmas holiday office party host Katie Stoll and also you Cody you're You're here. Christmas party. Yeah, you're also a host. Cody, hi. You don't know our slogan, Cody? Our classic slogan? First and Cody only.

Hi. Guys. That's the one. As I've intimated. Yep, here's the voice of someone else. Joining us today are our friends and coworkers and colleagues, all of the above, Will Gord and Katie Golden. And today, well, hello.

Hello. Yeah. Hi. Hello. Thanks for joining us. Today, we're going to have a reflective celebratory-ish episode where we go over the past year of content and we talk about some of our favorite episodes from some more news.

But before we do that, gotta call out the holiday. Oh, we're doing it? Merry Christmas Eve, you fucks. Oh, shit. Merry Christmas Eve. Oh, piss. Oh, fuck.

I just pluralized Christmas Eve. Christmas Eve? Pluralized Christmas Eves. Christmas Eves? Plural? Christmas is Eve, I think is how you say it. Yeah, Christmas is Eve. Like Attorney's General. It's also National Eggnog Day, whatever. It's Christmas Eve.

Yeah, who's an eggnog fan on this podcast? Do they drink eggnog in Italy no it's a civilized country yeah I often feel like I like eggnog right and then I have some and I like can't get past two sips and then I'm like I guess

I don't like eggnog because I can't drink it so is it it's got eggs in it I think I don't like eggnog because I can't drink it. So it's got eggs in it, I think. I don't like it. But also, I've never tried it. I've never tried it. It sounds disgusting. You know what the problem is, I think, with it?

Not enough chunks. Not enough chunks. Oh, you want more chunks of egg? More chunks. So, Cody, you just smell it and know that you don't like it by the smell. Yeah. Is that it? Knowing what it is and having been around it.

It's like, eh, it's not my thing. Is it chunky? No. No, it's thick. It's thick. Viscous. It seems like I'd rather have a milkshake, you know? Yeah.

It's a viscous, figgy concoction. It's also known as a milk punch. Yeah. I want a milkshake. Not It's also known as a milk punch. Yeah. I want a milkshake. I did. Milk punch. It kind of slithers down the throat festively. That sounds awful.

Sounds like something you'd... That's like how Santa hazes people or something. It's a little bit of love from Santa. I mean, if eggnog was so good, I feel like it would exist all year, right? it's a little chug the nog chug the nog from santa i mean if you're naughty or nice i feel like it would exist all year right but it only comes well push back pumpkin spice lattes and stuff like that that's not year-round arguments that should be you don't like those i don't drink them but i like pumpkin flavor thing it's manufactured scarcity you know oh yeah that's true

well yeah you can get way to bring it home all year round they just don't want you to I mean I certainly have like pumpkin pie spice year round in my cupboard it's like the McQuid and like what's my thinking like I could step out of the box I could take the initiative to pumpkin

spice my life up throughout the year but I don't what's that about Katie before you criticize maybe you should reflect Katie myself not you Katie oh this is my internal monologue I'm just gonna call you golden

I was just beating myself up you're fine I'm really confused now I don't know who I am It's always confusing there are two Katie's And I don't get it Let's just solve this right now I'll go buy something else Well you could go buy Catherine

And I could go buy Kathleen I could go buy something fun like Sippy Belphany Sippy? Belphany I like that. Belfany, that's going to be... Okay.

Jamsldorf. Jemnica. Jemnica. You can pick any name you want. Yes, you're right. Harry. Harry. Voresica.

Sounds good. Harry Potter. You can go by Harry Potter. Harry Potter. Skywalker. Did we land on Harry Potter for Katie? I'll go by Jimnica. Katie, just respond to any of them or none of them if you want.

Just respond to any name. Any name. Yeah. Okay. I'll do that. If I'm like, hey, Cody. Hey, Cody. Hey, that's...

Yeah, that's me. Okay. Thank you. All right. I think we're really dialing up the entertainment for our listeners on Christmas Eve today. This is going well. Yeah, it's going great. Welcome to the entertainment hour with the stars of the entertainment hour.

The speakers of the podcast. The speakers of the podcast. Gemnika. Bethany. Luke Skywalker. Harry Potter. Harry Potter. Eggnog.

The stars are out tonight. We're doing great. What are we talking about today? What's up? I want to. I'm telling you. I want us to just have a nice convo. Catch up. No.

We're going to talk about our favorite episodes of the year. Or you guys are. I'm going to facilitate this conversation because all three of you are writers and contribute a great deal to the show. I have to mention the fact that we wish our head writer, Dave Bell, was here, but he is traveling today

and he works hard. So I'm not going to begrudge him not being here for the holiday office party. Drink too much. Leave him be. But, you know, from this perspective as writers and looking at the show and there's a little bit of reflection, if you can handle it. Will, let's start with you. Okay, okay. What's one of your favorite episodes

from the past year of Some More News? Well, I was thinking one of the favorite things- Or the ones that you've written, yeah. Right, yeah. I was thinking of the episode called The Racist History of Austerity Politics. And specifically, there's a sketch in there starring you and my brother,

Daniel Vincent Gord, where it sort of basically shows the power imbalance between workers and laborers. And that was an interesting episode because I went into writing it with that thinking that I was going to have a certain thesis that ended up being wrong and i was exploring like in writing it i was like exploring why that thesis was wrong um because basically i was like i know as soon as biden's elected the republicans are going to be talking about the budget deficit all the time they're going to be

like they they trump did 7.8 trillion or whatever in um in the debt was raised while he was president and as soon as biden gets in there they're going to be talking about the budget deficit again but instead they were talking about like dr seussuss and Mr. Potato Head and all that cancel culture nonsense is critical race theory and all that stuff. And so I was like, okay, what's going on here? And so then that sort of ended up digging into that. that and i think that in a lot of ways that sketch that shows the power imbalance of bosses versus labor is sort of like kind of the thesis in a lot of ways to the episode and it's been interesting to see what's happened to look at the news events and the discussions over the build back better or um the infrastructure bill through the lens of like the political power trying to

maintain insecurity in workers so that that job interview is able to continue going forward, you know? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's a lot to respond to in that. I just want to point out something. You mentioned like the thesis of it being kind of encapsulated in the sketch. That's one thing that I've enjoyed over the past year is our expansion into playing with that and using it different ways, different tools to make the point. Obviously, we'll talk about Warmbo at some point today, but he's another example of that, of how you can, because it's all dark. It's a really hard, it's really hard to unpack everything

and keep it entertaining. So what are the different ways that we can approach telling that same story? Yeah, unfortunately, I think that sketch turned out to be even darker than anticipated. Like I've heard people say like, that's actually literally what I've experienced trying to find a job, you know?

Yeah. Katie really sold a fearing for, I was about to say, I'll give you a peek behind the curtain of that day. I was going through a bad breakup. I felt very easily access. It felt very easy for me to access access my emotions use it use it i was like as i was before doing that i was like doing this little hyperventilating thing

and i'm like this feels familiar is that funny or not come here ben hop up the dog yeah but that's yeah mean, your pain definitely showed through. But I was thinking in context of some of the news today or recently, Joe Biden's planning on reinstating people having to pay back their student loans. And you can't help but feel like the motivation is okay like people are getting a little too comfortable we need to like make everyone a little bit more desperate so employers have leverage over them to force everyone back into the labor market you know what i mean even i mean i almost think that like i feel like the

student loans thing is that there is just a principle they have that is we can't just let people off the hook of crippling debt like there is there is a i think it comes from a dogma of like wait we can't just like kids off the hook from crippling debt that will follow them and haunt them for the rest of their lives that's that's not our that's not our how will they ever learn yeah it always turns into just like well that was the choice they made they decided to do that yeah yeah there's definitely a morality that's baked into that philosophy. But I think that it obscures, like, there's also a function of austerity, which is if there's a moral idea to austerity, but there's also the function of it, which is, like, keeping people...

Because they're happy to forgive banks you know what i mean there's there's other things that they don't um moralize when they're bailing you know out uh the the bosses but i think there's a function of like we got to keep people insecure enough because if they have like if you have a place to live if you have health care if you have all this other stuff and you're not relying on a job to live then you're going to have more leverage in a job interview you know i mean they literally said that on fox news during the whole debate over should we give people money during a pandemic when they can't work uh where they had a guy on who talks about how like oh i know a military guy who trained

military dogs who's like didn't feed the dogs dinner or something or breakfast because a hungry dog is an obedient dog which a probably fake b dog abuse just like admitting to animal abuse and c comparing humans to dogs and then also being cruel to the dogs that you're comparing the humans to i don't know it's fun festive holiday episode obedience obedience yeah and then of course they rely they you know if you're in terms of the way that the racism embedded in austerity politics works in this society, it's like, you know, if you've got laborers mad at each other and fighting over scraps to use the dog, go back to the dog analogy, they're not going to look up to see who's really oppressing everyone across the board. The Grinch. That person?

The Grinch. They're not going to look up and see that it's actually the Grinch. Specifically, Jim Carrey's the Grinch. Oh, we all love that one. Very impressive. Did you guys know? Sorry, this is slightly off topic, but it is Christmas. In Italy,

Jim Carrey's The Grinch is a classic and their most favorite Christmas movie. Really? Interesting. Yeah. That's barely on the radar here. What do they think about Elf? I don't believe that.

He's very animated. Have they not seen Elf? It's a fun little... No, Elf doesn't... No, it's the Grinch. Il Grinch. Wow. And he's like painted everywhere.

They love it. Really? Yeah, no, I'm saying this is not a bit... How else is Christmas different in Italy? That's a good question. They put up a lot of streetlights that are really weird and interesting, at least here where I am. They have these neon ones that are two people kissing

or brain melding or something. Yeah, it's- Brain melding. Festive. Yeah, a lot of more artistic a lot of there's more intimacy involved in during public intimacy yeah they just public this is about public fucking yeah no they just straight up show like mary and joseph just tongue kissing uh you know like it's uh you're like i think i know how that baby showed the actual birth uh yeah is there like a not safe for work warning yeah yeah i mean it's a it's a you know it's a much

more sexually well no that's not true but it's a much less um puritanical culture that's actually probably also not true it's very catholic here oh they they're religious there okay good to know i mean debatable i should probably shouldn't get into yeah i don't know if the episode's about the the religious makeup of italy but the grinch is very popular that is their public horniness and their uh faith that's what we're talking about now. Both true, yeah. Publicly horny for the Grinch. Oh boy, let me tell ya, it is rough this season. A whole

lot going on. Waiting in line for hours at a time. Dealing with crowds. All to sit through the new Spider-Man. Just to get a glimpse of Willem Dafoe. Can't get enough of that Dafoe. It's hard to keep up with all the latest Willem Dafoe. Can't get enough of that Dafoe. It's hard to keep up with all the latest Willem Dafoe news and also maintain a balanced diet. Which is why I use AG1 by Athletic Greens, a health and wellness company that makes daily nutrition real simple.

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and you can get free life insurance quotes so you can leave your own wombo a little peace of mind. That's PolicyGenius.com with your keyboard and mouse, and your wombo can watch you get older and older and older and older and older. Yay. And older and older. Yay. So Katie, Jancica Potter, Jessica, whatever the names are. This feels like a good time for us to pivot to you.

For you to talk about some of your favorite episodes or favorite episode or etc. Yeah. yeah i mean i could start with uh one of the favorite ones that i wrote because i love to feed my enormous ego but um well i think it's interesting to hear about the process and to hear about the writing or something you know yeah i well the process is I buy about 24 candles and surround myself with it and just set the mood. Same here. That Wint tweet of like, we used all the budget on candles. Oh, no. That's probably not the tweet. But yeah, no, the episode is how the rich people keep screwing up global health. And I don't know if it's my favorite one that I've written or was my favorite one too right because it was very depressing.

But I think I'm smug about it in a very grim way because I think all the predictions that we made during that came true which it's like depressing remind remind let's we should do a little quick reminder log line of what we what we say in each episode like yeah sure yeah so it was basically about how, you know, we should have released the vaccine patent and recipe so that they could mass produce vaccines in other countries to get people vaccinated, because if not, we were rolling the dice with maybe a new variant, which I think this was before Delta. So there weren't dangerous variants on the scene yet. Perhaps Delta was emerging at that point,

but yeah, it is incredibly frustrating. Yeah, I think it was before, but yeah. Yeah, it was, and other things like just not paying people to stay home and kind of what we were talking about earlier of, well, we can't pay people to stay home. We can't let people live and be alive because then they don't want to go to

work, which, you know, I don't know that that doesn't make too much sense, but that's what was happening. And yeah, I think the main thing was, I think at the time, a lot of people were defending Bill Gates for not wanting to make the vaccine, quote unquote, open source, because his flimsy excuse of the time was like, well, if we just let other countries make it, they'll do a bad job and maybe turn a bunch of people into mutants when you inject them with the vaccine, and that's bad. Like pretending like India and China and, you know,

these other countries in Africa don't have, like, China and, you know, these other countries in Africa don't have like, sorry, countries in Africa don't have good pharmaceutical companies that can produce a vaccine is very, you know, very sort of Western chauvinist behavior. I feel like they would just fill it with sand. I think that feels right. Yeah, well, you know, you you never know i don't know but you know so so it was this idea of well we can't trust these quote-unquote non-like first world countries which you know i

mean china and india have a ton of medical technology and pharmaceutical companies and it's fine uh or like we can't trust countries in Africa to produce their own vaccine. Very racist, very Eurocentric. And he convinced the Oxford because Oxford had developed AstraZeneca and was willing to release the vaccine, make it release the patent and also, I think, release the formula for it. And Bill Gates's, Bill and Melinda Gates, which I guess, now that they're divorced, do they have to get a new name for their foundation? Anyways, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation was like, you know, stepped in and was like, no, no, no, don't do that. Don't release it. We'll pay

you. Or rather, we'll withhold the funding we're going to do if you do that. And, you know, so they were like, well, you know, we need funding for medicine. So I guess we don't release it. And then finally, like Bill Gates, I think after Delta, I don't know if I've got this timeline exactly right, but after the Delta variant, all these things like, oh, yeah, I guess maybe we should release vaccine. That's fine. And Joe Biden was like, yeah, let's do it. And yeah, but Joe Biden didn't do it until after Omicron, like Thanksgiving Day. He said, yeah, there's no reason why the we should be why this shouldn't be open source

or whatever. It's like, yeah, you fuck. That's what we've been saying for the last year, man. Right. He loves doing that as the president. It makes me so angry. It's just Uncle Joe making a friendly suggestion, okay? Somebody ought to do something about that.

Yeah, somebody ought to do something about that. You're the president, man. Yeah, somebody ought to do something about that is like, you're the president, man. Yeah, you you're the one that should be doing something about that. Somebody do something. Yeah. I mean, that's that's a famous Trump Trump thing. Like somebody do something. It's like you're the president.

But yeah, I mean, it is. It's one of those things where I mean, I'm glad our instincts were correct on that one, right? Like, yay. Like, hey, we kind of correctly assessed the situation. But, uh-oh, whoops, boo. We correctly assessed the situation because our assessment was very depressing and, you know, bad. So it's bad when bad things happen. But, hey, I'm glad that we know about them and talk about yeah you've got your finger on the pulse of the bummer like that we're all experiencing

i'd love to be wrong about some of this stuff but oh me too god i would love to be wrong i'd enjoy being wrong much more than i enjoy being right but i might as well enjoy a little bit being right yeah make any sense my bad person makes perfect sense no well it's also such it's such a strange thing like obviously like if you let if you don't help other countries deal with the virus it's going to have more of an opportunity to mutate and eventually that mutated virus is going to come back to us and and there's one you shouldn't even be worried necessarily that it's gonna how it's going to affect us you should consider the rest of the world just by its own virtues yeah um but even it's like the even the for selfish reasons if you're considering life and health of americans

you would want to do that but apparently that's not as important as profits yeah and i think this was a point we emphasized in the episode is like clearly you should care about giving the vaccines to people in other countries because, you know, I think we're not monsters and we don't want people to die. And I think most of our viewers share that ideal. But then it's on top of that, refusing to do it, even though many, many, many epidemiologists and health professionals and, you know, researchers predicted that this would come and bite everyone in the butt. So, again, like we weren't, you know, I'm kind of being tongue in cheek about being smug about being right, because, of course, it wasn't like our great epidemiological research that, you know, we did in the episode. It's based on what scientists

were saying. Everyone should have known this, right? It was based on my experiments in research and science. Cody's lab. Yeah, you're welcome. For my science. Now I want to do that

and then have Cody's lab just be disgusting like rotten fruit like a beaker full of mucus how else are you going to do science if you don't take chances you'd still be thinking I mean back in the day they used to

just infect themselves with diseases to test out inoculations it was great and exciting. Yeah, you're welcome. That's when people still had balls, you know? Good old days when men were men and they gave themselves smallpox. I think that's literally what they do in the movie. What's that?

I think it happens in World War Z, but Contagion, she's like, I'm going to be close to my dad who has the disease and then give myself the vaccine and that's how we're going to test it. And that's how science works, folks.

Yeah, sample size of one. Very disappointed in Contagion. Now. I was a fan before, but not anymore uh katie what's up is it how about you looking back over this year what's the what's episode stands out to you i'm wondering i'm curious because your perspective will be different because you perform all of them you've got your hands in all of the writing you know i mean we might as well talk about process a little bit at this point with our kind of output

you know we have writers meetings and cody works with the writers and you know we'll get a draft and then you know does a pass and does stuff so he's involved with all of it you know every script in a way yeah um i mean i'm i'm proud of every episode we've done um because we have such an amazing team um and uh we couldn't make the show without everybody and uh so i could i mean i could pick any of these and talk about them um and just the sort of like evolution of the show and how it's expanded. And like I'm looking at the thumbnails now of the past year and like, I don't know, even just like, you know, from a show that was mostly just a guy yelling at the camera for 30 to 40 minutes about whatever. I'm strolling through.'m like oh here we i got some funny glasses on oh there's a character in that thumbnail oh there's like oh i'm chugging

a beer because everybody loves making me chug things these days um remember remember when i made you what was it gatorade kool-Aid yeah it was Gatorade well that was I mean that was I feel like that was the beginning of it because you didn't make me do it I chose to Cody decided and then that

just everybody went with you you gave permission for it to be a thing by making it a thing yeah exactly I mean you definitely had like, drink some Gatorade here, but you didn't say chug an entire bottle of Gatorade. Right, right. It was so funny.

You started drinking it and then you just kept going and kept going. It was amazing. You can tell I think the moment was about to happen. Eggs and batteries. Oh, I ate that. It's more about seeing what you're physically capable of does help us as writers know what we can include in the script. So seeing that you can shotgun a Gatorade,

seeing how many raw eggs you can eat at one time, it gives us sort of direction. The episode I'm writing right now is just a 40-minute-long tracking shot of you running six miles. But there's landmarks in it. You have to hit all the landmarks. Uh-oh, Cody. Oh, yeah, did I not mention that?

I'm cool with that. That sounds like a challenge that will improve my life by making me. But you have to eat a new thing at each mile marker. I'll be there. I'll drive from my car to the new spot. Is it AG1 Athletic Greens? Just a couple of them.

You'd have to chug it real fast. I can do that. I did for the most recent episode. I chugged a whole glass of that. I can't think of every single ad. No, they don't. I know what I do to myself. I certainly don't.

I just take one big sip. It's fine. But you're right. Yeah. We've added more characters. We've added more props and costumes and production elements to the show over time. I think,

because I think, and this doesn't technically count. It doesn't count for this year technically but like the some more news movie we did uh which was around this time last year i guess it was like maybe a month a month ahead of the month we're in now uh which would be november the month now being December. So we did that movie, and in it, you know, just by the very nature of it, it was like, okay, we have these different versions of Cody. We have, like, all these characters, and they represent these certain viewpoints,

and we needed a puppet for the puppet Cody, and Luke Skywalker here made a really great puppet for us to use. That's what I told them, but it actually just showed up to my apartment one day unexplained. And I put it in the corner and then when I would turn around and turn back, it would have moved a little bit. Mouth wide open staring at you.

Yeah. Mouth wide open. Yeah. He does that. No, it is a nice puppet. I will admit that. I do like how its mouth. Yeah, its mouth is kind of spring loaded.

So at rest, its mouth is wide open. Oh, yeah. No, he's not in this room right now uh for reasons um but it is very disturbing every time walking in and seeing it is just mouth agape eyes that do not close um but that kind of stuff and being able to sort of introduce that and then um have that sort of playground grow and evolve has been very, very fun. I know there are some viewers. We're playing in the space.

Yeah. I know there are some viewers and listeners who actually think, who actually don't like it at all and want just like, no, stop with the bits, stop with the stuff, just like give me the information, which I totally understand and appreciate, but no. We have to have fun doing this, too, you know? Yeah, we've been doing this a long time,

and if you don't like it, you can go back and watch the early videos over and over. And we still do ones that aren't that way. We do ones that aren't, and you're not going to not get all the relevant information in the other part. But you should have like a warning. What I think is fun is that we come from a sketch comedy background and acting and all this stuff. And that's what we started off doing.

And there's this cool thing, awful thing, but cool thing that's happened in our careers where, you know, this is the trajectory we are on, but that doesn't mean that our past is in that play here. And not that we don't want to continue to develop the show and find new ideas. And it's really fun to play with the format and to play with characters. It's fun to think about. Also, I know I joke about this being the first and only news podcast,

but it's not. It's not. Oh, shit. um i don't think that most of them don't quit i thought it was so uh that's awkward just you'll never hear me say that again but um and so there's also an element of differentiation keeping it fresh and seeing what we come up with, you know? Yeah. And I like, I just like come up with some cool ideas, spin off show from our excursions in this. We never know.

I'm not promising. Wormbo's world. My, I'm going to say no, but who knows? But, but yeah, I mean,

I don't know. I also, I just, I like being able to have these sort of, whether it's the sketch we talked about earlier from Will's episode or the warm bow of it all or whatever, being able to sort of use these characters as conduits of certain viewpoints and perspectives in order to more thoughtfully, in some cases, less thoughtfully, but ideally more thoughtfully explore the topics that we're talking about. Because, you know, Wormbo doesn't just show up just because I have fun doing the voice. He shows up when the topic sort of asks for him to show up and give another perspective that

we can respond to um 2022 Cody I guess is what we would call him now he's just always one year in the future that guy we're not like oh we gotta get him in here it's like well no this episode is about this therefore we should probably have him show up and say X or Y. So it's sort of like a nice little toolkit to explore these topics. I was just going to say, Wormbo was born out of a deep frustration of the kind of everything is going back to normal. It's not worry about stuff, tuning things out. And I think it is, you know, as childish as people see a puppet, which personally, I think the art of puppetry is goes far back into antiquity and is a mature and interesting

noble profession. I think that it reflects sort of what we're trying to get across of this view of this kind of Sesame Street-esque, although Sesame Street is great, but the view of like, hey, everything's fine, everything's going back to normal, everything's friendly and good, and not necessarily wanting to hear like, hey, but Biden's making students pay loans again

and that's maybe not good. He lied and not wanting to hear about like, no, no, no, he didn't lie. He, you know, like with the whole giving the relief checks of no, he didn't lie. It's addition. He's adding and then subtracting what he said would be on the checks.

So, you know, that kind of viewpoint. But to the real Katie, what? Oh, well, just to add to that. Also, like with the student loan stuff or things, I see a lot of like, oh, well, you know, like a lot of the excuse making like all politicians sort of like make promises and then break them are like, yeah. politicians sort of like make promises and then break them are like yeah it's sort of the excuse making and the aspect of him being warm boat being a puppet he's saying the things that they want him to say he's he's helping them he is the puppet he is saying the things through his him as a vessel for uh you know these uh these other other folks um who have actual power over him the puppet anyway hey listen up you news moms it's katie you know there sure are a lot of big tech companies out there trying to steal your blood some days it seems like all anyone wants is my DNA. But that's Katie's blood,

and they can't have it. And so that's why I use ExpressVPN. What ExpressVPN does is it hides your IP address so that your activity is harder to track and sell to advertisers. That way, big tech can't get any of your blood unless you sell it to them fair and square. Incognito mode is for chumps who want their blood stolen. ExpressVPN encrypts 100% of your network data to protect you from eavesdroppers or DNA pests. All you gotta do is visit expressvpn.com slash some news. That's E-X-P-R-E-S-S-V-P-N dot com slash some news to get three extra months free with my exclusive link. Go to ExpressVPN.com slash some news right now to learn more. Protect your precious life goo today. Hey, listen to Cody.

Unless you're Wormbo, you probably have teeth, right? That's not controversial to say. There's a lot of teeth going around. And chances are you have some of them and you need to clean them. You need to get those teeth good and clean so you can bite things like food and maybe other stuff too, oo-ee.

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Let's talk about some episodes. I, so I, like you said, like I do try to add stuff to all the scripts and, you know, I'm involved in sort of the inception and that process. But in terms of actual episodes where I have sat down and written the full episode, it has been a while. I think the only one in recent memory is about Jeff Bezos going to space because fuck that guy. But so but there are a lot of episodes I think we can talk about just in sort of their relevancy now compared to when they came out.

Like Katie Golden talked about the AstraZeneca thing and how that's still a relevant topic. Or yeah, so Elon Musk, we did an episode about him earlier this year. I believe it's called Elonon musk is not your friend um speaking of the deficit will you mentioned hours ago deficit um uh he was interviewed uh oh yeah i saw him uh magazine uh person of the year situation and i think it's very funny and sort of emblematic of his whole deal because he was asked point blank like let's say president biden calls you up and like it's like what do you what can you get out of this bill what would you like in this bill what would help you or your vision or whatever um and his response was very interesting because it started out him saying,

well, we don't, we at Tesla really don't think about that. We haven't really thought about the bill. And you can sort of see him wavering because I think that he didn't necessarily know. A car company hasn't thought about an infrastructure bill. Yeah. Right. Exactly.

Considering how much government. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, how much, yeah yeah how he got and all this kind of stuff um but he was very much floundering sort of like uh you know i really thought about it um and it's so funny because after his sort of like meandering ramble the interviewer is like really surprised he's like oh okay me amble because she sorry because yes after his me amble um because the question wasn't necessarily like what in this bill do you like what do you not like um it was what would you want in a bill like what like what could help um and he had no answer um and then he just took the opportunity to say the deficit's really high and we shouldn't do the bill at all. His advice was like, I would just say don't do the bill.

Just like we shouldn't have anything. And then he spent like three minutes talking about the deficit. And he also compared the government to a business as well. Yes. He said if this was a business, we'd be at a $3 trillion loss. Like, well, it's not a business. That's kind of the point, right, Elon? So it's sort of this very like...

Oh, sorry, that reminds me of, I think, another episode we want to talk about today, the racist history of austerity in politics. And I really love the part of that where you guys do the like, let's compare it to household. And then it's like the point of, well, if this was a household, you would be spending most of your budget on like a trillion, multi trillion dollar security system. And there would be another house that's like a mansion where one of your children lives and then the other child lives in the basement and just this idea that you can compare a country to like a household to think about something like a deficit or a business is

stupid it's a child it's a childish baby kind of like view of something like a country's economy. And it makes sense that Elon would make that comparison because he has a sort of child's view of the world where it's like, well, OK, Earth looks pretty bad. So can I go and be CEO of Mars? And that's that's who he is. Right. Well, yeah. Right. Because he views it.

Like, I'm curious what he would say. He reminds me of Zephod Beeplebrox. I haven't said this before. Like, that's how I picture that character. Anyway, go ahead. I could see that. I could see Sam. Just, like, bumbling around, being an idiot.

And everybody around him is like hailed as like some genius, but really doesn't know what's up. And like everyone kind of rolls their eyes at him and is like, well, actually this. And like, are you going to come up with an answer? And he's like, I don't know. I'm maybe, you know, like. Well, that's the thing. Because during that interview that like that was that was the funny thing to me. Because like you, he would answer and then you could tell the interview was like, okay. And then he went on the deficit.

I'm very curious what he would say to like, okay, so if, yeah, if it was a business, you'd have this loss. In the business analogy, who are the citizens of the country to you? Right, the analogy makes no sense. Is it shareholders? Is it customers? Is it employees? What's the one-to-one here? And there is none.

And a business can't print their own money unless it's, I guess, Kohl's cash. That's the thing right also hasn't tesla been in non-profitable company for most of its existence yeah it's all just sort of yeah earning stuff um but there's a lot of like businesses that have a deficit that are all run on sort of speculative uh investment yeah and he and he knows why he does his tweets um but the uh the second interesting thing about that interview i thought was that he he so he goes on to be like well you just shouldn't have the bill not like i wish the bill was like this or like i want this he was just like don't do it. And he called out like, you know, we don't need, you know, we don't need these subsidies for electric vehicles.

Like we don't like Tesla doesn't need these subsidies for electric vehicles or like these tax credits for people. Because also he says like, you know, that goes to the company. It's like, well, the tax credit is for people to be able to afford. Right. Um, it's not like his framing was weird of like, well, it's not for you really.

It's for people who want to buy them. Also. So people can charge their cars around the country. so that's the other thing. His whole, uh, he, his other point was like,

don't, we don't need like, why do we need to fund like charging stations across the nation? We don't do that for gas stations. Pretty sure we did actually do that in the past. We have gas stations across the nation. Well, right.

Well, right. Also, we have them already. But also, but the real point of it is, which nobody has brought up to him, right. Also, we have them already. But also, but the but the the real point of it is which nobody has brought up to him to his face. He doesn't like these subsidies or the tax credits for electric vehicles because they go more. You get a higher tax credit specifically if the car is union made in a factory that is union there it is which is also more competition because as you guys point out in the elon is not your friend episode elon musk did not invent the electric car uh nowhere even close a lot of other companies came up with the electric car before him and since

him and he just invented sort of a well he didn't do it uh he i mean watch the episode he bought the company that right did this but like like the tesla company it's like a sort of electric sports car. Exactly. That is pretty expensive. It's not affordable for most people. So most people cannot get a Tesla, which you want most people to have an electric car. So he seems to object to these subsidies because he's like, well, it's not, doesn't help us. Well, Tesla just underscores that he doesn't care about saving the planet. Like everyone says like, yeah,

but think about all the good things he's doing for the world. What are you talking about? Exactly. He didn't invent electric cars or other electric cars. And in fact, he does a lot to undermine the proliferation of electric vehicles. Yes. Because he wants to be Duke of Mars. I think he wants, I remember, I'm not, I don't remember if this was in the episode or if this was in another like profile of Elon.

But his dream of going to Mars, I think predated him buying Tesla. Like, I think this has been a lifelong kind of thing. Yeah, it's a little boyhood thing. I want to go to Mars in a spaceship. And like, yeah, everybody wants to go on a spaceship. But just one last thing about this. I know. Because I think it just really speaks to his whole game, sort of.

Because in addition to the weird misrepresentation of tax credits and like why he doesn't like them, weird misrepresentation of tax credits and like why he doesn't like them. He also is against this spending money on infrastructure and having charging stations because he has charging stations.

Tesla has them. And Tesla is starting to allow non-Teslas to use them. He wants us to use his. That's why. It's very transparent. This Time Person of the Year article came out and I haven't read the whole thing because it was just frustrating and who cares ultimately. that are just like not true and don't really represent like what actually happened um like that where it's like they don't like there's no digging of like why would he say that oh it's

obviously because of this even his um he sold that stock um and in the article about him that says he's the person of the year's like yeah and it's all started with this twitter poll uh that he he said he would abide by no he was going to do it anyway he had to and if he was going to sell it he had to the deadline was up for him he had to do it so he posted the poll so we could say that he's abiding by the poll even stuff like that is just very like it's it just seems like his PR people wrote the article for them. It's very embarrassing job by them. Even like what this passage he drives a car he created that uses no gas and barely needs a driver. First of all, barely needs a driver.

Excuse me. Definitely needs a driver. He didn't create the car. Just like stuff like that. Of the guy. Have you seen that? create the car. There's that viral video of the guy. Have you seen that? The viral video of the guy

testing out the self-driving feature and it just keeps trying to go into the train tracks and the bus lane and hit pedestrians. It's just like this sort of like... Yeah.

He also didn't invent it. A little concerned about that. He can just present some carefully curated version of himself to the world, to the media, and that the idea that like a magazine like Time, which I guess has been pretty bad for a while, would just uncritically- But like that's the thing about him. It's not his real success yeah his real success and i think his real like uh genius uh is pr based he's created

this image of himself and his accomplishments that people sort of eat up um and that's that's the effective part even like with tesla like it was about an image thing like oh look the fucking tesla's electric cars are cool and like good on him for doing that one last thing we don't we should stop talking about the person of the year um he's got enough attention uh he gets attention every day um like when elizabeth warren was like billionaires should pay their fair share maybe the person of the year should pay his taxes and he was like uh sorry senator karen you're projecting and he shared an article about her like native american lie was like that's not the same thing man what

are you talking about anyway uh remember in march 2020 when he tweeted that by april 2020 there would be no new coronavirus cases in the united states and how fucking wrong that is, like how grotesquely wrong that was. And nobody has ever like brought it up to him to his face. It's ridiculous. I trust him to have humans on Mars. Yeah. Yeah. You got it, buddy.

You can do it. I believe in you. Just because he wanted his workers back in his factory, right? I'll say that. Yes, that is exactly why. It's always, there's always another reason for what he says. Under no circumstances do we expect Elon Musk to, nobody's talking about, I mean, about anything, but especially an infectious disease, you know, like a virus.

But the problem is, is that everybody believes his talking point, that he is smart, that he is creative, that he is a revolutionary, he's a genius. You know, there's this hero worship cult of Elon Musk, which I think is at the crux of everything

that's so frustrating, where you're like, he's not though. He's made billions of dollars exploiting people. He didn't invent something wonderful. He's not saving the world. And he certainly doesn't know shit about viruses or Mars. Apparently, yeah.

He's not a doctor, but you don't need to be a doctor to know to shut up. So, you know. But I do want to move on to other topics. The brilliant genius of what if we have like tunnels where everybody has to drive a Tesla in like a really small one lane tunnel just a death tunnel

if you get into a fender bender you both just like you cannot move and an ambulance can't get in yeah it's genius he just doesn't like sticky people he thinks serial killers are on the train and ambulance can't get in. Yeah, it's a genius. He just doesn't like sticky people. He thinks serial killers are on the train.

That's why he doesn't want to ride them. But the important thing is, before we go, I wanted to talk briefly about critical race theory in Will's episode about critical race theory, which is such a good episode. It is such a good episode. And so in-depth and exactly the right time and all correct explaining what it is

and why people are being dishonest about it i bring this up specifically because today uh our good friend ron desantis governor of florida oh my god uh uh announced a bill called the stop woke act uh that um is uh basically it's kind of framed like the uh a little bit like the texas abortion bill where uh basically just you can sue schools uh for teaching crt what does that mean you ask exactly whatever that means what that means um the other uh yesterday uh dan crenshaw who loves fucking tweeting about wokeness um he tweeted this thing about um this week in woke news and he the claim was denver public schools implementing racially segregated playground times to promote anti-racism.

So what do you think that means? If you read that phrase, you probably you answer. Yeah, you would think that they put kids of different races in different areas and they're not allowed to play together. During recess, right? It sounds like a playground. Yeah, that's what it sounds like he's saying. Well, that is what he's saying. playground like yeah that's what it sounds like he's saying well that is what he's saying uh the truth is that yeah it was in response to uh the school explained this black families talked about how the only times they really uh interact with each other and meet each other is drop off and

pick up during the school day and so wouldn't it be nice to have some sort of like event or something during that time where we can meet each other and talk about like issues with the school and all these sort of things everybody is welcome um it is not during recess it's not for it's not like they don't separate the kids it's about it's a thing that parents requested for after school so they can meet together. And so the school is honoring the parents' requests. That is what it is. So wait, is this lies? It's lies.

Did he lie? It sounds like lies. He did lie. By the way, speaking of these things, I just saw a new Tennessee law, I believe. And it's there are severe penalties if you teach certain things about our history. One of them is that America in general had slavery more extensively and for a later period of time than other nations. That's literally true. Oklahoma. I'm sorry.

Thank you. It's literally true. Oklahoma. I'm sorry. Thank you. I mean, it's objective truths. There are dates for when, I mean, it wasn't the last country, but it's pretty late in the game. It's late in the game, though. Like, yeah. Yeah. We weren't, like, that's the other thing.

Like, we've, America, like, ended slavery. Yeah. After a lot of other nations did. Um, how, of course we're not, we're not teaching critical race theory, but the bigger problem of course,

is that the things that we are teaching are lies about America. Yeah. Because I mean, I, I, I know this isn't true, but just that whole, the whole idea that it would negatively impact our country or our psyche if we knew somehow. Like, what do you expect? Burden our children with this guilt?

No, man. Tell them the truth. It'll be okay. I'm not saying it's your fault little boy I'm saying how do we be better Citizens little boy Yeah I mean it is This is a bit of a pivot from this

We can come back but in general What we're seeing This is something hopeful Like there's all this bullshit That's happening and we're all Litigating this. And for some maddening reason, I, you know, we have to have these bad faith arguments about the fucking truth.

But and this is a gross generalization. So whatever. But I we're seeing kids raised with more emotional awareness, not just in terms of this stuff, but we're raising kids with more understanding of empathy and like being in connected mental health, you know, and in general, I'm seeing a lot of kids, despite all of this,

becoming good little people. And again, anecdotally. But this is like, you know, Dave, like who knows? Yeah. Just in like five, ten years, if these bills actually like go through and like become like, yeah, this is how it is now. It's just like there's all these like little dangerous things popping up where it's like, so you can't talk about facts at all. And it's just frustrating. So you can't talk about facts at all.

And it's just frustrating. Yeah. Well, and the, this, this history is out there for, for people to learn. They may not learn it in school, but,

um, you know, there, I think their main goal is to make sure that to try and push back on the tide that people are reexamining our legacy of white supremacy, slavery and systemic racism and the impact that it has on people's life outcomes today. And if you teach that history matters,

impacts people's opportunities, then you can't continue to tell the lie that all you have to do is pull yourself up by your bootstraps. And that's what they want to protect because that protects the system of capitalism that they want to maintain. That's at least the thesis. You got to pull yourself up by your bootstraps.

You got to get on your hands and knees and you gotta collect as many one dollar bills in front of a crowd of hockey fans so that you can buy crayons for your students alright that's not a bit if you're listening that actually happened

yeah that literally happened that was great oh and they had to stuff the bills into their shirts so yeah yeah it's an extra an extra degree of humiliation for them and yeah yeah just like you know degrading them as much as you can um but but yeah i think that like it's also with all of these culture war things especially this one it's this like very it's red meat it's this juicy culture war thing where you this one, it's this like, it's red meat. It's this juicy culture war thing

where you can get people whipped up into like, you're talking bad about our America. And, you know, this idea of like, you're indoctrinating our kids to be communists.

And it's, it is a, it serves a dual purpose. It reinforces the cult of patriotism. That is this unquestioning, unflinching, America is the greatest country. And by creating that cult-like appreciation for an imaginary America, you can use that to keep people from thinking about their situation critically, like Will was just saying. If America is unassailable,

then when things happen like an Amazon warehouse collapses and kills a worker they were keeping there because of tornadoes, then you come up with some reason that that would be allowed to happen in America, where it's like, well, maybe Amazon, you know, was just trying to keep them safe in their super safe warehouse that collapsed. And if you have this, if you have something for people to defend and believe in that they cannot question, they, it's easier to convince them of another enemy. It's just, it's, it's cult creation 101. It's how you create a cult. It's how you shut down critical thinking in people and in peepees, I guess. Oh, yeah.

think in a way because i think that patriotism is always somewhat cult-like because it's like well why do you love a country that you just happen you know sperm met egg in that country yay uh but like it is it it's brought it's been brought to a new level i think in more recent post-trump years of just we need to indoctrinate and create this rabid fanatical worship of a fake America so people do not think about what's happening in the real America. Well said. Right. And how we could change things so they're not like that. Yeah. Things need to be A plus, A grade, number one.

Well, guys. USA number one. We are number one. We are USA. We are also just about out of time for this. Oh, there's always time in USA. We're number one for time. Even more new Christmas holiday special because you and I have to record another podcast.

Oh, because number one. Okay. Number one. But we are number one. I love it. I do love it. And I love that we're going to record this and then we're going to be done. Well, we're actually not going to be done, but pretty soon we'll be done.

We're getting ahead for the holidays and we'll get to take a couple weeks off, which is going to be super nice for everybody. You guys should refresh your throats with some nice thick nog. Some nice thick and viscous eggnog. Oh, yeah. It just slithers down your throat. I could coat my throat. Cody, that's good for us in the future when you're doing warm bow.

We'll just get some nog. It's very soothing. It's good for the pipes. it's like oil in your engine i was gonna say uh i was uh i heard i was told uh a lot of like uh very screamy like uh vocalists like rock vocalists and metal singers um they just say potato chips they have like they have like a... Who told us this? I straight up forget who. Was it Dan O'Brien? No, it was like a singer.

Not that Dan can't sing, but like it was like a professional singer. It was like, yeah, I heard this from this person. And like I started eating like some potato chips before shows. And like, and I do it every time now because the oils get, they get like stuck in there. And they like it. And they're delicious. get stuck in there. And they like it.

And they're delicious. Good. Tasty and delicious. Yum, yum, yum. Exactly. Can I just say one thing before we go? Yeah. I just wanted to say that Katie was, or Harry Potter rather, was talking about

that household budget section comparing in the racist history of austerity politics one of the reasons I think you might like that section so much is because a lot of that section came from ideas that you had in our writers meeting and also And also both Dave Bell. Such an egotistical person. No, I was trying to give you a compliment. Like they were really great ideas. And then both Cody and Dave Bell contributed a lot to the critical race theory episode. And I just am proud of the collaboration that we have across the board with all the writers. I do think that's a really cool part of it.

Especially when we get going in the meeting, a writer's meeting, and everybody's kind of contributing good thoughts. It's fun to see the finished product come together with like, oh, yeah. And they did that and they hit it. It's really exciting. Yeah. Especially like, yeah, this recent batch, like the past few months and stuff. Like with the Halloween episode, we were just like, oh, let's do like a Halloween episode months and stuff like with the halloween episode uh we were just like oh we like let's do like a halloween episode it's like a recent news but like with

the theme a hodgepodge but like with the theme of like news that's like scary but not and then uh just all these sort of ideas came flowing in um well and i'll just quickly i do think we need we do need to wrap this up but i'll just shout out this episode that came out earlier this week, which is another good example. Earlier this week, as of this release, Wormbo's Name Day special. And it was a collaborative effort with everybody, you know, pitching different ideas and topics about some good news, positive news. And that was, yeah, but that was also literally written by... Exactly.

Everybody took a section. And I'll say it's the first one that I've helped you host. And we'll see what the reaction to that is online. But it was a lot of fun. It was a lot of fun for us too. Being a woman online, this should be easy. I know.

Don't worry about it. I know. We even have, when I start talking, I'm like, all right, everybody, chill out, relax, whatever the line is. You were talking a great job. Calm down. He'll be back. Well, whatever.

I don't care. We'll see how it gets received. But it was a, it's a perfect example of the collaborative Nature that we're talking about. And that makes this bearable. And fun. And makes what we're doing a community. And I'll just shout out everybody. That listens and supports.

And interacts with us. Because you help inform this. We learn from you. You're a part of this community. And fuck it. We love you very much. I'll just say it. We should also mention how entirely fucked we would be without Dave Bell.

Oh, there's no question. It's like underscores everything we've said up until now. And we would be lost without Dave Bell. Just over and over again. That's his fingertips. Fingertips? Fingerprints? Yeah.

Fingerprints. His fingers are everywhere. His little fingers are over there. His fingers are all over every episode. Not just the ones he writes. Well, thank you guys. Thank you for taking the time to chat with us about this. Thank you for all of your hard work.

Thank you to everybody listening. Like I said. Check out very special episodes coming up soon on YouTube. Oh, we've got lots of special episodes coming up soon. It's real silly. One earlier this week and some biggies coming up soon. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Boy, howdy. Oh, hey. Oh, what? Marley Krampus. Marley Krampus Marley Krampo Krampus for all of us Merry Krampus Krampus

Krassmas Mungagum And Mishkish Bwano Krembles Kwanokrembles Linguini Crumbles. And mucho amore mucho.

That's how we say you love you very much. Much. In. In. Italy. Is it? Italian. Italian.

Italian. Italian. Italian. Oh. Christmas miracle Yeah I think we're still going strong

I don't know what you're talking about I am also going to stop recording