The Problem With Jon Stewart - Has America Learned Anything From Its Biggest Disasters? Not Really.

Episode Date: August 25, 2022

Jon talks to Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Sheri Fink, whose book Five Days at Memorial is the basis for the Apple TV+ series of the same name. They discuss why our healthcare system is a...lways ill-equipped for disasters—and whether there’s something else coming our way that we should panic about. Writers Robby Slowik and Maria Randazzo also stop by to talk about the Trump raid, the oddest menu items at Mar-a-Lago, and the scourge of lanternfliesCREDITSHosted by: Jon StewartFeaturing, in order of appearance: Robby Slowik, Maria Randazzo, Sheri FinkExecutive Produced by Jon Stewart, Brinda Adhikari, James Dixon, Chris McShane, and Richard Plepler.Lead Producer: Sophie EricksonProducers: Zach Goldbaum, Caity Gray, and Robby SlowikAssoc. Producer: Andrea BetanzosSound Engineer & Editor: Miguel CarrascalSenior Digital Producer: Frederika MorganDigital Coordinator: Norma HernandezSupervising Producer: Lorrie BaranekHead Writer: Kris AcimovicElements: Kenneth Hull, Daniella PhilipsonTalent: Brittany Mehmedovic, Marjorie McCurry, Lukas Thimm Research: Susan Helvenston, Andy Crystal, and Cassie MurdochTheme Music by: Gary Clark Jr.The Problem with Jon Stewart podcast is an Apple TV+ podcast produced by Busboy Productions.https://apple.co/-JonStewart

Transcript
Discussion (0)
Starting point is 00:00:00 Something on my mind lately has been these crazy lanternflies. Have you guys seen them? Absolutely, they're all over Jersey. By the way, beautiful. They are so pretty, you don't want to kill them, but unfortunately, you have to. Can I tell you something?
Starting point is 00:00:17 Their beauty makes me wanna kill them more. Oh. Because I am jealous. I am, I look at them and I say, how dare you walk this earth with such grace? They're like if a ladybug took ayahuasca. Hey, welcome to our end of summer, problem podcast with me, John Stewart.
Starting point is 00:01:04 We got our writers, Robbie Slogan, Maria Randazzo. Let's see, we have a television show. It's on Apple TV plus. It's, you know, they gave us a new premiere date, I believe, for the second season. October 7th, the show comes back on Apple TV plus. And in a bit, we're gonna be talking to a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Dr. Sherry Fink.
Starting point is 00:01:23 And that is not to suggest, Robbie and Maria, that neither of you are worthy of the Pulitzer Prize in journalism, you are. Oh, thank you. Thank you, yeah, we keep applying. Summer for me is always bittersweet. It's when I have to bring all my classified documents back home from my retreat.
Starting point is 00:01:42 I have obviously a retreat that I live at. Yes. It's a private community. Beautiful. It's inside, it's on a golf course. It's a mini golf course, but it's still a golf course. Okay, this sounds nice. Do either of you possess any classified information
Starting point is 00:02:01 that you would like to disclose right now that you've been holding on to? Yeah, nothing classified, but lots of stuff I've stolen from places I used to work, you know? Plenty of that stuff. Okay, all right. What would you, have you ever had when you left a job, your former employer come to you and say,
Starting point is 00:02:19 hey, fucking give me that back? Wait, yes. Okay, Maria, go. So this is less of a job, more of a, I was in a musical in college. And... First of all, bless your heart. I'd like to know the name of the musical
Starting point is 00:02:36 and the role you played. You know the musical. It's Cinderella, classic Rodgers and Hammerstein. Wow. They kind of blew up the world a little bit. We were all fairy tale characters, so I played Little Miss Muffet. This was like an Avengers.
Starting point is 00:02:52 I'm gonna ask you a question. I want you to answer this as honestly as you possibly can. Sure. Did you steal a Tuffet? Is that what we're dealing with here? I stole a Tuffet. You son of a, son of a bitch. And the Kurds in white.
Starting point is 00:03:06 You know how hard those are to come by? That's what I said. So you joined the play. Yeah. You put on the production. Put on the production, production ends. Okay. The costume designer hits me up and he's like,
Starting point is 00:03:20 hey, you took the cold cream that removed the makeup. How low budget of production are we talking about where the guy is inventorying cold cream? I know. He ran a tight ship. He ran a real tight ship. Did you have to walk of shame it back to the theater department?
Starting point is 00:03:43 I did. Did you come back with cold cream? I was like, here's your jar of ponds. I'm not sure how we got here from classified materials, but I enjoyed that story very much. Anytime. And Robbie, I'm sure you've stolen shit. Ah, nonstop.
Starting point is 00:03:55 One of the last jobs that ended up ending unceremoniously, I was working for you. Oh yeah, in Red Bank. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And you said, you were like, you guys just take the laptops. Just take the fucking laptop. That's right.
Starting point is 00:04:06 Yeah. Everyone was having a bad day and John's like, you know what, just take a laptop. I hate to see sad people. Yes. But getting back to classified information, I find that so mind blowing that the psychology of, I know this is a secret that is crucial to the safety
Starting point is 00:04:29 and security of the United States of America, but it's mine. It's sociopathic. And he keeps referring to everything that way. These are my documents. It's my stuff. It's like, it's the people's stuff. You know it's the people's stuff.
Starting point is 00:04:42 And he's just internalized mine. Everything's mine because that's his worldview. Well, I think he also treated the country like it is the Trump organization. It is because most people, you know, if you run a public company, you have shareholders, you have things. In his, I always found this when I watched The Apprentice,
Starting point is 00:04:58 which I did always watch, by the way. I enjoyed it very much. Nobody fires meatloaf like Donald J. Trump. Ouch. But when he would sit there at the table and he would have the two, it would be stereosiccophants. And one on one side, one on the other. Sometimes it was that older gentleman, George, I think.
Starting point is 00:05:16 Sometimes it was Ivanka. Sometimes it was Don Jr. And whatever happened on the show, Donald Trump would do his thing and he would sit back. Then he would turn to one side going. That was, you know, that was tough. And then whoever was on the right would be like, you did the right thing, boss, great job.
Starting point is 00:05:33 Then the other person would be like, what else could you have done? That was a great decision. And you realize, oh, his worldview is the right of kings. I just want you to know that in this like podcast app, I'm Maria and I are on either side of you, just I'm nodding along with your point. As you make it.
Starting point is 00:05:51 Yes, yes. I have no shareholders. See, that's how easy it is to turn into Hitler. It's so quick to turn. All you just need is two people who are agreeing. Here's what I imagine at Mar-a-Lago, where he keeps the classified documents. You know, when you go to a hotel
Starting point is 00:06:07 and they have that little safe. Yeah, yeah. You think that's where he keeps everything? In the, like, in one of the closets, there's that little. He's just got the little, yeah, the little mini bar safe. By the ironing board. And he just assumes that no spy will ever show up there
Starting point is 00:06:23 and go, what's Donald Trump's birthday? Hey! What do you know? What do you think, Maria? What I want to know is if any of this has disrupted the seafood and saxophone night that's held every Wednesday night at Mar-a-Lago on the patio. Do they really do seafood and saxophone every Wednesday?
Starting point is 00:06:44 I went on their website. I went on the Mar-a-Lago website and in their dining section of their website, it says, may I read you the breakdown? I'd be honored. Please. Okay, it's called six-star seafood night every Wednesday evening on the patio in parentheses. This dinner buffet features a sumptuous array
Starting point is 00:07:02 consisting of an appetizer table, two pound lobsters, freshly grilled fish and meat items, salads, and a dessert bar. I'm sorry, I'm sorry, hold on. Meat items. They've gone through so much, sumptuous, that thing. Everything sounds amazing. Meat items.
Starting point is 00:07:22 Meat items. I think we've buried the lead here. I'm a man who like specificity in my meat personally. And I have never heard it called items. Keep going, keep going. Salads and a dessert bar accompanied by a saxophonist under the stars. I'm sorry, you know what that is?
Starting point is 00:07:40 That's not Mar-a-Lago, that's heaven. You're right. That is the dream. And from what I understand in Mar-a-Lago, like you do have free reign of the place. Like all the seafood and saxophone people can just kind of wander. Like basically when you go down there,
Starting point is 00:07:56 you get a two pound lobster and nuclear codes. Like whatever you want under the stars. Remember the North Korea thing when Shinzo Abe of Japan was there and they were just looking at nuclear documents. It was just sitting at a table. On the Lido deck. With their phone lights or something, is that right?
Starting point is 00:08:14 You know what, and what blows my mind about this whole thing is everybody's got that thing like, is this it? Is this the thing? And I keep trying to explain to people, no, no, it's not. Like, why does anybody believe that there will be accountability in this man's life on this earth?
Starting point is 00:08:34 Right, there's been nothing up until this moment to ever show anyone, including him. And he's just trained to believe that I can do anything I want. How could he not feel that way? He fucked a porn star while his wife was giving birth, paid the porn star $130,000 to keep it quiet. His wife is like, boys will be boys
Starting point is 00:08:59 and his lawyer goes to jail for it. His accountant is going to jail. Everybody around him goes to jail. He's like the Mr. Magoo of absolved sins. He just walks through this world and we never hold him. You know what we are? Oh, this is the worst thing that we are. We're those parents.
Starting point is 00:09:20 You guys don't have kids yet, but there are certain parents that make a show of accountability. Johnny, don't, I'm going to count to three. And then nothing, that's who we are now. We are literally like, Donald, what's behind your back? Seriously. Are those classified?
Starting point is 00:09:39 What's in the box? Take it out of your mouth. Donald. Donald. One, two, no more porn stars. We're taking away the porn stars. Donald. If I get to three, we're doing a gentle raid.
Starting point is 00:09:55 I love it. And I love, my favorite thing about the whole thing is the things he puts out as exculpatory. It's like, look, this is the warrant. All it says is I have top secret documents. It's like, O.J., Sims are going, look at this knife. It's got a little blood on it, but I mean, come on. Yeah.
Starting point is 00:10:16 He's only left with the dumbest people in his orbit around him. And they were just, it's own goal, after own goal, after own goal. Dear Lord. So speaking of, and this is going to be a terrible transition, but we are going to talk to someone who is the antithesis of that, Dr. Sherry Fink.
Starting point is 00:10:32 After Katrina, she had written a book about a hospital down there where the infrastructure had failed and they had to get people out of that hospital and some of them died and like it was bad. Horrible. Anyway, that's a show now on Apple TV Plus. And now it's like dramatized.
Starting point is 00:10:49 By the way, Maria, there's a great role in it that I think you could play. Oh, does it require toughets? So I am going to introduce, if I may, Dr. Sherry Fink, author of Five Days at Memorial, Life and Death in a Storm-Ravaged Hospital, Dr. Sherry Fink. As I called it, God knows how many years ago,
Starting point is 00:11:13 when Dr. Fink was on The Daily Show, this has got to be turned into some type of film or movie. It is now a mini series, Five Days at Memorial, and it's available to stream on a streaming platform called Apple Television. And then there's a mathematical sign afterwards. I believe it's a plus sign. Dr. Fink, welcome.
Starting point is 00:11:35 You can call me Sherry Fink. You can call me Sherry, John. And it's Apple TV Plus sign. That's what it was, plus. I see that's why you're a scientist and a journalist. And I'm just an idiot with a podcast. But you called it, you called it. So I should explain.
Starting point is 00:11:50 So I interviewed Dr. Fink after you wrote the book about Katrina. This was, I don't even remember what year this was. What year did we speak on The Daily Show? It was 2013 that we spoke. My God, ages ago. And first of all, tell a brief recap of the story of what happened to this medical facility, Memorial,
Starting point is 00:12:17 after Katrina, during Katrina. What was, give us the setting. Sure, yes. So it was 2005 and Hurricane Katrina came up the gulf and in New Orleans were the failure of the flood protection systems and the levies. And this beloved city, it's like a bowl below sea level and it's flooded.
Starting point is 00:12:41 And the city's medical centers, pretty much all of them were vulnerable to flooding. And so Five Days at Memorial is about one of these hospitals and what happened in that situation. How did they choose which patients to rescue first? And as things grew more dire than issues of end of life, what about patients they worried that they couldn't rescue? And then all of the issues that were relevant
Starting point is 00:13:09 with this horrible disaster, the failure preparedness, the failures of response, the vulnerable people, different outcomes for different groups. And so we explore all of that both in the series and it's in the book as well. I mean, it really was an ethics class come to life. So much of what doctors learn obviously is anatomy and physiology,
Starting point is 00:13:39 but there was also a part of medicine, maybe less talked about or less prevalent, about the ethics of medicine and being faced with situations that it's a thought experiment. And yet the thought experiment became reality at Memorial. This idea that you triage the patients that you believe are the most injured, but also have the best ability to survive.
Starting point is 00:14:09 The doctors were faced with this situation, no power, limited food and water. And what were some of the decisions that they were faced with and that they made? Well, the first decision is very familiar to us, I think with COVID because it has to do with which patients get a share of a potentially life-saving resource when you feel like there's not enough
Starting point is 00:14:34 for everybody right away. I mean, we're seeing it with monkeypox right now with like who gets the vaccine or the treatment. So that's that triage question. And surprisingly enough, you can talk to people who went to medical school like me and it's not something that we really learn about how to do that, especially once patients are in a hospital.
Starting point is 00:14:56 And in this case, the resource was rescue helicopters. They were arriving one at a time on the helipad and there were well over 200 patients. There were 2,000 people in this like two city block long hospital complex. And so start to do that thought experiment yourself. And I think that's part of why we tell the story is to think about not so much to judge these people
Starting point is 00:15:23 who were trapped in the situation, but what would I do? Or what would I want done? There are different ethical things to weigh here and it's not really clear, but what is clear is that decisions like this rationing in a way have important ethical and value-laden types of implications and then they can translate into who lives and who dies. And too often, even in normal times,
Starting point is 00:15:51 we see rationing based on say ability to pay. So we want these decisions to be made in a way that is ethically defensible. And that's really important because as we see, we have analogs today with what we're going through. So you're saying you're not looking for an Eenie Meenie, Miney Moe situation. Now to be clear for people who don't realize
Starting point is 00:16:13 they were evacuating people from the hospital, not to the hospital. The hospital was the building, the complex that was in trouble. I mean, the whole city obviously was in trouble, but this hospital where you might normally look at, similarly to what happened at the Superdome, you sort of look at these facilities,
Starting point is 00:16:38 infrastructure facilities that you imagine are built for this type of disaster to send people to. What do you do when the facility that was built for such a disaster is in fact the disaster itself? It's such a good point. I mean, this is why the larger issue here, we can look at individual decision making, which is really important because our infrastructure
Starting point is 00:17:06 is a mess and it is likely that any of us could be a first responder de facto in our own communities because we have these vulnerabilities to flooding, to power outages, to earthquakes. But you're right, the larger importance here is we have to look at this infrastructure and what do we need to do to make these hospitals and flood prone areas hardened
Starting point is 00:17:30 so that they don't put people into these circumstances. And in fact, there were helicopters that landed that did try to bring patients to this hospital because you're right. In a disaster, we need our health infrastructure. We need it in a pandemic. We need it in a disaster like this. So we need these hospitals to keep working,
Starting point is 00:17:49 not only for the people who are already in them, but for people who might get injured, who might need help, who are being rescued. And so the city is devastated and the infrastructure that is put in place to be there in just such a situation, now that is failing. So here's what I think might be an interesting way to do this. In the way that you triage a patient, right?
Starting point is 00:18:12 Let's triage that infrastructure. Let's triage this medical system. In your experience now, after having gone through Katrina, and now, boy, and I hate to even say this, but Dr. Pink wrote about the pandemic. When did you write about the pandemic? A year before the pandemic? Yeah, I worked on a documentary series.
Starting point is 00:18:35 It was called Pandemic, How to Prevent an Outbreak. And it premiered January 20th, 2020. And the pandemic hit February and March of 2020. What say you with this witchcraft? No, it's that thing is, it's exactly what you said. We need to triage because these are maybe rare events, but they are foreseeable. The whole docu-series was about how scientists
Starting point is 00:19:01 all over the world were saying, we have to get ready. These are, this is gonna happen. It's not a question of, will it happen? It's, when will it happen? And so we need to do all these things to get ready for it. That's right. So why is it that we don't make these investments? But we are not, we are not and have never been
Starting point is 00:19:20 a prophylactic oriented society. We are, and for the most part, people I think in general are reactive. It's, you know, you can say all along, like maybe we shouldn't live in a flood basin, but generally you don't do anything about it until you're floating. And so as you look at, let's say, you know,
Starting point is 00:19:42 let's go writ large into more of the health infrastructure of the country. If you were going to triage the system, would you look first to the sort of broader base, we shouldn't be a for-profit system, or would you look at it and say, it's about coordination? If you were to reorganize and restructure us, triaging that system to make it more reactive,
Starting point is 00:20:08 responsive and prophylactic to some extent, what would you address first? What would be the most dire need? I mean, well, I'm just gonna riff here because I'm no expert on healthcare economics, but you know, well, what comes first to mind is our healthcare staff who we forget about, like the personnel, they've gone through such trauma,
Starting point is 00:20:32 they're having a lot of difficulties, we have shortages of health workers in really important areas. So there's been rationing in some ways of care or a lessening of the quality of care, for example, during COVID surges. So we really need to look at our health workforce and support that.
Starting point is 00:20:48 So when we think about infrastructure, it's actually people as well. How would you do that? Now, would you, how far behind are we and if this pandemic doesn't ease, or if monkeypox or whatever they've got next coming for us doesn't ease, how do we invest in and get these people,
Starting point is 00:21:10 A, the people that are already working there, some type of care to preserve their sanity and their wellbeing, and two, bringing in the next generation of workers. I think it's, it is mostly about supporting people in their jobs properly, paying them well and giving them the kinds of support that they need to do the jobs that they have trained to do.
Starting point is 00:21:36 And it's also about all of us. It's about Americans and there have been, there's been such a breach of trust during this pandemic. We talk about it with all sorts of professionals, whether it's trust in leaders and political leaders and journalists, but in public health officials who are attacked and denigrated, but also the health workforce, believe it or not,
Starting point is 00:22:03 it feels the same way when it comes to a vaccine for COVID. You will believe something that you see on social media over your trusted doctor. Why is that? That is very hard for health professionals or when people have gotten sick from COVID after not being vaccinated perhaps and then wanting a whole suite of treatment sometimes
Starting point is 00:22:23 that the doctors don't believe it has efficacy, that they don't believe it will work. So some of that is also adding or has added in these recent years. Yes, you are being so polite about this right now. I'm very impressed with how polite you are and not just saying, well, the first thing we need to do is get crazy people off of Facebook.
Starting point is 00:22:45 Get them off. I saw this in the local hospital here. When the pandemic first hit, man, the signs went up, healthcare heroes work here and the fire departments would come and the changing of the shifts, everybody would stand outside and they would do a clap and it was about, it took about eight to 12 months
Starting point is 00:23:07 and I remember driving by one day and it was probably around the election that ended and it was, so we were past that and the toxicity within the public sphere was so high at that point. This was post January 6th and there was a group of protesters in the same place of honor that they stood
Starting point is 00:23:30 standing by those now weathered signs that still stood as healthcare heroes work here and they were protesting the nurses and the doctors. So imagine you've just gone through hell. You've watched people die. You've been helpless. You've done everything you could to keep people alive. You risked your own life before vaccines.
Starting point is 00:23:57 You risked your own life and now not only are you not being hailed, you're being attacked right outside your place of work and I remember thinking, well, this on an emotional level this must be infuriating and maddening and also despairing. You're so right. That's exactly what I saw in the hospital. So this is a piece of it and this gets to
Starting point is 00:24:25 in any disaster, any emergency, it is all of us. We have to respond. We have to do our part or else there will be what we've seen which is a horrific burden of death and suffering that is avoidable. We've hollowed them out. Yeah, and I think in journalism, maybe we didn't do enough to prepare people for the idea
Starting point is 00:24:44 that this was a new disease and that something you hear today about it might not be the same as what you hear tomorrow because science will advance and also the virus will change potentially and we've seen that but I think maybe people lost trust because they weren't prepared for in fact and this is always in whatever emergency that you have to be flexible and you can't just be rigid
Starting point is 00:25:12 and have one way of doing things or you will not be evolving. You will not be doing your process improvement in the midst of an emergency. So this was true in Hurricane Katrina, the events in this hospital. There was this race to try to find the perfect triage method and the answer is there isn't one.
Starting point is 00:25:31 There has to be preparedness but then we have to prepare to be flexible and we did see that in COVID too. Some really ingenious types of adaptations and creative thinking that stretched resources. So we need to get out of that mindset of necessarily having to ration or make these tragic decisions but also thinking creatively
Starting point is 00:25:58 about how to expand resources in a crisis and I've seen that over and over again that lives can be saved because of that. Let me ask you, so this is, you've been very prescient about some of the things that are coming your way. Is there something on your horizon right now, infrastructure rise?
Starting point is 00:26:18 I'm gonna throw mine out there, what I believe it to be. Water. Water will be the next great catastrophe that we face and it'll be the antithesis of Katrina. It will be drought and it will be devastating and in slightly different areas and I'm not sure we have the infrastructure to know how to deal with that.
Starting point is 00:26:43 If you're throwing odds, where do you see the next thing? Is it a similar pandemic? What do you got for us? Here's mine, I would like us to do better right now with all of the disasters we are living through. One thing that we haven't talked about and I know this means a lot to you too but the sort of the inequity and outcomes
Starting point is 00:27:06 and the people who suffer the most in these types of situations and there are real disparities in the groups and we talk about socioeconomic and racial but there's another one which is disability too and I was speaking with an expert on this and just the other day and she mentioned that in her counting
Starting point is 00:27:32 that like more than half of the people who died of COVID in the US could be classified as people with disabilities and that again gets to this triage and who we value and where we put in the investments to harden infrastructure, to make sure that there are adequate staffing ratios to support health providers
Starting point is 00:27:53 and even I worked on an article during COVID just looking at New York City and the very different outcomes in that first horrific surge that all of us who lived in New York remember in 2020 and the outcomes were very different by hospital. Oh yeah, I had friends at Elmhurst. I mean, they had refrigerator trucks backed up. They were just, they were stacking bodies.
Starting point is 00:28:20 They were overwhelmed and that's a traditionally lower resource facility. Yes, Elmhurst is famous. There's a video that went viral that drew the attention to that hospital. I spent a lot of time in the Brooklyn Hospital Center which is one of the freestanding hospitals, one of the few that's not part of a big system
Starting point is 00:28:42 and all of the hospitals unfortunately had those horrific trucks outside with the bodies. Not only that, do you remember they had to actually build a second level because they filled up those trailers. They got the Carpenter, the hospital Carpenter had to come out and build a second level.
Starting point is 00:29:03 I have a friend who worked in the hospital who said, and he's a veteran, he's been to war. He said he's never seen anything like it and that it will haunt him till his dying day, that it was as horrific as anything that he had ever experienced and worse. So how do we do better? We come together as a society,
Starting point is 00:29:24 we listen to the advice, we care about the other people in our community. If everybody just thought about what can I do to make my own family, my own community more prepared? What can I do to look out for or include in the preparation process the people who are most vulnerable, the people with disabilities
Starting point is 00:29:41 who already have a lot of knowledge about how to sort of adapt to situations. It could seem overwhelming, I know that, but I also know from having written about these stories from five days at Memorial to COVID that the individual efforts can make a difference, a real difference and it does take all of us. It's not just-
Starting point is 00:30:03 It's really interesting how you frame it because it is, you're absolutely right. It's overwhelming and yet alarmingly simple. And it almost seems as though the real key to it is reminding people and convincing people that if you shore up the ground around us, if you shore up the ground around those
Starting point is 00:30:25 who are standing on the most tenuous soil, it will strengthen everything. And it's reminding people that that investment in those that are most vulnerable, it's not charity, it's smart investment because it shores up the entire system. You know, there's that old saying that rising tide lifts all boats,
Starting point is 00:30:46 but not if you don't have a boat and not if you don't have docks and infrastructure. Like you've got to invest in putting everybody on more stable ground and that will make the ground you're standing on less tenuous. So if we all come together to improve things for the most vulnerable, it is in our self-interest.
Starting point is 00:31:11 I think you can make a very good argument for that. Right, the self-interest of that. Let's get the algorithm to drive people to that. Well, that's, I appreciate you so much, Dr. Fink. I follow your writing because I wanna know what I have to be scared of next. What's the next thing that we can look out for? I think the one thing I committed to early
Starting point is 00:31:32 in this pandemic was to never predict anything. And that turned out to be a very good thing. Yes, Dr. Sherry Fink, Five Days at Memorial. It's a mini-series on Apple television. Plus, and thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you so much, John. All right, we are back after having been sobered up by Dr. Sherry Fink.
Starting point is 00:32:01 We are not prepared. Dr. Sherry Fink gave such simple advice. It was really one of those things like other pandemic and Katrina and all that. What could we do? And she's like, we could be better people. Right. And you're like, hmm.
Starting point is 00:32:15 Interesting concept. What do you got that might work for us? Now, are you guys relatively sanguine about all this shit? Or are you, what's your emotional state about the variety of disasters which seem to be hurtling our way? That's such a good question.
Starting point is 00:32:32 Thank you. I don't really know how I should be feeling. And in fact, I'd love to get your guys' thoughts on some things that are kind of swirling around the news lately. Robbie, how are you feeling? It's tough to be optimistic, but there are, yeah, there's definitely some news stories
Starting point is 00:32:49 that are weighing me down. Yes, yes. Can't decide whether or not to be stressed out. Something on my mind lately has been these crazy lantern flies. John, did you know that in New Jersey, they have a pub crawl that is dedicated to squishing lantern flies?
Starting point is 00:33:06 Is that new? I don't know if it's, I just read about it this week. Here's, here's what I'm going to tell you happened, Maria. There's a pub crawl. While they were going, somebody said, let's fucking kill this bug. But nobody got together and did that specifically. It's just that we drink a lot.
Starting point is 00:33:25 And we wander because all of us have lost our licenses because of the drinking. Let me ask you this. What does the lantern fly do that makes it such a public menace? Because we've been getting bulletins down here. If you see one, not only do you have to kill it, you have to call the authorities.
Starting point is 00:33:46 I have had to notify the police, you know. The bug police, the bug cops. The right people to call, I think the agriculture department in New Jersey about lantern flies. So do you, Maria, do you know what they do? Is it, what's the situation? Yes, they will, they harm pretty much all trees and plants
Starting point is 00:34:09 that they come in contact with, mainly fruit bearing trees and vineyards. So if you like wine, gotta have a heads up about these flies. But pretty much just destroying vegetation, which obviously has multiple consequences. And there is a real 800 number in Pennsylvania, that's 1-800-BAD-FLY. When you call it, get ready for this, get ready for this.
Starting point is 00:34:34 When you call it, what do they do? Send a SWAT team? Oh. I'm gonna go. I knew I was gonna get fired at the end of this podcast. That's not. I'm sorry. I'm my apologies.
Starting point is 00:34:46 That's my deepest apologies. That's gotta be stuck. So honestly, I think you've got it. I think you're gonna go the way the lantern flies. Right now in New Jersey, there is a pub crawl looking for Robbie to kick my ass. Yeah, that's right. Don't go to Jersey anymore.
Starting point is 00:35:02 Hey, are you the mother fucker that did the SWAT show? Hey, hey, get over here, you piece of shit. Yeah, this after a set of the stress factory, I go straight to my car. By the way, there's no way that like, individuals in New Jersey are going to crush enough lantern flies to make a difference. You don't think so?
Starting point is 00:35:21 You know, I just don't have faith in our ability to somehow eradicate some bug that can reproduce, you know, by the million. Yeah, there's no fuck. Basically by next year, we'll be living in the lantern fly state. All right. Well, this has been lovely.
Starting point is 00:35:43 This is our mid August podcast. Mid? Mid to late? Mid to late, yeah. We've got some podcasts coming up that'll blow your mind, some of the fucking people that are coming on this thing for no apparent reason.
Starting point is 00:35:59 It's going to be wild. I don't want to say who's coming. But people are coming. Yeah. It's classified. By the way, the list of guests on this podcast are being held right now in one of those closet safes at Mar-a-Lago.
Starting point is 00:36:21 Robbie, do you know John's birthday? No, should I know John's birthday? Just for the code. For the code on the thing. Well, if you guys need me, you know where I'll be, dancing under the stars, listening to saxophone and eating a meat item. Yes.
Starting point is 00:36:38 All right, kids. Thank you very much for joining us. Robbie Sloak, Maria Randazo, and of course, Dr. Sherry Fink, Five Days at Memorial is a mini series available to stream on Apple TV Plus and our show will be returning to Apple TV Plus. October 7th.
Starting point is 00:36:56 So hopefully that's not going to be a Wednesday. It's a Friday. Oh, thank God, because I would hate to miss saxophone and C-flicks. Yeah, luckily it doesn't conflict. Doesn't conflict. And season one obviously is online right now. Anyway, thank you so much, guys.
Starting point is 00:37:13 Thank you. As always. Thank you, John. A lot of fun talking to you. And we'll see you guys later. The problem with John Stewart podcast is an Apple TV Plus podcast and a joint busboy production.

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