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Bob Dylan in a Hoodie at the Vatican and a Week of Light and Darkness · Grizz Does the News

• 0:11
  Grizz: It's the fifth of November, 2026, which is World Tsunami Awareness Day. Pretty fitting that we just heard in the news that there was a blue tsunami this week in the United States. And it's the day of Bonfire Night in Britain, where kids and others set effigy to different public figures. Kind of interesting, but it's sort of a day of fire and water. Welcome to Grizz Does the News.
• 0:45
  Grizz: You've had quite a week. Let's look at the headlines and some other weird things you might not have seen. Well, let's start out here with a fun fact since we had the elections this week: in 1872, Susan B. Anthony, who helped women get the right to vote, of course, she voted illegally in the US presidential election and was later fined $100. It was $100 well spent. Now here's the first headline. Let me pull out my guitar here.
• 1:40
  Grizz: Bob the poet, meet Bob the priest: Pope Leo receives Bob Dylan at the Vatican.
• 1:57
  Grizz: CNN. They're two of the world's best-known Bobs from the US Midwest. Now Pope Leo XIV, whose birth name is Robert. Robert Prevost and Bob Dylan, the legendary musician, have met in the Vatican.
• 2:29
  Grizz: Bob the poet, meet Bob the priest: Pope Leo receives Bob Dylan at the Vatican. What I think was pretty cool about that is Bob Dylan shows up in a black hoodie, and there's the Pope in his white raiments. And immediately you look at it, and you think it's out of some movie about light and darkness, about the good side and the bad side.
• 3:05
  Grizz: And that's kind of what we've been dealing with this week. Of course, the two of them have a relationship already. Pope Leo, he put in one of his books a quote from Bob Dylan's 1963 song, "Go Away You Bomb." Sounds like early Dylan, and the line out of that is, I hate you because you're man made and man owned and man handled. So it's fitting for these times, of course, and the Pope's book, Disarmed and Disarming: Peace Is a Gift. That says a lot about humanity in these times. Now I'm going to do something interesting. As you're noticing, I sort of... I'm sitting here with my guitar, and I try to sing the headlines, and the best I can, I'll tell you who wrote these words and where they come from. And yeah, that's what we're doing here. So here we go, it's a bunch of headlines about the crazy news this week.
• 4:19
  Grizz: New York Post: Blue tsunami. Blue wave blowout, that's the Las Vegas Review-Journal. Wave of change, Dallas Morning News. Voters swing to Democrats, the Washington Post. Wall Street Journal says Democrats score big wins. The Boston Globe: Sweeping rebuke, sweeping rebuke of Trump. The Chicago Sun-Times: Dem-olition. The Guardian: Trumped.
• 5:17
  Grizz: The Independent: Trump dumped. In the Metro: Lame Donald Duck. The Courier-Mail: Don like a dinner. The Daily Mirror: Reborn in the U.S.A. In the Telegraph: Vance turns on Trump. The Daily Mail: MAGA turns on Trump. The Financial Times: Crushing midterm rebuke. The Times: Democrats make history. Le Monde: Electoral rout. Le Journal de Montréal: Quite a slap, of course. National punishment. The Wall Street Journal: The Trump Reckoning Arrives. A night of historic firsts, from Fast Company.
• 6:23
  Grizz: The Atlanta Journal-Constitution: Historic, shatters racial and gender glass ceilings. The Dallas Morning News: A mandate the size of Texas. James Talarico said, "My students weren't just kids; they were survivors, dreamers, fighters." And he said, "We just showed that the politics of division is no match for a politics of love." Politics of love.
• 7:02
  Grizz: And he said, "Those attacks were the final howls of a dying establishment." And he said, "That old politics is dying." And he said, "And a new politics is being born through each of us." From The Tribune in India, Talarico's words: "We just took back Texas. We just took back Texas.
• 7:33
  Grizz: We took back Texas." But Al Jazeera reports Florida's first Black governor said, "We are still red." In Florida, we are still red. In Florida, we are still gray. And in the Star Tribune, Peggy Flanagan promises a check on Trump. In Calcutta, the Telegraph said, Amish Shah makes history. ABC says, New blue Texas. New blue, blue Texas. Blue Texas. The New York Times says Trump's hunt for illegal votes nets little.
• 8:32
  Grizz: The Tehran Times says US hegemony is crumbling. USA Today says, U.S. strikes Iran island. Elon Musk on X tweets. Or does he X? I guess that's the new verb. "Guess my election-interfering space lasers. Guess my election-interfering space lasers didn't work this time."
• 9:07
  Grizz: Gotta do that one again. "Guess my election-interfering space lasers. Guess my interfering space lasers didn't work this time." And the Daily Beast said, Humiliated Musk scrubs posts. He scrubs posts after burning 500 million on midterms.
• 9:38
  Grizz: Well, it's the weird thing I do. I guess I process the news while picking a guitar. And some of these things, you just gotta process so many changes all at the same time. And humanity is trying to figure out what to do with it. So, you know, one side gets all excited, and then the other side gets all excited and swings back and forth.
• 10:10
  Grizz: Who knows what's going to happen next, but it's fun to watch. So here's a bit out of the news, a headline by Andrew Paul in Popular Science, and this one's a different kind of thing. So let's see if I can pull up a different sort of groove. Not sure here.
• 10:36
  Grizz: Famed... Famed Iron... Famed Iron Age king was actually a woman. Famed Iron Age king was actually a woman. In a new discussion published today in the journal Current Archaeology, researchers argue that historians have consistently gotten one key detail incorrect for at least two hundred years.
• 11:20
  Grizz: Based on their analysis of ancient artifacts and contextual information, the Iron Age ruler Verica was a woman, not a man. Verica was a woman, not a man. "Verica is assumed to have been male because of the patriarchal mindset of nineteenth-century classical historians," study author and Bournemouth University archaeologist Miles Russell said in a statement, said in a statement, said in a statement. "Verica was not only critical to the special relationship between Britain and Rome in the early first century, but she was indisputably female."
• 12:13
  Grizz: She was indisputably female. Famed Irish king was actually a woman.
• 12:25
  Grizz: That's a nice little ditty. Just so you know, I didn't come up with any of this before this podcast episode. I just sit here with this beautiful guitar and figure out how to, I guess, find some of the humanity in these crazy headlines. So the next one I found this week is from Maggie Harrison Dupré in magazine Futurism. Can you say that word, magazine, anymore? In the publication. And here we go. This one's a little spooky.
• 13:18
  Grizz: Microsoft patents an AI that can literally put words in people's mouths. Microsoft patents an AI that can literally put words in people's mouths in real time, in real time, in real time. Microsoft just filed a patent for an AI product that will be able to transform a live video in real time, in time, in real time to alter speakers' words and faces. Patent, as first flagged by patent tracker Patentlyze, is described by its inventors as a near real time artificial intelligence enhancement of video or augmented reality, presentations of live events. Microsoft patents an AI that can literally put words in people's mouths in real time, in real time, in real time.
• 15:17
  Grizz: That one's spooky because, you know, I... This software changes so fast, and I look at that one and think, you've got Microsoft trying to transfer live video in real time. That's the thing that makes me nervous. What video are you going to change in real time, Microsoft? Let's look at that and say, what behind that is human? What behind that is going to advance the human race, advance society, make the world a better place? That one's worth examining and thinking of. Here's another one that's kind of worth examining. You always get these things on days like this. You've got the Collins Dictionary.
• 16:12
  Grizz: I don't speak British English. I could try. You don't want to hear me try. But the Collins Dictionary chooses mogging, I guess, in American English, or mogging in British English, as its 2026 word of the year. Mogging. Well, I kind of want you, if you're listening to this, to think about what mogging might be if you don't know what it is already, like it's jogging through the mud or it's, you know, I don't know, there are a lot of things it could be before I tell you, but now I'm going to tell you. So, here we go. I'll set this one to a little jingle too. Let me do it. Maybe...
• 17:29
  Grizz: Collins Dictionary chooses mogging as its 2026 word... Mogging. Mogging. Collins Dictionary chooses mogging as its 2026 word of the year. London. Collins Dictionary has named mogging, a slang word meaning to outshine something or someone as its word of the year as its word of the year as its word of the year.
• 18:35
  Grizz: ...has entered mainstream language, saw a 210% increase in usage, 2026. Other new and notable entries include firewaves, defined as a series of urban wildfires in a short space of time. And P(doom), or P multiplied by doom, an estimation of a probability that artificial intelligence will bring about the collapse of human civilization. Collins Dictionary chooses mogging as 2026 word of the year. I got a little ridiculous in there.
• 19:59
  Grizz: But I guess maybe I was mogging, mogging a little bit. Mogging, mogging. Or maybe Trump had a little bit of a mogging this week. And any politician who didn't do so well or Elon Musk where his lasers didn't have any effect. I love that about humankind, that when someone gets upstaged, other people can jab them about it without hurting them, without mocking them. I think maybe that's what it means. You can correct me if I'm wrong.
• 20:55
  Grizz: Sometimes I get these songs a little bit off. It's hard to set things like that to music. So here's another one. Then, that was from the Associated Press. There was no author. Now that's another thing. You've got a team of people there. Theoretically, it's people and not AI because it is the Associated Press. You've got this team of people writing an article like that, even if they only put a couple of words into it, and they don't get credit for it. That's kind of an interesting thing. Does that mean that it's more reliable because it doesn't have one author or does it mean that it's less reliable because it's kind of a vanilla, a vanilla-ed out thing that, you know, just gets sort of turned into pudding somewhere in between everything else. Just a little thought there for you.
• 21:37
  Grizz: Now here's how I would like to sort of close up this episode. The reason I'm trying to read these headlines and put some music to them, some thought behind them is to actually go a little bit into depth on what these things mean for humanity and do it in a playful way. The guitar, you know, like good Bob Dylan from the start of the show, he used to sit in the corner of parties just playing the music and working out the lyrics and singing songs by other people. There's a...
• 22:14
  Grizz: There's something to music that allows you to share things in a different way, so that's what I'm trying to do here. I'm just one Grizz against the universe here, but I figure why not, I'll do something. This is one of many things that I'm planning on doing now, books, some music, some podcasting. I'm gonna have some guests on my other podcast called End of the Roaders, and I'll be out there a little bit doing some speaking and all that kind of stuff. But here's, you could say, the celestial ending of the show today, I found a couple of interesting news points that tickled me. Because I...
• 23:01
  Grizz: You know, when you look up into the night sky at night, it's the real equalizer. All of us people here on Earth, it doesn't matter who we are, if we won or lost or if we're rich or poor, any of that, we look up at the stars and we're on this little planet and something we all share together. Here are a couple more headlines for you.
• 23:33
  Grizz: All right, I think that's pretty much in tune. I like to tune by the skin of my teeth, not by... I don't use any tuners. Maybe I should start doing that. I figure some of that little out-of-tuneness makes it sound real. And these days, that's a pretty good thing. So here's an article from Space.com by author Mike Wall.
• 24:10
  Grizz: NASA's Swift space telescope crashes back to Earth after failed rescue attempt. NASA's Swift space telescope crashes back to Earth after failed rescue attempt. NASA's Swift space telescope had reached the end of its long and winding road. Swift fell uncontrolled to Earth today.
• 25:05
  Grizz: Twenty-two years after it launched, but just three months after a private spacecraft was supposed to boost it to a higher life... crashes back to Earth after failed rescue attempt.
• 25:43
  Grizz: The 3,200-pound, 1,450-kilogram observatory reentered Earth's atmosphere at 7:30 a.m. Eastern Standard Time today over northern Sumatra, according to satellite tracker Jonathan McDowell, who cited US Space Force data. The fall likely didn't make much of an impact. NASA officials predicted beforehand that most of the minibus-sized Swift would burn up as it fell, and they put the odds of any of the surviving pieces hurting anyone on Earth at just 1 in 2,100.
• 26:55
  Grizz: I gotta pause here for a second. So that interesting article, and hold on a minute, there are a lot of human beings on this Earth and other creatures, so the odds of the surviving pieces hurting anyone on Earth at just 1 in 2,100 seems like pretty big odds, which kind of makes me nervous about all the other stuff we're shooting off into space. So that was just an aside. Now I'll finish that one up and then go to the next one.
• 27:44
  Grizz: NASA's Swift space telescope has reached the end of its long, wide... All right. And here's another article that I... That I'll pair with that one. That is pretty cool that those both arrived on the same day. Let's see. Let's see. Do a drop tuning on this one. That was a weird note. There we go. That's better.
• 28:33
  Grizz: NASA. Oh, first, this is BBC Sky at Night Magazine. Author Iain Todd. NASA gets Voyager 1... pushes deeper in space. NASA engineers are having to think on their feet, pulling off creative problem-solving. Voyager 1, the farthest human-made object, is racing toward a historic milestone.
• 30:09
  Grizz: On the 18th of November, the spacecraft will reach a distance of 16.09 billion miles from Earth. Voyager 1. Voyager 1. On November 18, the spacecraft reached a distance of 25.89 billion kilometers from Earth.
• 30:48
  Grizz: NASA gets Voyager 1... Congratulations to NASA for that one. Pretty interesting to think about all that. And that goes on to talk about that distance from Earth is one light-day from home. A light-day. To get a light-day away from Earth, it takes all those years, and that's a humbling thing for some creature like here...
• 32:13
  Grizz: Like me here on this Earth, and I hope you too. So that's been Grizz Does the News. I appreciate you listening in. Still a bit rough around the edges, but I guess I am too. Take care of each other. Peace.
• 32:39
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