Latest / Pod Save America / “Baby, you’re a firework.” (Fourth of July holiday pod!)

Transcript

“Baby, you’re a firework.” (Fourth of July holiday pod!) · Pod Save America

• 0:20
  Speaker 1: Welcome back to Pod Save America. I'm Tommy Vitor.
• 0:22
  Speaker 2: I'm Jon Lovett.
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: Jon Favreau is still vacationing down at Mar-a-Lago, spending some
• 0:27
  Speaker 1: much-deserved time with Twitter. So Lovett and I are holding
• 0:29
  Speaker 1: down the fork today for an extra fun July 4th
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: themed show.
• 0:34
  Speaker 3: Lovett, do you have any.
• 0:35
  Speaker 4: Fireworks ready for us today? Uh, no, the LAPD took all,
• 0:39
  Speaker 4: they took all my fireworks. The LAPD took all my
• 0:41
  Speaker 4: fireworks and they were like, it's fine. We know what
• 0:43
  Speaker 4: to do. Anyway, it was a mess. Uh, well, for those,
• 0:49
  Speaker 4: for those who don't have local LA, they really LAPD
• 0:53
  Speaker 4: blew up a truck and it's part of town. They,
• 0:56
  Speaker 4: but anyway, sorry.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: I didn't, I didn't even know that. Oh, no. That's exciting. Okay.
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: It was a real mess.
• 1:01
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Well, that sounds like a mess then. We are going
• 1:04
  Speaker 1: to talk about narratives in politics and beyond. And you
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: might be asking why narratives? Because narratives, that's what July
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: 4th is all about, right? We are told a story
• 1:12
  Speaker 1: about America, stretches from 1776 to today. And there's an
• 1:17
  Speaker 1: important discussion to be had about what's real, what's not,
• 1:19
  Speaker 1: what's good, what could be a blind spot for us
• 1:21
  Speaker 1: as Americans. And we're also going to pick apart some
• 1:24
  Speaker 1: other common media narratives and politics in our culture today.
• 1:27
  Speaker 1: that sometimes are good, sometimes drive us crazy. We're going
• 1:29
  Speaker 1: to have a little fun with it. Then we are
• 1:31
  Speaker 1: going to be joined by Jason Concepcion, the co-host of
• 1:34
  Speaker 1: Take Line and All Caps NBA, and Ira Madison III,
• 1:37
  Speaker 1: the co-host of Keep It, for a very special conversation
• 1:41
  Speaker 1: about the most patriotic songs. And then finally, you're going
• 1:45
  Speaker 1: to hear my interview with Roger Bennett. He's the co-host
• 1:47
  Speaker 1: of a fantastic sports and soccer podcast called Men in Blazers.
• 1:51
  Speaker 1: We're going to talk about his new book, Reborn in
• 1:53
  Speaker 1: the USA. Roger became a U.S. citizen in 2018. after
• 1:58
  Speaker 1: falling in love with America decades ago as a kid
• 2:00
  Speaker 1: growing up in Liverpool, England. And we'll talk about American
• 2:04
  Speaker 1: culture and the power of the American story and probably
• 2:07
  Speaker 1: some sports. And it will be a lot of fun.
• 2:08
  Speaker 1: And I think you will love hearing from him. But
• 2:11
  Speaker 1: love it. Let's start with this narrative that defines July
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: 4th and defines this episode, which is American exceptionalism. What's
• 2:19
  Speaker 1: your take?
• 2:19
  Speaker 3: Good? Bad?
• 2:20
  Speaker 1: It's complicated?
• 2:21
  Speaker 4: So here's what I want to say about American exceptionalism.
• 2:25
  Speaker 4: And it is this. Anyone who believes that America is
• 2:30
  Speaker 4: the best country in the world cannot also believe in
• 2:34
  Speaker 4: American exceptionalism. American exceptionalism is a pejorative to describe people
• 2:40
  Speaker 4: who believe that America is the best country in the
• 2:43
  Speaker 4: world despite evidence. And so when someone says, oh, they
• 2:46
  Speaker 4: don't even believe in American exceptionalism, it's really fucking confusing
• 2:49
  Speaker 4: to me because presumably someone who says, I think America
• 2:54
  Speaker 4: is the fucking best, one of which is me. I'm
• 2:57
  Speaker 4: one of those people. And it's not because I believe
• 3:02
  Speaker 4: or you believe. If the person who says that doesn't
• 3:04
  Speaker 4: believe in American exceptionalism, they believe America is the best
• 3:08
  Speaker 4: based on the facts, right? To say you believe in
• 3:11
  Speaker 4: American exceptionalism is like a paradox. Do you see what
• 3:14
  Speaker 4: I'm saying? Do you see how it doesn't really make sense?
• 3:18
  Speaker 1: I hear what you're saying.
• 3:19
  Speaker 3: I mean, I think.
• 3:20
  Speaker 1: Well, look, just so listeners know, Lovett's constantly just popping
• 3:22
  Speaker 1: into the office and being like, America, fucking best. Go
• 3:26
  Speaker 1: to the bathroom. I mean, I think some of this
• 3:29
  Speaker 1: is kind of definitional, right? There are things about America
• 3:31
  Speaker 1: that are exceptional. Until recently, I would have included our
• 3:34
  Speaker 1: history of peaceful transfers of power. That got a little
• 3:37
  Speaker 1: complicated on January 6th, right? Our constitution, our system of
• 3:40
  Speaker 1: government is unique in that we have this capacity to
• 3:43
  Speaker 1: amend it and fix it over time. I think the
• 3:45
  Speaker 1: term American exceptionalism, it was first coined by Alexis de Tocqueville, right?
• 3:50
  Speaker 1: But it's changed a ton over time. And I think
• 3:53
  Speaker 1: we get into trouble when we get too high on
• 3:55
  Speaker 1: our own supply and we decide that it means like
• 3:58
  Speaker 1: America is more just and more pure than anyone else.
• 4:01
  Speaker 1: And like our way of life is just inherently better
• 4:04
  Speaker 1: than everyone else's. And we're going to force it on you.
• 4:06
  Speaker 1: Like that to me is a real risk.
• 4:07
  Speaker 4: Well, it's that, you know, Obama got dinged for saying
• 4:10
  Speaker 4: Americans believe in American exceptionalism in the same way Greeks
• 4:13
  Speaker 4: believe in Greek exceptionalism. And it was like, he was
• 4:15
  Speaker 4: like two weeks of fucking stories. about him not believing
• 4:18
  Speaker 4: America is the best, but actually he was saying something different.
• 4:21
  Speaker 4: American exceptionalism isn't something you can believe in the inside.
• 4:25
  Speaker 4: It's what people on the outside say about us and
• 4:28
  Speaker 4: our myopic view about America being the center of every story.
• 4:32
  Speaker 4: That said, I believe America is the center of every story.
• 4:36
  Speaker 4: That's my position, which is why I reject American exceptionalism
• 4:39
  Speaker 4: because America is the best. Do you see the problem?
• 4:42
  Speaker 1: Do you see the issue?
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: I like it. I like it.
• 4:45
  Speaker 1: I also think like what I kind of like, cringe
• 4:48
  Speaker 1: at a little bit is the constant like reflexive, this
• 4:51
  Speaker 1: isn't who we are rhetoric, whenever something terrible happens in
• 4:54
  Speaker 1: the United States, which ignores the reality that a lot
• 4:57
  Speaker 1: of the things we're talking about that are terrible in
• 4:59
  Speaker 1: that moment have happened a lot, right? Slavery, Jim Crow,
• 5:03
  Speaker 1: these are some of the recent conversations we had. And
• 5:05
  Speaker 1: then there was this just ridiculous, idiotic 1776 commission report
• 5:11
  Speaker 1: that the Trump folks leaked or released, sorry, right at
• 5:14
  Speaker 1: the end of the administration that was literally just whitewashed, literally, U.S.
• 5:18
  Speaker 1: history in an effort to push back on the 1619 Project. And, like, that,
• 5:23
  Speaker 1: to me, is the ultimate, like.
• 5:26
  Speaker 1: American exceptionalism, to me, is good when it's aspirational. It's
• 5:30
  Speaker 1: a story about America constantly trying to live up to
• 5:32
  Speaker 1: an ideal. It's really bad when it's a cudgel that
• 5:35
  Speaker 1: just silences criticism. And I think that's what, like, kind
• 5:37
  Speaker 1: of the right-wing version has become.
• 5:41
  Speaker 4: Yeah, there's also... there's like another level to the racism
• 5:45
  Speaker 4: that goes along with the fighting against teaching of our
• 5:49
  Speaker 4: history in full. Like, you know, oh, and, and, you know,
• 5:51
  Speaker 4: you see this with people like Josh Hawley saying like,
• 5:53
  Speaker 4: I don't want to teach my, I don't want our
• 5:55
  Speaker 4: kids to learn that America is racist. I want America,
• 5:58
  Speaker 4: people to have hope in America and implicit in that,
• 6:01
  Speaker 4: you know, Sam Sanders and we, we talked about with
• 6:03
  Speaker 4: Sam is that, you know, who is, who is teaching
• 6:06
  Speaker 4: for is teaching for, for white kids, but it's also
• 6:08
  Speaker 4: who is, who does America belong to? And to not,
• 6:13
  Speaker 4: to not include the full scope of our history in
• 6:16
  Speaker 4: our patriotism is to deny the American-ness of the people
• 6:20
  Speaker 4: denied America's promise for hundreds of years. And like, it's their, it's,
• 6:25
  Speaker 4: this was their country too. And their, this was their
• 6:28
  Speaker 4: story too in full. And so like, anyway, end of thought,
• 6:32
  Speaker 4: end of thought.
• 6:32
  Speaker 1: No, that's, I agree with that. And that's why I
• 6:34
  Speaker 1: do think it's more than symbolic that we are now
• 6:36
  Speaker 1: celebrating and recognizing Juneteenth and that we've made a lot
• 6:38
  Speaker 1: of progress in this set of conversations. Um, I have
• 6:41
  Speaker 1: another narrative for you that drives me a little bit crazy,
• 6:44
  Speaker 1: which is that Washington used to be a bastion of civility,
• 6:48
  Speaker 1: if we could only get back to that. And I
• 6:50
  Speaker 1: would say, look, you could start this narrative in a
• 6:52
  Speaker 1: lot of places. If you go way back to the 1800s,
• 6:56
  Speaker 1: a representative beat Charles Sumner with a metal-tipped cane on
• 7:00
  Speaker 1: the Senate floor, I don't know that that's the civility
• 7:02
  Speaker 1: we're looking for. The more modern iteration is Ronald Reagan,
• 7:06
  Speaker 1: Tip O'Neill, They would have a scotch, talk like men,
• 7:09
  Speaker 1: cut deals on social security reform. Why can't we get
• 7:12
  Speaker 1: back to that? Woe is Washington, right? Like we miss
• 7:15
  Speaker 1: those days. And the problem here is this is such
• 7:18
  Speaker 1: rose-colored revisionist history. Like, yes, these guys cut a deal,
• 7:22
  Speaker 1: but it wasn't because of friendship or civility.
• 7:24
  Speaker 3: Love it.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: How civil is this quote to you? Quote, the evil
• 7:28
  Speaker 1: is in the White House at the present time. And
• 7:30
  Speaker 1: that evil is a man who has no care and
• 7:32
  Speaker 1: no concern for the working class of America and the
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: future generations of America. who likes to ride a horse.
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: He's cold. He's mean. He's got ice water for blood.
• 7:41
  Speaker 1: That's Tip O'Neill talking.
• 7:42
  Speaker 3: About Ronald Reagan.
• 7:44
  Speaker 4: I like that. I like that side of Tip O'Neill.
• 7:47
  Speaker 4: You don't hear enough about it.
• 7:48
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 7:48
  Speaker 4: It's also like, you know, one of the great political
• 7:52
  Speaker 4: deals ever made in Washington was between Northern Democrats and
• 7:55
  Speaker 4: Southern Democrats to allow the South to be an authoritarian
• 7:59
  Speaker 4: region so that FDR could become president, you know, the
• 8:04
  Speaker 4: Democrats could win elections.
• 8:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 8:06
  Speaker 4: So Some deals are really bad, I think. My view
• 8:08
  Speaker 4: is that deals inherently aren't good or bad. It depends
• 8:11
  Speaker 4: on the deal, I think. That's my view on deals. Honestly,
• 8:14
  Speaker 4: this narrative, I really wrote this down. This narrative is
• 8:17
  Speaker 4: the cousin of the sort of bipartisan policies are inherently
• 8:20
  Speaker 4: better than partisan policies narrative, which is just absurd.
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: When you think about the Iraq war versus the Affordable
• 8:26
  Speaker 1: Care Act. But yeah, I mean, the civility case, it
• 8:29
  Speaker 1: just ignores so many things. It ignores the way the
• 8:31
  Speaker 1: parties have changed over time. It ignores the way gerrymandering
• 8:34
  Speaker 1: has radicalized the House of Representatives and changed the political incentives.
• 8:37
  Speaker 1: And it also just ignores the reality that, yeah, okay, sure.
• 8:41
  Speaker 1: Like members of Congress used to be better friends. They
• 8:43
  Speaker 1: were also more homogenous at that time. It was more white.
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: It was more male. It was more Christian. It was
• 8:48
  Speaker 1: a bunch of people from the same social class. So like,
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: I think we just need to be very careful for
• 8:53
  Speaker 1: the sort of olden days that we're pining for. Because
• 8:56
  Speaker 1: if you look under the hood, I'm not sure that
• 8:57
  Speaker 1: they were quite that great.
• 8:59
  Speaker 3: I agree.
• 9:00
  Speaker 4: I don't really do very much pining as a rule,
• 9:03
  Speaker 4: not a piner. Um, I'll go. Uh, my next, my
• 9:07
  Speaker 4: narrative is, uh, moderate Democrats in swing districts taking more
• 9:11
  Speaker 4: moderate stances are hurt by left-wing members in left-wing districts
• 9:15
  Speaker 4: taking more left-wing stances. Um, this, this came up, uh, uh,
• 9:20
  Speaker 4: soon after the election when there was some, uh, uh,
• 9:22
  Speaker 4: hand wringing about the fact that yes, Joe Biden won,
• 9:25
  Speaker 4: but the house majority shrunk that Democrats, uh, weren't able
• 9:27
  Speaker 4: to win a resounding victory in the Senate that we
• 9:30
  Speaker 4: were ultimately later able to win the Georgia.
• 9:31
  Speaker 1: Races, obviously.
• 9:33
  Speaker 4: And this began with a fight between Conor Lamb and
• 9:36
  Speaker 4: AOC that I don't think played out particularly helpfully, but
• 9:40
  Speaker 4: I'm glad it sort of has died down. And basically,
• 9:43
  Speaker 4: you know, the crux of the issue is that it
• 9:47
  Speaker 4: seems very true that moderate Democrats or Democrats in swing
• 9:51
  Speaker 4: districts are getting tagged by monikers like socialism or defund.
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: The police.
• 10:00
  Speaker 4: Or Medicare for all, or a host of other policies
• 10:04
  Speaker 4: that are not helpful to them amongst the, the kind
• 10:08
  Speaker 4: of suburban moderates that these, that these more moderate members
• 10:11
  Speaker 4: are trying to win. And so where did they point?
• 10:14
  Speaker 4: They point to the, uh, the people on the left
• 10:17
  Speaker 4: of the party, both in Congress and outside of Congress,
• 10:20
  Speaker 4: the activists who have made defund the police or abolish
• 10:23
  Speaker 4: ICE or Medicare for all or a host of other
• 10:25
  Speaker 4: left-wing priorities, sort of, they have kind of found very
• 10:29
  Speaker 4: ingenious ways to frame these debates, simple, elegant, powerful messages
• 10:34
  Speaker 4: that break through and have helped shift our debate, but
• 10:37
  Speaker 4: then through Fox News and propaganda organs get tagged to
• 10:40
  Speaker 4: all Democrats. And my issue here is, I think, you know, John,
• 10:45
  Speaker 4: Tommy and I, we talk about this all the time
• 10:47
  Speaker 4: that like, I think one thing that you see on Twitter,
• 10:50
  Speaker 4: but I think you see in a larger way is
• 10:53
  Speaker 4: it's more fun to yell at people who respond to you.
• 10:56
  Speaker 4: It's more fun to engage with people who see you,
• 10:59
  Speaker 4: acknowledge you, care what you have to say, or perhaps
• 11:01
  Speaker 4: in some way affected by your arguments. And so, you know,
• 11:06
  Speaker 4: it's a similar phenomenon of looking for your keys where
• 11:10
  Speaker 4: the light is shining. But the reality is, whether the
• 11:14
  Speaker 4: left of the party takes a strong stance or not,
• 11:17
  Speaker 4: Fox News, Tucker Carlson, right-wing radio, the Facebook right-wing organizations,
• 11:26
  Speaker 4: they don't need a lot of help to find the activist,
• 11:33
  Speaker 4: the random person, to saying something to the left that
• 11:38
  Speaker 4: they're going to tag you with. And so don't hate
• 11:40
  Speaker 4: the player, hate the game. The issue is that we
• 11:43
  Speaker 4: have a massive right-wing operation that's taking every extreme or
• 11:47
  Speaker 4: every left idea and trying to paint everybody with it.
• 11:50
  Speaker 4: And we have to fight that, not each other, because
• 11:53
  Speaker 4: there's always going to be a left of the party.
• 11:55
  Speaker 4: And they're always going to be trying to pull us
• 11:56
  Speaker 4: to the left. That's a good thing. And so we've
• 11:58
  Speaker 4: got to find a way to fight the actual cause.
• 12:01
  Speaker 4: The cause of the problem is not the left person
• 12:03
  Speaker 4: saying something. It's the system that takes that left person's
• 12:06
  Speaker 4: words and applies it to everybody, even if it's not
• 12:09
  Speaker 4: helpful in certain places. And I think we lose sight
• 12:11
  Speaker 4: of that because it's easier to argue with people who
• 12:13
  Speaker 4: argue back.
• 12:14
  Speaker 3: That's a good one.
• 12:15
  Speaker 1: That's a good one that I believe deeply. Here's one
• 12:18
  Speaker 1: that's a little tough to swallow for former White House
• 12:22
  Speaker 1: communications aides, which is the bully pulpit. There is this belief,
• 12:27
  Speaker 1: a narrative, that the White House comes with a bully
• 12:30
  Speaker 1: pulpit that is this huge rhetorical weapon that presidents can
• 12:33
  Speaker 1: pull out at any time, and you can just use
• 12:35
  Speaker 1: it as you want to move political opinion. Now, what
• 12:38
  Speaker 1: folks need to know is there is no evidence that
• 12:40
  Speaker 1: this is true. A bunch of political scientists have dug
• 12:42
  Speaker 1: into the data. So Ronald Reagan was known as the
• 12:45
  Speaker 1: great communicator. He saw support for programs he opposed, like regulations,
• 12:49
  Speaker 1: health care spending, welfare, education, environmental protection. Support for those
• 12:53
  Speaker 1: things went up during his presidency, and support for defense
• 12:55
  Speaker 1: spending went down when he was championing it. Other researchers
• 12:59
  Speaker 1: looked at FDR's fireside chats. They only increased his approval
• 13:03
  Speaker 1: by less than 1%. His big speeches on issues like
• 13:06
  Speaker 1: entering the Second World War They didn't move the electorate either.
• 13:09
  Speaker 1: Bill Clinton visited 200 cities and towns before the 1994 midterms.
• 13:15
  Speaker 1: God bless his staff. His numbers dropped. His health care
• 13:18
  Speaker 1: bill failed. Republicans retook the House. Bush tried to sell
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: Social Security privatization.
• 13:23
  Speaker 3: Failed.
• 13:24
  Speaker 1: Gallup looked at the impact of State of the Union
• 13:26
  Speaker 1: addresses going back to 1978, and they found that they
• 13:29
  Speaker 1: rarely affect the president's public standing in any meaningful way.
• 13:33
  Speaker 1: So my take home here is that sometimes talking about
• 13:37
  Speaker 1: stuff could just backfire. Like when a president talks about
• 13:39
  Speaker 1: an issue, things that are nonpartisan can become partisan the
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: minute you champion it. So I think white houses and
• 13:45
  Speaker 1: activists need to think just as much about, do we
• 13:48
  Speaker 1: want the president to not focus on this, to not
• 13:50
  Speaker 1: talk about it and just work it behind the scenes
• 13:52
  Speaker 1: and see if that's a more effective path to getting
• 13:54
  Speaker 1: something done than to like make it the headline of
• 13:56
  Speaker 1: the state of the union. Yeah.
• 13:58
  Speaker 4: I think there's two things. I think that's one. I
• 14:00
  Speaker 4: think sometimes it's like, um, Uh, I think politics really
• 14:05
  Speaker 4: messaging generally, I think it's true for, you know, corporations
• 14:08
  Speaker 4: trying to sell something. Um, it's like being on a swing.
• 14:11
  Speaker 4: You got to pump your legs at the right time
• 14:12
  Speaker 4: and you got to be resonant with the wave. You know,
• 14:15
  Speaker 4: it doesn't help to, to, to, to pump your legs
• 14:17
  Speaker 4: halfway down. You got to be right at the top
• 14:18
  Speaker 4: or right at the back. And so I think sometimes
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: it's about knowing the moment where you can kind of
• 14:24
  Speaker 4: use the momentum of a conversation and move it a
• 14:26
  Speaker 4: little bit further than it otherwise would have gone easier to,
• 14:29
  Speaker 4: easier to, to, uh, to make a fire worse than
• 14:31
  Speaker 4: it is to start a fire. And then the deeper
• 14:34
  Speaker 4: part of this too is political news is about people.
• 14:38
  Speaker 4: It's about individuals. It's about personalities. Much harder to make systems, trends, institutions,
• 14:48
  Speaker 4: the protagonist in the news just doesn't work. And so
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: we end up talking about individuals and personalities when we
• 14:53
  Speaker 4: need to be talking about like systems and structures.
• 14:55
  Speaker 3: I think that's right. Yeah. Oh, here's one.
• 14:59
  Speaker 4: This is, This is a stretch, but I think implicit
• 15:04
  Speaker 4: in a lot of our politics right now, including my own,
• 15:07
  Speaker 4: so I'll own this and take... It doesn't change my...
• 15:10
  Speaker 4: Why don't I just say it? The nature of polarization,
• 15:14
  Speaker 4: that the nature of polarization as it is right now
• 15:17
  Speaker 4: is like a semi-permanent fixture. And so the only way
• 15:20
  Speaker 4: we can combat things like the anti-majoritarian nature of the
• 15:24
  Speaker 4: Senate is to add states, or the only way we
• 15:27
  Speaker 4: can stop... Republicans from having an inherent advantage in gerrymandering
• 15:32
  Speaker 4: is to stop gerrymandering. I want to stop those things.
• 15:35
  Speaker 4: And I want DC to become a state. I want
• 15:36
  Speaker 4: Puerto Rico to have the chance to choose if they
• 15:38
  Speaker 4: want to become a state. I want to add seats
• 15:40
  Speaker 4: to the Supreme Court.
• 15:40
  Speaker 1: I'm for all of it.
• 15:41
  Speaker 3: Let's go.
• 15:42
  Speaker 4: But I think sometimes there's a learned helplessness around why
• 15:48
  Speaker 4: Democrats fail to win in some of the reddest places
• 15:51
  Speaker 4: in the country when Democratic politics, like expanding Medicaid, raising
• 15:55
  Speaker 4: the minimum wage, union politics, sometimes do much better than Democrats.
• 15:58
  Speaker 4: And so I think we should sometimes put a little
• 16:02
  Speaker 4: more thought into why there's this massive delta between democratic
• 16:05
  Speaker 4: policies and democratic politicians. And when we are also focused
• 16:09
  Speaker 4: on fighting some of these counter majoritarian institutions, because like,
• 16:12
  Speaker 4: you know, we weren't talking as much about how anti-democratic
• 16:15
  Speaker 4: the Senate was when we had 60 seats really didn't
• 16:18
  Speaker 4: come up in the conversation as much. So like we
• 16:21
  Speaker 4: should not write off the smallest States in the country
• 16:24
  Speaker 4: and just assume that those are Republican forever. There's just
• 16:26
  Speaker 4: no reason to, to accept that as a permanent state.
• 16:31
  Speaker 3: That's good.
• 16:31
  Speaker 1: That's good. Here's one for you. This is how we
• 16:34
  Speaker 1: got Trump. People love to state their pet issue and say,
• 16:38
  Speaker 1: this is how we got Trump. My hot take is
• 16:40
  Speaker 1: you're always wrong. 100% of the time, you're wrong when
• 16:43
  Speaker 1: you make this claim because it wasn't one thing. That's
• 16:46
  Speaker 1: more of a statement than a debate. Here's one to
• 16:48
  Speaker 1: debate with you. Public apologies work and they're the right
• 16:51
  Speaker 1: thing to do. I used to be a firm believer-
• 16:54
  Speaker 1: They're like, if you screw up in the public eye,
• 16:56
  Speaker 1: you own it, you apologize, you bust out that notes app,
• 16:59
  Speaker 1: you write out your, you take your lumps, right? I
• 17:01
  Speaker 1: feel 100% confident now that that is the wrong advice
• 17:05
  Speaker 1: and that our culture punishes people who apologize, who, you know,
• 17:09
  Speaker 1: it just gets covered more. There's voices who say your
• 17:12
  Speaker 1: apology sucked. It wasn't good enough. Those drown out all
• 17:14
  Speaker 1: the others. And it's just, it's a broken process.
• 17:17
  Speaker 4: I think that's, yeah, I think it's, I don't think
• 17:20
  Speaker 4: that there's a clear rule, um, I think it depends.
• 17:24
  Speaker 4: I think one, one more, one clear version of this
• 17:27
  Speaker 4: to me is, uh, not, not for moral reasons, but
• 17:30
  Speaker 4: for pure mercenary political calculus.
• 17:33
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 17:34
  Speaker 4: Never resign. Never, ever resign.
• 17:36
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 17:36
  Speaker 4: Like resigning is always a mistake. Uh, Andrew Cuomo, still governor.
• 17:41
  Speaker 4: Eliot Spitzer, I think he's in space maybe or with
• 17:44
  Speaker 4: John Edwards building houses.
• 17:46
  Speaker 1: I don't know where they are.
• 17:47
  Speaker 4: Never, ever resigned.
• 17:48
  Speaker 1: Mark Sanford, yeah.
• 17:49
  Speaker 4: Like maybe it's– well, Mark Sanford, he resigned.
• 17:53
  Speaker 3: He did a thing.
• 17:53
  Speaker 4: Then he won and then he lost. But he's a
• 17:55
  Speaker 4: weirdo and he's an exception and edge cases make bad laws.
• 18:00
  Speaker 4: But yeah, the– if someone– If someone close to me
• 18:07
  Speaker 4: was in a terrible political scandal and asked me what
• 18:11
  Speaker 4: to do, and I was focused only on what was
• 18:14
  Speaker 4: best for them, not for the state, not for the government,
• 18:16
  Speaker 4: not for anybody, but them as individuals, I would say,
• 18:19
  Speaker 4: you hang on for dear fucking life. You hide, you
• 18:22
  Speaker 4: do whatever. Maybe apologize, though. See, this is why I
• 18:24
  Speaker 4: think it's sometimes you can get in on apology. Although
• 18:28
  Speaker 4: Liz Brunig, who is a great writer and often heterodox
• 18:32
  Speaker 4: in a way that makes Twitter very angry, but who
• 18:34
  Speaker 4: I respect a lot- talks about how we have created
• 18:37
  Speaker 4: a kind of system, um, where there is, uh, lots
• 18:41
  Speaker 4: of repentance, but no acceptance. And so like, that's not ideal.
• 18:46
  Speaker 4: That's not ideal. Uh, but, um, end of, uh, incoherent thought.
• 18:53
  Speaker 1: No, I agree with all of that. Do you have a,
• 18:56
  Speaker 1: do you have any more narratives? Oh, I have one more.
• 18:58
  Speaker 4: I have one more, which is, um, the value of authenticity. Uh,
• 19:06
  Speaker 4: There's this idea that what we're looking for is authentic politicians.
• 19:10
  Speaker 4: And I think Trump ought to be the thing that
• 19:14
  Speaker 4: kills that dead because he is on stage an incredibly
• 19:19
  Speaker 4: authentic liar, a fully present performer living in the moment,
• 19:24
  Speaker 4: saying what is in his heart and obviously completely full
• 19:27
  Speaker 4: of shit because he's When you're saying you're looking, so
• 19:30
  Speaker 4: I think it's because authenticity is a lot of good
• 19:35
  Speaker 4: traits stripped of their meaning, stripped of their morality. Like
• 19:38
  Speaker 4: authenticity is an impression of honesty, integrity, trustworthiness, right? But
• 19:45
  Speaker 4: when you signal to the world that we are looking
• 19:49
  Speaker 4: for politics that seem authentic, you announce it to ambitious
• 19:54
  Speaker 4: people of all levels of virtue that like what you
• 19:58
  Speaker 4: need to do is put on a performance of authenticity.
• 20:01
  Speaker 4: And you know what? They'll do it. They'll do it.
• 20:03
  Speaker 4: So we don't want authenticity. We want integrity. And by
• 20:06
  Speaker 4: the way, I think sometimes the authenticity trap is that
• 20:10
  Speaker 4: authenticity is, I think, for many reasons, easier to be
• 20:15
  Speaker 4: performed by old white guys and often harder to be
• 20:19
  Speaker 4: grasped in the media by women, by people of color,
• 20:23
  Speaker 4: by gay people. So integrity, not authenticity. That's my position.
• 20:30
  Speaker 1: I like that. Okay, this is a random one. I
• 20:32
  Speaker 1: don't know if this is a narrative as much as
• 20:34
  Speaker 1: just a thing that annoys me. Why do people gender
• 20:38
  Speaker 1: inanimate objects? You hear this mostly from men, a lot
• 20:42
  Speaker 1: of times around like food, like steaks and beer, masculine,
• 20:45
  Speaker 1: salads and wine, feminine. No, it's fucking food. You're eating food,
• 20:50
  Speaker 1: sustenance to keep you alive. But I actually think it's
• 20:53
  Speaker 1: kind of a dumb, damaging thing. If you think about
• 20:56
  Speaker 1: the idea of telling a bunch of young kids, especially
• 20:59
  Speaker 1: young boys, that like eating healthy is not what they
• 21:02
  Speaker 1: should be doing for like made up gender reasons. It's
• 21:04
  Speaker 1: the thing that's really bothered me for a long time.
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: Yes. It's, um, it's happening. It's playing out right now around, um,
• 21:12
  Speaker 4: I'm trying to even say it without the lab grown meat,
• 21:15
  Speaker 4: like meat that is not made of cows, but made in,
• 21:17
  Speaker 4: out of other materials. And, you know, there's this like
• 21:20
  Speaker 4: culture war going on now in Texas where they're like,
• 21:22
  Speaker 4: you can't call it meat. And, you know, and, and,
• 21:25
  Speaker 4: and I saw there was a great ad by one
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: of the companies impossible beyond one of the fake meat companies.
• 21:30
  Speaker 4: Fake meat's not the right term. We need a better term.
• 21:33
  Speaker 4: You haven't cracked yet. I told you this, you haven't listened.
• 21:36
  Speaker 4: but their campaign is, are you afraid you'll like it?
• 21:38
  Speaker 4: Which I think is really good. It's really good kind
• 21:41
  Speaker 4: of pushing back on that. But yeah, it's like, there's
• 21:43
  Speaker 4: always this thing. It was like when Ted Cruz put
• 21:45
  Speaker 4: bacon around the end of like some kind of a
• 21:47
  Speaker 4: gun to cook the bacon with the gun.
• 21:50
  Speaker 1: To cook the bacon.
• 21:50
  Speaker 4: And it's, it's, yeah, there's a, yeah, the, yeah, masculine
• 21:58
  Speaker 4: food is pretty incoherent.
• 22:02
  Speaker 1: But you know, decades of bad advertising basically just rotting
• 22:06
  Speaker 1: our brains.
• 22:07
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 22:08
  Speaker 1: It's interesting.
• 22:09
  Speaker 4: It's like even flowers, right? Like flowers are feminine. What, what, what,
• 22:14
  Speaker 4: what it's very, it's, um, it's hard, right? Cause so
• 22:16
  Speaker 4: much of language is analogy and like we, we speak
• 22:19
  Speaker 4: in analogies all the time, but they really do get
• 22:22
  Speaker 4: into our brains.
• 22:24
  Speaker 3: Um, yeah. Gender.
• 22:27
  Speaker 1: It's a real pickle. It's a real pickle. Last one
• 22:30
  Speaker 1: I prepped for you, and we can cut this if
• 22:32
  Speaker 1: it's too weird. Stalin was a good listener.
• 22:35
  Speaker 3: Now, love it.
• 22:36
  Speaker 1: This take was hot on the Twitter streets a couple
• 22:38
  Speaker 1: of days ago. A professor at Riverside City College in
• 22:41
  Speaker 1: California tweeted, people say I idolize, in quotes, Stalin.
• 22:45
  Speaker 3: Not true.
• 22:45
  Speaker 1: I hold a fair and balanced view. The man was
• 22:47
  Speaker 1: neither savior nor saint, but he was at once a
• 22:49
  Speaker 1: very successful revolutionary, a great contributor to Marxist theory, and
• 22:53
  Speaker 1: said to be a great listener and collaborator during discussions,
• 22:57
  Speaker 1: end quote. So you might look at Stalin and see
• 23:00
  Speaker 1: a paranoid totalitarian leader who threw millions of his own
• 23:03
  Speaker 1: people into the gulags.
• 23:05
  Speaker 4: I see a shoulder to cry on. There is no
• 23:10
  Speaker 4: view too stupid to find quarter on the internet.
• 23:15
  Speaker 1: None.
• 23:16
  Speaker 4: Not a one. And this was true. When I see
• 23:22
  Speaker 4: Elon Musk tweets, I think maybe rocket science is easy.
• 23:26
  Speaker 4: when I see Ben Carson's, uh, uh, public utterances, I
• 23:30
  Speaker 4: think maybe brain surgery is easier than it looks. Uh,
• 23:34
  Speaker 4: when I see this person, uh, tweet what he's been
• 23:37
  Speaker 4: tweeting about fucking Stalin, one of the worst mass murderers
• 23:41
  Speaker 4: in human history, I think maybe getting, uh, uh, a
• 23:47
  Speaker 4: job as a professor is easier than it looks. Uh, and, um,
• 23:51
  Speaker 4: here's the other thing I would say, uh, Just a reminder,
• 23:57
  Speaker 4: you can say nothing.
• 23:58
  Speaker 1: If you want.
• 23:59
  Speaker 4: Say nothing. All of us. You can just let it
• 24:02
  Speaker 4: go by. You can just let it go by.
• 24:04
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 24:05
  Speaker 1: I thought Bo Burnham put it very well in his special.
• 24:08
  Speaker 3: Just shut the fuck up.
• 24:12
  Speaker 4: One hour. In Dark Knight, there's this moment where this
• 24:18
  Speaker 4: cop wants to interrogate the Joker and And the cop says,
• 24:21
  Speaker 4: I've seen a lot of punks and I know the
• 24:23
  Speaker 4: difference between the ones you can hit and the ones
• 24:25
  Speaker 4: who will like it. Well, I'm going to hit you
• 24:27
  Speaker 4: and I'll just have to try to like it more.
• 24:29
  Speaker 4: That is what engaging with trolls is. You are engaging
• 24:32
  Speaker 4: with a joker who likes the pain and whom you
• 24:35
  Speaker 4: cannot beat. So you know what? Don't do it. The
• 24:39
  Speaker 4: lesson of Dark Knight, don't feed the trolls.
• 24:44
  Speaker 1: Don't feed the trolls.
• 24:45
  Speaker 3: I totally.
• 24:46
  Speaker 1: I see it.
• 24:47
  Speaker 3: I like it a lot.
• 24:48
  Speaker 1: Okay, that's our narrative section. We're going to take a
• 24:50
  Speaker 1: quick break. When we come back, we'll be joined by
• 24:52
  Speaker 1: Jason Concepcion and Ira Madison III to talk about patriotic songs.
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: Stick around.
• 24:57
  Speaker 1: It will be a lot of fun. Okay, we want
• 25:07
  Speaker 1: to welcome in some very special guests for this segment
• 25:10
  Speaker 1: about patriotic music. First, we have the co-host of the
• 25:14
  Speaker 1: fantastic podcast, Take Line. and the host of the YouTube series,
• 25:18
  Speaker 1: all caps, NBA, Jason Concepcion.
• 25:20
  Speaker 3: Jason, welcome.
• 25:21
  Speaker 2: Let's go.
• 25:22
  Speaker 5: Land of the free, home of the brave, baby.
• 25:26
  Speaker 1: We are also thrilled to have with us the co-host
• 25:29
  Speaker 1: of Keep It, a man too spicy for Twitter, Ira
• 25:32
  Speaker 1: Madison III. Drop the nudes, Ira. Welcome to the pod.
• 25:36
  Speaker 5: Hi.
• 25:36
  Speaker 3: I'm glad to be here while John's on vacation. Okay.
• 25:42
  Speaker 1: We thought that was the deepest cut of all of this.
• 25:44
  Speaker 3: Here's the plan.
• 25:45
  Speaker 1: So we're going to do, for all the listeners, we're
• 25:47
  Speaker 1: going to do a little draft. So we're going to
• 25:48
  Speaker 1: select our five most patriotic songs. When listeners hear this episode,
• 25:52
  Speaker 1: you will be able to go to the various Pod
• 25:54
  Speaker 1: Save America social media accounts and vote on who had
• 25:57
  Speaker 1: the best draft or just talk shit to us. There's
• 26:00
  Speaker 1: no stakes here. This is just fun. So just come
• 26:02
  Speaker 1: for the ride. So when folks pick their song, Feel
• 26:05
  Speaker 1: free to make a little case for why it's the best.
• 26:07
  Speaker 1: We're going to define patriotism broadly, I assume. So we'll
• 26:10
  Speaker 1: start by me drawing some names out of a hat
• 26:13
  Speaker 1: to see who goes first, and then we'll do a
• 26:14
  Speaker 1: snake draft.
• 26:16
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 26:17
  Speaker 1: Love it. Number one pick.
• 26:19
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 26:19
  Speaker 1: I'll kick us off.
• 26:20
  Speaker 3: I'll kick us off.
• 26:21
  Speaker 1: Let me draft the others real quick. Okay. We've got
• 26:24
  Speaker 1: to get our order. Number two, Jason.
• 26:30
  Speaker 3: Ooh.
• 26:31
  Speaker 1: Number three, Ira.
• 26:33
  Speaker 4: Ira.
• 26:34
  Speaker 1: I'm bringing up the rear here.
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: Okay. Dear diary.
• 26:40
  Speaker 4: All right, here we go. Am I kicking us off?
• 26:44
  Speaker 3: You are.
• 26:44
  Speaker 1: You go one and then I'll do two at the
• 26:47
  Speaker 1: end because it's a snake.
• 26:48
  Speaker 5: Well, should you explain for the audience out there who's
• 26:53
  Speaker 5: not perhaps versed in the snake draft what the snake
• 26:56
  Speaker 5: draft is?
• 26:57
  Speaker 3: Explain it for me.
• 26:58
  Speaker 1: I don't know what the snake draft is.
• 27:00
  Speaker 4: I've been pretending to.
• 27:04
  Speaker 1: He's a pro, people. Jason's a pro here. So the
• 27:05
  Speaker 1: way a snake draft works is whoever picks first goes,
• 27:09
  Speaker 1: then goes second, third, fourth. And then the person who
• 27:11
  Speaker 1: drafted fourth, so me, I'll pick two. And then we'll
• 27:14
  Speaker 1: come back around to love it and he'll do two. Right?
• 27:17
  Speaker 1: So that's how you don't get screwed if you're at
• 27:20
  Speaker 1: the end.
• 27:20
  Speaker 5: So think about the way a snake moves, like in
• 27:23
  Speaker 5: this kind of... squiggling fashion.
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: Squiggles.
• 27:27
  Speaker 5: As the snake hits the end, the fourth pick, it
• 27:30
  Speaker 5: then comes back and so the fourth pick picks again
• 27:33
  Speaker 5: and then when it gets back to the front, the
• 27:35
  Speaker 5: formerly first pick now picks again and it does this
• 27:37
  Speaker 5: whole squiggle.
• 27:39
  Speaker 1: Like I said, he's a pro.
• 27:40
  Speaker 3: Don't tread on me.
• 27:41
  Speaker 4: Now you can see it. Do not do it. Now
• 27:44
  Speaker 4: you can see it. All right, I'm going to kick
• 27:46
  Speaker 4: us off. This is an anthem for our time and
• 27:50
  Speaker 4: for this moment. It is a song written By Will.i.am,
• 27:56
  Speaker 4: Otto Knows Jetman, Sebastian Ingrosso, Anthony Preston, and Ruth Ann Cunningham,
• 28:01
  Speaker 4: along with the singer of the song, Britney Spears. It
• 28:06
  Speaker 4: was the lead single. It was the lead single in
• 28:10
  Speaker 4: the 2013 album, Britney Jean. The song is Work Bitch,
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: but it was edited for radio as Work Work. I
• 28:17
  Speaker 4: will share with you some of the lyrics that I
• 28:19
  Speaker 4: think capture both the American experience and the ongoing tragedy
• 28:23
  Speaker 4: of Britney Spears' captivity. Here we go. You want a
• 28:27
  Speaker 4: hot body. You want a Bugatti. You want a Maserati.
• 28:29
  Speaker 4: You better work, bitch. You want a Lamborghini sipping martinis
• 28:32
  Speaker 4: looking hot in a bikini. You better work, bitch. You
• 28:33
  Speaker 4: want to live fancy, live in a big mansion party
• 28:35
  Speaker 4: in France. You better work, bitch. You better work, bitch.
• 28:38
  Speaker 4: You better work, bitch. You better work, bitch. Now get
• 28:40
  Speaker 4: to work, bitch. How is it that we did not
• 28:43
  Speaker 4: understand that these songs were a cry for help?
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: You know, love it. I know you had to read
• 28:52
  Speaker 3: those lyrics.
• 28:56
  Speaker 4: What's your point?
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: I knew them off the top of my head. Oh, shit. Oh, wow.
• 29:00
  Speaker 4: You're gayer than me.
• 29:01
  Speaker 3: I am.
• 29:02
  Speaker 4: Look at you.
• 29:05
  Speaker 1: It's getting personal early, everybody. Jason, you're up with your
• 29:08
  Speaker 1: first pick.
• 29:10
  Speaker 5: Uh, well, it's not only a great July 4th song.
• 29:14
  Speaker 5: I see it as a great song for moving to
• 29:16
  Speaker 5: Los Angeles, which is a move that I made several
• 29:19
  Speaker 5: years back. You know, I hopped off the plane at
• 29:21
  Speaker 5: LAX with a dream in my cardigan, uh, lyrics by, uh,
• 29:28
  Speaker 5: Jesse J. I love that, that, that a British person
• 29:32
  Speaker 5: wrote this song, uh, vocal by Miley Cyrus. It is
• 29:35
  Speaker 5: of course party in the USA, an anthem for our times,
• 29:40
  Speaker 5: an anthem for all time, an addictive number. I love
• 29:43
  Speaker 5: the song. Does the geography quite make sense that she
• 29:46
  Speaker 5: would hop off the plane at LAX and then looking
• 29:49
  Speaker 5: to the right, see the Hollywood sign? That doesn't quite track,
• 29:53
  Speaker 5: but love the song anyway.
• 29:55
  Speaker 4: Party in the USA. She couldn't have taken the 10.
• 29:58
  Speaker 4: She couldn't have taken the 10. To the, no, it
• 30:01
  Speaker 4: doesn't work. Yeah, it doesn't, yeah. The 101.
• 30:05
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 30:06
  Speaker 4: Maybe she went south and then.
• 30:07
  Speaker 5: But again, Jessie J, a British person, wrote the song,
• 30:10
  Speaker 5: so that's fine.
• 30:12
  Speaker 3: You know what? Jessie A, Jessie J is a great singer.
• 30:15
  Speaker 3: She can blow.
• 30:15
  Speaker 5: A great singer in her own right. I love her.
• 30:17
  Speaker 3: Yeah. That is true. All right, Ira. Okay. Number one pick.
• 30:21
  Speaker 3: My first choice, you know, inspired by the ongoing drama
• 30:26
  Speaker 3: with the filibuster is, and people in the Democratic Party.
• 30:33
  Speaker 3: I'm picking Where the Party At by Jacket Edge featuring Nelly.
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: Because also, you know, whenever there's American holidays, I'm always like,
• 30:42
  Speaker 3: where the party at?
• 30:45
  Speaker 1: God, that's a good one. That's a real good one. Okay.
• 30:49
  Speaker 3: So I got two now.
• 30:50
  Speaker 4: That's classic Ira.
• 30:51
  Speaker 1: That's classic Ira.
• 30:53
  Speaker 4: He always bounds in the room and goes, where.
• 30:54
  Speaker 3: The party at? Okay. I have done that.
• 30:59
  Speaker 1: My first pick.
• 31:00
  Speaker 3: I want to pick two.
• 31:01
  Speaker 1: My first pick, Sam Cooke, A Change Is Gonna Come.
• 31:05
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 31:05
  Speaker 1: One of the greatest voices in the history of the world.
• 31:08
  Speaker 1: The song became an anthem for the civil rights movement.
• 31:12
  Speaker 1: We will all look past One Night in Miami and
• 31:14
  Speaker 1: how underwhelming that film actually was. If you're going to
• 31:17
  Speaker 1: have the most interesting people in history in a room together,
• 31:20
  Speaker 1: maybe have them do something, just a thought. But that's
• 31:22
  Speaker 1: my first pick. My second pick is Green Day... American Idiot.
• 31:29
  Speaker 1: It was a takedown of post 9-11 hysteria. Don't want
• 31:33
  Speaker 1: to be an American idiot. One nation controlled by the media.
• 31:37
  Speaker 1: Information age of hysteria. It's calling out to idiot America.
• 31:42
  Speaker 1: How perfect is that?
• 31:44
  Speaker 4: Shout out to the person who would lean over and say,
• 31:49
  Speaker 4: this is about Bush.
• 31:55
  Speaker 1: Ira, your second pick.
• 31:58
  Speaker 3: So my next song is by an icon, Lenny Kravitz.
• 32:04
  Speaker 3: It's American Woman. And the lyrics sort of is how
• 32:12
  Speaker 3: I feel about most American women. American woman, stay away
• 32:16
  Speaker 3: from me. American woman, mama, let me be. The American
• 32:21
  Speaker 3: woman's a white woman.
• 32:22
  Speaker 4: Wow.
• 32:24
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 32:24
  Speaker 1: That's an assumption.
• 32:28
  Speaker 3: I think we know who he's telling to get away. Okay.
• 32:30
  Speaker 3: 76 report.
• 32:35
  Speaker 4: Whoa.
• 32:37
  Speaker 3: It's not. You're right.
• 32:39
  Speaker 5: And who could forget?
• 32:40
  Speaker 3: Of course.
• 32:40
  Speaker 4: Here's why I love this.
• 32:42
  Speaker 5: I just want to say that I love this pick
• 32:44
  Speaker 5: both for its essential essence in and of itself. And
• 32:47
  Speaker 5: the fact that famously Lenny Kravitz split his leather pants
• 32:52
  Speaker 5: and While performing this song, the clip then going viral,
• 32:57
  Speaker 5: an amazing moment in American history.
• 33:00
  Speaker 1: Indeed. Indeed. Let it all hang out, Lenny.
• 33:03
  Speaker 4: He did.
• 33:05
  Speaker 5: Gosh, for my next pick, I'm going to go slightly meta.
• 33:12
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 33:13
  Speaker 5: This song, I love this song. It's not just a
• 33:17
  Speaker 5: 4th of July song, but I think specifically it works
• 33:19
  Speaker 5: really well on the 4th. It is Katy Perry's Fireworks. Firework,
• 33:25
  Speaker 5: excuse me.
• 33:25
  Speaker 4: I'm so glad you caught that. Now, do I dock
• 33:30
  Speaker 4: it points?
• 33:32
  Speaker 5: Because the opening couplet is, do you ever feel like
• 33:35
  Speaker 5: a plastic bag drifting through the wind and, you know,
• 33:42
  Speaker 5: That being a reference, I think, to a scene from
• 33:48
  Speaker 5: a bad movie that I'm not going to name because
• 33:50
  Speaker 5: the movie is bad and problematic. Yes, I do docket
• 33:55
  Speaker 5: points for that. But I still think the chorus is addictive.
• 33:58
  Speaker 5: And Katy Perry is a great pop songstress. And I
• 34:02
  Speaker 5: would love to hear this song on the 4th of July.
• 34:05
  Speaker 2: Katy Perry's Firework.
• 34:06
  Speaker 1: All right, Lovey, you got two.
• 34:09
  Speaker 4: I got two. And I really appreciate that choice, Jason.
• 34:14
  Speaker 4: I understand why you don't like that film, but I
• 34:18
  Speaker 4: think that anyone who isn't moved by two teens saying
• 34:22
  Speaker 4: that there's so much beauty in the world, they don't
• 34:23
  Speaker 4: think that they can take it about a plastic bag.
• 34:26
  Speaker 4: floating in the wind has no, has no, has ice
• 34:29
  Speaker 4: in their veins, frankly. And I disagree with those who
• 34:33
  Speaker 4: say that there was some sort of collective fucking delusion
• 34:36
  Speaker 4: about that movie when it came out in what, like 90?
• 34:39
  Speaker 3: 99. 98, I want to say.
• 34:41
  Speaker 4: 98, 99. Something like that.
• 34:44
  Speaker 3: Yeah. It's bad.
• 34:48
  Speaker 5: Why did we think that was profound? Why did we,
• 34:50
  Speaker 5: why did people were like, oh man, the plastic bag scene, that,
• 34:53
  Speaker 5: holy shit.
• 34:55
  Speaker 4: There's something I always remember because it was from the
• 34:57
  Speaker 4: making of American Beauty, and it was a story in
• 35:00
  Speaker 4: which Steven Spielberg saw an early screening, came out of
• 35:03
  Speaker 4: the movie with a tear rolling down his cheek, and
• 35:05
  Speaker 4: turned to Sam Mendes and said, you've made a classic.
• 35:09
  Speaker 4: I always think about that. All right, my next two. First,
• 35:16
  Speaker 4: this is a song called Main Title. It is the
• 35:19
  Speaker 4: first movement from one of the greatest pieces of orchestral
• 35:21
  Speaker 4: music ever written called Star Wars. by the composer John Williams,
• 35:25
  Speaker 4: often connected to a lesser work of film that shares
• 35:27
  Speaker 4: the same name. It is about a group of rebels
• 35:29
  Speaker 4: that take on an empire and win and then, as
• 35:32
  Speaker 4: we learn in later movies, fail to tackle a lot
• 35:34
  Speaker 4: of the systemic internal issues once the empire is defeated.
• 35:38
  Speaker 4: Main title of Star Wars, one of the greatest songs
• 35:42
  Speaker 4: in American history. John Williams, one of the greatest composers
• 35:46
  Speaker 4: in American history, doesn't get the credit, doesn't get the credit.
• 35:50
  Speaker 4: If he puts some of those songs into a symphony...
• 35:54
  Speaker 4: and then Spielberg took from that symphony as found music,
• 35:58
  Speaker 4: he'd be considered one of the greatest composers of all time.
• 36:01
  Speaker 4: But he's not, because he's got the stink of cinema
• 36:03
  Speaker 4: on him. Shame on all of us. Shame on all
• 36:07
  Speaker 4: of us.
• 36:08
  Speaker 3: Wow.
• 36:08
  Speaker 4: Shame on Jason. This is a great pick. I agree
• 36:11
  Speaker 4: with it.
• 36:12
  Speaker 1: It's a good pick.
• 36:13
  Speaker 3: Okay. Yeah, one more.
• 36:15
  Speaker 1: Yeah, one more.
• 36:15
  Speaker 3: Love it.
• 36:16
  Speaker 4: Oh, my next is a song called Fanfare for the
• 36:22
  Speaker 4: Common Man. Written to honor America. Yeah, that's right. That's right.
• 36:27
  Speaker 4: Written by Aaron Copland, a gay Jew from Brooklyn. You
• 36:37
  Speaker 4: hear that song, boom, boom.
• 36:40
  Speaker 1: You're on your.
• 36:44
  Speaker 3: Is he single?
• 36:45
  Speaker 4: You're on your fucking feet.
• 36:46
  Speaker 1: Is he single?
• 36:48
  Speaker 4: He's dead. But one thing I really liked... So yes,
• 36:51
  Speaker 4: but one thing I really liked... One thing I really
• 36:54
  Speaker 4: liked about Aaron Copland is he kept getting older, but
• 36:57
  Speaker 4: his boyfriend stayed the same age.
• 37:00
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 37:01
  Speaker 1: Kevin Spacey fan over there. That's not a, they were adults.
• 37:05
  Speaker 4: I'm not, they were just, he just, you know, they
• 37:06
  Speaker 4: were adults.
• 37:08
  Speaker 1: You creeps. Oh, that's a good pick. All right, Jason,
• 37:12
  Speaker 1: you're up. Woo.
• 37:14
  Speaker 4: Okay.
• 37:16
  Speaker 5: Uh, tough to pick here, but, uh, Let's go with
• 37:21
  Speaker 5: one of the greatest renditions of the Star Spangled Banner
• 37:27
  Speaker 5: ever put to wax recording. Whatever you want to say,
• 37:31
  Speaker 5: it is Whitney Houston's rendition, rest in power, of the
• 37:37
  Speaker 5: Star Spangled Banner. I know we have divisive feelings about
• 37:42
  Speaker 5: this particular song, but who can hate on Whitney's stirring
• 37:47
  Speaker 5: emotions and absolutely flawless delivery of this song. It is
• 37:54
  Speaker 5: Whitney Houston singing the national anthem.
• 37:56
  Speaker 3: Children were singing that song at weddings, graduations, at funerals.
• 38:02
  Speaker 4: You know what else I really like about the performance, Jason?
• 38:04
  Speaker 4: Because it's so big and it is so memorable. And
• 38:09
  Speaker 4: so when I think of it, I think of it
• 38:11
  Speaker 4: as this gigantic, incredible, long, sweeping performance. But actually, she
• 38:16
  Speaker 4: walks out there in that tracksuit, she starts, she crushes it,
• 38:21
  Speaker 4: and she's gone. It's tight. It's tight.
• 38:24
  Speaker 5: The thing I remember about it is that after it
• 38:27
  Speaker 5: was done, and I don't remember who the person calling
• 38:31
  Speaker 5: the game was, just went, whoa!
• 38:33
  Speaker 4: Like....
• 38:40
  Speaker 3: Understated.
• 38:41
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 38:43
  Speaker 3: Ira, you are up. All right, well... I'm surprised no
• 38:47
  Speaker 3: one picked this already, but I'm going to have to
• 38:50
  Speaker 3: go with the seminal classic, American Pie, which, of course,
• 38:56
  Speaker 3: was released in 2000, and the soundtrack for the Madonna-Rupert
• 39:02
  Speaker 3: Everett film, The Next Best Thing. I'm, of course, talking
• 39:04
  Speaker 3: about the Madonna cover of American Pie. Oh, my God. Disgusting.
• 39:09
  Speaker 3: Shame on you. That's good. Shame on you. Sicko. Thank you,
• 39:11
  Speaker 3: William Orbit, for the remix. Sick.
• 39:16
  Speaker 4: That is a sick choice.
• 39:18
  Speaker 3: Great choice. Hashtag did it first.
• 39:20
  Speaker 1: I'm coming. I'm bringing the heat right back to Jason
• 39:24
  Speaker 1: because I'm going with the Jimi Hendrix version of the
• 39:27
  Speaker 1: Star Spangled Banner at Woodstock.
• 39:30
  Speaker 5: Can't beat it.
• 39:30
  Speaker 1: Because the song itself, it evolved over time like the country.
• 39:34
  Speaker 1: There were hundreds of different lyrics that morphed into what
• 39:36
  Speaker 1: we hear today. The Hendrix version, some would argue, is
• 39:40
  Speaker 1: the most powerful version of it in history. Jimi was
• 39:43
  Speaker 1: in the army. Vietnam was raging. It was like, he
• 39:47
  Speaker 1: was just this torn, tortured person in that era. So,
• 39:50
  Speaker 1: Hendrix is my guy here. And then my next one,
• 39:54
  Speaker 1: similar timeframe, but I'm going to go with Creedence Clearwater Revival,
• 39:58
  Speaker 1: Fortunate Son.
• 39:59
  Speaker 3: Wow. Because that is.
• 40:01
  Speaker 1: Like an in-your-face fucking angry protest song about class and
• 40:06
  Speaker 1: who fights our wars and who makes the decisions to
• 40:08
  Speaker 1: go to war. And it's angry and it's scathing and
• 40:11
  Speaker 1: it's awesome.
• 40:13
  Speaker 5: Didn't Trump come out to Fortunate Son in one of
• 40:15
  Speaker 5: those didn't listen to the lyrics moments in.
• 40:18
  Speaker 4: American political history? That's exactly right. And that's America too.
• 40:24
  Speaker 4: That's America's story. Singing songs and not paying attention to
• 40:27
  Speaker 4: the lyrics. That's the story of this country too.
• 40:31
  Speaker 1: Ira, your fourth pick.
• 40:33
  Speaker 3: You know, my fourth pick is from a musical. I
• 40:37
  Speaker 3: love this. It's very American. It is... The opening song
• 40:44
  Speaker 3: from Assassins, Everybody's Got the Right. Off-Broadway cast, not Broadway.
• 40:51
  Speaker 4: I want you to know that as I was thinking
• 40:54
  Speaker 4: about off-Broadway, as I was thinking about my choices, the
• 40:59
  Speaker 4: only place where I feared overlap would be Sondheim. That
• 41:02
  Speaker 4: was where I thought that that's where we might overlap.
• 41:06
  Speaker 4: I didn't end up choosing any.
• 41:07
  Speaker 3: You probably would have picked something like America from West
• 41:10
  Speaker 3: Side Story. Shit. No, I didn't. I didn't.
• 41:16
  Speaker 4: I didn't.
• 41:21
  Speaker 3: Am I up? Yeah. I'm sorry. Jason's up.
• 41:24
  Speaker 1: Jason's up.
• 41:24
  Speaker 3: Oh, Jason's up. Wow.
• 41:26
  Speaker 5: I'm going to jump down. I'm going to pick up
• 41:29
  Speaker 5: one of my lower seeds a little early just because
• 41:33
  Speaker 5: as a high school band kid– This one really speaks
• 41:37
  Speaker 5: to me. I love a good band arrangement. I'm going
• 41:39
  Speaker 5: to go with Stars and Stripes Forever by John Philip Sousa.
• 41:47
  Speaker 5: As soon as you hear it, you want to do
• 41:49
  Speaker 5: that quick step and march. And again, I love to
• 41:53
  Speaker 5: hear those tubas. I love to hear those sousaphones. I
• 41:55
  Speaker 5: love to hear the clarinets, the trumpets, the flutes. Give
• 42:00
  Speaker 5: it to me. John Philip Sousa, the Stars and Stripes Forever.
• 42:06
  Speaker 4: It's a great pick.
• 42:07
  Speaker 3: Great pick.
• 42:08
  Speaker 4: You know you're dealing with a master when they name
• 42:11
  Speaker 4: a giant tuba after you. When you can make a
• 42:14
  Speaker 4: new tuba.
• 42:15
  Speaker 3: He did it.
• 42:15
  Speaker 5: He did that thing.
• 42:16
  Speaker 4: When you can't get what you need out of a tuba.
• 42:19
  Speaker 4: I need a new tuba. For what you're putting out there,
• 42:21
  Speaker 4: we need a super tuba.
• 42:22
  Speaker 5: Our current tuba technology is not up to the standards
• 42:27
  Speaker 5: that I am looking for. Therefore, I'm going to disrupt
• 42:30
  Speaker 5: the tuba space and create a whole new tuba with
• 42:34
  Speaker 5: a wider range.
• 42:39
  Speaker 3: Love it.
• 42:39
  Speaker 1: You got two.
• 42:40
  Speaker 4: I'm just loving Sousa disrupting the tuba space.
• 42:46
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 42:47
  Speaker 4: My next two. And I want to go in here
• 42:52
  Speaker 4: knowing that some people play to win. Some people play
• 42:56
  Speaker 4: for history.
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 42:57
  Speaker 4: With the choices that they make.
• 42:58
  Speaker 1: All right. My next choice.
• 43:02
  Speaker 3: It is.
• 43:05
  Speaker 3: It is.
• 43:06
  Speaker 4: From the ballet Rodeo, the courting at Burnt Ranch, specifically
• 43:11
  Speaker 4: the section called Hoedown, the 1942 ballet composed by, you
• 43:16
  Speaker 4: guessed it, gay American, born 1900, died 1990. That's right.
• 43:22
  Speaker 4: It's Lithuanian Jewish origins. Aaron Copland with Hoedown. From Rodeo.
• 43:29
  Speaker 3: He knows it. Yes.
• 43:30
  Speaker 1: Yes.
• 43:30
  Speaker 4: I'm well aware of it.
• 43:31
  Speaker 3: I love it.
• 43:31
  Speaker 5: Big fan.
• 43:32
  Speaker 4: You are talking about so many dead gay people today.
• 43:34
  Speaker 1: It's the same one.
• 43:34
  Speaker 5: It's the one dead gay guy.
• 43:35
  Speaker 1: Well.
• 43:36
  Speaker 3: I almost.
• 43:36
  Speaker 2: I want you to know.
• 43:37
  Speaker 3: I almost.
• 43:54
  Speaker 4: I made a choice and I almost was going to
• 43:58
  Speaker 4: give you a range of gay Jewish composers. And then
• 44:04
  Speaker 4: the problem was it was hard to not go with
• 44:08
  Speaker 4: George Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue.
• 44:10
  Speaker 3: That's a great one.
• 44:10
  Speaker 4: But Rhapsody in Blue has been double tapped in the
• 44:13
  Speaker 4: back of the head. One shot by Woody Allen in Manhattan,
• 44:16
  Speaker 4: the other by United Airlines. So that's an executed song
• 44:20
  Speaker 4: dead on the ground. And then it was like, well,
• 44:23
  Speaker 4: there's Samuel Barber, but it's like Adagio for Strings while
• 44:26
  Speaker 4: very American.
• 44:27
  Speaker 2: It's too sad.
• 44:27
  Speaker 4: It's too sad. Even though the American story.
• 44:30
  Speaker 5: Is songs to be played while troops freak out. I'm
• 44:33
  Speaker 5: just thinking 9-11 and of course, never forget, but yeah,
• 44:35
  Speaker 5: it's too much.
• 44:36
  Speaker 3: I mean, isn't the most American Gershwin song slap that bass? Sure.
• 44:42
  Speaker 1: Sure.
• 44:43
  Speaker 3: Sure. Why not? Why not?
• 44:45
  Speaker 4: My next choice. And that's not the, there's another too
• 44:52
  Speaker 4: that you're not, there's another, there's, there's darker, there's darker,
• 44:56
  Speaker 4: there's darker choices in the Gershwin song catalog. But the
• 44:59
  Speaker 4: next choice is Appalachian spring, specifically the Allegro. By the
• 45:06
  Speaker 4: late composer, it's Aaron Copland. It's Aaron Copland. And my
• 45:10
  Speaker 4: reason for choosing all of these Copland songs, again, knowing
• 45:13
  Speaker 4: that this was not for a win, but for history,
• 45:16
  Speaker 4: is I just want to remind everybody listening that gay
• 45:19
  Speaker 4: Jews from Brooklyn wrote the American songbook, all right? They
• 45:23
  Speaker 4: wrote America's songs, all right? Some of them married women
• 45:28
  Speaker 4: and they hated it. Some of them didn't. Some of
• 45:31
  Speaker 4: them married women and then had heart attacks, which seems
• 45:35
  Speaker 4: like probably were just kind of panic attacks from the
• 45:38
  Speaker 4: lives they had to lead. But they wrote great songs.
• 45:40
  Speaker 1: All right.
• 45:41
  Speaker 4: Shout out Charles Ives. I don't know if he was gay, actually.
• 45:44
  Speaker 4: Shout out to Charles Ives, whether you were gay or straight.
• 45:46
  Speaker 4: If Charles Ives was straight, I apologize. He was an accountant.
• 45:52
  Speaker 4: I do know he was an accountant. Or an ad man.
• 45:56
  Speaker 3: Everyone's gay when they're dead.
• 45:59
  Speaker 1: It's true.
• 46:00
  Speaker 4: That's not what the Mormons have anything to say about it. Ira, go.
• 46:03
  Speaker 1: That is true. No, Jason's up. It's a Jason, then Ira,
• 46:05
  Speaker 1: then me.
• 46:06
  Speaker 4: Oh my God.
• 46:07
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 46:07
  Speaker 1: Snake trapped.
• 46:08
  Speaker 3: Woo.
• 46:10
  Speaker 5: Well, here is where I'm kind of thrown into disarray
• 46:13
  Speaker 5: a little bit here.
• 46:13
  Speaker 4: You know what?
• 46:14
  Speaker 5: I'm going to say I thought about I'm just going
• 46:17
  Speaker 5: to take you into my process. I thought about picking
• 46:19
  Speaker 5: American Boy, but I already picked a song written by
• 46:22
  Speaker 5: another British person about America.
• 46:24
  Speaker 4: So I'm not going to do that.
• 46:25
  Speaker 5: I also don't know what Estelle is up to right now.
• 46:28
  Speaker 5: So I'm not going to I'm going to go away
• 46:30
  Speaker 5: from that one. Is she queuing on now? OK, so
• 46:32
  Speaker 5: I'm glad I didn't pick.
• 46:33
  Speaker 1: OK.
• 46:33
  Speaker 4: Slander.
• 46:38
  Speaker 5: So I am going to go, gosh, this is tough.
• 46:41
  Speaker 3: You know what?
• 46:41
  Speaker 5: I'm going to go with Woody Guthrie's This Land is
• 46:45
  Speaker 5: Our Land. You learn it in school. It is a
• 46:49
  Speaker 5: Folkways classic, one of the great protest songs in American history.
• 46:56
  Speaker 5: The fact that they teach it to kids is funny
• 46:59
  Speaker 5: to me because then you read the lyrics and you're like, oh,
• 47:04
  Speaker 5: this is actually revolutionary socialist propaganda that I'm learning as
• 47:09
  Speaker 5: a child, which I maintain sharing this country as one people.
• 47:18
  Speaker 5: It's an ideal that we should try to live up to.
• 47:20
  Speaker 5: This land is our land, Woody Guthrie.
• 47:22
  Speaker 3: It's critical race theory is what it is. It is. Yeah.
• 47:27
  Speaker 5: Don't let the right read the lyrics.
• 47:29
  Speaker 1: To This Land is Ireland. Don't tell Tom Cotton. Ira,
• 47:32
  Speaker 1: your final pick.
• 47:33
  Speaker 3: I know. It's like, do you think I'm going to
• 47:35
  Speaker 3: go for a very serious, earnest one? Or I see
• 47:39
  Speaker 3: love at space. I know what he thinks I'm going
• 47:41
  Speaker 3: to do. But I'm going to go with a serious one.
• 47:45
  Speaker 3: I'm going to go with the Black National Anthem as
• 47:50
  Speaker 3: sung by Beyonce at Coachella.
• 47:54
  Speaker 5: I knew it.
• 47:55
  Speaker 3: Yeah, lift every voice and sing.
• 47:58
  Speaker 1: Great choice.
• 47:59
  Speaker 3: That's a great one.
• 48:00
  Speaker 4: There was a real opportunity there for you to say
• 48:03
  Speaker 4: one of the many other songs she sang.
• 48:05
  Speaker 3: I mean, I could have gone with Independent Woman because
• 48:09
  Speaker 3: I'm constantly throwing my hands up at her because I
• 48:11
  Speaker 3: am an independent woman. Yeah. I'm a mama who's profiting dollars.
• 48:20
  Speaker 1: You bet.
• 48:20
  Speaker 3: You bet you are.
• 48:21
  Speaker 1: Yeah.
• 48:22
  Speaker 4: That's what everyone says about you.
• 48:23
  Speaker 3: Thank you.
• 48:27
  Speaker 1: Struggling here with this last one.
• 48:28
  Speaker 5: Okay.
• 48:30
  Speaker 1: I know what I'm going to do. D'Angelo, Devil's Pie.
• 48:37
  Speaker 1: Fuck the slice. We want the pie. Watch us all
• 48:40
  Speaker 1: stand in line for a slice of the Devil's Pie.
• 48:42
  Speaker 1: It's about greed, materialism. What is more American than that?
• 48:46
  Speaker 1: Rick Rubin, I think, produced it. Pretty sure he did.
• 48:50
  Speaker 1: Great song. Great artist. Underrated.
• 48:53
  Speaker 3: Underrated.
• 48:54
  Speaker 1: Listen to it, kids, if you don't know this one.
• 48:55
  Speaker 1: Also featured in the movie Belly, which is also underrated
• 48:59
  Speaker 1: if you want to see lots of rappers acting. So
• 49:03
  Speaker 1: that's my final pick.
• 49:06
  Speaker 3: Not Tommy talking about Belly on this morning.
• 49:10
  Speaker 1: I think I've seen Belly 10 times.
• 49:12
  Speaker 3: I see that for you. It's a good movie.
• 49:15
  Speaker 1: There's that scene where they come into the club and
• 49:18
  Speaker 1: it's all lit up. I forget what song's playing. Anyway,
• 49:21
  Speaker 1: I'm not going to sing it.
• 49:23
  Speaker 3: Guys.
• 49:23
  Speaker 1: Yeah, I was really hoping.
• 49:25
  Speaker 5: I was on the edge of my seat hoping.
• 49:28
  Speaker 4: That it would happen.
• 49:28
  Speaker 3: No, no, no, man.
• 49:30
  Speaker 1: Singing is something you only hear on all caps NBA
• 49:33
  Speaker 1: because one of us went to Berkeley and one of
• 49:36
  Speaker 1: us can't sing. Well, that doesn't mean I can sing.
• 49:38
  Speaker 3: A Hype Williams classic, so.
• 49:41
  Speaker 4: Look, here's the thing. As a small child, I had
• 49:44
  Speaker 4: a wonderful, melodious voice, famed at Camp Starlight, where I
• 49:49
  Speaker 4: was Oliver, where I took on many a great role.
• 49:52
  Speaker 4: And then I hit puberty, and I vividly remember the
• 49:56
  Speaker 4: two gay guys who ran the theater department, one of
• 49:59
  Speaker 4: them saying, what happened to John? And then the guy
• 50:02
  Speaker 4: at the piano went, puberty. And then ba-dum-bum-ba-dum-bum. And that
• 50:06
  Speaker 4: was the end of my music career. So I won't
• 50:09
  Speaker 4: be doing very much singing.
• 50:10
  Speaker 3: You were bullied by the Gershwin brothers.
• 50:13
  Speaker 4: I was. Also, by the way, just doing a little
• 50:15
  Speaker 4: internet searching here. It turns out Charles Ive may have
• 50:19
  Speaker 4: also just been a huge homophobe. So I just may
• 50:21
  Speaker 4: have my wires crossed there. Just something to keep in mind.
• 50:23
  Speaker 4: But then again, maybe she protests too much. I don't know.
• 50:26
  Speaker 3: Fair. I don't know.
• 50:28
  Speaker 4: Put it in the comments on Charles Ives.
• 50:29
  Speaker 1: Am I up? Is somebody up?
• 50:30
  Speaker 3: Are we done? I think we're done.
• 50:31
  Speaker 1: How long are we doing? We're done. I have to
• 50:35
  Speaker 1: thank all of you for playing along with this. That
• 50:37
  Speaker 1: went better than I ever could have possibly hoped. That
• 50:39
  Speaker 1: is our first, maybe final, patriotic song draft. Thank you, Jason.
• 50:44
  Speaker 3: Thank you, Ira.
• 50:46
  Speaker 1: Everyone, go on social media, the cricket accounts. You can
• 50:49
  Speaker 1: roast us. You can vote for who had the best draft.
• 50:51
  Speaker 1: And when we come back, You'll hear my interview with
• 50:54
  Speaker 1: Roger Bennett from Men in Blazers about the story of America,
• 50:57
  Speaker 1: his immigration story, sports, soccer, all kinds of other fun stuff.
• 51:02
  Speaker 1: So stick around for that. I am thrilled to welcome
• 51:13
  Speaker 1: on today's guest. He's a broadcaster, podcaster, co-host of the
• 51:17
  Speaker 1: fantastic Men in Blazers shows, and the author of the
• 51:21
  Speaker 1: amazing new book, reborn in the USA, Roger Bennett. Roger,
• 51:25
  Speaker 1: great to have you on the show.
• 51:26
  Speaker 2: Tommy, it's a joy to be back.
• 51:30
  Speaker 1: Okay, so today's episode, we're talking a lot about narratives.
• 51:33
  Speaker 1: And I thought your book is a perfect way to
• 51:34
  Speaker 1: talk about the power of the story of America, the
• 51:37
  Speaker 1: power of American movies and culture and music, because this
• 51:41
  Speaker 1: book is a self-described Englishman's love letter to America. And
• 51:45
  Speaker 1: I feel like it's so nice to hear that sentiment,
• 51:47
  Speaker 1: because I think we rightly have talked a lot about
• 51:49
  Speaker 1: the enormous flaws with this country but it's important to
• 51:52
  Speaker 1: also remember what a privilege it is to be here.
• 51:55
  Speaker 1: So it's also a privilege to have you.
• 51:58
  Speaker 2: Oh, it's remarkable to be here just after the July
• 52:02
  Speaker 2: 4th weekend. You know, I wrote this book for so
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: many reasons. Your listeners can probably tell by my accent
• 52:08
  Speaker 2: that I'm not from the United States, but I have
• 52:11
  Speaker 2: become in my heart more American than Kenny Powers. I'm
• 52:15
  Speaker 2: probably like Bruce Springsteen levels. That's what I aspire to.
• 52:18
  Speaker 2: And I grew up in Liverpool, England. at a dark
• 52:21
  Speaker 2: time in the North's history, 1980s, the great city of Liverpool,
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: magical place that was falling apart economically, politically, culturally. There
• 52:31
  Speaker 2: was a heroin epidemic, unemployment soaring, Thatcher just laying waste
• 52:35
  Speaker 2: to the coal pits, to the steel mills. If you've
• 52:38
  Speaker 2: seen Billy Elliot, you kind of know what I have.
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: And I didn't have ballet to save me, Tommy, but
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: what I had instead of the arabesques, really was American
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: soft power, the culture, the books, the music, the movies,
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: the television shows, the Chicago Bears. And I feasted on
• 52:56
  Speaker 2: all of them. They all seem to be little breadcrumbs
• 52:59
  Speaker 2: of a life that could be lived in color, whereas
• 53:02
  Speaker 2: mine was lived in black and white.
• 53:04
  Speaker 1: So I want to talk about that feast. I want
• 53:05
  Speaker 1: to talk about John Hughes and the Chicago Bears and
• 53:07
  Speaker 1: the music. But let's just start with your formative experience
• 53:11
  Speaker 1: growing up in Liverpool, because the book is so funny.
• 53:15
  Speaker 1: And it's incredibly relatable detail because I want to get
• 53:18
  Speaker 1: to that experience. So you talk about like teachers just
• 53:21
  Speaker 1: caning students regularly, beating the crap out of them with rulers,
• 53:25
  Speaker 1: I guess. There are scenes where students put hydrochloric acid
• 53:29
  Speaker 1: on a teacher's desk. There's a thumbtack on a teacher.
• 53:32
  Speaker 1: Was your school full of sociopaths or was this normal
• 53:35
  Speaker 1: for Liverpool?
• 53:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, one of the working titles for the book was
• 53:39
  Speaker 2: This Past As Normal. It was normal. I went to
• 53:44
  Speaker 2: a school in England where, at the time, almost every school, 1980s,
• 53:48
  Speaker 2: the teachers created discipline by just thrashing the students.
• 53:52
  Speaker 3: It was a school.
• 53:53
  Speaker 2: It was like the last vestiges of the British Empire.
• 53:55
  Speaker 4: My school.
• 53:56
  Speaker 2: Britain still had an empire. Children should be seen and
• 53:59
  Speaker 2: not heard. Study Latin, Greek and ancient history. And any
• 54:03
  Speaker 2: deviation was met with a quick thrashing of the buttocks.
• 54:06
  Speaker 2: And you'd routinely go home absolutely battered by a sadistic teacher.
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: And your parents had just been like, oh, son, were
• 54:14
  Speaker 2: you a bad kid again? Like it was everything passed
• 54:18
  Speaker 2: as normal. And, you know, it was the story you're
• 54:21
  Speaker 2: referring to. One of my classmates put a thumbtack on
• 54:25
  Speaker 2: a on a teacher's seat and he sat on it
• 54:27
  Speaker 2: and we all held our breath to start laughing when
• 54:29
  Speaker 2: he jumped up in pain instead. He delivered the lecture
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: for an entire hour. And at the end, he said, children,
• 54:37
  Speaker 2: I know you put a thumbtack on my seat and
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: I was foolish enough to sit on it. And as
• 54:42
  Speaker 2: a result, I must pay the price. The World War Prisoner,
• 54:46
  Speaker 2: World War Two prisoner camps teach us if you have
• 54:49
  Speaker 2: an action, you must pay the consequences. And I have
• 54:52
  Speaker 2: paid mine. And he walked out and left us absolutely
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: gobsmacked by his sadistic attempt to tell us his life truth,
• 55:00
  Speaker 2: which was pretty awful.
• 55:01
  Speaker 1: Unbelievable. I mean, I guess unless anyone feels too bad
• 55:04
  Speaker 1: for you about all of this, high school sounds just
• 55:07
  Speaker 1: like a bacchanalia. I mean, there are some stories that
• 55:11
  Speaker 1: maybe are too hot for TV. Roger, you might have
• 55:13
  Speaker 1: to buy the book to find out what happened to
• 55:15
  Speaker 1: the poor microwave at one high school party. But it
• 55:18
  Speaker 1: was so relatable because I think every kid, every high
• 55:22
  Speaker 1: school class has that one high school party that got
• 55:24
  Speaker 1: famously out of control, right? Like there was my sophomore year,
• 55:28
  Speaker 1: my friend walked into one party and And someone he'd
• 55:30
  Speaker 1: never met before came up to him and said, Adam,
• 55:33
  Speaker 1: do you know Millie? And she was the person who
• 55:35
  Speaker 1: lived there. And she asked this of Adam. And he said, yes, yes,
• 55:39
  Speaker 1: I do. And this stranger said, tell her there was
• 55:42
  Speaker 1: a small fire in the basement, but it's been contained.
• 55:46
  Speaker 1: And that was his entryway to this party. And I
• 55:48
  Speaker 1: thought of that as I read about this just debauchery
• 55:51
  Speaker 1: with you and your friends at the pubs every night.
• 55:53
  Speaker 1: I mean, you kind of had to pull yourself back
• 55:55
  Speaker 1: from the brink there at one point.
• 55:57
  Speaker 2: Well, you survive in a world of darkness with humour.
• 56:03
  Speaker 2: There's a reason so many English comedians come out of Liverpool.
• 56:08
  Speaker 2: It's hilarious. You know, you survive through making light of
• 56:13
  Speaker 2: a darkness that surrounds you. And also Liverpool was the
• 56:17
  Speaker 2: port city in which every product rolled out to the
• 56:20
  Speaker 2: empire in the olden days. And then everything came in
• 56:23
  Speaker 2: and Liverpoolians look out to sea and dream of a
• 56:27
  Speaker 2: world which is different to our own and particularly towards America, Tommy.
• 56:31
  Speaker 2: All the products, all the goods, all the services from
• 56:34
  Speaker 2: America rolled through the port of Liverpool. It's not a
• 56:36
  Speaker 2: coincidence that the Beatles came out of Liverpool. It's where
• 56:40
  Speaker 2: rock and roll first hit England. Paul, John, George and
• 56:47
  Speaker 2: the other one, they all rose up and... So we
• 56:50
  Speaker 2: felt so close to America. And so I told myself
• 56:55
  Speaker 2: I was an American trapped in an Englishman's body. My
• 56:59
  Speaker 2: own family story is that of three generations ago, my
• 57:02
  Speaker 2: great grandfather, Harris. was a butcher in the Ukraine. He
• 57:06
  Speaker 2: dreamt of a better life like thousands. He wanted to
• 57:09
  Speaker 2: go to Chicago, the hog capital of the world. And
• 57:12
  Speaker 2: the myth of the Liverpool Jewish community is that it's
• 57:15
  Speaker 2: full of the low IQ individuals that when the boat
• 57:18
  Speaker 2: from Eastern Europe docked to refuel in Liverpool, they looked
• 57:22
  Speaker 2: up at the one tall building on the Liverpool skyline,
• 57:24
  Speaker 2: thought they were in New York and got off and.
• 57:26
  Speaker 3: Said, you know, we're here.
• 57:28
  Speaker 2: We've made it to the promised land.
• 57:29
  Speaker 1: But it wasn't.
• 57:30
  Speaker 2: And my grandfather, Sam, who I was so close with,
• 57:34
  Speaker 2: when things were dark, he would pick up this little tchotchke,
• 57:37
  Speaker 2: Statue of Liberty, plastic souvenir toy, and he'd just look
• 57:41
  Speaker 2: at it and he'd.
• 57:42
  Speaker 4: Say, we should have lived there.
• 57:43
  Speaker 2: We should have lived there. So every American piece of culture,
• 57:47
  Speaker 2: heart to heart, the love boat, fantasy, all of it
• 57:50
  Speaker 2: just filled me with, they were like clues of this
• 57:53
  Speaker 2: land that I felt I was, America, even though I'd
• 57:56
  Speaker 2: never set foot there. And obviously the parties, Tommy, your party,
• 58:00
  Speaker 2: my party, it was Run DMC and the Beastie Boys
• 58:03
  Speaker 2: that were just essentially, they were the puppet masters of
• 58:06
  Speaker 2: all of our behavior for at least two years.
• 58:08
  Speaker 4: Amazing.
• 58:09
  Speaker 1: So Roger, the transfer portal opened and we got our
• 58:12
  Speaker 1: hands on you on June 1st, 2018. You became an
• 58:15
  Speaker 1: American citizen. Congratulations. We are thrilled to have you. But
• 58:19
  Speaker 1: before you spent, you know, before you became a citizen,
• 58:22
  Speaker 1: you spent all this time in the U.S. watching, observing America.
• 58:25
  Speaker 1: You are our modern Alexis de Tocqueville. Was there anything
• 58:28
  Speaker 1: you were able to see in that time that you
• 58:30
  Speaker 1: think that we missed about ourselves?
• 58:34
  Speaker 2: I first came to Chicago when I was 16. I
• 58:37
  Speaker 2: came over for a summer and I lived in the
• 58:39
  Speaker 2: northern suburbs with my pen pal. That's the person you
• 58:42
  Speaker 2: write to, young listeners, before the age of the Internet.
• 58:46
  Speaker 2: And it was John Hughes's neighborhoods, Glencoe, Highland Park I
• 58:49
  Speaker 2: lived in. And it was as promised. It was as promised.
• 58:54
  Speaker 2: It was the Holy Land, you know, New Trier High School,
• 58:57
  Speaker 2: which was bigger than most English universities.
• 58:59
  Speaker 1: My mom went there.
• 59:00
  Speaker 2: Oh, you know, New Trier Mafia. Thousands of your listeners
• 59:03
  Speaker 2: are no doubt. Yes, I went to it. It was
• 59:05
  Speaker 2: it was eye openly spectacular. And I met the Chicago
• 59:09
  Speaker 2: Bears Super Bowl winning team. William Refrigerator Perry whispered into
• 59:13
  Speaker 2: my ear, dream big dreams, kid.
• 59:16
  Speaker 4: You can do anything. I did.
• 59:18
  Speaker 2: You can, too, which I now know working in sports
• 59:21
  Speaker 2: is an amalgam.
• 59:22
  Speaker 4: Of every cliche.
• 59:23
  Speaker 2: Any athlete just flings off when they meet some little
• 59:26
  Speaker 2: kid and want to get the hell away from them.
• 59:28
  Speaker 2: But when he said them, I was like, oh, my God,
• 59:30
  Speaker 2: he's telling me to move to Chicago as soon as
• 59:33
  Speaker 2: I can.
• 59:34
  Speaker 4: And I did.
• 59:34
  Speaker 3: I did.
• 59:35
  Speaker 2: I moved here at the first opportunity after university in England.
• 59:41
  Speaker 2: And I got a job, my first job. I was
• 59:43
  Speaker 2: an illegal alien, which I think is an important part
• 59:46
  Speaker 2: of the story, Tommy. I came on a tourist visa
• 59:49
  Speaker 2: and just never left. And to begin with, I was
• 59:51
  Speaker 2: a waiter, a baker, a terrible baker, 4 a.m.
• 59:54
  Speaker 3: Shift.
• 59:56
  Speaker 2: I was a librarian and I'd fall asleep in the stacks.
• 59:59
  Speaker 2: I was just hustling. And then I got a job.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: I'd done a law degree in England. I got a
• 1:00:03
  Speaker 2: job during the welfare debates, during the Clinton welfare debates,
• 1:00:09
  Speaker 2: where single African-American males were really stigmatized in that policy debate.
• 1:00:17
  Speaker 2: And I worked with public advocacy groups to train mostly
• 1:00:21
  Speaker 2: homeless men how to talk to the media about the
• 1:00:25
  Speaker 2: challenges between welfare and work. It was amazing. So I
• 1:00:30
  Speaker 2: arrived and then spent most of my life in the
• 1:00:33
  Speaker 2: Robert Taylor homes in the near south side of Chicago.
• 1:00:36
  Speaker 2: And so what I realized immediately, young Rog, and this
• 1:00:39
  Speaker 2: will not shock you, Tommy, you spend your whole life
• 1:00:41
  Speaker 2: grappling with this, I was absolutely aflame, and I still am.
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: That's why I wrote the book.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 4: I still am.
• 1:00:48
  Speaker 2: The biggest motivator, the driver of my life, the driving
• 1:00:52
  Speaker 2: force in my life that I've acted upon as a
• 1:00:55
  Speaker 2: kid that grew up with a Statue of Liberty painted
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: on his bedroom wall and the Manhattan skyline and dreamed
• 1:01:01
  Speaker 2: of moving there and made that dream come true by
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: luck and by luck, by being blessed. But I realized
• 1:01:08
  Speaker 2: that's the American idea. And I instantly, in the Robert
• 1:01:10
  Speaker 2: Taylor Holmes book, you immediately are exposed to the American reality.
• 1:01:16
  Speaker 2: And the gap between those two was startling, is startling. Obviously,
• 1:01:24
  Speaker 2: I wrote the book in the past 17 months of lockdown,
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: when all of that really fermented and became unbearable and
• 1:01:32
  Speaker 2: impossible to ignore, which is why ultimately, you know, the
• 1:01:36
  Speaker 2: epitaph for a book that's about a love of America,
• 1:01:39
  Speaker 2: a lifelong love of America, the driving love of America,
• 1:01:43
  Speaker 2: why the epitaph of the book, which is probably the
• 1:01:46
  Speaker 2: most important words in the book, they're not mine. The
• 1:01:49
  Speaker 2: epitaph is such a funny, sorry, it's why the epigraph
• 1:01:53
  Speaker 2: of the book um the epigraph is such a funny
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 2: part of any book where you're actually using somebody else's
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 2: words to to set your own up or in my
• 1:02:02
  Speaker 2: case overshadow them it's the words of of langston uh
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 2: hughes let america be america again the land that never
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 2: has been yet and yet must be.
• 1:02:13
  Speaker 1: I love the book in your political awakening it starts
• 1:02:17
  Speaker 1: when your father makes you Be one of like the
• 1:02:20
  Speaker 1: only people in all of Liverpool to support Margaret Thatcher
• 1:02:23
  Speaker 1: and go around and canvas and knock doors. And then
• 1:02:26
  Speaker 1: you get obviously immediately makes you just a red hot
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 1: flaming liberal like like me, you know, just like the
• 1:02:34
  Speaker 1: absolute opposite of whatever he intended.
• 1:02:36
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, my father is a judge in Liverpool.
• 1:02:41
  Speaker 2: And Liverpool, when I was growing up, the city was,
• 1:02:45
  Speaker 2: it felt like you could walk onto a street corner
• 1:02:48
  Speaker 2: and stare at buildings and genuinely see them deteriorate before
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 2: your eyes. I remember watching Mad Max, The Thunderdome. I'm
• 1:02:55
  Speaker 2: thinking that the wasteland, yeah, the wasteland didn't look that
• 1:02:57
  Speaker 2: bad to me. I was like, that'd be an upgrade
• 1:03:00
  Speaker 2: on where I'm living. And it was a deeply political time.
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 2: Thatcher was making the South rise up as a financial center,
• 1:03:09
  Speaker 2: a financial center in Europe and the North. She just
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 2: laid wasting and Liverpool was her punching bag. She stigmatized
• 1:03:17
  Speaker 2: the entire city. And we grew up at a time
• 1:03:21
  Speaker 2: when Liverpool City Council had serious debates about whether they
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 2: should cede from the rest of England and become a republic,
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 2: a socialist republic, the Republic of Liverpool. And in that milieu...
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 2: My dad was like one of the last conservatives. He
• 1:03:35
  Speaker 2: adored Mrs. Thatcher, loved the Queen. You know, I was
• 1:03:38
  Speaker 2: waiting for school like everybody. There were pitch battles at
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 2: the time, all up and down England between the miners
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 2: trying to fight to save their union and Thatcher and
• 1:03:46
  Speaker 2: the police force just running battles every night on the news.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 2: Just thousands of men just bloodied. in pitch hand-to-hand battles
• 1:03:54
  Speaker 2: up and down the North and the Midlands. And so
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 2: I wore for school under my collar, which was a
• 1:04:00
  Speaker 2: canable offence if you were found, a Cole Not Dole sticker.
• 1:04:04
  Speaker 2: Like I was all in. But my dad, my dad
• 1:04:07
  Speaker 2: was the last, probably maybe there were a dozen Thatcher supporters.
• 1:04:11
  Speaker 2: It was the most fruitless thing. It was like Daniel
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 2: going into the lion's den, but with the opposite set
• 1:04:16
  Speaker 2: of values. And he said, you know, we need to
• 1:04:18
  Speaker 2: leaflet these areas with conservative, what you call in England,
• 1:04:23
  Speaker 2: bump propaganda crap.
• 1:04:26
  Speaker 1: And, you know, I was 9, 10.
• 1:04:27
  Speaker 2: I do whatever my dad said. Like if he said
• 1:04:30
  Speaker 2: you can't answer the phone when it rings during dinner time,
• 1:04:32
  Speaker 2: that's the rule.
• 1:04:33
  Speaker 3: You do it.
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: And we went and we had just dogs set on us.
• 1:04:38
  Speaker 2: We had bags of piss chucked at us. As well
• 1:04:43
  Speaker 2: we bloody should have done. And there's no better way,
• 1:04:45
  Speaker 2: I believe, than to turn your kids into flaming progressives
• 1:04:50
  Speaker 2: than to force them to do.
• 1:04:52
  Speaker 1: What we did.
• 1:04:53
  Speaker 2: So in a way, I'm thankful. And every election, my
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 2: dad would say before the results came in, when I
• 1:04:58
  Speaker 2: went to bed, he'd say, if the Conservatives lose tonight,
• 1:05:02
  Speaker 2: we're going to move to Canada. And Tommy, I had
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 2: seen I had seen the grassy street. It didn't look
• 1:05:09
  Speaker 2: half bad in Toronto. And I would go to bed
• 1:05:11
  Speaker 2: and I would like kneel like I'd seen, you know,
• 1:05:13
  Speaker 2: the how you pray in school.
• 1:05:15
  Speaker 3: I'd seen that.
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 2: That's what you do. I'd kneel, put my hands together
• 1:05:18
  Speaker 2: and I'd say, please, God, let Thatcher lose tonight. And
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 2: she never did.
• 1:05:22
  Speaker 1: So this political turmoil is this formative experience for you.
• 1:05:28
  Speaker 1: And then you become a citizen in the middle of
• 1:05:30
  Speaker 1: the Trump era, right? When racism and anti-immigrant sentiment is
• 1:05:33
  Speaker 1: just spewing forth from the White House. Did you ever
• 1:05:36
  Speaker 1: worry that you joined Team America right before we were
• 1:05:40
  Speaker 1: about to get relegated to a lesser tier of democracy?
• 1:05:43
  Speaker 1: Because it felt bad for a minute.
• 1:05:46
  Speaker 3: Mate, mate, mate.
• 1:05:47
  Speaker 2: I mean, there's a joke on my show amongst our
• 1:05:50
  Speaker 2: fans that when a elite athlete comes on or a
• 1:05:54
  Speaker 2: movie star, they are guaranteed to have just a bomb
• 1:05:59
  Speaker 2: of a movie within weeks.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 3: Or, you know, Aaron Rodgers.
• 1:06:02
  Speaker 2: Came on and then lost the Tampa Bay in the
• 1:06:07
  Speaker 2: playoffs immediately. And when that happens, the fans always tweet
• 1:06:11
  Speaker 2: hashtag curse of Rodger. And I have to be candid
• 1:06:16
  Speaker 2: that I became an American in 2018. It was the,
• 1:06:21
  Speaker 2: and will be, the single greatest achievement of my life
• 1:06:24
  Speaker 2: to be a kid that had dreamed and yearned, completing
• 1:06:27
  Speaker 2: my family three-generation story, finally becoming what they always dreamt
• 1:06:33
  Speaker 2: of when they left Ukraine, chased onto the boat, no
• 1:06:37
  Speaker 2: doubt by Cossacks. Three generations later, I was completing that journey.
• 1:06:43
  Speaker 2: And to stand in that room, Tommy, to stand in
• 1:06:45
  Speaker 2: that room in the southern tip of Manhattan in a
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 2: courtroom with 162 individuals from 42 nations around the world,
• 1:06:58
  Speaker 2: and you look left and right, and these individuals, all
• 1:07:02
  Speaker 2: I'd done was survive a couple of thrashings from teachers
• 1:07:05
  Speaker 2: and then late night beatings in chip shops after the
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: pubs had closed. There's individuals who had escaped civil war, famine,
• 1:07:14
  Speaker 2: they were trekked across, you know, arduous terrain. And all
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 2: of us had been united by that idea of America
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: in my life when I needed it. Run DMC, Chicago Bears,
• 1:07:28
  Speaker 2: Tracy Chapman, whatever. And I know it sounds, I know it's,
• 1:07:30
  Speaker 2: but to me, it's like saying Animal Farm is a
• 1:07:33
  Speaker 2: book just about horses and pigs. It's much deeper than that.
• 1:07:37
  Speaker 2: And so are all of those things to me. And
• 1:07:39
  Speaker 2: America gave me, and everybody in that room, you could
• 1:07:42
  Speaker 2: see the tears, the joy, the dreaming, you could see.
• 1:07:46
  Speaker 2: that America had given, the idea of America had given
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 2: each of us courage, strength, joy, hope, a sense of
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 2: possibility that there could be another world to the one
• 1:07:57
  Speaker 2: that we lived in. And so that was an incredible,
• 1:08:00
  Speaker 2: that was an incredible moment. And, you know, at the time,
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 2: the last president's headshot was hanging over the judge. And
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 2: the judge who swore us in did allude in his speech, said,
• 1:08:12
  Speaker 2: not everybody, not everybody feels about new immigrants as I do,
• 1:08:17
  Speaker 2: as we do in this room. And I came out
• 1:08:19
  Speaker 2: of the courtroom and tweeted a photograph of myself. This
• 1:08:22
  Speaker 2: is why I wanted to write this book about a love,
• 1:08:25
  Speaker 2: a nuanced love of America. I came out and tweeted
• 1:08:28
  Speaker 2: a photo of myself with a naturalization certificate. And It
• 1:08:32
  Speaker 2: was the most joyous day of my life. And immediately
• 1:08:35
  Speaker 2: there was a, you know, I must say, the majority
• 1:08:38
  Speaker 2: of people joyous, just welcoming, just elated. There's a true
• 1:08:42
  Speaker 2: joy in new Americans arriving. But there was a strain
• 1:08:46
  Speaker 2: in social media who said, you know, good, Roger, you've
• 1:08:50
  Speaker 2: done it the legal way and started to kind of
• 1:08:52
  Speaker 2: make a political point out of the whole thing. And
• 1:08:56
  Speaker 2: it devastated the days for me because I realized just...
• 1:09:00
  Speaker 2: because I'm white and funny and on television, they just
• 1:09:04
  Speaker 2: project that Roger's one of the good ones. But the
• 1:09:07
  Speaker 2: honest truth is I am a legal alien who came
• 1:09:11
  Speaker 2: to this country with, you know, with big dreams, no plan,
• 1:09:17
  Speaker 2: no money, bit of hustle. And it was really devastating
• 1:09:22
  Speaker 2: that in that moment that that fight broke out on
• 1:09:26
  Speaker 2: social media. And so I wanted to tell this story
• 1:09:28
  Speaker 2: because I think the... The story is important. And then
• 1:09:32
  Speaker 2: even more so, Tommy, because I decided to write the
• 1:09:35
  Speaker 2: book and then obviously did nothing about it. But then
• 1:09:38
  Speaker 2: lockdown began. I live in New York City. New York
• 1:09:42
  Speaker 2: City was the ground zero of the pandemic. Sports shut down.
• 1:09:48
  Speaker 2: You know, that sports is how I make sense of
• 1:09:50
  Speaker 2: the life. It's the drama. It's the human theater that
• 1:09:53
  Speaker 2: animates gives structure to my life. And so nature abhors
• 1:09:57
  Speaker 2: a vacuum. And I, um, started to write the book.
• 1:10:00
  Speaker 2: And then as I wrote the book, the pandemic response, um,
• 1:10:03
  Speaker 2: just segued into the black lives matter. Some of the agony,
• 1:10:08
  Speaker 2: the pain, just, uh, just the, the, just the immense
• 1:10:11
  Speaker 2: trauma of that period of time. And then into the
• 1:10:14
  Speaker 2: toxicity of the election cycle. And I did think, my God,
• 1:10:19
  Speaker 2: is this the ultimate curse of Rog that I have
• 1:10:21
  Speaker 2: stumbled into? And then the second thought, Tommy, is who
• 1:10:25
  Speaker 2: the hell, if this thing goes bottom up, this election,
• 1:10:28
  Speaker 2: who the hell is going to want... want to read
• 1:10:31
  Speaker 2: a book about a love of america like am i
• 1:10:33
  Speaker 2: gonna have to just plug it on newsmax and oann
• 1:10:36
  Speaker 2: and like the the publisher's gonna be like good news
• 1:10:39
  Speaker 2: we got someone to blurb your book bad news it's
• 1:10:42
  Speaker 2: sebastian gorka he's the only one who wants to to
• 1:10:45
  Speaker 2: attach himself to a love of america so it was
• 1:10:47
  Speaker 2: a it was a deeply traumatic time and and through
• 1:10:51
  Speaker 2: through the book i tried to embrace that trauma.
• 1:10:53
  Speaker 1: And i think the book is a beautiful antidote to
• 1:10:56
  Speaker 1: some of that trauma and And in particular, the scene
• 1:10:59
  Speaker 1: where you become a citizen and all the people around
• 1:11:01
  Speaker 1: you and applauding for each other and the diversity in
• 1:11:03
  Speaker 1: the room. And it's just a beautiful story. It's a
• 1:11:05
  Speaker 1: uniquely American story. And I loved it.
• 1:11:08
  Speaker 3: All right.
• 1:11:09
  Speaker 1: So I feel like I'm actually torturing you by not
• 1:11:11
  Speaker 1: asking you about sports for this long. So the episode
• 1:11:14
  Speaker 1: comes out July 5th, right? What's left in the Euro
• 1:11:17
  Speaker 1: 2021 tournament? I've been watching a lot of listeners maybe haven't.
• 1:11:21
  Speaker 1: What should they tune in for? And then, you know,
• 1:11:23
  Speaker 1: do you have any pitches for Olympic soccer? Later this summer,
• 1:11:26
  Speaker 1: I know our American women are as badass as badass gets.
• 1:11:31
  Speaker 2: If only our men were half as good as our women,
• 1:11:34
  Speaker 2: we would be dominating on both sides of the field.
• 1:11:37
  Speaker 2: So the Euros is the World Cup, but just for
• 1:11:39
  Speaker 2: European teams. And it was postponed last year because of
• 1:11:43
  Speaker 2: the pandemic. So it's been unbelievable just to have this
• 1:11:46
  Speaker 2: at all, to have 11 cities across Europe host this
• 1:11:50
  Speaker 2: just delicious tournament where... The nations are taking the field
• 1:11:57
  Speaker 2: with their histories, taking the field alongside of them. It's
• 1:12:00
  Speaker 2: just so much narrative in this tournament. And there's been
• 1:12:04
  Speaker 2: so much, so many storylines where because the joy of
• 1:12:08
  Speaker 2: football is that it's really just a mirror that reflects history.
• 1:12:12
  Speaker 2: societies the politics the culture that surround it so there's
• 1:12:16
  Speaker 2: been and let's just say there's a lot of history
• 1:12:18
  Speaker 2: when whenever a european team takes a field so we've
• 1:12:21
  Speaker 2: been we've been very blessed a that it's happened at
• 1:12:23
  Speaker 2: all be that there's fans there see that i mean
• 1:12:26
  Speaker 2: there's been incredibly joyous storylines there's been some terribly dark
• 1:12:30
  Speaker 2: storylines with hungary and victor orban using his team as
• 1:12:34
  Speaker 2: a essentially attempting to use his team as a symbol
• 1:12:38
  Speaker 2: of of statecraft and black shirted thuggery. But when this
• 1:12:45
  Speaker 2: podcast airs, we will be down to the final four.
• 1:12:49
  Speaker 2: One of those four could be England, which is, you know,
• 1:12:52
  Speaker 2: for England is just a remarkable, they're like the New
• 1:12:57
  Speaker 2: York Knicks of, of world football. They never miss an
• 1:13:00
  Speaker 2: opportunity to miss an opportunity. So we'll be down to
• 1:13:04
  Speaker 2: the final four. And then next weekend, we have the
• 1:13:09
  Speaker 2: final and the joy that surrounded this tournament being played
• 1:13:12
  Speaker 2: by men who have exhausted psychologically physically exhausted by the
• 1:13:17
  Speaker 2: pandemic schedule of football over the last year they played
• 1:13:21
  Speaker 2: with a giddiness with a adrenaline um just so many
• 1:13:25
  Speaker 2: they pulled on the shirt sang the national anthem and
• 1:13:28
  Speaker 2: they've almost reverted because they're all exhausted they're all knackered
• 1:13:32
  Speaker 2: and they've just played like kids on a schoolyard there's
• 1:13:34
  Speaker 2: been a giddy joy a hilarity it's been like the
• 1:13:37
  Speaker 2: scorelines have been like aba basketball in the 1970s It's
• 1:13:42
  Speaker 2: been a whole continent has made memories that they will
• 1:13:46
  Speaker 2: savor for generations.
• 1:13:48
  Speaker 1: It was so fun hearing you talk about the England-Germany
• 1:13:51
  Speaker 1: game on Men in Blazers, your podcast. There are some
• 1:13:56
  Speaker 1: people in the UK who see the UK play Germany
• 1:14:01
  Speaker 1: and think about, they still have that anger there from
• 1:14:04
  Speaker 1: World War I or World War II or real past battles.
• 1:14:07
  Speaker 1: To your point, that history really does come out on
• 1:14:10
  Speaker 1: the field. for some folks. It never really occurred to
• 1:14:12
  Speaker 1: me that that was true.
• 1:14:14
  Speaker 2: In the worst possible way, this tournament is going on
• 1:14:17
  Speaker 2: and there's an English-born bloke. I ride with Team America now.
• 1:14:20
  Speaker 2: I want to make that clear. When America and England
• 1:14:22
  Speaker 2: play each other, I am only cheering for one side
• 1:14:26
  Speaker 2: and it's whatever side Piers Morgan isn't on. So I
• 1:14:30
  Speaker 2: am absolutely on Team America, but I can measure my
• 1:14:34
  Speaker 2: life by one traumatic, self-sabotaging, defeat against Germany after another
• 1:14:42
  Speaker 2: so I'm always braced for the darkness and for the
• 1:14:44
  Speaker 2: England team the stakes feel so high Tommy because we
• 1:14:49
  Speaker 2: enter this tournament as a divided nation post Brexit divided
• 1:14:54
  Speaker 2: in so many searing ways that manifest itself in a
• 1:14:59
  Speaker 2: toxic fashion around the football especially in the run-up to
• 1:15:02
  Speaker 2: the tournament when in the practice games the warm-up games
• 1:15:06
  Speaker 2: English fans returned to watch their beloved national team for
• 1:15:09
  Speaker 2: the first time in 16, 17 months and decided to
• 1:15:12
  Speaker 2: boo their own players when they took the knee. You know,
• 1:15:15
  Speaker 2: the players are trying to protest racism in the game
• 1:15:18
  Speaker 2: and in society. And in the run-up, that was a
• 1:15:21
  Speaker 2: dominant storyline. The English manager had to, and he's truly
• 1:15:24
  Speaker 2: emotionally intelligent, Gareth Southgate. He's a deeply empathetic human being.
• 1:15:29
  Speaker 2: He had to spend almost all of his press conferences
• 1:15:32
  Speaker 2: talking about racism in the nation. He sounded more sane
• 1:15:37
  Speaker 2: in doing so, I have to say, than our Prime Minister, who,
• 1:15:40
  Speaker 2: by refusing to criticise the booing fans for an entire week,
• 1:15:44
  Speaker 2: just further defied the nation. And that's the joy of
• 1:15:48
  Speaker 2: this tournament, is that this young England team are models.
• 1:15:52
  Speaker 2: If they can pull it off, and by pull it off,
• 1:15:55
  Speaker 2: it's a national question rather than just a footballing one,
• 1:15:58
  Speaker 2: of a new England, Raheem Sterling, a Jamaican Englishman who
• 1:16:04
  Speaker 2: has addressed the issue of racism in society in the
• 1:16:07
  Speaker 2: most exquisite ways. He scored three of the four goals
• 1:16:11
  Speaker 2: the team have scored. He's an incredible human being.
• 1:16:13
  Speaker 3: Amazing.
• 1:16:14
  Speaker 2: Young star Marcus Rashford, who spent his summer taking on
• 1:16:17
  Speaker 2: the British government on the issue of child hunger, feeding
• 1:16:21
  Speaker 2: kids below the poverty line, modelled a new form of
• 1:16:24
  Speaker 2: sporting leadership. And we always mock football players. You know,
• 1:16:27
  Speaker 2: they make piles of cash. They just want to drink
• 1:16:30
  Speaker 2: champagne with supermodels and then crash Lamborghinis into the lampposts.
• 1:16:34
  Speaker 2: But this team contained the seeds of an exquisite England,
• 1:16:38
  Speaker 2: a new England, and using their platform for the force
• 1:16:44
  Speaker 2: of good. And that's really the battle. They occasionally, to me, Tommy,
• 1:16:47
  Speaker 2: seem to be some of the last sane human beings
• 1:16:49
  Speaker 2: left in the country.
• 1:16:51
  Speaker 3: I love it. I love it. Okay.
• 1:16:52
  Speaker 1: So Raj, my last question is really more of a favor.
• 1:16:55
  Speaker 1: I think you're about to change my life. So I
• 1:16:58
  Speaker 1: love watching the Euros. I love watching the World Cup
• 1:17:01
  Speaker 1: when it's on, the Olympics, but I don't have a
• 1:17:03
  Speaker 1: professional club. And I keep saying, I want to watch
• 1:17:06
  Speaker 1: more football, watch more soccer, but I don't have a club.
• 1:17:09
  Speaker 1: So will you be my soccer sommelier and help me
• 1:17:13
  Speaker 1: pick a team based off of some tasting notes and
• 1:17:15
  Speaker 1: some personality traits that I'll share with you?
• 1:17:18
  Speaker 4: Yeah, Tommy, that's why I live.
• 1:17:20
  Speaker 2: I live to serve. And ultimately, football is just human
• 1:17:23
  Speaker 2: theater and you are about to pick your role.
• 1:17:26
  Speaker 4: Let's do it.
• 1:17:27
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 1:17:28
  Speaker 1: So my entire sports identity is derived from being from Boston. Now, Rogers,
• 1:17:32
  Speaker 1: we both know like the last A couple of decades
• 1:17:35
  Speaker 1: has meant near constant domination, cheating. There's a lot of
• 1:17:39
  Speaker 1: bad shit there. But my formative years as a kid
• 1:17:43
  Speaker 1: were when Boston could never win a championship, right? In football,
• 1:17:46
  Speaker 1: this was the Parcells, Drew Bledsoe era. We were also
• 1:17:49
  Speaker 1: living with the scar tissue from the 86 Red Sox
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 1: in 1918.
• 1:17:53
  Speaker 2: Tony Eason, make the case that he's the greatest Patriots
• 1:17:56
  Speaker 2: quarterback of all time because I can.
• 1:17:58
  Speaker 3: Tony Eason.
• 1:18:00
  Speaker 1: Okay, so that's my sports. That's the regional part. I'm
• 1:18:03
  Speaker 1: a Democrat. So obviously a glutton for punishment.
• 1:18:05
  Speaker 2: Didn't know that about you, Tommy.
• 1:18:09
  Speaker 1: I live in Los Angeles now, so I'm soft. I
• 1:18:12
  Speaker 1: don't like the cold. I'm pampered. I'm whiny. I struggle
• 1:18:15
  Speaker 1: with time zones. So those are things we got to
• 1:18:16
  Speaker 1: factor in there. Some favorite players growing up. I had
• 1:18:19
  Speaker 1: Ray Bork. We had Paul Pierce, Manny Ramirez, Nomar. So
• 1:18:23
  Speaker 1: I don't know. Did I give you enough? What do
• 1:18:26
  Speaker 1: we think?
• 1:18:27
  Speaker 2: What I need to know, Tommy, ultimately- What do you
• 1:18:30
  Speaker 2: like in life? Do you like winning? Did you like
• 1:18:32
  Speaker 2: the Red Sox better when they gave you endless dreams
• 1:18:37
  Speaker 2: and then self-sabotaged and they taught you that life ultimately
• 1:18:40
  Speaker 2: is about endless hope and when you do have a
• 1:18:43
  Speaker 2: modicum of joy, you just dance as if you're at
• 1:18:46
  Speaker 2: your own kid's wedding because you know life is dark
• 1:18:49
  Speaker 2: and really, it's about savoring great times when you have
• 1:18:52
  Speaker 2: them or do you prefer the world domination days when
• 1:18:55
  Speaker 2: you could say look down on us all from the
• 1:18:58
  Speaker 2: mountain and just say yeah we cheated but let's overlook
• 1:19:01
  Speaker 2: that part winning ultimately is all that matters where are
• 1:19:05
  Speaker 2: you on that spectrum because that's ultimately.
• 1:19:07
  Speaker 1: The issue I'm not going to lie. I kind of
• 1:19:10
  Speaker 1: miss the pre-2004 Red Sox vibe when we were the
• 1:19:15
  Speaker 1: lovable losers. I remember watching Aaron Boone just smash a
• 1:19:19
  Speaker 1: ball into the stands and walking by another bar as
• 1:19:23
  Speaker 1: I went to my car and hearing New York, New
• 1:19:24
  Speaker 1: York being played on the piano. I like the pain. Yeah.
• 1:19:30
  Speaker 3: Tell me.
• 1:19:31
  Speaker 2: Tommy, I, by the way, I relate to that. I
• 1:19:33
  Speaker 2: used to, I love traveling America. It's one of the
• 1:19:35
  Speaker 2: joys of my job is to, and I've missed it
• 1:19:38
  Speaker 2: so much over the past 17 months. I love Charlottesville.
• 1:19:41
  Speaker 2: I love Nashville. I love all the bills. And I
• 1:19:43
  Speaker 2: used to love when I first came here, going to
• 1:19:45
  Speaker 2: Boston in the late nineties, going to Fenway park and
• 1:19:50
  Speaker 2: just sitting there. And it reminded me of home. It
• 1:19:53
  Speaker 2: reminded me of Liverpool. Just, just the sadness of the fans,
• 1:19:58
  Speaker 2: the shattered, shattered bereft hope. And, But just the eternal opt-out,
• 1:20:04
  Speaker 2: willing to go again, willing to be constantly Charlie Brown,
• 1:20:09
  Speaker 2: kicking any ball that Lucy was holding. I'm going to
• 1:20:12
  Speaker 2: tell you, Tommy, welcome.
• 1:20:14
  Speaker 4: Welcome.
• 1:20:15
  Speaker 2: This is life-changing for you. Welcome to Everton Football Club.
• 1:20:20
  Speaker 3: Yes.
• 1:20:21
  Speaker 2: It's a family. It's a club that does everything off
• 1:20:26
  Speaker 2: the field. so joyously. They invest in community. They've got
• 1:20:30
  Speaker 2: social programming. They care about their fan base. It's such
• 1:20:35
  Speaker 2: an authentic, exquisite club. We eternally are desperate to return
• 1:20:41
  Speaker 2: to former glory of the 1980s. Let's just say we
• 1:20:47
  Speaker 2: are lost in the woods without breadcrumbs to help find
• 1:20:51
  Speaker 2: our way out. And the occasional moments, the occasional moments
• 1:20:55
  Speaker 2: of glory They feel all the sweeter.
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 1: And I do.
• 1:20:58
  Speaker 2: I've made this one of my life achievements. Ultimately, my
• 1:21:01
  Speaker 2: greatest achievement is becoming American. And I do hope that
• 1:21:05
  Speaker 2: in six generations time, my NBC headshot just is above my.
• 1:21:10
  Speaker 2: descendants dinner table and someone will say who the hell
• 1:21:13
  Speaker 2: is that bald person and they'll say oh we don't
• 1:21:15
  Speaker 2: we don't remember his name anymore but he's the one
• 1:21:17
  Speaker 2: that brought us to america that is a that is
• 1:21:20
  Speaker 2: the greatest achievement of my life but the other achievement
• 1:21:23
  Speaker 2: is to me i have four kids and i've made
• 1:21:25
  Speaker 2: them all everton fans like uh it's hard work it's
• 1:21:29
  Speaker 2: because americans like winning and everton don't do that a
• 1:21:31
  Speaker 2: lot but my wife is like why the hell would
• 1:21:34
  Speaker 2: you do this why the hell and why now she's
• 1:21:36
  Speaker 2: going to say why did you make tommy why do
• 1:21:37
  Speaker 2: you make that sweet bloody tommy an Everton fan. And
• 1:21:40
  Speaker 2: I do believe it's an approach to life. Life is hard.
• 1:21:44
  Speaker 2: Life is dark. There's a lot of disappointments, a lot
• 1:21:47
  Speaker 2: of challenges. But when those moments of wonder come, Tommy,
• 1:21:50
  Speaker 2: when those moments just dance, just savor them, just make,
• 1:21:54
  Speaker 2: that's a whole point of sports, make collective memories together.
• 1:21:58
  Speaker 2: And now you and me, Tommy, we are going to
• 1:22:00
  Speaker 2: make them together.
• 1:22:01
  Speaker 1: Well, now you got five kids.
• 1:22:03
  Speaker 3: Thank you, Raj.
• 1:22:04
  Speaker 1: The book is Reborn in the USA. I literally picked
• 1:22:08
  Speaker 1: it up, as I told you via DM. The only
• 1:22:11
  Speaker 1: reason I put it down was because I actually went
• 1:22:12
  Speaker 1: to a baseball game. It's such a fun read. It
• 1:22:15
  Speaker 1: will make you feel better about the country. You'll laugh
• 1:22:18
  Speaker 1: your ass off at lots of fun stories. I can't
• 1:22:21
  Speaker 1: recommend it enough. So, Roger Bennett, wonderful to have you
• 1:22:24
  Speaker 1: on the show. Have a great Fourth of July.
• 1:22:25
  Speaker 3: Have a great everything.
• 1:22:27
  Speaker 2: Same to you, beautiful man. Tommy, and to all of
• 1:22:30
  Speaker 2: you at Pod Save America, and you're off.
• 1:22:39
  Speaker 1: We're doing the outro.
• 1:22:40
  Speaker 3: This is it.
• 1:22:41
  Speaker 1: All of us are still here.
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 3: Love it.
• 1:22:42
  Speaker 1: Ira, Jason.
• 1:22:43
  Speaker 2: Hello.
• 1:22:45
  Speaker 4: Can I tell you what my, uh, my runners up
• 1:22:46
  Speaker 4: were that I didn't get to say?
• 1:22:47
  Speaker 3: Yes, please.
• 1:22:48
  Speaker 4: Uh, they were, uh, uh, fight the power because Chuck
• 1:22:53
  Speaker 4: D came on love it or leave it.
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 1:22:54
  Speaker 1: Good one.
• 1:22:55
  Speaker 4: Uh, They were The Times They Are Changing by Bob Dylan,
• 1:22:58
  Speaker 4: specifically because it is a song in which the water's
• 1:23:01
  Speaker 4: rising is a metaphor, and now the waters are actually rising,
• 1:23:05
  Speaker 4: and still nothing changes.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 1: That's it.
• 1:23:13
  Speaker 4: Those are my alternates. Those were the two I didn't
• 1:23:14
  Speaker 4: get to. I went for my Copland theme.
• 1:23:17
  Speaker 5: Man, my alts were Rump Shaker by Rex and FX.
• 1:23:20
  Speaker 5: Great one. and Philadelphia Freedom by Elton John.
• 1:23:28
  Speaker 3: I like that. I like that.
• 1:23:29
  Speaker 1: Any Alzheimer's?
• 1:23:30
  Speaker 3: I had Eminem's White America. And I also, you know,
• 1:23:37
  Speaker 3: I also had Did It Autumn by Nicki Minaj because
• 1:23:41
  Speaker 3: I'm a bar before I'm an American.
• 1:23:43
  Speaker 1: I like that. I had Dixie Chicks, Not Ready to
• 1:23:46
  Speaker 1: Make Nice, good protest song. Lorde, Royals, because Royals is
• 1:23:51
  Speaker 1: not in our blood, but we're happy to be your ruler.
• 1:23:53
  Speaker 1: Thought that was a very American sentiment. Jason Isbell, the TVA.
• 1:23:57
  Speaker 1: It's about infrastructure projects. They're very hot right now. Simon
• 1:24:01
  Speaker 1: and Garfunkel, America. A moon rose over an open field.
• 1:24:05
  Speaker 1: You know, who hasn't put that song?
• 1:24:06
  Speaker 3: I can't believe no one picked the Pod Save America
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 3: theme song.
• 1:24:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's true.
• 1:24:09
  Speaker 1: Like the Nintendo music. Oh, Childish Gambino, This America.
• 1:24:13
  Speaker 5: Simon and Garfunkel, America, one of our great pop songs
• 1:24:16
  Speaker 5: that doesn't rhyme. It doesn't happen often, but that one
• 1:24:19
  Speaker 5: does it.
• 1:24:21
  Speaker 4: I will always... I will always love the Katy Perry
• 1:24:24
  Speaker 4: song Roar, but for the fact that in the song
• 1:24:26
  Speaker 4: she rhymes the word fire with the word fire. That
• 1:24:30
  Speaker 4: will always bother me. You can't rhyme the same words.
• 1:24:33
  Speaker 4: It hurts our brains. I don't know why, but it does.
• 1:24:36
  Speaker 3: See, that's why you're not a Barb lover, okay? I
• 1:24:40
  Speaker 3: love Nicki Minaj rhyming China 12 times in one verse.
• 1:24:44
  Speaker 4: Okay, we're different people. That's just something, that's okay, right?
• 1:24:47
  Speaker 4: That's American too, isn't it?
• 1:24:48
  Speaker 3: I thought. Yeah, it is. It is.
• 1:24:51
  Speaker 1: Well, we learned something about America and ourselves in the outro.
• 1:24:53
  Speaker 1: So thank you all again. Talk to you next week.
• 1:25:00
  Speaker 1: Pod Save America is a Crooked Media production. The executive
• 1:25:03
  Speaker 1: producer is Michael Martinez.
• 1:25:05
  Speaker 3: Our senior producer is Flavia Casas.
• 1:25:08
  Speaker 1: Our associate producers are Jazzy Marine and Olivia Martinez. It's
• 1:25:11
  Speaker 1: mixed and edited by Andrew Chadwick. Kyle Seglin is our
• 1:25:14
  Speaker 1: sound engineer. Thanks to Tanya Somenator, Katie Long, Roman Papadimitriou,
• 1:25:19
  Speaker 1: Caroline Rustin, and Justine Howe for production support. And to
• 1:25:22
  Speaker 1: our digital team, Elijah Cohn, Phoebe Bradford, Milo Kim, Gail Freed,
• 1:25:25
  Speaker 1: and Nar Melkonian, who film and share our episodes as
• 1:25:28
  Speaker 1: videos every week.