Latest / The Daily Sarcast / March 5th, 2026: Polio, Sea Levels Mistake And My Club

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March 5th, 2026: Polio, Sea Levels Mistake And My Club · The Daily Sarcast

• 0:00
  Today's episode is sponsored by An Early Bedtime.
• 0:03
  It's relaxing, helps promote overall stress and health, but never really actually happens.
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  I'm an essentially pretty private person, and it's a tough line you have to
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  straddle with the press.
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  I definitely learned a lesson. Rose Byrne on regretting about talking about
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  her husband buying a bearded dragon and then be with her at the Golden Globes last month.
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  Insert theme song here. This is the Daily Starcast. I give you the news and
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  maybe a laugh. I'm Lindsay Wernick, and it's March 5th, 2026.
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  In real news, the House just voted to subpoena Attorney General Pam Bondi over
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  the government's handling of documents tied to Jeffrey Epstein.
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  The House Oversight Committee approved the subpoena after Democrats and a handful
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  of Republicans said the Justice Department hasn't been transparent about the Epstein files.
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  Everyone wants to know if documents were withheld, heavily redacted,
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  or never even released in the first place.
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  This comes right after Bill and Hillary Clinton testified about their connections
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  to Epstein, and obviously they said they didn't have any.
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  So this will be interesting to see what happens with this.
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  And if we didn't have enough to worry about right now in the news,
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  the CDC has issued a travel advisory for 32 countries because polio is apparently spreading again.
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  The CDC put out a level two alert, which means travelers should take precautions
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  but not cancel their trips.
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  The agency is advising Americans heading abroad to make sure their polio vaccinations
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  are up to date and adults can get a single booster shot before traveling if
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  they were vaccinated as kids.
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  This includes a lot of places in Europe, like Spain, Germany,
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  Poland, Finland, and the UK, along with some of Africa, the Middle East,
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  and Asia, but obviously you shouldn't be going to the Middle East right now anyway.
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  Polio is very, very contagious, and it was largely eliminated in the U.S.
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  Thanks to vaccines, so the risk for vaccinated people is very low.
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  Doctors say that this can pop up occasionally when small outbreaks appear around the world.
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  So it's not like that that big of a deal, but it's like a little bit of a big
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  deal. And that's the actual official word on it.
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  Meanwhile, in climate news, there's a new study that suggests that sea levels
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  around the world may be higher than scientists previously believed.
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  Researchers found that many coastal studies used an outdated mapping method
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  that underestimated where ocean levels actually are.
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  In some places, the difference is 8 inches to a foot higher than earlier estimates,
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  and in parts of South Asia and the Pacific, the gap can be several meters.
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  The researchers reviewed nearly 400 papers and found that less than 1% accurately
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  measured current sea levels using the most precise data available. That is crazy.
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  So the takeaway from this isn't that sea levels are rising faster than expected,
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  which is also a thing now, but scientists also say the biggest issue is that
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  the starting point was off,
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  meaning hundreds of millions of people may be living closer to rising oceans
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  than previously thought, especially like in places like Vietnam,
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  Indonesia, and the Maldives.
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  So it turns out that the ocean isn't suddenly rising faster.
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  Scientists just realized the starting point was wrong, which is not something you want to hear.
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  Okay, I don't know about you, but this whole ocean sea levels thing definitely
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  sounds way more important than the polio outbreak.
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  Right? Am I crazy? The news is so crazy these days.
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  It's like impossible to tell what's actually not that bad and what's really
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  bad, but in like a little bit bad anymore.
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  And Lindsay life. Yesterday I was walking down the street. Sounds so New York.
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  And I was like walking in Midtown and I had my headphones on and this guy standing
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  on the side of the sidewalk is,
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  was like, miss, miss, you dropped something. And I was like, oh, shit, what?
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  And I'm like quickly scanning the ground. I don't see anything.
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  I look up at him and I'm like, what did I drop? I don't see anything. He goes, my heart.
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  And I was like, oh, my God.
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  Join the club and walked away. So cute. Lessons I should have learned by now.
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  One, untie your shoes before you put them on.
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  Two, take your keys out of the door after you open it.
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  Three, do not answer your ex's phone call at 8 a.m.
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  Four, don't put a full Stanley cup of water in your purse with your laptop and
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  cell phone and AirPods and leather wallet.
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  You will get water all over them.
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  And five, don't forget that happened and do all that again.
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  Cooking tip of the day. Add bone broth to your ground beef.
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  Feedback, comments, questions, a nice Jewish boy looking for a date,
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  email me at lindsay at thedailystarcast.com.
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  Thanks so much for listening. Have a great day, and I will talk to you guys tomorrow.