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Speaker 1: Well, hey guys, we are back on normally, the show

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Speaker 1: that normals takes for when the news gets weird.

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Speaker 2: I am Mary teth Him.

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Speaker 3: I'm Carol Markowitz. I keep waiting for the news not

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Speaker 3: to be weird, but it's just weird every day.

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Speaker 4: Mary Catherine, I'm a weird every.

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Speaker 1: Day, the upside of the tagline. And I'm having a

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Speaker 1: weird week because I'm working without a net. I have

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Speaker 1: no childcare, so we're recording during nap time and we're

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Speaker 1: crossing our fingers.

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Speaker 2: But we can do it.

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Speaker 4: Carol, it's gonna be a fast one. Let's do it.

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Speaker 2: Oh my goodness.

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Speaker 1: Well, there's news in the trade war on the tariff front,

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Speaker 1: and that is that Donald Trump announced via Truth social

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Speaker 1: network that he is pausing for ninety days tariffs on

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Speaker 1: everyone else, the reciprocal tariffs, not the baseline ten percent,

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Speaker 1: which will still exist, all right, pausing the extra ones

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Speaker 1: for ninety days, except for on China.

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Speaker 2: Here's the truth.

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Speaker 1: Based on the lack of respect that China has shown

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Speaker 1: to the world's markets, I am hereby raising the tariff

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Speaker 1: charged to China by the United States of America to

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Speaker 1: one hundred and twenty five percent effective immediately. At some point,

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Speaker 1: hopefully in the near future, China will realize that the

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Speaker 1: days of ripping off the USA and other countries it

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Speaker 1: is no longer sustainable or acceptable. Conversely, and based on

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Speaker 1: the fact that more than seventy five countries have called

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Speaker 1: representatives of the United States, including the Departments of Commerce, Treasury,

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Speaker 1: and the US Trade Representative's Office, to negotiate a solution

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Speaker 1: to the subjects being discussed relative to trade, trade barriers, tariffs, currency,

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Speaker 1: manipulation of non monetary tariffs, and that these countries have not,

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Speaker 1: at my strong suggestion, retaliated in any way, shape or

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Speaker 1: form against the United States.

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Speaker 2: I have authorized in ninety.

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Speaker 1: Day pause and substantially lowered reciprocal tariff during this period

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Speaker 1: of ten percent, also effective immediately.

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Speaker 2: Thank you for your attention to this matter.

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Speaker 3: Everyone's like glued to their television screen like.

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Speaker 2: He has a way.

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Speaker 4: He really does.

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Speaker 1: So the markets responded well to this idea of a pause,

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Speaker 1: as they did to the fake news about a pause

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Speaker 1: a couple of days ago.

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Speaker 2: That should show the president something I'm not sure.

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Speaker 1: Again, this is the problem with the whole structure of

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Speaker 1: this is that he can change his mind unless Congress

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Speaker 1: takes this power.

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Speaker 2: Back in a moment if he wants to.

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Speaker 1: I like the idea of going after China, but being

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Speaker 1: chiller with people who are not involved in a bunch

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Speaker 1: of unfair practices. That seems good to me. Getting closer

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Speaker 1: to zero for zero tariffs seems good to me. Do

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Speaker 1: I think that was the plan here?

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Speaker 2: I'm not sure, but I'm glad we're here at the moment.

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Speaker 3: Well, that's the thing, right, What was the plan?

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Speaker 4: Was there a plan? We'll never know?

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Speaker 3: And I look again, you and I have been sort of,

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Speaker 3: I think, not cautiously optimistic, but just cautious in general

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Speaker 3: about this whole thing. And we're not surprised that it

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Speaker 3: ended up here for now. Again, it might start back

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Speaker 3: up again in ninety days.

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Speaker 2: This is pretty much where we.

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Speaker 3: Predicted he'd be. Maybe we didn't see the China angle coming.

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Speaker 3: I thought maybe he would be across the board pose.

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Speaker 4: It for ninety days. I'm not mad at this. I

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Speaker 4: think that China.

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Speaker 3: Does deserve some retribution for what they do to us.

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Speaker 3: And look, if this is where we end up, I

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Speaker 3: think that'll be okay.

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Speaker 1: Howard Lutnik, who is the Commerce Secretary, tweeted, I just

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Speaker 1: found this very funny. As a cabinet member for Trump,

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Speaker 1: Scott Besson and I set with the President while he

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Speaker 1: wrote one of the most.

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Speaker 2: Extraordinary tingh my god of his presidency.

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Speaker 1: The world is ready to work with President Trump to

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Speaker 1: fix global trade, and China has chosen the opposite direction.

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Speaker 1: I have a feeling that Scott Bessont was like, this

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Speaker 1: looks like a win to me, sir, And here's how

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Speaker 1: we can tell that story.

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Speaker 2: Besson's quote is this was driven by the President's strategy.

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Speaker 2: This was his along.

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Speaker 1: You might even say he go to China into a

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Speaker 1: bad position. They have shown themselves to the world to

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Speaker 1: be bad actors, and we are willing to cooperate with

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Speaker 1: our allies and with our trading partners who did not retaliate.

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Speaker 2: Again.

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Speaker 1: I think this is a reframing, but it's one that

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Speaker 1: I don't mind if it gets us.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, let's declare victory and get the hell out of this.

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Speaker 2: Yes, cutting the federal workforce please, right.

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Speaker 3: I think things were going so well until this tariff thing.

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Speaker 3: The idea of bringing back manufacturing seems like a stretch,

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Speaker 3: but I'm open to hearing plans about it.

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Speaker 4: Look, all of this is heading.

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Speaker 3: Towards being automated anyway. So this idea of let's bring

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Speaker 3: back these amazing jobs and have manufacturing in the United

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Speaker 3: States probably isn't what's actually going to happen.

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Speaker 4: We'll see. I'm happy with this.

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Speaker 3: If we could just say we won and leave it here,

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Speaker 3: that would be good in my opinion.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, we have manufacturing jobs that go unfilled here, so

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Speaker 1: it's not that they don't exist. I think one of

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Speaker 1: the issues is that we need to do a better

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Speaker 1: job of training people or those type of jobs, which

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Speaker 1: is a skill we've lost over the years, maybe doing

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Speaker 1: little too much DEI teaching in the schools instead of.

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Speaker 2: Thought class, that kind of thing.

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Speaker 1: And I do remain concerned about the uncertainty itself, and

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Speaker 1: that is just like the price of admission with Trump.

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Speaker 3: It so is, yeah, you're getting on a roller coaster.

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Speaker 1: Enjoy the ride, but it does have effects, you know,

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Speaker 1: in real time, because people will, like on the real markets,

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Speaker 1: because they people will get worried about investing their money,

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Speaker 1: and I don't want them worried about that.

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Speaker 2: Absolutely. I think this is a better track though, right.

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Speaker 3: The uncertainty is obviously the key problem with the last

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Speaker 3: few days, but I will say that if we knew

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Speaker 3: that he was going to pause the tariffs, then I

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Speaker 3: have to imagine the people investing in the markets also

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Speaker 3: had in that that was going to happen, you know,

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Speaker 3: by the dip sell it when Trump pauses the tariffs,

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Speaker 3: that you know, that's where we are.

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Speaker 1: Basically, one Robbie Swaby was was bragging about how he

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Speaker 1: had he had guessed.

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Speaker 2: This almost with very hight, almost with.

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Speaker 1: The same language that the President presented. So he writes

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Speaker 1: for Reason magazine. So I appreciated that.

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Speaker 3: Yeah, I get I think we guessed it. We basically

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Speaker 3: said that that was where he was going to end up.

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Speaker 3: I mean, again, this is not an ending, so we

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Speaker 3: don't know, but we felt like there was going to

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Speaker 3: be a pause.

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Speaker 4: And look there's one. So follow us from more investing advice.

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Speaker 1: Well, I mean the thing is too like normis who

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Speaker 1: are not necessarily heavy investors.

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Speaker 2: But have four O one case, Yeah, who are.

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Speaker 1: Watching the markets or hearing things while they're you know,

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Speaker 1: have CNBC on in the background, or you know, worried

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Speaker 1: about the impact it might have on grocery prices, which

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Speaker 1: is something that we should care about for regular people.

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Speaker 1: They're not maybe thinking through all the details of trade policy.

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Speaker 1: But they're concerned just like we are, and I think

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Speaker 1: it's good to give them some comfort.

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Speaker 4: We'll be right back on normally.

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Speaker 3: At Real Clear investigations, You're going to be so surprised

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Speaker 3: by this. Mary Catherine lee Fang has found that the

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Speaker 3: whole Kamala Harris Brat summer was actually astro turf. No, yes,

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Speaker 3: I know, I know, I too could not believe it.

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Speaker 3: Lee Wright's influencers flooded the web with Neon Macha Green

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Speaker 3: pro Harris videos sync to beats from Charlie XCX album

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Speaker 3: Bratt released last summer. Last year, The poppy ray videos

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Speaker 3: Gosh journalists showed that Harris embodied the confidently independent brat.

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Speaker 4: Vibe conveyed by the music.

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Speaker 3: Social media pages bubbled with memes celebrating Harris as the

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Speaker 3: voice of queer in black youth and contrast with the

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Speaker 3: Republican agenda of white supremacy. Now, this was a career

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Speaker 3: politician who was deeply entrenched in the Democratic Party's establishment,

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Speaker 3: and she was somehow rebranded as like the latest coolest thing.

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Speaker 3: It all seemed a bit suspicious at the time. Now

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Speaker 3: Real Clearer obtained internal documents and WhatsApp messages from Democratic

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Speaker 3: strategists behind the influencer campaign called Way to Win, one

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Speaker 3: of the major donor groups behind the effort. They spent

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Speaker 3: more than nine point one million dollars on social media

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Speaker 3: influencers during the twenty twenty four presidential election. Five one

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Speaker 3: hundred and fifty content creators published six six hundred and

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Speaker 3: forty four posts across TikTok, Instagram, YouTube, Twitch, and x.

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Speaker 3: The thing is that we have no idea that any

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Speaker 3: of this goes on until after the fact. If then

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Speaker 3: the story has barely been hitting you know, any of

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Speaker 3: the main stiam news outlets. We felt like we had

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Speaker 3: to talk about it on this show because it's been

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Speaker 3: so undercovered. Let's listen to this clip from Lee about

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Speaker 3: what the problem is in getting kind of to the

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Speaker 3: truth of this sort of thing.

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Speaker 5: This whole thing raises ethical concerns about transparency in political campaigning.

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Speaker 5: Should there restrict disclosure requirements imposed on influencers for influencer

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Speaker 5: based political content?

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Speaker 6: Look, we've had we've had rules for decades now where

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Speaker 6: you know, if you sponsor a billboard, a radio ad,

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Speaker 6: a television ad, the last few seconds of that message

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Speaker 6: has to show sponsored it. You know, on the billboard,

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Speaker 6: there's a disclosure at the bottom which pack or campaign

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Speaker 6: sponsored that message. No such rules exist for social media

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Speaker 6: for these influencers on Instagram, TikTok, and what have you.

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Speaker 6: It's really the wild West. At the end of twenty

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Speaker 6: twenty three, the Federal Election Commission proposed some influencer payola disclosures.

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Speaker 6: They deadlocked on the issue. There was no movement, so

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Speaker 6: right now, really anything could happen. And you know, we

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Speaker 6: were seeing this problem more and more on both sides,

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Speaker 6: both Republicans and Democrats have kind of got caught doing this.

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Speaker 6: This particular story that we're reporting this week, this is

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Speaker 6: the biggest I think effort of this type on either side,

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Speaker 6: Democrats spending ten million dollars just in this one kind

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Speaker 6: of organization. But it's a big problem, and it's a

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Speaker 6: big problem for disclosure. We haven't really resolved it.

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Speaker 4: Yeah, you know, you and I have talked about recently.

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Speaker 3: When the Florida bill came up about immigration, influencers were

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Speaker 3: paid to praise a Florida politician. It was so obvious,

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Speaker 3: and then somebody found the actual payment structure of that.

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Speaker 4: It is the wild West. We don't know who's getting

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Speaker 4: paid for what?

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Speaker 3: These influencers are taking money for their opinion, And it's

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Speaker 3: sort of interesting because obviously you know, and again we've

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Speaker 3: talked about it on here, but like if they already

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Speaker 3: believe what they're saying, I guess the feeling is like,

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Speaker 3: why shouldn't I get paid for it?

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Speaker 4: But everybody else has to disclose? I think they should

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Speaker 4: have to also.

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Speaker 1: Now I think it's it's tricky because it is in

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Speaker 1: this area, this gray area of election law, so you

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Speaker 1: don't really have to disclose this stuff.

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Speaker 2: What worried me.

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Speaker 1: And by the way, I appreciate Lee's reporting often and

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Speaker 1: he's Lee Hfang on X if you want to follow him.

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Speaker 1: He does a lot of interesting work along these lines,

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Speaker 1: and it takes a lot of work to track down

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Speaker 1: all these dms and all the easy financing. But he

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Speaker 1: notes that way to win, which is the organization that

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Speaker 1: did this stuff structure the funds through nonprofit corporations that

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Speaker 1: paid various influencer talent agencies firms such as Paltt Management

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Speaker 1: and Vocal Media, so it's all intertwined. But the nonprofit

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Speaker 1: groups struck me, like how much perhaps tax payer money

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Speaker 1: is going to various nonprofits that can get dumped into

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Speaker 1: electioneering and influencer campaigns. Although, like you said, Carol, we

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Speaker 1: weren't really tricked by this one.

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Speaker 2: I think that this was entirely organic.

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Speaker 3: Regularly the brat, Kamala's bratt, so bratt, super bratt.

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Speaker 4: You know, like pan.

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Speaker 2: Suit, I sort of.

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Speaker 1: I sort of enjoy when politics just kills a slang

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Speaker 1: term immediately, Like bratt was really like smothered in the crib.

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Speaker 1: That one went so fast, because once a politician takes it,

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Speaker 1: even though they're trying to tell you the politician's cool,

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Speaker 1: it's over.

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Speaker 2: It's done.

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Speaker 1: Even even I can't kill it as quickly as Kamala

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Speaker 1: or Hillary Clinton can.

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Speaker 2: So yeah, I.

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Speaker 3: Mean once you start using it around your kids, I

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Speaker 3: think it's also usually pretty dead.

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Speaker 2: I did delight in that, by the yeah, the same skivity.

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Speaker 2: I delight in that. Oh my gosh, yes, ohio so much.

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Speaker 3: But yeah, so back to this, I you know, I

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Speaker 3: think there have to be some guidelines. I don't know

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Speaker 3: how they can establish them.

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Speaker 4: It's it's so tough, like what what if you.

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Speaker 3: Tweet something positive about whatever somebody and somebody hits the

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Speaker 3: tip jar that a lot of these influencers have, like

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Speaker 3: do they then have to disclose? I think it's not

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Speaker 3: quite as black and white as an AD and there

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Speaker 3: have to be some rules to this, like I've you know,

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Speaker 3: I'm sure you have. Also I've been accused of taking

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Speaker 3: money from various causes. However, open on the record like yes,

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Speaker 3: come pay me, but I'm mostly just kidding. I have

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Speaker 3: never taken any money from any cause ever. I have

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Speaker 3: foolishly done this all for free. And I think that

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Speaker 3: there has to be some level of trust between the

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Speaker 3: consumer of our information and us, and the way that

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Speaker 3: I think we established that trust is not taking money

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Speaker 3: to push any causes, even causes we already agree with,

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Speaker 3: and so there has to be some sort of policy

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Speaker 3: around this.

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Speaker 4: I don't think this go on.

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Speaker 1: There are ways that social media has made rules for this,

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Speaker 1: so it could come not necessarily from government regulation, but

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Speaker 1: from the social media entities themselves, where a lot of

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Speaker 1: them require tagging something as an AD or disclosing what

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Speaker 1: you're doing, and I don't see why dedicated posts couldn't

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Speaker 1: be treated that way as well. It may not be

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Speaker 1: forthcoming from the FEC, however, and like you said, could

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Speaker 1: cause a.

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Speaker 2: Bunch of other downstream unintended issues.

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Speaker 3: As a result, we're going to take a short break

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Speaker 3: and come right back with normally.

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Speaker 1: Jim Van de High, who now works at Axios, I believe,

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Speaker 1: was a founder of Politico. Yeah, that's correct, is that Axios?

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Speaker 1: And he was speaking with Barry Weiss on her Honestly

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Speaker 1: podcast about lack of trust in media not influencers this

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Speaker 1: time media, But aren't they sometimes the same? Weren't there

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Speaker 1: as well? I can remember there was one segment post

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Speaker 1: braught summer news cycle where a CNN anchor was wearing

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Speaker 1: the color like on perpose, saying like here we are.

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Speaker 1: That is a hazy memory, but I'm pretty sure that

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Speaker 1: happened at any rate. Anda he's talking to her, and

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Speaker 1: this is a longish clip, but it's worth listening to

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Speaker 1: the whole thing to get an idea from a guy

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Speaker 1: who's at the top of political media, who's being i

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Speaker 1: would say a little more introspective than many of them are,

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Speaker 1: to see what he diagnoses as the problem, and then we'll.

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Speaker 2: Talk about it.

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Speaker 7: I feel like the trust really started to shatter over

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Speaker 7: the last decade, and I look at it in three phases.

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Speaker 7: The first was the creation of Twitter. What happened with

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Speaker 7: Twitter is people forget like now it's on a lot

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Speaker 7: of conservative voices, a lot of independent voices. It was

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Speaker 7: a hot bed of liberal group think for a long time.

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Speaker 7: And it was the first time since I've been in

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Speaker 7: this business that I would get on a fee and

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Speaker 7: I would see reporters who I had trusted, who I

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Speaker 7: had admired, making it crystal clear what their views were,

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Speaker 7: what side they were on. You could tell in what

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Speaker 7: they were tweeting, and you could tell in who they

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Speaker 7: were following and who was following them. So I thought

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Speaker 7: that was stage one, because at least before any bias

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Speaker 7: people had they hid from the public. Now it was

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Speaker 7: in a somewhat full view. Then came along kind of

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Speaker 7: the COVID defund, the police word policing, where I think

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Speaker 7: a lot of Americans were looking around and being like,

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Speaker 7: it doesn't sit right with me, and it doesn't in

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Speaker 7: the way it's being covered didn't sit right with them.

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Speaker 7: And then I think the final straw really was the

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Speaker 7: coverage of Joe Biden, when people were saying, hey, I

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Speaker 7: could see with my own two eyes that the guy

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Speaker 7: seems pretty old, probably doesn't seem capable of being the

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Speaker 7: President in the next term, and yet there's not a

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Speaker 7: whole hell of a lot of coverage of it. We

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Speaker 7: you know, Alex Thompson, our White House reporter, just won

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Speaker 7: the White House Reporting Award because he was one of

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Speaker 7: the few reporters to write about the decline of Joe Biden,

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Speaker 7: and he got the help exactly some of the very

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Speaker 7: reporters who may have you know who will applaud him

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Speaker 7: when he wins the award in a couple of weeks.

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Speaker 7: If you go back and look at their Twitter feeds,

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Speaker 7: there's a lot of people dunking on him and saying, oh,

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Speaker 7: that's not actually true. And we're on the other ends

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Speaker 7: of the calls from the White House saying that you

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Speaker 7: guys are out on a limb, you're wrong, you're crazy,

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Speaker 7: blah blah blah. And so I think those three things

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Speaker 7: in totality really cemented the distrust that a lot of

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Speaker 7: people have in media, and it breaks my heart. I

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Speaker 7: hate that. I love journalism. I am a fierce, fierce,

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Speaker 7: dependent defender of journalism. I believe that most reporters at

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Speaker 7: most institutions actually do try to get to the closest

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Speaker 7: approximation of the truth and achieve it most of the time.

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Speaker 7: I think it's a couple of bad apples who make

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Speaker 7: it look bad for everyone.

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Speaker 3: I mean, the idea that it was somebody else, you know,

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Speaker 3: it's it's that whole the meme of the guy in

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Speaker 3: the hot dog costume, where he's like, we're looking for

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Speaker 3: the person who did this and not taking any responsibility.

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Speaker 3: I think that's actually problem number one.

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Speaker 4: The things that he diagnoses. He's right, he's.

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Speaker 2: Right, stones are correct, yes.

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Speaker 3: Yes, but the blame placing of some vague other journalists

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Speaker 3: is a little bit too rich.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, I got a couple problems with this one. At

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Speaker 1: the risk of my reputation. I am a fourth generation

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Speaker 1: newspaper journalist. I know, shame upon my whole family line.

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Speaker 3: You're so awesome, Come on, that's amazing.

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Speaker 1: So my great grandfather owned a newspaper in Georgia, and

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Speaker 1: then my grandfather worked for him as a sports writer,

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Speaker 1: and then my dad was an editor, and then I

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Speaker 1: was at a newspaper before newspaper sail. So I am

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Speaker 1: sort of like coming from a family of inkstained wretches,

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Speaker 1: and I've always been part of media in a sort

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Speaker 1: of like help me, help you kind of way. Like

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Speaker 1: I want you to do the job you're supposed to

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Speaker 1: do now. That has been a seriously uphill battle, and

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Speaker 1: I found that I was ideologically an outlier, even in

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Speaker 1: a small newsroom in rural North Carolina, right because journalists

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Speaker 1: are just very, very left, and there are so many

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Speaker 1: of them that are very left, and I would argue

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Speaker 1: they're more left now than they've ever been, and more

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Speaker 1: elite and elite dist than they've ever been, and at

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Speaker 1: least to all these blind spots.

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Speaker 2: The idea that it started with Twitter.

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Speaker 1: That we didn't know before, Like friend, I knew before

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Speaker 1: two thousand and seven or nine or whenever it was,

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Speaker 1: so that was what I was not shocked. I actually

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Speaker 1: prefer it to be crystal clear what their biases are

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Speaker 1: because I knew before.

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Speaker 2: Stop hiding it from me. One of the reasons that we.

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Speaker 1: Do what we do the way we do it is

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Speaker 1: to be able to say, like, this is where I stand.

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Speaker 2: You can judge.

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Speaker 1: I will try to get to the true, but you

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Speaker 1: can judge my motivations how you wish.

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Speaker 2: Sure, that's part of it.

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Speaker 1: The COVID and defund the police and the you know,

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Speaker 1: woke stuff all slammed together in that very short mention.

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Speaker 1: It really doesn't even begin to get to the crazy,

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Speaker 1: really does they endorsed? I mean doesn't even begin, right.

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Speaker 3: You didn't mention things like Kavanaugh, for example, which he

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Speaker 3: was particularly involved in pushing specifically him, and you know

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Speaker 3: things like that are just get left off the list.

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Speaker 1: And then there's Joe Biden, where it's like, oh, the

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Speaker 1: slings and arrows. I appreciate it is true that Thompson

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Speaker 1: reported when others did not, as did the Wall Street

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Speaker 1: Journal reporters who first wrote the formal story in this,

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Speaker 1: But the rest of us were just like, Hi, guys,

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Speaker 1: we can see this.

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Speaker 4: Right with our eyes.

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Speaker 2: There are no awards forthcoming for that.

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Speaker 1: I love the idea that the White House was like,

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Speaker 1: you're really out on a limb here, buster like am

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Speaker 1: I I can see you wandering through field. I don't

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Speaker 1: think I'm that on a limb. And then the idea

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Speaker 1: that it's just a few of them.

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Speaker 2: Is you got animals, right, the group think?

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Speaker 1: Why does the group think exist that he that he

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Speaker 1: identifies at the beginning of Twitter.

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Speaker 2: It's because they all think the same thing, right, And

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Speaker 2: I think.

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Speaker 3: That they were surprised to find that that's identified as

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Speaker 3: group think, or that that's even leftism. To them, that's

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Speaker 3: just normal. And what do you mean, we're not leftists,

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Speaker 3: We're just mainstream journalists who all think the same way.

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Speaker 4: Why is that weird to you?

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Speaker 1: It's just neutral, good, right, like all the things we think.

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Speaker 1: But all the things we think became defund the police

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Speaker 1: and stay in your home for two years, and toddlers

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Speaker 1: should wear masks, and schools should be closed, and you

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Speaker 1: should never say any of the words we say.

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Speaker 2: You can't say.

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Speaker 1: Nina Jenkowitz should be in charge of all of it.

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Speaker 1: And Biden is great for another four years. I mean,

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Speaker 1: come on, how can they be surprised the people don't

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Speaker 1: trust them?

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Speaker 3: Yeah, they can't be. And I don't know if there's

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Speaker 3: a way back from it. I you know, we'll see

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Speaker 3: what happens.

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Speaker 4: Maybe there's enough resistors to.

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Speaker 3: Make the failing mainshoe media relevant again, but it's hard

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Speaker 3: to see how that's going to happen.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, As I always say, this country is desperate for

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Speaker 1: a reliable narrator, and the media absolutely refuses.

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Speaker 2: To be one.

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Speaker 1: Yeah, and for that reason, they have lost tons of power.

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Speaker 1: And I think actually the losing of their power and

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Speaker 1: the dispersal of viewpoints. Yes, makes it's hard sometimes to

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Speaker 1: figure out what information you're getting and how and what

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Speaker 1: is real and what is not, but also means that

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Speaker 1: they can't create fake narratives the way that they used to.

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Speaker 2: That's right.

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Speaker 3: We're going to tell you the truth on this show

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Speaker 3: whether or not you like it, so stay tu enjoy.

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Speaker 4: Yeah. Thanks for joining us on normally.

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Speaker 3: Normally airs Tuesdays and Thursdays, and you can subscribe anywhere

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00:22:54,680 --> 00:22:56,080
Speaker 3: you get your podcasts.

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00:22:56,320 --> 00:22:57,280
Speaker 4: Get in touch with us.

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Speaker 3: At normallythepod at gmail dot com.

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Speaker 4: Thanks for listening, and when things get weird, act normally