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Speaker 1: A huge thank you to Prudential, along with financial wellness
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Speaker 1: about the changing financial landscape and a brand new project
Speaker 1: called the State of Us. Fewer than half of us
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Speaker 1: dot com slash State of US. Hey Brian Hi Katie
Speaker 1: and High to all of our listeners. Before we begin
Speaker 1: today's show, we wanted to share a little news. After
Speaker 1: two and a half years of making this podcast, Brian
Speaker 1: and I have decided that today will be our last episode,
Speaker 1: at least for a while. Think of it as we'll
Speaker 1: see you later and not necessarily goodbye, more of a
Speaker 1: of an au revoir, if you will. We're taking a
Speaker 1: break because we have not bigger fish to fry, but
Speaker 1: other fish to fry. Right Brian, this is true. Um.
Speaker 1: Katie's production company is taking the world by storm, producing
Speaker 1: tons of shows both online and in other platforms. I
Speaker 1: am trying to figure out my plan for but we
Speaker 1: fear not, dear listeners, fear not, You will hear from
Speaker 1: us again in the not so distant future in some way,
Speaker 1: shape or form. And I, for one, have loved doing this.
Speaker 1: I'm such a huge fan of my colleague Brian Goldsmiths,
Speaker 1: and I've loved spending this time together with him, and
Speaker 1: of course, our incredible group here at Stitcher has been
Speaker 1: a real joy to work with and so we're gonna
Speaker 1: miss being together every week. But again, we've got a
Speaker 1: lot of things up our sleeves. So two words, stay
Speaker 1: tuned and working with Katie has been a joy and
Speaker 1: a privilege every single day, and I will I will
Speaker 1: miss that, although I am very confident we will stay
Speaker 1: in touch quite frequently in the weeks and months ahead. Um.
Speaker 1: But we're not done quite yet. We still have a
Speaker 1: very special show today. This is part two of our
Speaker 1: look back at the year eighteen. This week we're talking
Speaker 1: about the year in climate change with former Vice President
Speaker 1: Al Gore, someone I admire enormously, and then we'll talk
Speaker 1: about the year in news and politics with someone else
Speaker 1: I really like, Michael Barbarrow, who hosts The Daily from
Speaker 1: the New York Times. We're big fans of The Daily. Meanwhile,
Speaker 1: we're starting with the Vice President. And of course I
Speaker 1: have known Al Gore for a long time. I think
Speaker 1: I first covered him back in nineteen ninety two. Jesus,
Speaker 1: I'm old, aren't I. During his terms as a representative
Speaker 1: and then Senator from Tennessee, he was already passionate about
Speaker 1: the environment and very interested in climate change. In fact,
Speaker 1: he published his first book on the environment back into
Speaker 1: the same year he and Bill Clinton were elected to
Speaker 1: the White House. Of course, after eight years as Vice President,
Speaker 1: Gore ran for president in the infamous or famous two
Speaker 1: thousand election against George W. Bush. Gore won the popular
Speaker 1: vote but lost in the electoral college. Some say he
Speaker 1: lost in the Supreme Court, but we're not going to
Speaker 1: go there. Um. After that debacle, Gore left politics for
Speaker 1: good and really focused on his passionate advocacy on the
Speaker 1: climate issue. And that's why in two thousand and six
Speaker 1: he released a book and documentary, both titled An Inconvenient Truth,
Speaker 1: that detailed the impending climate disaster, and in two thousand
Speaker 1: seven he won the Nobel Peace Prize for his environmental work.
Speaker 1: In the years since two thousand, al Gore has also
Speaker 1: been very involved in Silicon Valley tech has been a
Speaker 1: huge passion of his. He's on the board of Apple,
Speaker 1: among other things, and he's also founded the Climate Reality Project,
Speaker 1: which is a big nonprofit devoted to solving what he
Speaker 1: calls the climate crisis. So he's been very busy, and
Speaker 1: we're going to be talking him primarily about the environment. First.
Speaker 1: I wanted to know, given the devastating California wildfires and
Speaker 1: hurricanes on the Eastern seaboard that we saw this year,
Speaker 1: what role has climate changed played in two thousand team. Well,
Speaker 1: the impacts of the climate crisis are growing much more severe,
Speaker 1: uh and much more frequent. And the latest report by
Speaker 1: the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change got the attention of
Speaker 1: millions of people around the world, and it was followed
Speaker 1: by the devastating hurricanes you mentioned, and these incredible fires
Speaker 1: this year that have been so devastating in California and
Speaker 1: in other parts of western North America and around the world.
Speaker 1: By the way, these are global events. Every night on
Speaker 1: the TV news is like a nature hike through the
Speaker 1: Book of Revelation now, and I think that people are
Speaker 1: are are responding to Mother Nature's advocacy far more than
Speaker 1: to the advocacy of those of us who are activists
Speaker 1: on this issue. But we're trying to do our part
Speaker 1: as well. I think that the entrenched opposition to really
Speaker 1: solving this crisis h still comes from a dark money
Speaker 1: provided by large carbon polluters, the American Petroleum Institute, the
Speaker 1: Koke Brothers, some of the large oil companies, even some
Speaker 1: who publicly proclaim they've changed their minds and are not
Speaker 1: fighting action anymore. Whenever there's a serious proposal, they pour
Speaker 1: in the money. But overall, we are seeing tremendous momentum
Speaker 1: for the solutions to the climate crisis. Some of it's
Speaker 1: uh due to technological advances, the stunning reductions in the
Speaker 1: cost of electricity from the sun and the wind, and
Speaker 1: stunning reductions in the cost of batteries and electric vehicles
Speaker 1: and all kinds of efficiency improvements. This is a really
Speaker 1: changing the global picture. Sometimes I get confused out when
Speaker 1: I see these fires, and I watched these hurricanes, and
Speaker 1: I get confused about the direct link between climate change
Speaker 1: and these catastrophic events. What is the link? I mean,
Speaker 1: can you say that these wildfires are because of climate change?
Speaker 1: Here is the connection, Katie. The accumulated amount of man
Speaker 1: made global warming pollution in the thin shell of atmosphere
Speaker 1: surrounding our planet. You know, it stays. We're putting a
Speaker 1: ten million tons every day into the atmosphere as if
Speaker 1: it's an open sewer, and it stays there for more
Speaker 1: than a thousand years. The majority of it, and the
Speaker 1: accumulated amount of man made global warming pollution is now
Speaker 1: trapping as much extra heat energy every day as would
Speaker 1: be released by five hundred thousand herosia mclass atomic bombs
Speaker 1: exploding every twenty four hours. Day in and day out.
Speaker 1: That extra heat energy evaporates a lot more water vapor
Speaker 1: off the oceans into the sky, and the so called
Speaker 1: atmospheric rivers carry it over the land, and so we
Speaker 1: get these massive downpours uh, four times more common than
Speaker 1: in even And the same extra heat pulls the moisture
Speaker 1: out of the soil and the vegetation, so you get
Speaker 1: both the droughts and drying trees and dead trees that
Speaker 1: are kindling for these fires. Uh. And you get much
Speaker 1: more powerful hurricanes and much larger town pours. So Mr
Speaker 1: Vice President, I have a hard time calling you out.
Speaker 1: I want to step back and talk about why we're
Speaker 1: in the position that we're in at this moment. You
Speaker 1: mentioned the Koch Brothers and some of the kind of
Speaker 1: carbon polluting interests. Do you basically hold them responsible for
Speaker 1: the reason it's been so hard to convince the public
Speaker 1: of the magnitude of this Well, I think they're one
Speaker 1: of the major reasons. Yes. Um, the large carbon polluters
Speaker 1: have spent a couple of billion dollars in sewing confusion
Speaker 1: and false s doubt. They took the playbook of the
Speaker 1: tobacco companies and use some of the same pr firms
Speaker 1: and lobbyists. The tobacco companies hired actors and dress them
Speaker 1: up as doctors and put them in front of cameras
Speaker 1: and teleprompters to falsely reassure people that there was no
Speaker 1: medical reason to avoid smoking cigarettes. Well decades later, they've
Speaker 1: documented how the large carbon polluters spend enormous amounts of
Speaker 1: money to intentionally confuse Americans and paralyze legislative bodies to
Speaker 1: prevent to action. They're losing this battle, but they are
Speaker 1: delaying actions still. The grassroots opinion, more than two thirds
Speaker 1: of the American people know this UH is real. College
Speaker 1: young Republicans, by the way, are now UH saying their
Speaker 1: party has to change as well. A lot of businesses
Speaker 1: are providing leadership. But you know UH. In Tennessee, the
Speaker 1: farmers have an old saying that if you see a
Speaker 1: turtle on top of a fence post, you can be
Speaker 1: pretty sure it didn't get there by itself. And and
Speaker 1: if if you see persistent levels of climate denial in
Speaker 1: the US, unlike in any other country, you can be
Speaker 1: pretty sure that didn't happen by itself either. It's very
Speaker 1: hard to find an established, much less respected scientific voice
Speaker 1: that disagrees with the consensus. The level of certainty exceeds
Speaker 1: that linking smoking to lung cancer, and it almost approaches
Speaker 1: the certainty about the existence of gravity. But on the
Speaker 1: other hand, there was a gallipole earlier this year that
Speaker 1: showed that only eighteen percent of Republicans believe that global
Speaker 1: warming will pose a serious threat in their lifetime. And
Speaker 1: and this country elected a climate change denier as president.
Speaker 1: So it seems like the experts haven't really made the
Speaker 1: sale here. Well, let me unpack that that that question.
Speaker 1: First of all, of course, as you know, there's the
Speaker 1: fabled tribalism in our politics now, and there is, of course, uh,
Speaker 1: something else at work. And when there is a general
Speaker 1: uneasiness about the state of the world and a general
Speaker 1: feeling of doubt, then that that creates conditions for a
Speaker 1: demagogue to come in with with falsehoods and uh and
Speaker 1: false expansive promises. And I think we've certainly seen that,
Speaker 1: and we've seen a wave of populist authoritarianism in other
Speaker 1: countries as well. Part of it is the global financial
Speaker 1: crisis in two thousand and eight, uh uh, and I
Speaker 1: think that was a real trigger for the real disaffection
Speaker 1: and hostility against elites and experts of any stripe. I mean,
Speaker 1: you know, you can go deeper into this, but I
Speaker 1: think that's a fair summation. And add to that, this
Speaker 1: issue of the climate crisis is inherently complicated, and it's
Speaker 1: global in scope, and we're not used to thinking in
Speaker 1: those terms, and it plays out over longer time periods
Speaker 1: than our political system is used to dealing with, and
Speaker 1: so and and and the final element would be just
Speaker 1: sort of garden variety denial. It's hard to think about
Speaker 1: difficult threats that are scary and solutions that are now
Speaker 1: readily available but seem to require overcoming the inertia in
Speaker 1: in our devotion to patterns that have existed for a
Speaker 1: long time. It also seems to me out that people
Speaker 1: have a hard time dealing with problems that are not
Speaker 1: necessarily immediate, and that's one of the problems I think
Speaker 1: with climate change. Similarly, the causality. Sometimes people don't understand
Speaker 1: that events like wildfires and flooding and hurricane is seriously
Speaker 1: exacerbated by climate change. Yeah. Well, I think that part
Speaker 1: of human nature is that we are more prepared to
Speaker 1: respond immediately to the kinds of threats that are and
Speaker 1: sesters survived, you know, a snake, other humans with weapons. Uh.
Speaker 1: These are the things that we're hardwired to respond to immediately.
Speaker 1: And when we face a much greater danger that has
Speaker 1: to be UH perceived with the assistance of our analytical capabilities.
Speaker 1: Were capable of that too. We've demonstrated that throughout history,
Speaker 1: but it takes more effort. And in fact, al I
Speaker 1: was going to mention, I recently read that the ozone
Speaker 1: layer was closing up because of actions that were taken
Speaker 1: to do just that. And that is an example that
Speaker 1: shows when we take action, things can change, right. Yes, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And back in the mid eighties, the scientific community UH
Speaker 1: made this alarming discovery that a certain kinds of chemicals
Speaker 1: that had only been used for about fifty years were
Speaker 1: destroying that stratosphere go zone layer that filters out the
Speaker 1: UV radiation and keeps it so that it only gives
Speaker 1: a sunburn instead of killing us. That that it was
Speaker 1: deteriorating rapidly, and within one year, Margaret Thatcher in the
Speaker 1: United Kingdom, who had a chemistry a degree, enlisted the
Speaker 1: cooperation of her dear friend of President Ronald Reagan. They
Speaker 1: took action and now we are on the way to
Speaker 1: solving that crisis. Now here's the difference, Katie. Those chemicals
Speaker 1: that were causing that catastrophe were a very tiny part
Speaker 1: of the global economy. The company's making it fought against it,
Speaker 1: but they but they were defeated. Now, the problem is
Speaker 1: c O two and methane and other gases, But the main,
Speaker 1: the heart of it is CEO two, and that comes
Speaker 1: from the fuels that still provide of all the inner
Speaker 1: g in the global economy. And there are alternatives for
Speaker 1: them as well. But there are vested interests and established
Speaker 1: patterns of behavior that are more difficult to change and
Speaker 1: overcome than it was when we successfully solve the stratospheric
Speaker 1: zone layering problem. Clearly, President Trump is not on the
Speaker 1: same page as you are. To put it mildly, here's
Speaker 1: what he said not too long ago on sixty minutes
Speaker 1: about global warming. Do you still think the climate change
Speaker 1: is a hoax? Look, I think something's happening, something's changing,
Speaker 1: and it will change back again. I don't think it's
Speaker 1: a hoax. I think there's probably a difference, but I
Speaker 1: don't know that it's man made. I will say this, Um,
Speaker 1: I don't want to give trillions and trillions of dollars.
Speaker 1: I don't want to lose millions and millions of jobs.
Speaker 1: I don't want to be put a disadvantage. I'm not
Speaker 1: denying climate change, but it could very well go back.
Speaker 1: You know, we're talking to about all that's the nine
Speaker 1: of views. They say that we had hurricanes that were
Speaker 1: far worse than what we just had with Michael who
Speaker 1: says that, they say people say that India. But what
Speaker 1: about the scientists who say it's worse than ever. You
Speaker 1: have to show me the scientists because they have a
Speaker 1: very big political agenda, lest like I can't bring the
Speaker 1: managers also have a political agenda. What has your reaction
Speaker 1: been to the President's position on this? Well? Uh, you know,
Speaker 1: if you want to go into the Trump cul de sac,
Speaker 1: we may not escape from it. I don't know. I
Speaker 1: mean whenever, every time a new outrage comes along, I
Speaker 1: have to download some existing outrage to make room for
Speaker 1: the new outrage. Uh. And just to take a couple
Speaker 1: of points from his comment, uh that it will change back. No,
Speaker 1: it won't change back. Uh No, because we're putting a
Speaker 1: million extra tons every day, uh and into the sky
Speaker 1: and adding it to this blanket of heat trapping gases
Speaker 1: that is causing the problem. Uh, it can go back
Speaker 1: if we change our behavior. Now. The the idea that
Speaker 1: the scientists have some political agenda, it's an insult to
Speaker 1: these uh scientists. They do it on volunteer time. Uh.
Speaker 1: They won the Nobel Prize. They continue their work. They're
Speaker 1: they're they're among the most respected women and men uh
Speaker 1: in their fields in countries all around the world. And
Speaker 1: by the way, as I said before, they've been proven right.
Speaker 1: What they predicted decades ago is playing out on our
Speaker 1: television screens and in the lives of people living in
Speaker 1: cities that are being hit hard right now. So, UM,
Speaker 1: this is wilful denial. This is is a global crisis.
Speaker 1: You know, the President set up this prototypical battle between
Speaker 1: industry and jobs on the one hand and the environment
Speaker 1: on the other. Is that really the choice that we're
Speaker 1: facing here? No, the choice actually switching to renewable energy
Speaker 1: that saves us money and and by the way, it
Speaker 1: creates jobs. The fastest growing job in the United States
Speaker 1: of America today, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics,
Speaker 1: is solar installer. Those jobs are growing nine times faster
Speaker 1: than average job growth. The second fastest growing job is
Speaker 1: wind turbine technician. We're in the early stages of a
Speaker 1: sustainability revolution all around the world that has the magnitude
Speaker 1: of the industrial revolution, but the speed of the digital revolution.
Speaker 1: Electricity from solar and wind is now cheaper in the
Speaker 1: majority of locations around the world than electricity from burning
Speaker 1: fossil fuels. End. The fossil fuel electricity keeps getting more
Speaker 1: expensive and also produces local air pollution, which kills almost
Speaker 1: ten million people a year. Air pollutions the new smoking,
Speaker 1: whereas the renewable electricity is pollution free, creates jobs, makes
Speaker 1: our economy more efficient, and it keeps coming down in
Speaker 1: price year after year after year. This is the future. Uh.
Speaker 1: And you know, we don't have a shortage of fossil fuels.
Speaker 1: But as the oil minister of Saudi Arabia said, and
Speaker 1: his warning to the King of Saudi Arabia decades ago,
Speaker 1: remember the Stone Age didn't end because of a shortage
Speaker 1: of stones. It ended because something better came along. And
Speaker 1: that's the point we're at now in our energy and
Speaker 1: transportation uh and and and built environment. So per your
Speaker 1: point earlier, I don't want to move into the Trump
Speaker 1: cul de sac. But we we have to stay there
Speaker 1: for a little while, just because obviously he's the president
Speaker 1: of the United States. You met with him when he
Speaker 1: was president elect. During the transition. It was reported that
Speaker 1: Jared and Ivanka helped set that up. Do you think
Speaker 1: Jared and Ivanka, who seemed to be more sympathetic to
Speaker 1: your views, have exercised any influence in the administration. Yes,
Speaker 1: obviously they have had a good deal of influence. I
Speaker 1: I think that where his buddies in the in the
Speaker 1: carbon pollution community are concerned, I think they take a
Speaker 1: priority over everyone else when it comes to this issue.
Speaker 1: I think that's abundantly obvious. I mean, look at the
Speaker 1: people he's appointed. I you know, I think there must
Speaker 1: be a grifter's tender out there where these people find
Speaker 1: one another. Uh, I mean you you look, I mean,
Speaker 1: just look at this acting Attorney general. For God's sake,
Speaker 1: I mean, you could not. I mean the classic cliche
Speaker 1: is if you wrote this in a novel, your editor
Speaker 1: would say, no, it's just not believable. On you, sasquatched,
Speaker 1: I'm travel I mean, please, as we're airing this out,
Speaker 1: you'll be at the annual meeting of the group that
Speaker 1: produced the Paris Climate Agreement, and it's been more than
Speaker 1: a year since the president pulled out of that agreement.
Speaker 1: Some people minimize this by saying it's a non binding deal.
Speaker 1: What if the real consequence has been of America's withdrawal
Speaker 1: from the accord. Well, first of all, under US law
Speaker 1: and international law, the first day on which the US
Speaker 1: can actually withdraw from the agreement happens to be the
Speaker 1: day after the next presidential election, in the middle of November. Uh,
Speaker 1: And so he can make a speech and declare his intention.
Speaker 1: But the US is still legally bound. And while part
Speaker 1: of it is voluntary, there are also binding provisions in
Speaker 1: the agreement, and a new president, by the way, could
Speaker 1: simply give third day's notice and we're back in the agreement.
Speaker 1: But perhaps more importantly, the US, in spite of Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: is on track to exceed the commitments so that we're
Speaker 1: made by our country in the Paris Agreement. That's partly
Speaker 1: because big states like California and New York and fifteen
Speaker 1: others and hundreds of cities and uh, many of the
Speaker 1: large businesses, particularly consumer facing businesses, they're still in the
Speaker 1: Paris Agreement, and they've stepped up their efforts to exceed
Speaker 1: their commitments. Uh. California just passed a binding law that
Speaker 1: they're gonna go a hundred percent carbon free. Uh. Colorado
Speaker 1: is now going to join them by so many cities
Speaker 1: are going a renewable I was just in Atlanta and
Speaker 1: they've made that commitment of Atlantic can do it, any
Speaker 1: city can do it, and that gives us real hope. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it does. So now I don't I don't want to
Speaker 1: to risk a sounding up Polly Anish, because the truth
Speaker 1: is the problem is getting worse faster than we are
Speaker 1: responding to it. But the new Congress that comes in
Speaker 1: uh to office in in January is gonna make a
Speaker 1: huge difference. Uh. The new Democrats picked up seven governors
Speaker 1: offices and many hundreds of state legislative seats. Uh. We're
Speaker 1: seeing commitments on climate action from many of these new officeholders.
Speaker 1: So there's there's ample room for legitimate optimism. But we
Speaker 1: have to retain our sense of urgency because the danger
Speaker 1: is very high, it's very real, it's growing, and in
Speaker 1: order to solve this crisis in time, we have to
Speaker 1: step up the changes in laws and policies. You know,
Speaker 1: one person who's not quite as optimistic as you are
Speaker 1: is Bill mckibbon, who recently wrote a long piece for
Speaker 1: The New Yorker that's very powerful in a affecting about
Speaker 1: climate change, and he basically argues that even if Paris
Speaker 1: were followed, it's wildly inadequate to the challenge, and that
Speaker 1: a future of negative and even catastrophic consequences is virtually inevitable.
Speaker 1: So has your optimism been tempered at all by the
Speaker 1: events we've seen over the last several years. Well, you know,
Speaker 1: Bill does a great job. I'm a big fan of
Speaker 1: his work. But but if you look at that piece
Speaker 1: in the New Yorker, you'll see that he carved out
Speaker 1: a section for hope himself and articulated it. And where
Speaker 1: the inadequacy of the Paris Agreement is concerned, I have
Speaker 1: said that many times, but again here is a really
Speaker 1: important provision in the Paris Agreement that ought to change
Speaker 1: the way pessimists think about it. One of the binding
Speaker 1: provisions is that every five years, all of the nations
Speaker 1: that have signed it have an obligation to review their
Speaker 1: progress and upgrade their ambitions. And in light of the
Speaker 1: continuing cost reductions in carbon free energy and efficiency improvements
Speaker 1: and electric transportation and so forth. UH. The first five
Speaker 1: year review period, which will begin next year and culminate
Speaker 1: in the Conference of the Parties, is likely to see
Speaker 1: significant increases in ambition, with much steeper cuts in greenhouse
Speaker 1: gas pollution pledged by the major emitters. So it's certainly
Speaker 1: true that the Paris Agreement taken as a whole is inadequate,
Speaker 1: of course, but it it was designed to build a
Speaker 1: foundation from which stronger commitments can come UH in the
Speaker 1: year's five allowing the implementation of the agreement, and that
Speaker 1: process has already started. Some nations have already upgraded their commitments,
Speaker 1: and in I think you're likely to see a major
Speaker 1: global increase in the pledged actions by countries around the world.
Speaker 1: Bill McKibbin sort of bemoaned the fact that world leaders
Speaker 1: and presidents in our country didn't intervene enough and said
Speaker 1: that what was that the theoretical threat has become a
Speaker 1: fierce daily reality. I know that in two thousand thirteen
Speaker 1: you said President Obama failed to use the bully pulpit
Speaker 1: to make the case for bold action on climate change.
Speaker 1: That was a direct quote. Do you think he could
Speaker 1: have and should have done more well. I think you
Speaker 1: have to differentiate to Katie between President Obama's record in
Speaker 1: his first four years and in his second four years.
Speaker 1: He deserves credit, as I've written, in his first four
Speaker 1: years for dramatically increasing the mileage standard requirements for cars
Speaker 1: and trucks, and for the green stimulus elements of his
Speaker 1: economic stimulus plan, which which made a difference. The White
Speaker 1: House might well have done more to secure passage of
Speaker 1: major legislation that passed the House in the in the
Speaker 1: early summer of two thousand nine, which failed in the Senate.
Speaker 1: But in his second term, uh, he built on his
Speaker 1: beginnings in the first term and really did use the
Speaker 1: bully pulpit quite significantly. And and he played a major
Speaker 1: role in securing the success of the Paris Agreement. And
Speaker 1: one year before the Paris Agreement, he achieved an historic
Speaker 1: binational commitment between the US and China which laid the
Speaker 1: foundation for the success in Paris. So I think you
Speaker 1: look at the balance of his eight years in the
Speaker 1: White House, I think that he made major, major contributions.
Speaker 1: A number of top retired Republicans have signed onto a
Speaker 1: carbon tax as the right way to deal with climate change.
Speaker 1: Can you quickly explain what that means and tell us
Speaker 1: what you think of that approach. Well, I've proposed a
Speaker 1: a carbon tax UH for thirty years now, so yes,
Speaker 1: I'm very much in favor of it for the simple
Speaker 1: reason that our economy now counts pollution UH to have
Speaker 1: a value of zero. We we ignore it. And you
Speaker 1: know the term of art you've heard as externalities, which
Speaker 1: basically means, uh, just forget about it and pretend it
Speaker 1: doesn't exist. But but that's obviously insane, particularly when when
Speaker 1: we're putting a hundred ten million tons of it every
Speaker 1: day into the sky. Uh. And and one of the
Speaker 1: ways to remedy uh, the economy's blindness to this pollution
Speaker 1: is to put a price on it. Now, having said that, Katie, UH,
Speaker 1: the political difficulty in enacting any kind of taxation increase
Speaker 1: is well known and impressive, and partly as a result,
Speaker 1: many people took a different approach with the so called
Speaker 1: cap and trade mechanism UH that's now being used in
Speaker 1: the European Union, It's being used by China. They implemented
Speaker 1: it this year. It is an indirect price on carbon
Speaker 1: and can achieve the same goals if it's skillfully UH
Speaker 1: and strongly enforced, and I think the world is probably
Speaker 1: moving in that direction. I actually support both a carbon
Speaker 1: tax and a carbon trading or cap and trade regime,
Speaker 1: but we also need um regulatory chain, just requirements, such
Speaker 1: as telling utilities they have to have growing percentages of
Speaker 1: their electricity from renewable sources by a date certain UH.
Speaker 1: Many countries around the world have now enacted laws requiring
Speaker 1: the the illegal cessation of any sales of internal combustion engines,
Speaker 1: mandating a shift to electric vehicles. Sweden, India has announced
Speaker 1: that by no new internal combustion cars and trucks can
Speaker 1: be sold. And that's the an example of a of
Speaker 1: a law and a regulation approach that can accomplish more
Speaker 1: very quickly. But yes, I support a carbon tax and
Speaker 1: a cap and trade program. Mr Vice President Alexandra Ocasio Cortes,
Speaker 1: the new Democratic Socialist congresswoman from New York, led a
Speaker 1: protest in Nancy Pelosi's office to create a Select Committee
Speaker 1: on Climate change, which is a position that Pelosi has
Speaker 1: said that she shares. What was your reaction to the
Speaker 1: decision to protest her, of all people, and do you
Speaker 1: think she ought to be the next Speaker of the House.
Speaker 1: First of all, I really welcome the energy and activism
Speaker 1: of this new incoming group of Democrats in the Congress.
Speaker 1: I mean, I like that Select Committee. I don't think
Speaker 1: the opposition to it, by the way, was anything more
Speaker 1: than the committee chairs, with the substance of jurisdiction, want
Speaker 1: to sink their teeth into it. But I'll let them
Speaker 1: sort that out. As far as the race for Speaker
Speaker 1: of the House is concerned, I'm a longtime friend and
Speaker 1: admirer of Nancy Pelosi, and in my experience, she's been
Speaker 1: one of the great speakers of the last century. She
Speaker 1: knows how to knit her caucus together and count votes. Well.
Speaker 1: I don't know how that race is going to turn out,
Speaker 1: but if I had a vote, I would vote for her.
Speaker 1: I want to leave people some hope as we enter
Speaker 1: two thousand nineteen, and I think some people feel powerless.
Speaker 1: They see these problems, they see the government not acting enough,
Speaker 1: and they wonder what can we do. So, what one
Speaker 1: piece of advice would you give the average American if
Speaker 1: he or she wants to uh contribute to finding a
Speaker 1: solution for global warming? Well as important as it is
Speaker 1: to to change light bulbs and take those other actions
Speaker 1: that each individual can take. It's more important to change
Speaker 1: the laws and the policies. So my number one recommendation
Speaker 1: is to not only register to vote and vote, but
Speaker 1: reclaim your voice as a citizen of this country and
Speaker 1: become politically active. There is hope in action, and I
Speaker 1: get a tremendous amount of hope from the millions of
Speaker 1: people who are now really engaged in grassroots active them.
Speaker 1: I train climate activists all over this country and all
Speaker 1: over the world, and what I'm seeing is an up
Speaker 1: surge of enthusiasm and energy and demands for progress and
Speaker 1: change that is ultimately not going to be denied. So
Speaker 1: be be a part of those who are taking action
Speaker 1: as citizens of this country. Well that's good advice, and Brian,
Speaker 1: you and I will meet you at the next protest. Actually,
Speaker 1: I would like to get out there and be more
Speaker 1: vocal about some of these issues. You know, as journalists,
Speaker 1: I think we always shy away a bit, But you know,
Speaker 1: in my old agel, I'm like, to hell with it.
Speaker 1: I'm going to speak my mind a little bit more.
Speaker 1: In the middle of March, we're having a three day
Speaker 1: mass training in Atlanta, UM and there there. These trainings
Speaker 1: really motivate people. You'll learn everything you need to know
Speaker 1: about the causes of the climate crisis and the solutions
Speaker 1: for the climate crisis, and communications and advocate advocacy skills,
Speaker 1: and one or both of you ought to consider coming
Speaker 1: down and covering that going through it. That would be fun.
Speaker 1: And when people say what are you doing these days?
Speaker 1: I can say I'm a climate change activists. What are
Speaker 1: you doing? There? You go, yeah, that's a good question. Absolutely. Anyway,
Speaker 1: Al Gore, you're you're such uh, you're such a mench
Speaker 1: Al let me do us from Nashville. Thank you, Brian,
Speaker 1: and thank you Katie, and thank you for the overly
Speaker 1: generous and kind words. Katie and I hope to see
Speaker 1: you both in person again soon. I hope so too.
Speaker 1: Happy New Year coming up, We're gonna look back this
Speaker 1: year in news and politics with the one and only
Speaker 1: Michael Barbarrow of the New York Times Daily podcast that's
Speaker 1: right after this. Support for today's show comes from Thrive
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Speaker 1: is seamless, very cool, and only takes a few seconds. Now,
Speaker 1: let's get back to the show. Our next guest is
Speaker 1: Michael Barbaro, who many of you know as the host
Speaker 1: of The Daily podcast from the New York Times and
Speaker 1: not to be missed podcast for Brian and me. That's true.
Speaker 1: Michael and his team take the biggest news stories and
Speaker 1: turn them into a short narrative podcast that comes out
Speaker 1: every weekday. And because he's always covering the biggest headlines,
Speaker 1: we thought he'd be the perfect person to walk us
Speaker 1: through what happened this year in the wacky world of
Speaker 1: news and politics. I started by asking Michael a very
Speaker 1: important question, if he's having fun doing the Daily most
Speaker 1: of the time. I'm having a really good time most
Speaker 1: of the time, having a wonderful time. You know, making
Speaker 1: a daily show from scratch, it's all consuming. It's a vortex,
Speaker 1: and no one tells you that when you start to
Speaker 1: make a show. And even it's almost been two years
Speaker 1: since we started the Daily, and it turns out that
Speaker 1: it's a really powerful way of transforming the written word
Speaker 1: into in some ways, a more resonant, emotional kind of storytelling.
Speaker 1: And now, and the most flattering thing that's happened since
Speaker 1: The Daily started, there are a lot of copycats. Is
Speaker 1: there are a lot more. There are a lot more
Speaker 1: kinds of daily news shows. And that's really flattering. And
Speaker 1: I I wish them well and I mean that, but
Speaker 1: I wish them sleep because I just don't think they
Speaker 1: know how hard it will be. Okay, Michael, we we've
Speaker 1: got to get to the topic or the topics at
Speaker 1: hand here, which is the year and news and politics.
Speaker 1: So let's start with the biggest names. One name we
Speaker 1: didn't necessarily expect to be big this year, President George H. W. Bush.
Speaker 1: He recently died, of course, age ninety four. Here's a
Speaker 1: clip of his son, President George W. Bush, eulogizing his father.
Speaker 1: And we're gonna miss you. Your decency, sincerity, and kind
Speaker 1: soul will stay with us forever. So through our tears,
Speaker 1: let us know the blessings of knowing and loving you,
Speaker 1: a great and nobleman. Were you surprised at how George
Speaker 1: Herbert Walker Bush was practically deified in the media, And
Speaker 1: do you think it's because by comparison, he's such a
Speaker 1: different public figure than our current president. Yes and no.
Speaker 1: And I want to dispute the characterization a little bit
Speaker 1: of deification because by the second day of National Mourning
Speaker 1: around George Herbert Walker Bush. There there were a slew
Speaker 1: of sobering articles that we're pointing out all the ways
Speaker 1: in which he was this or not quite that. You know,
Speaker 1: what happened with AIDS under his watch, what was his
Speaker 1: relationship with race, What does it mean to be a
Speaker 1: wasp and to be really entitled? And are we in
Speaker 1: a better place now as a meritocracy than we were
Speaker 1: during the era when the Bushes came up and were
Speaker 1: guaranteed pretty much a spotty yale and seemingly a spot
Speaker 1: of a governorship or a job in the house. I
Speaker 1: was so struck by the number of people who came
Speaker 1: out to greet his train, the train that brought him
Speaker 1: to College Station, Texas for his burial, and that instinct
Speaker 1: to just be patriotic in that moment, I think overrides partisanship,
Speaker 1: and that is rare. And I think so many elements
Speaker 1: of his death, the funeral, the President's all sitting in
Speaker 1: a row. It was like nostalgic, even in the moment,
Speaker 1: because our day to day with President Trump is so
Speaker 1: partisan and combative. Just the simple spectacle of unification around
Speaker 1: mourning feels of a different era, and I think that's
Speaker 1: why everybody felt something there. What do you think? I
Speaker 1: think his presidency also looks a lot different now than
Speaker 1: it did when he was defeated. Somehow at the time,
Speaker 1: with the sour economy, we probably didn't appreciate enough the
Speaker 1: masterful role he played in managing the end of the
Speaker 1: Cold War and the role he played in building a
Speaker 1: lot of bipartisan accomplishments at home. Plus his signal sort
Speaker 1: of failure as president, breaking his no new taxes pledge
Speaker 1: in retrospect looks like an accomplishment because it took great
Speaker 1: political courage to do what was right, even though he
Speaker 1: knew it would hurt him in the next election. You
Speaker 1: know one other figure like that who died this year,
Speaker 1: of course, was Senator John McCain. Do you think these
Speaker 1: two deaths signaled the death of the Republican established shman
Speaker 1: itself a certain kind of Republican establishment for sure. Yeah.
Speaker 1: And both of them existed in eras when what would
Speaker 1: become the future Republican Party was bubbling up beneath their feet.
Speaker 1: I mean, John McCain got a lot of grief for
Speaker 1: his enthusiasm for immigration reform. Uh. George Herbert walker Bush
Speaker 1: was experiencing the beginning of the kind of anti tax revolt,
Speaker 1: the gingrich revolution that would come in ninety four, and
Speaker 1: he was kind of tamping it down, and he left
Speaker 1: office as it rose. It's so interesting you point out
Speaker 1: the tax pledge, because after George Walker Bush left office,
Speaker 1: almost every Republican would be asked to literally sign a
Speaker 1: pledge that Grovern Orcas would present to them. And it
Speaker 1: felt like a pledge. You know, if you didn't sign it,
Speaker 1: you were a real Republican that you would never agree
Speaker 1: to raise taxes. And so yeah, this was an error
Speaker 1: where it was conceivable that you could stand for compromise
Speaker 1: and you would be respected within your party. In addition
Speaker 1: to changing our view of the Republican establishment, I do
Speaker 1: think it hearkened to a bygone era when presidents did
Speaker 1: not tweet things about former secretaries of state and say
Speaker 1: they're dumb as a rock. I mean, I think the
Speaker 1: contrast was so intense when you looked at this patrician
Speaker 1: family that had certain more Ray's a lot of humility,
Speaker 1: hated to talk about himself. So I think that's one
Speaker 1: of the reasons that people were just craving that kind
Speaker 1: of civility, and that was what I believe was being
Speaker 1: celebrated as much as George Bush's presidency itself. Completely agree,
Speaker 1: and yet it was also an occasion to be sober
Speaker 1: and honest about the ways in which that was a
Speaker 1: crafted image, right, Because the reason why we were all
Speaker 1: talking about the Willie Horton ad that George Herb Walker
Speaker 1: Bush put out in his winning campaign against Michael Cocacus
Speaker 1: was because it was it was a really ugly ad
Speaker 1: and it felt racist and definitely racially tinged, and you know,
Speaker 1: it was a it was a very very messy moment
Speaker 1: in our kind of national political dialogue to have that
Speaker 1: ad running, and I think it's important that people did
Speaker 1: talk about it because I think, beneath the veneer of
Speaker 1: civility and grace and sort of good manners, a lot
Speaker 1: of people said that when push came to shove, George
Speaker 1: Herbert Walker Bush did what he had to do politically,
Speaker 1: and some of it was not very pretty. Let's talk
Speaker 1: about what we learned this year about the state of
Speaker 1: Muller's investigation, you know, especially with all of the people
Speaker 1: it's ensnared, like Michael Cohen and Paul Maniford and Michael Flynn,
Speaker 1: Am I the only one who has a really hard
Speaker 1: time keeping up with all of this? Yes? No, no,
Speaker 1: you're not that A yes that meant no that everybody
Speaker 1: has a hard time keeping up that we constantly at
Speaker 1: the daily We constantly debate like do we need to
Speaker 1: do another episode? And the the answer is often yes,
Speaker 1: because no one can keep track of everything. It is
Speaker 1: so hard, So help us. As the year draws to enclose,
Speaker 1: where we are in terms of the investigation, there's a
Speaker 1: lot about Michael Cohen. Maybe start with him. Sure, So,
Speaker 1: as we speak, Michael Cohen is about to be sentenced
Speaker 1: for his role in these payoffs, to these attempts to
Speaker 1: silence the women who claim they had sexual encounters with
Speaker 1: candidate Donald Trump. And the bigger narrative of the moment
Speaker 1: is that the Special Counsel went out seeking information about
Speaker 1: essentially two things, Russian interference in the election and communication
Speaker 1: between the those around the Trump campaign and Russia. I
Speaker 1: think it's been during the process of this investigation that
Speaker 1: all these many investigations have spun off, and those are
Speaker 1: the ones that are hard to keep track of. In
Speaker 1: the mix of this as well, is whether the president
Speaker 1: sought to obstruct justice after these investigations all began. And
Speaker 1: the reason why people like Michael Cohen get caught up
Speaker 1: in this is because of the kind of ancillary investigations
Speaker 1: that have spun off of this. I mean, one of
Speaker 1: the most astonishing things about the Muller investigation is how
Speaker 1: often he seems to prove that people around the president
Speaker 1: lie and lie with with real kind of ease, as
Speaker 1: if it's you know, kind of like essential to their nature.
Speaker 1: Whether it's Paul Manaford or Michael Flynn, the president's former
Speaker 1: national security advisor and the president's campaign chairman and then
Speaker 1: his personal lawyer. I mean, these were people that the
Speaker 1: president has entrusted huge responsibilities to and it turns out
Speaker 1: that that they lie. But Michael Flynn, it seems to me,
Speaker 1: you guys, has been very cooperative. That's the message coming
Speaker 1: from Mueller's office. What in store for him? And why
Speaker 1: is he behaved differently than Cohen and Manafort? I would say,
Speaker 1: assuming he's being honest, he's looking out for his own
Speaker 1: self interest. You know, Mueller is very effective, along with
Speaker 1: some people around him who have had great experience doing this,
Speaker 1: like Andrew Weissman At basically saying to people, unless you
Speaker 1: are on cooperative, we're going to prosecute you and put
Speaker 1: you away for many, many years. And the people who
Speaker 1: are apparently cooperating for real, like Flynn, are going to
Speaker 1: get treated a hell of a lot better than the
Speaker 1: people who tried to shade the truth a little bit
Speaker 1: and kind of play both sides, like Paul Manifort, who
Speaker 1: is now staring in the face of being in jail
Speaker 1: for the rest of his life. And why does the
Speaker 1: President tweet things like thank you you know, no collusion,
Speaker 1: I you know, basically claiming he's been exonerating. I mean,
Speaker 1: he may genuinely feel relieved each time there's a chord
Speaker 1: filing that he's not directly implicated in a in a
Speaker 1: way that exposes him to any kind of criminal charges.
Speaker 1: So there's that. There's also just the kind of incessant,
Speaker 1: impulsive need to kind of put his stamp on something.
Speaker 1: I think he also recognizes that if he says something
Speaker 1: about the country will believe it, and so he can
Speaker 1: create this alternative universe, this alternative reality where up is down. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's it's partially he wants to shape the narrative, as
Speaker 1: he's very effective in doing, but things are getting We're
Speaker 1: entering a very interesting and perilous phase of this, all
Speaker 1: for the president. Because Michael Cohen is pleading guilty to
Speaker 1: conduct that the president was personally involved in. Suddenly the
Speaker 1: stakes are getting higher, and it's starting to look like
Speaker 1: very much in Watergate, when Richard Nixon was an unindicted
Speaker 1: co conspirator, and you're here that I'm a crook, when
Speaker 1: when he wasn't charged, but every everyone understood that he
Speaker 1: had been involved in criminal conduct or potentially criminal conic
Speaker 1: We're now entering a phase. We're according to all of
Speaker 1: my colleagues and to the documents that were filed just
Speaker 1: a couple of days ago, the president was involved in
Speaker 1: something that those who were also involved in are pleading
Speaker 1: guilty to a crime for that suggests that a crime
Speaker 1: has been committed and he was involved. You can play
Speaker 1: all sorts of word games, but at the end of
Speaker 1: the day, if he were not president, would he be
Speaker 1: charged with that same crime? And I think some people
Speaker 1: believe yes. So then it becomes an interesting question of well,
Speaker 1: what do we do with that? Can I ask you
Speaker 1: about Russian collusion though, because we're dealing with obviously stormy
Speaker 1: Daniels and the other woman and paying them money when
Speaker 1: he was a candidate. But where are we on in
Speaker 1: the collusion uh phase of the investigation. I think there's
Speaker 1: an extraordinary amount of evidence that there was, to quote
Speaker 1: the most recent filing, a political synergy between the Russians
Speaker 1: and the Trump campaign. And what we've learned over the
Speaker 1: last several days and in the most recent filings is
Speaker 1: a potential motive, which is that Donald Trump wanted to
Speaker 1: build a Trump Tower in Moscow. He apparently was prepared
Speaker 1: to offer the penthouse to Vladimir Putin to get it done.
Speaker 1: And this is a project that would have made him tends,
Speaker 1: if not hundreds of millions of dollars. And so when
Speaker 1: you look at all the actions that his campaign took
Speaker 1: to cozy up to Russia, it turns out Donald Trump
Speaker 1: had an ongoing financial motive to try to do that.
Speaker 1: The complicated question of collusion and there really isn't there's
Speaker 1: a lot of debate about what that word means. Is
Speaker 1: it requires motivation on both sides, I believe, And what
Speaker 1: was the motivation of those around the president? Did they
Speaker 1: intend to solicit the political cooperation of Russia with the
Speaker 1: sole intent of affecting the out of the election, or
Speaker 1: or at various moments where they just kind of following
Speaker 1: their instinct to get dirt on an opponent or to
Speaker 1: do a business. What is it all add up to?
Speaker 1: And that's why Robert Mueller very much wanted to sit
Speaker 1: down with President Trump, because there's only one way to
Speaker 1: get to someone's motives at any moment, and that's to
Speaker 1: ask them, what were your motives? And maybe in this
Speaker 1: case that it's the cover up, like in Watergate, more
Speaker 1: than the crime itself that nails the president in that
Speaker 1: lying about this, obstructing justice about this may ultimately be
Speaker 1: seen as the greater infractions here. Needless to say, you'll
Speaker 1: be doing a lot of dailies in two thousand nineteens
Speaker 1: about the Mueller investment. By the way, no one thoughtless
Speaker 1: investigation would last through the end of the year. Let's
Speaker 1: move on to some of the other big names and
Speaker 1: big stories that really dominated the daily and headlines writ
Speaker 1: large over the last year. Mohammed been Salmon and Saudi
Speaker 1: Arabia MBS. I remember seeing sort of a big pr campaign.
Speaker 1: He was kind of doing a dog and phony show.
Speaker 1: I'm a new kind of ruler look at this guy,
Speaker 1: and suddenly he is, you know, public enemy number one
Speaker 1: in many ways. Why did it take so long for
Speaker 1: the United States and for the citizens of this country
Speaker 1: to really take a close look at Saudi Arabia and
Speaker 1: our relationship with it. It's a great question. This all
Speaker 1: goes back to Jared Kushner, as a young, pretty inexperienced
Speaker 1: adviser to the president, striking up a relationship with Mohammed
Speaker 1: been Salmon, because, as we're now learning through leaked documents
Speaker 1: and investigations, the Saudi Arabian leaders, especially MBS, they understood
Speaker 1: that he was vulnerable, that they could cozy up with him.
Speaker 1: We didn't have a whole lot of baggage or deep
Speaker 1: history in the region, and they formed an alliance that
Speaker 1: ended up influencing the course of events in Saudi Arabia
Speaker 1: because once Jared Kushner decided to elevate Mohammed been Salmon,
Speaker 1: in particular with a one on one meal with President Trump,
Speaker 1: suddenly people back in Saudi Arabia undershoid, Oh this guy,
Speaker 1: he demand he is. He's in a really good position here,
Speaker 1: and so that affected his trajectory. Back at home. We
Speaker 1: understand he is elevated to Crown Prince, which is effectively
Speaker 1: the day to day leader of Saudi Arabia, and he
Speaker 1: has the approval the perimeter of the White House, so
Speaker 1: he's sitting kind of pretty. And then a series of
Speaker 1: events happen that make us question why why did we
Speaker 1: do that? And that, of course was the assassination of
Speaker 1: Jamaka Shoji, this journalist who resided in the US, and
Speaker 1: it's had the secondary effective focusing our attention on the
Speaker 1: US role in the war in Yellen, which is a
Speaker 1: Saudi led campaign that President Obama signed off on. President
Speaker 1: Trump continued, it's one of those things. Yes, we weren't
Speaker 1: paying attention to any of this until this assassination, and
Speaker 1: then we will look back and tried to understand what
Speaker 1: Jared Kushner had done and where he had taken us,
Speaker 1: and why we have had such a cozy relationship with
Speaker 1: Saudi Arabia for many, many years. It's a remarkable kind
Speaker 1: of moment in live history when an event like this,
Speaker 1: this assassination, forces everyone to reevaluate everything, including whether we
Speaker 1: should be involved in the war in Yemen, whether we
Speaker 1: should be selling arms to Saudi Arabia for that war,
Speaker 1: the role it has Visa vi Iran, right. I mean,
Speaker 1: it seems like it's it opened up a huge geopolitical
Speaker 1: kind of worms, right. And Yemen is the worst humanitarian
Speaker 1: catastrophe in the world right now. There are literally thousands
Speaker 1: and thousands of children who are dying needlessly of starvation.
Speaker 1: And you, yourself, Michael, admitted that you hadn't really been
Speaker 1: paying attention to it. I don't. I think most people had. No,
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't. I think all of us understood
Speaker 1: that there was a war in Yemen. We understood it
Speaker 1: was about Iran and Saudi Arabia, and there it was bad.
Speaker 1: And now I think the world's attention is is fick
Speaker 1: xed on it anyway, that this that that that again
Speaker 1: is just like a very unexpected outcome of one man's assassination.
Speaker 1: One of the reasons I think Yemen has gotten so
Speaker 1: little attention is because news organizations are too afraid to
Speaker 1: turn attention away from Donald Trump. I'm not quite sure
Speaker 1: I agree with that. It's very hard to get journalists
Speaker 1: in Yemen. It's a very hard place to report from.
Speaker 1: And yes, there's a domestic story that is pretty consuming.
Speaker 1: And I believe to the degree that our news diets
Speaker 1: are shaped by cable news and front pages. Those are
Speaker 1: dominated by the president, and it was after the death
Speaker 1: of Jamal ka Shoji, the assassination of him by the
Speaker 1: Saudi government, that many front pages, including The York Times,
Speaker 1: started to focus more on Yemen. We have a clip
Speaker 1: of President Trump talking about the Kasho murder. Abia has
Speaker 1: been a great ally, but what happened is unacceptable. He
Speaker 1: later would deny what the entire intelligence community said, which
Speaker 1: is that MBS either directed or at least was very
Speaker 1: aware of the assassination of Kashogi, and he is signaled
Speaker 1: to the rest of the world that, you know, business
Speaker 1: as usual goes on, which is a little bit interesting
Speaker 1: because unlike in previous decades, the US is no longer
Speaker 1: dependent on oil from Saudi Arabia, so it costs a
Speaker 1: lot less for US to be more independent and stand
Speaker 1: up to Saudi Arabia than it than it used to.
Speaker 1: Some of my colleagues have this phrase for what President
Speaker 1: Trump does and some of these moments. They call it
Speaker 1: reading the stage directions out loud. You know, traditionally politicians
Speaker 1: would never say the thing that really undergirds a decision.
Speaker 1: President Trump will often just say it out loud. And
Speaker 1: the thing he has said repeatedly about the U S
Speaker 1: relationship with Saudi Arabia is it it's financially motivated. He
Speaker 1: makes no bones about it. He doesn't she that in
Speaker 1: diplomacy and niceties. He makes very clear that in his
Speaker 1: mind there's a Faustian bargain. Saudi Arabia buys billions of
Speaker 1: dollars of American military are and we have a productive
Speaker 1: economic partnership, and that overrides the moral questions about their behavior.
Speaker 1: There's a kind of virtue in that honesty, I suppose,
Speaker 1: but it's very startling to hear Michael speaking of moral questions.
Speaker 1: Another huge story involving some big names who want to
Speaker 1: talk about is Facebook, and those names are Mark Zuckerberg
Speaker 1: and Cheryl Sandberg. How did we get to where we are?
Speaker 1: Where Facebook has become probably the most controversial technology company
Speaker 1: in America, if not the world. In some ways, it
Speaker 1: goes back to right after the election. Doesn't seem like
Speaker 1: everything goes back to the election, and when Mark Zuckerberg,
Speaker 1: the founder and CEO of Facebook, said the idea that
Speaker 1: Facebook somehow influenced the outcome of the election, that someone
Speaker 1: could hijack it or misuse it, and it could influence
Speaker 1: who won. That's crazy. And it turns out inside Facebook,
Speaker 1: his own employees, his own security official heard him say
Speaker 1: that and said, oh no, he may not understand the
Speaker 1: depth of what has just happened. And what had just happened,
Speaker 1: of course, was that Russians who were maliciously intended that
Speaker 1: that's the word. Um, they we just made it one.
Speaker 1: We made it one. They had found ways to use
Speaker 1: Facebook to influence American voters, or to seek to influence
Speaker 1: American voters in a pret systematic way, and that either
Speaker 1: in their minds, their boss didn't know about it, or
Speaker 1: was deliberately misleading people. And what was going on inside
Speaker 1: Facebook was a kind of reckoning with what had really
Speaker 1: happened on this giant social media platform at the hands
Speaker 1: of people who wanted to exploit it. And over time,
Speaker 1: we've now learned from the reporting of of my colleagues
Speaker 1: at the times, the company sought to tamp down that information.
Speaker 1: They didn't want the world to know in real time
Speaker 1: as they were learning it just how much influenced Russians
Speaker 1: had actually had with this platform. And it got to
Speaker 1: the point where those criticizing Facebook became targets of Facebook.
Speaker 1: And we now know that Cheryl Sandberg, the CE who
Speaker 1: is who's beloved by many for her public profile for
Speaker 1: the book she wrote about encouraging women to lean in,
Speaker 1: Who's written after her husband, very very movingly, about losing
Speaker 1: a spouse, and about being thoughtful when it comes to grief,
Speaker 1: yours others. What we learned is that people underneath Cheryl
Speaker 1: Sandberg and Its, seemingly with her permission, had authorized opposition
Speaker 1: research into those who criticized the company, including George Sorrows,
Speaker 1: who is a billionaire investor known for his left leaning positions.
Speaker 1: And so now there are all sorts of questions. Why
Speaker 1: would Facebook go after its critics like this? Why would
Speaker 1: it hire a company to do opposite of research. Why
Speaker 1: isn't its instinct to share with the world immediately what
Speaker 1: Russia did on its platform? I think the bigger question
Speaker 1: is sort of like, is this a company that started
Speaker 1: off and has even through its development, is ultimately interested
Speaker 1: in bringing people together or is this really a company
Speaker 1: that's interested in kind of like hoovering up all our
Speaker 1: private information, using it for profit, keeping things secret, going
Speaker 1: after critics. I mean that's not the Facebook that you
Speaker 1: and I think about when we post baby photos. Soros,
Speaker 1: or at least going after Soros is such a fraud
Speaker 1: thing because he has become unfairly, in my view, a
Speaker 1: boogeyman on the right and used to explain all sorts
Speaker 1: of conspiracy theories, liberal victories, et cetera in a way
Speaker 1: that crosses the line into anti Semitism. And so it
Speaker 1: may have been legitimate, given Soros his history of short selling,
Speaker 1: to look into whether Soros had a financial stake in
Speaker 1: what he was saying about Facebook. The reason it it
Speaker 1: set off so many alarm bells is this is exactly
Speaker 1: what sort of the most extreme elements on the right
Speaker 1: do you is George Soros as an excuse for everything.
Speaker 1: Brett Havanaugh is another huge name, along with Dr Christine
Speaker 1: Blassie Ford. They dominated the conversation for a certain period
Speaker 1: in two thousand and eighteen. You all approached it in
Speaker 1: a very interesting way at the daily We did, I
Speaker 1: mean we everyone instantly understood that this was going to
Speaker 1: divide the country kind of down the middle in the
Speaker 1: way that so many of these kind of national episodes do.
Speaker 1: And there were so many big questions brought up by
Speaker 1: this case. One was simply what happened, and did Brett
Speaker 1: Kavanaugh do the things that he denied doing, and that
Speaker 1: Dr plus Ford said that he did do? And who
Speaker 1: do you believe? And who do you believe? And I
Speaker 1: think there was no satisfying resolution in the kind of
Speaker 1: national public conscious conscious when it came to that, because
Speaker 1: there wasn't really an investigation done by the Senate Judiciary Committee,
Speaker 1: and and that was such a messy, complicated partisan process,
Speaker 1: and so everybody was left to kind of come to
Speaker 1: their own conclusions about this. And we went to Brooklyn
Speaker 1: the Daily to talk to a bunch of young high
Speaker 1: school girls about what had happened, and in some ways,
Speaker 1: you know, these girls were more thoughtful about it than
Speaker 1: members of the U. S. Senate because they understood what
Speaker 1: it meant to be in that phase of life. Like obviously,
Speaker 1: high schools like a write of passage, and you've got
Speaker 1: to make mistakes and learn your way through it. But
Speaker 1: there are certain things that it's just like like saying
Speaker 1: hateful things to certain minority groups and things like sexual misconduct.
Speaker 1: That kind of stuff follows the victims forever. And if
Speaker 1: it follows the victims forever. Well, then you've got to
Speaker 1: do with it too, since it's your fault, you know
Speaker 1: what I mean. I think when we look back at
Speaker 1: this year, the dueling testimony of Christine blasi Ford and
Speaker 1: Brett Kavanaugh, her tone, her vulnerability, his rage, his defensiveness,
Speaker 1: and ultimately some of the inconsistencies that we're surfaced about
Speaker 1: how he described his behaviors, how other people versus his
Speaker 1: classmates who described him as as drinking much more heavily
Speaker 1: than he acknowledged. We're gonna be remembering that testimony and
Speaker 1: how it contrasted with her testimony for decades. Well, I
Speaker 1: think it's not just the testimony, it's also the aftermath.
Speaker 1: The result of this hearing was Kavanaugh achieving his lifelong
Speaker 1: dream of sitting and serving on the Supreme Court, and
Speaker 1: Christine blasi Ford, when last I checked, still couldn't go
Speaker 1: back to her home, still required seven security for all
Speaker 1: the threats that she's gotten. And so the trope that
Speaker 1: you know she's doing this for any reason other than
Speaker 1: telling the truth rings a little bit hollow to me personally,
Speaker 1: given the costs that this is imposed on her life.
Speaker 1: I do think this was the moment where the me
Speaker 1: Too movement did lose a bit of steam in the
Speaker 1: eyes of some people who are more traditional in terms
Speaker 1: of gender and societal roles, and they saw this as
Speaker 1: going too far, and people having very very little sympathy
Speaker 1: for the perpetrators of these crimes or incidents suddenly said,
Speaker 1: wait a second, we're not sure we can wholeheartedly embrace
Speaker 1: this moment or this movement as much as we thought.
Speaker 1: Would you agree with that? I do agree with that,
Speaker 1: because this was the moment when the me too movement
Speaker 1: sort of crashed into American politics, which is sort of
Speaker 1: split right down the middle, and for the half of
Speaker 1: a country that supports the Republican Party and Donald Trump,
Speaker 1: Brett Kavanaugh seemed more like the victim here than Dr Ford,
Speaker 1: and the fact that there weren't a lot of other
Speaker 1: people who either were willing to come forward or were
Speaker 1: called to come forward to support her side of the
Speaker 1: story was used by Kavanaugh supporters to say, how can
Speaker 1: you destroy this man's life based on the word of
Speaker 1: one person? And I think that went even beyond you guys,
Speaker 1: Donald Trump supporters. I think it was also the feeling
Speaker 1: amongst some older women who just thought it was a
Speaker 1: bridge too far even if they weren't firmly in Donald
Speaker 1: Trump's camp. Let's transition to some other big moments. On
Speaker 1: election Day, Democrats took the House of Representatives. We now
Speaker 1: know they gained forty seats. Nancy Pelosi is likely to
Speaker 1: become Speaker of the House. What are the consequences for
Speaker 1: politics and twenty nineteen. It means so many things to
Speaker 1: have divided government. Is the difference between a giant tax
Speaker 1: bill passing or not passing, between the possibility of investigations
Speaker 1: with the president happening or not happening, between healthcare being
Speaker 1: fundamentally changed on the country or not changing. And and
Speaker 1: it's a complete game changer for the second half of
Speaker 1: a presidency. Everybody remembers what the first two years of
Speaker 1: President Obama's government looked like when the House, the Senate,
Speaker 1: and the White House we're controlled by Democrats. That's when
Speaker 1: the Affordable Care Act passed. And then the lights went
Speaker 1: off and the Republicans took back control of Congress, and
Speaker 1: that and and and and basically we had paralysis. And
Speaker 1: now we're looking at a similar situation potentially with President Trump.
Speaker 1: We now know that it was the biggest House popular
Speaker 1: vote victory from one party since the aftermath of Watergate,
Speaker 1: that there was an enormous swing and a huge national
Speaker 1: rebuke in the House to President Trump. So, Michael, one
Speaker 1: trend we may see playing out over the course of
Speaker 1: is an economic slowdown. We've had a very long economic expansion.
Speaker 1: We're due for a recession, if not a slowdown. What
Speaker 1: do you think the consequences would be if unemployment goes up,
Speaker 1: if growth slows down, if wages don't keep increasing, etcetera.
Speaker 1: I think no one wants to see a slowdown. But
Speaker 1: if there is an economic slowdown, and it feels like
Speaker 1: we're starting to see science that there could be one,
Speaker 1: but we're not sure that that would be very problematic
Speaker 1: for President Trump. I mean, we talked about President George
Speaker 1: Herbert Walker Bush. The thing that happened to him that
Speaker 1: no one expected was that the second half of his presidency,
Speaker 1: which felt so triumphant, was defined by a recession. And
Speaker 1: I think it will be really interesting to see how
Speaker 1: a president who defines his success by the stock market
Speaker 1: and by the economic indicators of the country, how he
Speaker 1: will deal with a suddenly souring economy. I don't I
Speaker 1: don't think he would deal with it very well. We've
Speaker 1: started to see him scream at the Federal Reserve chairman
Speaker 1: for doing something that the President didn't like on interest rates.
Speaker 1: And it's of course unorthodox to respond to a changing
Speaker 1: economy by yelling at the people around you because you
Speaker 1: don't like it. But if that's his response, that that
Speaker 1: could be very politically problematic. Because he is seen as
Speaker 1: a very firm figure when it comes to the economy.
Speaker 1: I think that's an area of of kind of, in
Speaker 1: a sense, almost unmitigated success for this president. So if
Speaker 1: it begins to change, I don't know how he will respond,
Speaker 1: and I think he will be very flustered. What about
Speaker 1: gun violence, you know that dominated the headlines in two
Speaker 1: thousand eighteen. Do you think anything is going to change?
Speaker 1: I mean, at a national level, a huge percentage I
Speaker 1: think want want universal background checks, for example, and yet
Speaker 1: I think people are very frustrated that nothing seems to change.
Speaker 1: So you see that any movement in this area at all,
Speaker 1: I mean I would just to bump stocks. Remember those
Speaker 1: were the devices that everybody seized on and seemed to
Speaker 1: agree shouldn't be on the market because they make it
Speaker 1: possible for a semi automatic weapon to become essentially automatic.
Speaker 1: They were used in that horrible Las Vegas mass shooting,
Speaker 1: and nothing changed, nothing happened. And this was the year
Speaker 1: eighteen where it felt like an entire generation of millennials
Speaker 1: was activated and animated about guns and gun violence and
Speaker 1: gun controlled by by the Parkland school shooting. And I
Speaker 1: think it's been really sobering for those kids to see
Speaker 1: how hard it is to make things change, and yet
Speaker 1: I don't see them being dissuaded from it. And it
Speaker 1: feels like they're going to spend the rest of their
Speaker 1: lives on this. And the question is when will their
Speaker 1: time come, if it comes at all, or will they
Speaker 1: be stymied by the kind of the wall of of
Speaker 1: opposition that's so nestled into our political system. Early this year,
Speaker 1: Katie and I spoke to Ali, she from Parkland, Florida,
Speaker 1: and she said very clearly that they're in this for
Speaker 1: the long haul and that progress may come slowly. They
Speaker 1: understand that. I mean, what we may see in is
Speaker 1: the House passing some legislation that then dies in the Senate. Katie,
Speaker 1: you've pointed out that states may take greater action to
Speaker 1: combat the scourge of gun violence, and I think one
Speaker 1: thing we saw in the election is that support for
Speaker 1: gun control could be a political plus in a way
Speaker 1: that maybe it hadn't been previous cycles. People are becoming
Speaker 1: single issue voters on that issue, as we saw with
Speaker 1: the Lucy Macbeth victory in Georgia, which was a surprise
Speaker 1: too many people. And of course at all starts at
Speaker 1: the top. With new leadership potentially in and someone who
Speaker 1: is not beholden to the n r A as President
Speaker 1: Trump is, that could be clearly a game changer which
Speaker 1: brings us to elections. Commonly, Harris has said she's going
Speaker 1: to think about it over the holidays. Mike Bloomberg visited Iowa. Uh,
Speaker 1: there's what a cast of thousands who are considering running
Speaker 1: for the Democratic nomination? How do you see that all
Speaker 1: playing out? And um, you know, are the ideological uh
Speaker 1: differences within the party itself going to work against whoever
Speaker 1: it is who runs against Donald Trump. Either it will
Speaker 1: make it harder for that person, or it will be
Speaker 1: really clarifying and it will crown that person, whoever he
Speaker 1: or she is. Because there are twenty debates going inside
Speaker 1: the Democratic Party and we can't keep up with all
Speaker 1: of them. But I mean among them are generational. Is
Speaker 1: Joe Biden too old to be the nominee or is
Speaker 1: he just right? Is Elizabeth Warren too progressive or is
Speaker 1: she just right? Um? Is this party or too green?
Speaker 1: Too inexperienced exactly or is he exactly level of excitement
Speaker 1: that people wanted to do? You have to be an officeholder?
Speaker 1: Can you be an outsider? Donald Trump was an outsider?
Speaker 1: Can the Democrats wrap their head around the idea of
Speaker 1: a celebrity candidate the rock? Yeah? I think that the
Speaker 1: president broke so many of the rules that you have
Speaker 1: to reevaluate the rules to a certain degree. And then
Speaker 1: you have to answer the questions that the Democrats have
Speaker 1: kind of failed to answer for many election cycles. Now,
Speaker 1: which is is it a party about identity and progressive politics?
Speaker 1: Is it a party that's going to rival the Republicans
Speaker 1: and President Trump around questions of economic populism? Is it
Speaker 1: going to speak to the coal workers? Can it be
Speaker 1: a party that stands for environmentalism and sustainability while being
Speaker 1: sensitive to to the to were traditional forms exactly to
Speaker 1: the coal miner um or those two things incompatible? And
Speaker 1: does it need to bet on an on a new
Speaker 1: exciting outsider or can it be a familiar face who
Speaker 1: stands for kind of the middle. And I mean the
Speaker 1: reality is that it keeps putting off these debates. The
Speaker 1: House strategy that seemed to win this year was a
Speaker 1: message of health care and the economy, and it the
Speaker 1: party forestalled these essential debates about who they are. And
Speaker 1: now it can't do that anymore. It has to figure
Speaker 1: out who it is. And I think, as you say, Michael,
Speaker 1: the debate is going to be as much about the
Speaker 1: past versus the future as it is about the left
Speaker 1: versus the center. You look at the last three Democratic
Speaker 1: presidents Obama, Clinton, Carter, they were all to some extent
Speaker 1: outsiders to the political establishment. They were young, they didn't
Speaker 1: have a ton of traditional Washington experience. Um Nominating and
Speaker 1: electing Joe Biden would be a real break from that.
Speaker 1: But Donald Trump is a break from a law of things.
Speaker 1: So we'll see. I guess the big question is do
Speaker 1: you go with someone who is new, exciting, charismatic, has
Speaker 1: a great message and signals the dawn of a new era.
Speaker 1: But if you do that to risk going with someone
Speaker 1: who's not guaranteed to be President Trump, I think that's
Speaker 1: no one is guaranteed anybody, right, But that's I think
Speaker 1: the question or who has you know? Do you go
Speaker 1: with someone solely because they have enough popular appeal that
Speaker 1: they'll be able to beat the president? Or do you
Speaker 1: usher in this new generation not really knowing if they're
Speaker 1: going to be able to get the job done. My
Speaker 1: advice is always the same, one of these things. Having
Speaker 1: covered so many presidential campaigns, now is there is a process,
Speaker 1: it plays out, it works, there's primaries. I don't know
Speaker 1: why people get so agitated so early. I don't know
Speaker 1: why polls get done before beple are even close to voting,
Speaker 1: but they do. I don't know why people throw things
Speaker 1: across the table, you know, at family dinners when people
Speaker 1: haven't even announced candidacies. Um, but we have one full
Speaker 1: year before this primary, and I plan on not using
Speaker 1: it to think too much about the presidential election. All
Speaker 1: of us will have plenty to talk about in two
Speaker 1: thousand nineteen, and the dailies will keep you as busy
Speaker 1: as ever and us as informed as ever. Congratulations for
Speaker 1: such great work for not only during two thousand eighteen,
Speaker 1: but two thousand seventeen as well. Thank you, Thank you,
Speaker 1: kat I really appreciate. Thank you. We're big fans of
Speaker 1: the show, big fans, as they say, Michael, thanks for
Speaker 1: thanks for doing our show. My pleasure. So Katie, before
Speaker 1: we wrap our final episode of this show, are wonderful
Speaker 1: producers and I have put together another look back, not
Speaker 1: just at this year, but at the whole run of
Speaker 1: this podcast. Let's have a listen. It all started with
Speaker 1: a trip down to d C in July. It feels
Speaker 1: a little like old Home week for me because here
Speaker 1: we are in the heart Senate office building. When I
Speaker 1: lived in Washington, I covered a lot of stories here
Speaker 1: and I have to say it's a beautiful building. For
Speaker 1: our first episode, we talked with then Senator Al Franken,
Speaker 1: give us your prediction for the fall. I am not
Speaker 1: a prognosticator. That's not what I do. So what I do?
Speaker 1: Do you think Hillary Clinton is going to win? The
Speaker 1: Senator was wrong about that, of course, and little did
Speaker 1: we know that just over a year later, his own
Speaker 1: political career would end. We continued obsessing about the presidential
Speaker 1: election throughout that year with people like Samantha b. Bryan
Speaker 1: and I started this by saying I can't wait till
Speaker 1: it's over. Ryan said, he's going to be sad when
Speaker 1: it's so. You're Nate Silver made a pretty safe prediction
Speaker 1: right before the election, there are going to be consequences
Speaker 1: of this election, win or lose, are going to persist
Speaker 1: for for many years. And then we got together the
Speaker 1: morning after and tried to make sense of what happened
Speaker 1: with Doris Kern's goodwin. You know, I predicted, obviously wrongly,
Speaker 1: that the morning after people would realize what a big
Speaker 1: thing this was that two forty years after our founding,
Speaker 1: when so many other nations have had their first female leader,
Speaker 1: we finally had a female president. We went back down
Speaker 1: to Washington to catch the last of the Obama administration
Speaker 1: with Valerie Jarrett. Welcome to the White House, Katie, delighted
Speaker 1: to have you, thank you. And just as President Trump
Speaker 1: was taking office, we talked with the impersonator in chief
Speaker 1: NBC Great organization. Yes, sure, Katie schooled the pod Save
Speaker 1: America guys, Jason Candersy, the one that did the great
Speaker 1: where he put together the automatic weapon blindfolded. Yeah, he's
Speaker 1: a card carrying badass. We also, obviously Elizabeth Warren is like,
Speaker 1: I want to be a card carrying badass. I think
Speaker 1: you just had to apply. We heard from New Orleans
Speaker 1: Mayor Mitch Landrew Listen, I think that race is really
Speaker 1: hard for us. It's hard for everybody to talk about.
Speaker 1: And I've said many times on this issue. We have
Speaker 1: made a lot of progress, but we're not finished. And
Speaker 1: we talked with New Jersey Senator Corey Booker. So, I'm
Speaker 1: a former mayor and um, I had a fixed stuff,
Speaker 1: um that I couldn't use philosophy, as Fiel Little Guardias said,
Speaker 1: there's no Republican or Democratic way to fix a pothole.
Speaker 1: You just gotta fix it. But it hasn't been all
Speaker 1: politics for us. We've sat down with everyone from Tony Robbins,
Speaker 1: so we're gonna feed a billion people and then an
Speaker 1: i'mgoing hundred million new meals per year. Can I just
Speaker 1: say I give up? I feel so lazy and useless
Speaker 1: after just hearing the this is really impressive to Ena Garden,
Speaker 1: who's in charge of cracking eggs, so I need eight eggs,
Speaker 1: eight eggs of excellent. We were also inspired by the
Speaker 1: strength and talent of so many women we talked to,
Speaker 1: like Ava du Verney working for thirteen years and film
Speaker 1: that closely gave me a set of tools that really
Speaker 1: made up for not going to film school and Martha
Speaker 1: Stewart and then you had this moment in your life
Speaker 1: when you were in prison. What was that like for you? Mean?
Speaker 1: Was that sort of like it was horrifying. It was
Speaker 1: horrifying and no one, no one should have to go
Speaker 1: through that kind of indignity. We even got to take
Speaker 1: a peek or listen inside Katie's closet with Marie Condo,
Speaker 1: the Queen of tidying up. So when I was in nineteen,
Speaker 1: I went to university and my hobby then was to
Speaker 1: clean my friends places and then ounds fun. But it's
Speaker 1: no surprise that in these turbulent time so many of
Speaker 1: our conversations turned back to politics and Donald Trump. Like
Speaker 1: with Morning Joe and Morning Mika, He's not interested in policy,
Speaker 1: He's interested in getting the reaction from the tweet. Somebody
Speaker 1: who's loved very close to me just said he loves
Speaker 1: setting the bomb off and just watching him loves float.
Speaker 1: We even went across the pond with the BBC and
Speaker 1: got to bask in the britishness with Doubt Nappy creator
Speaker 1: Lord Julian Fellows. I like the servants more than that
Speaker 1: people's favorite characters. We dealt with big issues and challenging
Speaker 1: subjects on this show, like the Me Too movement. We
Speaker 1: talked about it with Amy Schumer. I identify with with
Speaker 1: all the women in these situations. I kind of my
Speaker 1: mind doesn't go right. Even if it's my friend, I
Speaker 1: don't go oh, but he's a good guy. I think,
Speaker 1: what would it feel like to have been her? You know?
Speaker 1: And Laverne Cox. I noticed when some trans women have
Speaker 1: come forward and said that they have been exactly assaulted,
Speaker 1: there's been a different tenor in terms of the ways
Speaker 1: in which they've and believed we reckon with the scourge
Speaker 1: of gun violence. When we talked to Ali, she student
Speaker 1: from Marjorie Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, I'm
Speaker 1: going to ask the question that reporters are told not
Speaker 1: to ask, but somehow I feel is appropriate given the situation.
Speaker 1: How are you doing? Um? I think right now all
Speaker 1: of us are kind of doing the best that we can.
Speaker 1: It's getting used to our new normal that we have
Speaker 1: at our school, in our community. Right now, we've asked
Speaker 1: the tough questions of people like Jim Comey, a friend
Speaker 1: of mine who's a very respected former federal prosecutor, says,
Speaker 1: the only reason not to fully inform the Attorney general
Speaker 1: was that you knew you were doing something wrong and
Speaker 1: you didn't want to be stopped. I'm curious to hear
Speaker 1: your reaction to that, and we've been able to get
Speaker 1: an inside a look at what happened behind the news.
Speaker 1: Like with former U s. Attorney pre Perra, we had
Speaker 1: a discussion about whether or not we should tape the
Speaker 1: President of the United States. We decided against that because we,
Speaker 1: unlike Michael Cohen, his own lawyer, I thought it was
Speaker 1: kind of uncool to take the president of the United States.
Speaker 1: And speaking of an inside look, we took a deep
Speaker 1: dive into this political moment with our series on Katie's
Speaker 1: Sarah Palin Interviews ten years later. She was the canary
Speaker 1: in the mind that the party had changed and it
Speaker 1: had become more animated by xenophobia, by nativism, by grievances
Speaker 1: than by any single animating idea. We laughed a lot,
Speaker 1: you know, the trampoline based workerut I mean, and then
Speaker 1: there's a lot was just there learned a lot. I said,
Speaker 1: such an underrated beauty to all it really is. She's
Speaker 1: so anti inflammatory and she's so affordable, which is great.
Speaker 1: And listened to Katie sing a lot. There's no business
Speaker 1: like shoe business. Okay, you got the idea. So you're
Speaker 1: Jesus Christ. Were the great Jesus Christ? Prove to me
Speaker 1: that you're summer loving had me a last summer loving
Speaker 1: happened so fast, and I know that if you love
Speaker 1: me to want a wonderful world, this would be through
Speaker 1: it all. My admiration and affection for Katie pretty big
Speaker 1: to begin with, only got bigger. What a wonderful privilege
Speaker 1: it was to be on this journey with Katie and
Speaker 1: with all of you for the last two and a
Speaker 1: half years. Uh, that was so nice. Thank you all
Speaker 1: so much for putting that together. And wow, this was
Speaker 1: a really good show. It actually was. That's it, everybody,
Speaker 1: at least for now. It's our last show. I'd like
Speaker 1: to start off by thanking Stitcher Media, the company that
Speaker 1: Brian and I partnered with to douce this podcasts. And
Speaker 1: a huge thank you to Gianna Palmer, who's no longer
Speaker 1: with us. Well she's with us, she's working, but she
Speaker 1: was our fearless leader throughout much of our podcast times.
Speaker 1: Here and Chris Bannon who was such a big supporter,
Speaker 1: and John Delore who was our audio engineer at the
Speaker 1: very beginning and who helped out tremendously during our two parts,
Speaker 1: Sarah Palin episodes, and Greta Cone who was our very
Speaker 1: first producer. Um We also want to thank our our
Speaker 1: current production staff, producer Emma morgen Stern, associate producer Noura Richie,
Speaker 1: audio engineer Jared O'Connell who never gets the credit he deserves.
Speaker 1: And a shout out to Brendan Burns at ere Wolf
Speaker 1: and Julian Nicholson and Invisible Studios for recording the l
Speaker 1: A side of today's podcast, And of course the team
Speaker 1: over at Katie Couric Media, my assistant Beth de Mos,
Speaker 1: my social media Maven Julia Lewis, she obviously took Alison
Speaker 1: Bresnick's place. We mentioned Allison a lot, as you know,
Speaker 1: and Jim Brown, who helped out a lot with the booking.
Speaker 1: You all have helped the production run so smoothly and
Speaker 1: I can't thank you enough. Jared Arnold composed our theme music.
Speaker 1: You can continue to find me on at Goldsmith b
Speaker 1: on Twitter, and even though the podcast is ending, Katie
Speaker 1: has no plans to retire from social media anytime soon.
Speaker 1: Quite the contrary. You can find her on Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat,
Speaker 1: and especially Instagram at Katie Current and Brian and I
Speaker 1: will have important exciting news to report, so pay attention
Speaker 1: to our social media channels. Will share with you what
Speaker 1: we're doing on those platforms. And I'd just like to
Speaker 1: say personally, thank you all so much for listening to
Speaker 1: our podcast. I have to say, you know, I've done
Speaker 1: a lot of different things throughout my career, but people
Speaker 1: who were enthusiastic about the podcast, possibly because we're coming
Speaker 1: through your little earbok uds directly to your brain, have
Speaker 1: been so supportive and enthusiastic about the work we've done here.
Speaker 1: And we can't thank you enough for really caring about
Speaker 1: the things that we care about and wanting to listen
Speaker 1: to the guests that we've been interested in. Yeah, people
Speaker 1: tell me all the time about how much they've learned
Speaker 1: on this show, while I've learned at least as much
Speaker 1: as they have working with Katie, working with our terrific team,
Speaker 1: interacting with our listeners. Uh, it's just been a fabulous
Speaker 1: experience start to finish, So thank you all. For being
Speaker 1: part of this with us, and remember you know you
Speaker 1: can still listen to a lot of the episodes if
Speaker 1: you're interested. If this is peaked your interest in the podcast,
Speaker 1: or you're just feeling nostalgic to hear some of your
Speaker 1: favorite episodes over again, feel free to listen and to
Speaker 1: reach out to us on social media because we'd love
Speaker 1: to continue to hear what you have to say and
Speaker 1: understand the issues you're you're interested in, uh learning more about,
Speaker 1: and the people you'd like to hear from. Because we're
Speaker 1: not going away, we're just taking a little break. So
Speaker 1: thanks again everyone so much for your support and Brian Um,
Speaker 1: you know I'll be calling you at all hours per usual.
Speaker 1: Why should anything change? Okay? This show is sponsored by
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Speaker 1: secure smart home just for you it Stitcher. I always
Speaker 1: told you you ought to go into politics, Katie. I
Speaker 1: think I said that to her too. Yeah yeah, Well
Speaker 1: maybe maybe between the two of us we can talk
Speaker 1: her into it. I doubt it. Hello, Dead Beats, It's Gabby.
Speaker 1: Gabby Done, host of Bad with Money. I had the
Speaker 1: Bad with Money book come out in January. I'm super
Speaker 1: stoked for season four. This season, we're going back to
Speaker 1: our roots and I'm having long conversations with amazing people
Speaker 1: and getting the big picture about money and the economy.
Speaker 1: Do you like intersectional queer, social justice based money podcasts?
Speaker 1: This is the only one, so get into it. Did
Speaker 1: you earn it? You deserve to be like a billionaire
Speaker 1: when somebody who's working as a janitor or working in Walmart,
Speaker 1: or teacher or a teacher, yeah certainly, or a teacher
Speaker 1: who may be working just as many hours as you,
Speaker 1: maybe just as smart it as you like? Does that
Speaker 1: make it okay that you have so much? I get
Speaker 1: paid once a month, so my my check accounts huge.
Speaker 1: It's like a tidal wave comes in and then on
Speaker 1: the second it's empty again. Oh my god, speaking my language.
Speaker 1: Bad with Money is back now for season four, Listen
Speaker 1: and stitch your Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.