WTW104: Bill Maher Tries Comedy. It Doesn't Go Well.

Transcript

This transcript was generated automatically and may contain errors — the audio is the record.

0:00:03 Clip: What's so scary about the woke mob? How often you just don't see them coming. Anywhere you see diversity, equity, and inclusion, you see Marxism and you see woke principles being pushed. Wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic hands down. The woke monster is here and it's coming for everything.

0:00:33 Clip: Instead of go-go boots, the seductress green M&M will now wear sneakers.

0:00:42 Thomas: Hello and welcome to Where There's Woke. This is episode 104, and more importantly, it's episode Bill Maher's an Idiot 2. Well, is it 2? It's 2 of this one. This current Bill Maher's an idiot.

0:00:54 Lydia: Yeah, I was going to say of eternal.

0:00:56 Thomas: Yeah, Infinity Volume 2. I don't know. I'm Thomas. That's Lydia. How you doing?

0:01:01 Lydia: Oh, I'm doing pretty well. Eager for this next round of bullshit from Bill Maher. And I can't wait to get into it, personally.

0:01:09 Thomas: It was really hard to decide how to do this set of episodes. I'm hoping it's 2. We'll see if it bleeds over because there's so much. I wanted to structure it around the Bill Maher video, but that video structure is very weird. So we ended up covering the real substance in terms of like the more academic type stuff in terms of like Democrats, should they moderate? And I can't get over how weak the New York Times is arguing is like, it's just, it's just so weak. It's just like misleading stats and weak argument. Like the more I think about the Georgia example, like I still can't get over that. I know we're kind of reviewing yesterday's, you know, I know, we're kind of revealing last episode, but it's one of those things where it's like I edit and then we

0:01:43 Lydia: Yeah. We reflect on it more.

0:01:49 Thomas: Publish and then digest more yeah and it's just like how could you say with a straight face that the key difference between warnock and stacy abrams was just that he pledged to be a moderate and she didn't like based on the vote count it's incumbency two different ways it's warnock was the incumbent at that time she was going against the incumbent he was a white man like it's every which way and her vote difference was only a hundred thousand something less than his that's way more explainable by the incumbency by the horrible opponent that Warnock had like that alone could be it like literally any one of those factors I feel like could account for the hundred thousand and the fact that they're not even like maybe I'm wrong I don't know but the fact that they don't even engage with that they don't have an advanced statistical model that shows like hey yeah we know there's these other things going on in that election but when you run the numbers this amount was

0:02:02 Lydia: Yeah, yeah, it's insane.

0:02:40 Thomas: Actually the leftover over centrism thing and that's just one of their shitty examples and they had so many in full fairness I don't fault bill maher too much I fault the new york times way more for that article obviously than bill mahr for like relying on it it is an opinion piece so it's just him finding the opinion he likes obviously whatever I'll spot bill mahar that one but we're gonna finally hit play on the video that we stopped two minutes in of an eight minute video almost nine minutes It gets so fucking stupid. I can't wait. So we've kind of, in a way, eaten our vegetables, and now we get to enjoy a nice dessert of Bill Maher's head.

0:03:17 Thomas: His head on a platter, because it's just so stupid. So that's what we're going to talk about after the break. Bill Maher's an idiot, and we'll talk about Zoran. We'll hear Bill Maher probably get his name wrong several more times. We'll see. And lots of other stuff. Democratic socialists, their conventions, all kinds of fun stuff. Stuff. So after this break, which you can avoid at patreon.com/where there's woke, avoid the ads, get bonus stuff, get a happy feeling in your heart. Talk to us, be our best friend, be our pen pals. Maybe we haven't done that one yet, but maybe earn the title of Wokey. You too can be a Woke. patreon.com/where there's woke. Thanks so much to our supporters. And after this break, we'll get to it.

0:03:17 Lydia: Amazing. Yep. Earn the title of Wokie. Mm -hmm.

0:04:00 Ad: [Ad break 1 — ad music]

0:04:00 Thomas: Okay. Time to just hit play.

0:04:01 Lydia: Hit play.

0:04:01 Thomas: And I don't know how long I'm going to last For one, a part of me really wants, can I one more time just play when he bombs really fucking hard?

0:04:12 Lydia: Yeah, why not?

0:04:13 Thomas: Just for fun. It's just so funny. It was like the very beginning. I just want to, but

0:04:17 Lydia: My favorite thing was when we played it the first time and then you realize that we played it sped up and then we had to endure it like in real time. We had to endure real time in real-time. Womp womp.

0:04:25 Thomas: It was still enjoyable. Like, yeah. You mean this?

0:04:28 Clip: And finally, New Rule Democrats must recognize that Zoran Mamdani is the future of the party. Unfortunately, it's the Republican Party.

0:04:39 Lydia: Oh my god! Get me out of here!

0:04:40 Thomas: It's so bad. Oh my God. It is so fucking good. Oh God. So keep that in mind. And I, you know, that was mainly for me, but also as I sort teased early on. The audience gets more and more insane and I fucking love it because they're just fucking with him. Or the other option is like they're paid to laugh or something, or they know they have to laugh because he sucks and they're mad about it. Or they're so dumb that they're doing it. You'll see. Okay. So we're roughly around here somewhere here.

0:05:03 Lydia: And the sign is lighting up and yeah.

0:05:10 Clip: Gosh, if only someone had been saying that all along, but, you know, welcome home.

0:05:13 Thomas: He was doing his victory lap over centrism. It's such a great take.

0:05:20 Thomas: And that's the thing is we haven't had had enough people saying the left has gone too far. That's the key. There just haven't been enough. We just need more.

0:05:26 Lydia: It'll crack through eventually. Just keep saying it.

0:05:30 Thomas: It's every single media source all day for the past ever 20 years. The left has gotten too far, the left's gotten too much. We needed one more voice to say the left has got too far God. Imagine taking a victory lap over that.

0:05:48 Clip: Problem is, Gen Z thinks socialism's wired and capitalism's tired and billionaires are And who can blame them?

0:05:51 Thomas: Here we go. I love that either he has some younger person that he tries to pay to make him sound younger or they're just doing their best and it's so fucking bad he that wired and tired is like not even millennial that's like fucking gen x isn't it like that's

0:06:07 Lydia: That was very cringey. Is that a saying that people say oh yeah well there you go

0:06:15 Thomas: Yeah there's something is wired and something is tired it's so old I think you're too young for

0:06:19 Lydia: I'm an elder millennial and I don't get

0:06:21 Thomas: It yeah something's wired something's tired and then the richard works for dinner okay so he's got a cadence going it has the cadence of a joke where it's like like it's kind of a rule of threes type cadence a little bit which is like when you're writing, I don't write jokes. I don'T do a lot of this kind of thing.

0:06:39 Thomas: You know, there's an R2 and people are better or worse at it, but like, there's no logical flow from wired tired to what'S for dinner.

0:06:39 Lydia: It I had to look up when this is from earliest use of using the words tired and wired as a type of social barometer comes from the first issue of wired magazine published on april 1st 1993 okay when I was four so yeah exactly

0:06:56 Thomas: Yeah. Yeah, exactly. And, and it was, it was a vaguely nineties thing, but that's not millennial because we were too young. That'S like the gen X is still, so it'S a gen X slang. So, and I was corrected. Did I say this on the show? I assumed, I just assumed Bill Maher was gen X, but he'S way fucking older than I thought. Yeah, he is. He's a fucking boomer. I don't know why. For some reason in my mind, I thought he was a lot younger than he is, and I have no excuse. Like, I just don't know why I just thought that he's like, what is he mid 60s? It was way older than I thought. He is 69 years old. He's almost 70.

0:07:04 Lydia: I don'T get it whatever he's a boomer yeah yeah yeah I saw an article saying when he was dating Kara that he was 55 and she was 23 I think it was

0:07:35 Thomas: Oh, God. Yeah. Yeah, that's the thing that happened. He IS almost 70 I did not know he was that fucking old. I DON'T KNOW WHY.

0:07:48 Thomas: So he's a boomer Yeah, so my apologies to the Gen X for that smear.

0:07:48 Lydia: It yeah yeah you're not responsible for Bill

0:07:52 Thomas: So him trying to do young speak is wired and tired. Something from when he was the young age of 40 something, you know, or whatever.

0:08:02 Lydia: Maher! Oh my God!

0:08:02 Thomas: And we were barely born. Okay. I'll forgive that. But does he try to do a beef? It's what's for dinner or something? Cause like billionaires, it's what'S for dinner. It doesn't have any logical connection to the first two things. Let's see.

0:08:04 Lydia: I won't I guess so no I

0:08:15 Clip: Problem is, Gen Z thinks socialism's wired and capitalism's tired and billionaires are what's for dinner.

0:08:22 Thomas: Okay, what is that?

0:08:23 Lydia: Think It must be the where's the beef or whatever

0:08:25 Thomas: Well, that's two different things, isn't it?

0:08:27 Lydia: No not where's the beef a beef

0:08:29 Thomas: Yeah, Yeah. Isn't it? Beef is what's for dinner. Hold on. Beef is, I love how this is just us learning about stuff. That's so fucking old.

0:08:36 Lydia: Thing we're doing history lessons

0:08:38 Thomas: I know beef what's for dinner. Oh my God. Really?

0:08:39 Lydia: Yes launched in 1992 so yeah

0:08:43 Thomas: So maybe, okay. Was there something in 1992 or three or four or five that tied those things together? This is fun. Actually. I'm now having fun. Wired, tired, what's four dinner. Just search that. I just, is that a construction? It'll be actually a relief because otherwise I don't know what the fuck he's talking about and where he got that.

0:08:49 Lydia: And wired and

0:09:02 Thomas: Nothing.

0:09:01 Lydia: Tired all I'm getting are like recipes to cook when you're feeling

0:09:04 Thomas: No. Yeah. I think he's making this up. I can't believe what's beef is what's for dinner and where's the beef are two different things. Where's the Beef is Wendy's, right? Old Wendy's commercial. Yeah.

0:09:11 Lydia: Overwhelmed wendy's really well I I recognize I do know

0:09:16 Thomas: Well, okay. So where's the beef? Now this isn't Bill Maher's fault. He's not doing where's the beef.

0:09:18 Lydia: It where's the beef you're right okay wendy got it yeah Yeah.

0:09:21 Thomas: Where's the Beef is from 1984, even older, super old. Beef is what for dinner is from just like fucking big beef. It's like the beef council or whatever. You know how like, yeah, I was just going to say big milk and big beef would just do like our product in general. You need it.

0:09:28 Lydia: Yeah. Like got milk. Like we drank so much milk.

0:09:36 Lydia: Oh my God. Do you remember? I just, I need a moment to think about this because I hated milk. I hate, I never enjoyed it ever. I hated it. And I just remember like flipping through magazines and the number of times you'd see celebrities with the milk mustache in the middle of like teen Vogue.

0:09:41 Thomas: Oh really? I love milk. Oh yeah. Those commercials.

0:09:52 Lydia: It was like commercials, Print ads constantly. Yeah. It was crazy.

0:09:55 Thomas: That's what I meant. Print ads. Yeah. The ones I remember Michael Jordan, I'm pretty sure. So they got them. They got everybody. Yeah, but I think it's so funny that there are these generalized commercials. Like they don't do that for any other product. There's not like all the car manufacturers are like cars. Are they awesome?

0:10:00 Lydia: Yeah, the hold that milk had on this country.

0:10:12 Thomas: Like it's like Like commercials, like you need to eat three cars a day to maintain your diet or whatever. Like cars are just great for you. Maybe they do. And I don't notice, but like, it's funny that beef and milk, like the dairy, whatever, just like got to our government. Yeah. The dairy council, isn't it? Or something.

0:10:25 Lydia: The dairy industry and corn.

0:10:29 Thomas: What do you mean? There's a commercials where they're just like corn in general. No, go with the thing I'm doing. God, the thing. I'm not doing is that it's weird that there's a product where they'RE just like our product in general and it's not any one beef thing or milk thing it's not like a milk brand it's just like big cow yeah

0:10:31 Lydia: Corn also Yeah, that's true. Yeah it's not happy cows come from California That's tied to a specific brand, right? The dairy farms within California I

0:10:53 Thomas: What is that oh god this is we're so off the rails point is something wired something tired and something is what's for dinner is nothing those are two unrelated things from the early 90s it's so weird how do you how does one's brain put that together it has the cadence of a joke like I said where it's like a you know rule threes kind of joke And Bill Maher does his only method of trying to be funny that he has, which is saying something with that sort of quick cutoff tone to try to give the impression that like he's way ahead of you.

0:11:08 Lydia: Don't know yeah

0:11:25 Thomas: You know, it's the most obnoxious fucking thing. It's the one thing he has at all. He does it all the time. Sometimes he does a little mouth click with it. But the sign he puts up or the image he puts up with this is eat the rich and it has a cookie monster thing on it and it's cookie monster eat the rich how is that related to rich people are what's for dinner or any of those elements of it those early 90s things I don't know I it's just silly here's what I want to say I'm gonna zag when you're thinking I'm going to zig though this is the brief 10 seconds or so when he has a good monologue so I want you to hear this I well you probably have but I want everyone to hear this this is like we get a brief glimpse of what Bill Maher could be or could have been this is like some decent comedy delivered terribly by the way his delivery's awful but if this were on John Oliver it would be a little better but like these punch lines could be on John Oliver in service of a good point and they'd be pretty good so listen to this

0:11:25 Lydia: Yeah yeah exactly

0:12:21 Clip: If you're 30 and still sharing a bathroom with roommates, capitalism isn't working for you. People will reject any economic system where there's a strange hair on the soap.

0:12:33 Thomas: Part not bad that's not bad I like the delivery sucked but like if that was the line for a moment he's making a point that's good and he's punching up instead of down, which is, hey, capitalism is fucking us. He has another decent one. Notice the crowd actually likes this.

0:12:49 Clip: NO ONE WANTS TO BE APPROACHING MIDDLE AGE AND STILL WRITING THEIR NAME ON FOOD BEFORE

0:12:54 Thomas: That's a good one. That's the end of it. Never mind. I thought there was one more, but no, like that idea, that kind of framing of like, hey, you're gonna quit an economic system where such and such, you know, and those are great. Hair on the soap, you Know, fine. Writing your name on food. I don't think I would have thought of that. I think that's a Good. Like he's 70 and has been wealthy for a very long time. I don't think he's thinking of that. Probably one of his writers thought of that, you know, examples of whatever, you know, like economic woes that we've had to face and our generation and younger have had to face that Bill Maher never got anywhere near. I don't know his childhood, maybe, who knows, but like for at least 50 fucking years or whatever, like 40 years, he's been doing well. And those are like decent punchlines. It's not the funniest thing in the world. I'm not like laughing. And it's also, he'S so fucking stuck up and his delivery sucks that like, I didn't really laugh, but I had a moment of like, oh, if you did those kind of jokes in service of like, yeah, this is why people are turning towards Zoran Mamdani. The funny thing is he's sort of doing that. What is this doing in his monologue about how socialism sucks and we need centrism?

0:13:53 Lydia: Yeah

0:14:02 Thomas: You know, it's like we've had centrism. That's what has gotten us here. What are you talking about? What is this even doing here?

0:14:02 Lydia: Yeah it's really disjointed it doesn't make sense with everything else that he talks

0:14:12 Thomas: There's one writer in the writer's room who's like trying to sneak in some sense and like, oh, okay, we'll use that thing. Oh, you're going to use that to say capitalism sucks, right? Oh, no, no. It's ultimately going to be about centrism and how socialism sucks, but we'll use this good observation here. And so that was a brief few seconds of decent writing there. Now we're going back. I love this so much. Now he's going back to trying to make references to be young. He's going to use quiet quitting, but mess it up and say quitting first. When's quiet quitting from? Five years, six years? That's a while ago, right?

0:14:15 Lydia: About yeah quiet quitting uh

0:14:47 Thomas: Or is that post -COVID or pre -COvid?

0:14:49 Lydia: I think it say it was post -COVID. I could be wrong.

0:14:51 Thomas: Yeah, That could have been when was quite. You might be right. Twenty twenty two. OK, so it was post covid. All right. It's only three years old. So sure, that's something. But then he just goes to like texting talk from like the early 2000s. Just like, OK, here we go.

0:15:04 Clip: SO THEY'RE QUITTING QUIET-QUITTING CAPITALISM AND TEXTING SOCIALISM THAT THEY'RE DOWN TO

0:15:13 Lydia: Whoops. So stupid. No.

0:15:17 Thomas: Just says socialism DTF on a fake phone and then a thumbs up emoji and a kiss heart. That's not how the youths do it. DTF is like that's that's like our generation. We're down to fuck. Okay so he was are they? I don't know about that no

0:15:33 Lydia: Yeah, I would say like, yeah, Gen Z, Gen Alpha, they're far more subtle than millennials were because no, I do think so. I mean, like they don't say things like DTF or anything like that. There's also like a big change in hookup culture. We're not going to get into it.

0:15:46 Thomas: It's probably just fucking gifts and fucking whatever that I don't even understand

0:15:48 Lydia: But honestly, I just think about like, like we probably were just super straight to the point because the phones that we had, we had to press each button so many times that we were like yeah exactly like that we're like we need to be efficient about this yeah

0:15:58 Thomas: Yeah and pay by the like letter yeah no yeah no but this is so out of touch but also why would quiet quitting be the quiet quitting capitalism they're just quitting capitalism are they quiet quitting it doesn't even work. Yeah, exactly. This is the closest he's gotten to modern times. He's like, he's like in a time machine, but the controls are broken. And he's like, oh, I got within three years. I'm within three years. So I can almost see current day. And there's, oh no shit. You just went to DTF from a fake phone. Ah, we're 20 years away again, at least.

0:16:12 Lydia: I don't think it's quiet quitting I think he's just trying to sound relevant yeah hopping around all over the place quick grab something yeah

0:16:33 Clip: Fuck. Socialism that they're down to fuck. Thing is, socialism will fuck you, because socialism, to put it simply, just doesn't work and has never worked, like Kevin Federline.

0:16:49 Thomas: Can you tell me what that means? No, No, I know the name.

0:16:51 Lydia: Do you know who Kevin Federline is okay Britney Spears ex -husband yeah so the joke is that he He never really worked. I think he was like a backup dancer or whatever and then never has to work because he had sole custody of their kids for a while. And like from some people's perspective, manipulated the family court system in order to get more money from Britney Spears.

0:17:09 Thomas: Oh, what century was this in? No, it's within the past. What is this reference? It's not relevant. It's is he in the news or something? Really?

0:17:12 Lydia: Yeah. Late 2000s, I would say. I mean, a little bit, but not him particularly. It will, oh God, it's this whole thing.

0:17:24 Thomas: Why don't I tell you this? Why don'T you go for Bill Belichick's girlfriend? Go for something that's like within the last. I forgot who this was. I didn't know what the joke was. The name reminded me of like the 90s, but I wasn't sure. I was like, is that, that sound feels older to me. Like, it's just so fucking lame. It's God, it's lame. And then the other thing is right when he had gotten within, you know, three years and then back to DTF, like 20 years, then he goes for, you Know, Red Scare and his fucking time machines back in the fifties. He's all the way, but it doesn't work.

0:17:54 Thomas: It never worked to be fair. That's more of like a Ronald Reagan -esque thing, probably like that era, because, you know, in the sixties, we hadn't yet ruined every single other country that tried socialism in any way. There's still several that we ruined after that, that we hadn't gotten to, to be able to say it never works. But yeah, Kevin Federline, like it's just so fucking, God, man, don't even do jokes.

0:18:17 Thomas: Like just do the part where you have Reagan-esque era commentary and then just own that. You're not funny.

0:18:23 Lydia: I mean it'll probably come off better and the audience will be less

0:18:27 Thomas: Yeah. Finally, the audience can just be sorted down to the maybe centrist at best, but kind of conservative people who would listen to this fucking garbage. But But listen to that Kevin Federline reaction.

0:18:39 Clip: Just doesn't work and has never worked, like Kevin Federline.

0:18:45 Thomas: Ha ha ha. The count is in there. He's counting the number of jokes. One joke. Ah, ah, ah.

0:18:50 Lydia: Awkward it's such a performative laugh someone was like oh you know my mom's gonna be watching this at home she's gonna hear it she's yeah

0:18:59 Thomas: I think it's Bill Maher is going to be watching this. Like, I really wonder. He almost sort of looks annoyed at points in this. So I wonder if it's like the guy that's like loosely associated with this. Because there's always this fucking guy. Like, I don't know if it is the exact guy, but every time we have ever watched it, there is this type of noise. And it is not a funny joke. And someone trying to go, go, ha ha ha.

0:19:20 Lydia: Right it's just the plant yeah

0:19:20 Thomas: Like it's, I, I think so, but it's also a bad plant. So I don't, I don't know what this is. It, it gets worse.

0:19:29 Clip: I know the kids think that stuff that happened before their appearance on the planet didn't

0:19:32 Thomas: No, you don't fucking know anything about the kids we have.

0:19:35 Clip: Really happen, but it did. We've run this experiment many times, and the results are

0:19:42 Thomas: Okay. We've run this experiment. Mind you, the central thing here is Zoran Mamdani. As much as he's going to say Mamdami several times. Have we run that experiment? Have we ever done anything like like Zoran, especially in New York City, you know, like, have we done that at all? Like you could argue there's a few places they've tried some socialism on a small scale, but not New York City.

0:19:53 Lydia: Yeah, center of business and finance and yeah, no.

0:20:06 Lydia: Yeah yeah I think like Vermont right Vermont tried to do some health care related stuff.

0:20:11 Thomas: Well, you're going to get to that. That's in this.

0:20:12 Lydia: Oh yeah true but it's always like specific to a particular segment of life within whatever area but never to the scale of new york city and never in like a full -fledged

0:20:25 Thomas: So this was something I went down the road. Well, okay. Let's let, let's let him, let him go. I can't even say let him cook. Let's let him fucking burn the nothing, uh, fast food that he ordered and then like burnt in an oven after that.

0:20:33 Lydia: Platform

0:20:38 Clip: Here's capitalist South Korea at night from space. Here's socialist North Korea.

0:20:44 Thomas: Guys, capitalist South Korea versus socialist North Korea. Do you think that's the difference between North and South Korea?

0:20:53 Lydia: Yeah and like look at them from space look at them from space uh

0:20:54 Thomas: Is the socialism? I mean, I've been seeing this graphic for 20 years or whatever, since they've had like decent satellite imagery. It is disturbing and sad that there is this sizable chunk of the world that's just dark, that right above South Korea, which is insanely bright. And it is absolutely true that South Korea is very very successful in North Korea, not so much. Is socialism the key? Did they try to give them too much healthcare in North Korean? Was that what happened? Was they passed Obamacare in North Korea? And then everybody's just all of a sudden, there's no lights. They just took out all the lights. It's like, we can't afford healthcare. We've had to sell all our lights. Is that what's going on? Or do they have a horrific fucking dictatorship where they have to worship a fucking moron who's in charge of their whole country and it's a planned economy that has nothing to do with any like sensible choices economically it's about honoring the dear leader and enriching one person it's just so fucking dumb to try to do a gotcha on socialism mind you we're talking about socialism too so it's not communism I don't I don' know I think maybe the name let's see is that I looked it up and I forgot officially the name is the democratic people's Republic of North Korea. I guess they describe themselves as an independent socialist state,

0:21:23 Lydia: They just have a really strong social safety net yeah it's all about enriching yeah and his family yeah

0:22:15 Thomas: But it's just not. It's just dictatorship. It is totalitarian dictatorship. It's like saying socialism doesn't work. Look at the fucking country in 1984. It doesn't. They're not doing well. That's socialism for you. Is it? Is that what socialism is? I don't really think so. I think that's Red Scare bullshit. And I went down a rabbit hole of this and then then realizing like, okay, there's stuff that I just shouldn't try to take on in a Where There's Vogue episode, like this massive debate over socialism and capitalism, and then some other stuff we're going to reference later. But I did find, just for fun, I was like, I just want to hear smart people actually talk about this. And I found a debate that was during COVID. So it was done from each of the person's homes, and it was two scholars, and I think it was affiliated with Harvard in some way. And it was really nice because they were like really cordial to each other and respectful. And the guy, the guy who was arguing kind of against socialism was like still praising the other guy's book. It was like, hey, you should take him seriously and read his books and all this. It Was Nice. And ultimately, it was like yeah, there's not one socialism like it's weird. It's just simplistic to be like socialism doesn't work capitalism and we never count the losses toward capitalism.

0:23:22 Lydia: Think it's there's also this conflation of an economic system and a political system and saying socialist well that's in reference to the economy that doesn't also necessarily mean the government structure either. Yeah.

0:23:34 Thomas: Yeah, lots of totalitarians call themselves socialists for one reason or another.

0:23:38 Lydia: You collapse it onto itself and it's meaningless now. Right.

0:23:41 Thomas: Yeah. And for a while it had to do with the cold. I'm fucking nowhere near an expert on this, but I know like there's various reasons. For one, it makes you appear more soft and human. If your dictatorship government says you're socialist, then it's like it sounds better. And also there was some element of like aligning with, you know, either Russia or the U .S., I think. And so there might have been I believe there are some cases where, you Know, you kind of advertise as communists or socialists in order to just get support from Russia because there's this literal fucking Cold War where each side was trying to like boost their allies and hurt their enemies on a global scale. And so there's that too. But like, didn't Hitler's party have like socialists somewhere in there? Like, it's just meaningless. It doesn't, that's not important. What's important is what you actually do and the actual economic system. And one thing to point out is that they always count any example that can loosely be tied to socialism in any way, linguistically, if need be, like just merely linguistically if need me. And any failure means all of socialism fails. Else. Meanwhile, but the guy made a really interesting point that I actually hadn't heard articulated to this degree, which is

0:24:48 Thomas: They always say, and I don't know how much of this you've been exposed to, because I don' t know how m uch you watch these kind of debates or whatever, but the classic like Reagan -esque talking point is always like, you know how many people that Stalin killed with starvation? I don'' t know if you' ve heard that before.

0:25:02 Thomas: Oh, you know what I mean? It's a lot. It's like, it's a go -to anti -left, anti -socialist, anti whatever, whatever pro -US, pro -capitalism line. And actually, I'm exposed to it most because they also try to tie in atheism to it. They'd be like, Stalin, atheist. He killed hundreds of millions. Like, it's a lot. Like, It's awful. And there's argument about this, but some people say it's Stalin trying to eliminate Ukrainian independence. And so it's man -made famine. Some say that it was, you know, it could have been a mix of causes. But one way or the other, it's 3 .5 to 5 million dead.

0:25:37 Thomas: It's really bad. So they go to it, And then I think there's more examples and they try to take this big tally and talk about like, I've heard it in the atheism sense. And they're like, that's how many people atheists have killed, add together, pull pot and all this stuff that has nothing to do with atheism. Now, here's the other thing. Do they talk about things like, I don't know, the famine enforced by the UK on like the Irish that they call the potato famine or whatever, but it's actually just fucking the same thing essentially. Essentially or just colonialism and how many people that has killed in the last, in the 1900s and 1800s, us trying to spread our kind of gospel of capitalism in a way and all the way into today and the Iraq war.

0:26:18 Lydia: I would say humans suck regardless of economic system yeah

0:26:22 Thomas: Well, the point is it's counting your hits and not counting your misses is the general thing that's happening. And they look at all the horrors of the Soviet Union and they label that as like that gets to count against anything vaguely not capitalist. So it's not just like communism is not even just socialism. It's like all of any left effort gets to be tarred with that. But what about the fucking economic crisis of 2008? What about the, well, the Great Depression, I guess?

0:26:50 Thomas: What about The Opioid Epidemic? The Opiod Epidemia is 100 % capitalism. Like you cannot call that anything other than unbridled fucking greed and capitalism. And it's hard to estimate how many people have died from that. I'm seeing estimates of more than 645 ,000, and it's a lot of things like that. We don't count all these ways that people have died that have to do with capitalism in one way or another, and you could tally all those up, or you could just stop trying to make this a debate in those terms. The terms people have to use is because during the Red Scare and onto today, they have to make people really afraid of socialism. You can't just be like, well, we disagree with some of the aims. Regimes, you know, it has to be like, no, this is death. You know, like that's how fucking conservatives have had to do it. It can't just be, we kind of disagree with the economic system over there. It has to been, no this is certain death. We just fucking die. We have to be as afraid as possible. And this guy in this debate made that point and he had more examples too. Like there's so many examples. I mean, the Iraq war is, can you say that's just capitalism? Not Not exactly, but it certainly has a lot to do with it, you know, and like

0:26:50 Lydia: Yeah yeah okay

0:28:02 Thomas: The millions dead there. There's so many deaths that we don't count. Capitalist America doesn't count those. It's like, yeah, you Know, those are costs of doing business or something, but you count all the deaths on the other side that can even be just like I said, loosely fucking linguistically tied to socialism, not even really directly from it. No one is that I know of has ever overdosed on socialism. And so all this is to say, I didn't want to take on that entire big topic in this episode, But it's just such a feeble attempt. Like, at least you could make a more scholarly case in the capitalism, socialism, broadly speaking, debate. But ultimately, when you look at scholars, it's like that's just too simplistic. And it's very relative to where we are. That's the thing that people also don't update in their minds. These fucking boomers don't upgrade in their mind is where are we now? You know, they're arguing for more capitalism and less socialism, oftentimes based on like their fucking 1988 idea of what's going on in government because they're so fucking out of touch. They're boomers. They haven't had to worry about anything for that long. And so they go in their minds to what they think the tax rate was then and what they Think the whatever was then, and the unemployment, all that stuff. And they're like, Oh, we can't have socialism. It's like, they don't know where we are now. They don't Know how fucking expensive everything is, and how unattainable homes are for anyone younger than them. Like it's, they just are so out of touch. This is a feeble fucking attempt. I said it in the first episode with the New York Times Times thing. A sign that there's too much groupthink is how weak these arguments are with no one calling Bill Maher on it and no one called the New York Times on those weak arguments. There's no one telling Bill Maer no, which is weird because he does talk across the aisle sometimes. He talks to Republicans a lot. I'm realizing I was thinking across the aisle in that moment as progressives. They'll come on sometimes. But then there's that other thing that happens that I really resent where it's like anyone going on Bill Maers show, show they're trying to get out whatever their message is and they're not ruffling feathers you know and so it's like no one really challenges Bill Maher on this shit like ever or if they do it's Like Me or someone else on the internet and he never has to listen so he can just keep making these tired ass terrible arguments about North Korea being too socialist

0:30:07 Clip: In 1990, Venezuela was wealthier than Poland. But then Poland, finally free of Soviet-style economics, And now their economy is as big as Japan. And people there have high wages, low inflation, cars, vacations, homes. Meanwhile, Venezuela traded capitalism for Hugo Chavez's Socialism for the 21st Century, which turned out to be like socialism in the last century, or any century, a fucking mess.

0:30:38 Thomas: Look at that round of applause listen

0:30:42 Clip: It turned one of Latin America's richest countries Low wages, high inflation, shortages, outages,

0:30:51 Thomas: Ready for an amazing punchline

0:30:52 Clip: If you think New York can somehow reinvent this wheel, you're in for a rude awokening.

0:31:00 Thomas: Oh let's pause there I

0:31:01 Lydia: It's lazy

0:31:07 Thomas: Don't know shit about Venezuela. Matt?

0:31:09 Lydia: You know who knows about venezuela prager you they have they have a stupid video about this yeah it is exactly this and it's animated so

0:31:14 Thomas: That's probably exactly this line of thought.

0:31:19 Lydia: I did watch it when we were getting ready to do our prager u videos yeah and I'm I'm sure it is so simplistic and trying to talk about an entire country's economic hardships and things like that and the characterization of it from this like amazing place, you know, just a few decades ago to the squalor of the earth basically now and how they characterize it. I doubt PragerU and their little five minute videos is doing it justice. But yeah, I did. I did watch it. But I do think one of the things that he's glancing over that a lot of people seem to glance over is the dependence on oil specifically.

0:31:54 Thomas: That's the part that I know about is they're all in on oil. And when the oil price of oil crashed, that killed the country. And that's also when you look at authoritarian stuff, when you Look at, you know, like corruption, does socialism always mean authoritarianism, totalitarianism and corruption? Does it? I don't think so. I think that there are reasons that there can be some correlations there, one of which I already said, which is those awful people say they're socialists because it's like a sometimes like a softer image. Like Trump got elected on pretending to be populist. Like he if we didn't have all the baggage around these these words, there could have been an alternate universe where Trump became elected president by pretending he was a socialist, you know, in so many words, because he campaigned on those kind of populist level ideas. Does that mean he actually was? No.

0:32:47 Ad: [Ad break 2 — ad music]

0:32:47 Thomas: So he had a headline up on the screen that I just wanted to check. And it's from a history .com article. You know, that's where all the academics go to make claims about socialism and whatever. And I think what's funny is his claim is, again, socialism, bad capitalism, great. The reason Venezuela sucks is socialism, but like already off the top of our heads, oil was obviously what it was like without even, I just know that from reading vaguely, You know, like I'm not not even talking about research. I think anyone listening would probably say, yeah, weren't weren't they heavily dependent on oil? And then when that crashed in the 80s and 90s and like that made their government unstable, you know, a lot of stuff like that. But even from this article, which is what Bill Maher pulls up, and I always love pulling those up to see, you know, like what he's actually looking at. One of the first paragraphs, Venezuela has long been dependent on oil revenues and the Bolivarian revolution of Hugo Chavez did not fundamentally alter that situation, explains Joe Murray Burt, an associate professor of political science and Latin American studies, blah, blah. The decline of oil prices, the massive social spending of the Chavez and Maduro governments, U .S. sanctions and a combination of economic mismanagement and corruption at the top have contributed to the economic collapse.

0:33:57 Thomas: And we've sanctioned their their oil industry. We sanctioned their gold mining, I think probably because of the forest stuff, I'm guessing. But OK, let's let's look at that. It is true that when they had a bunch of oil money, they started putting it in the Chavez revolution. They started putting it towards social spending like health care and other stuff. And then from what I can see, the key wasn't, oh, and then because that always kills everyone and is bad, then they all died. It was, well, the main thing that makes money for them stopped doing that. No matter what program you're talking about or country or anything, if the main thing you do stops making money, that equals bad. Like there's no capitalism or socialism about it. Like we had a Great Depression. And here's the thing. Did that mean that absent the social spending, they would have been fine? No, like there probably was a path out of it. And it is true that if If you're at one level of social spending and your budget is like ruined, yeah, you're going to have to reduce your social spending. And I think a lot of what happened there, too, is these are countries that have been destabilized by us over history,

0:34:28 Lydia: Yeah, like if you've lost your job. Yeah. Uh huh.

0:35:00 Thomas: By colonialism, by all kinds of forces. And, you know, not to put anyone there blameless, too. It's also people there taking advantage every which way. There's stories of South American stuff throughout history that is so ridiculous in terms of like people wanting to take over governments. And so they appeal to the U .S. or to Russia or one way or the other and saying like, hey, we're we're capitalists. Help us take over these socialists or communists, vice versa. And then getting arms from the U。S. In order to do a coup somewhere. I don't know if this is specific to Venezuela. I'm just saying in general, a lot of that has happened. It's very destabilizing. And Venezuela was a country that was doing really well because it had so much oil at a time when oil was very high priced. And any economy that's based on like one thing, when that one thing dries up or the price goes lower, that's going to be a huge problem. And they probably needed, who knows, I'm not an economist, there probably was maybe a way out, but it would have involved a lot of, I'M guessing, short term pain and planning and all that and stuff that like is hard to do when you've been subject to so many like revolutionary takeovers and instability and all all that kind of stuff. Like it's, it's hard to have that kind of institutional knowledge when you've been so disrupted throughout history, like they haven't had a long, stable, calm period, like the US, relatively speaking, has been able to have, where we've gotten a chance for our best and brightest to kind of flourish. It's a different situation. And the other point is, the social spending, you can point to it as a problem. But it's not like when tHere's a big crash, if you're capitalist, the people do better. And if you're you're socialist, they don't. You know what I mean? Like when the great depression happened here, yeah. And the recession that sucked, you know, like that wasn't like better for us because we were capitalist and especially the great oppression, the route out of that was a lot of socialist programs.

0:36:37 Lydia: Oh, yeah. Just look at the, I was going to say the recession too. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

0:36:50 Thomas: And either way, if you have some sort of force, like, especially when you're dependent on one product, like oil and that crashes, it doesn't really fucking matter how capitalist or socialist you are. You could have been all in on capitalism, but it's just just oil capitalism, you know, and then you'd be fucked. Like if you had a kind of capitalism that included more competition and like movement into different industries and diversification, I don't know fucking how that, how you force that or whatever. Or like if the socialism was the reason that didn't happen, I really doubt it. I really doubting. I doubt it because that's not what determines major country. Like oil was like 50, 60 % of it's like GDP, you Know, like how did the socialism do that? You know, like, well, I don'T even understand the claim there. And it's It's just so simple minded again and again.

0:37:36 Lydia: It's also like more believable, like reflecting back on the recession, capitalism did make that happen. Right. Like that is actually the cause of the recession was capitalism. Yep.

0:37:48 Thomas: Lack of regular, a hundred percent lack of regulation on a specific instrument in mortgage, all that stuff that we saw. What's her name? Explain.

0:37:55 Lydia: Margot Robbie in the bathtub.

0:37:55 Thomas: All right. And yeah, exactly. That's explained it pretty well. Like that is directly a result of failure of regulation. You know, what's really interesting is even now, whenever I see posts about like, hey, there's another coming crisis, it's coming. We're getting another crisis. And there's, you know, there's definitely reasons for pessimism. But one thing a bunch of people will chime in and say including people who kind of know what they're talking about in my opinion is like yeah no this is bad but like we can't actually have that same housing crisis like everyone wants to say like it's going to be the 2008 so you know seven eight nine housing crisis yeah and it's like well something bad sort of like that could happen but that was a very specific credit default swap trading bullshit thing it's not to say it's impossible that something equivalent could happen but it is actually true that if you just fucking regulate the problem in certain ways, it can greatly mitigate your risk.

0:38:28 Lydia: The bubble's about to burst. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, it insulates. Yeah right.

0:38:48 Thomas: It's a really interesting thing. I learned a lot about it in like 2011. I kind of took on my own like an economics class that talked about it. And the way that that happened is really fascinating. But basically an entire market became dependent on an asset that was fake. I mean, it's not dissimilar to like Enron, like, but our whole country, or not our whole company, but a whole industry, like the housing industry, when it all is based on something that's revealed to be like, like, oh, this is actually bullshit, it quickly crumbles. And we have regulated, at least as of now, who knows if that'll get reversed or something. And a lot of it, a lot the protections have. It's funny, I had to pause for a second while I was trying to remember. I was thinking of the timeline. I'm like, wait, I was in college a little too during the crash for it to be this. I was think of Sarbanes -Oxley. So we learned a whole bunch of stuff in accounting school as a result of the SarbanES -OXLEY Act of 2002, which was directly in response to Enron and World WorldCom and some of these other things where it's, again, it's the same story every time where it's like, oh shit, we weren't regulating enough. We weren't keeping a good enough eye on this stuff and a massive fraud happened. In the same way, Dodd -Frank reformed a lot of that stuff. And then what'll happen is they'll be like, well, things are going well. It's sort of like if you have a severe mental health problem and you take meds to make it better, and then the meds make you think you're fine. You're like, I don't need those. Fuck, why am I taking these for?

0:40:05 Lydia: Right.

0:40:05 Thomas: In that same way. And that's not to stigmatize that. That's something I struggle with. In the same way, when the cure is something like regulation and then all of a sudden the crony capitalists are like, hey, look, we're doing great. We don't need this regulation. That should have slowed us down. And it's like, no, that's the thing that's keeping us from collapse. Collapse. And they have undone a lot of it. Now, some of it, I remember learning in Sarbanes -Oxley that act and others. Some of it will be like, oh, this is a little too burdensome. But yeah, it's like you're trying to prevent a crisis. There's going to be stuff that's like, ah, that's a little Too Far. And then you can always, if you have a functioning Congress, you can dial it back.

0:40:40 Thomas: You can dial It in. But that's obviously not what we have. Point is, all of this was to say that rather than taking these very silly Reagan -esque looks at like scary socialist countries versus great capitalist countries and how amazing they are. There's a lot of nuance there. And capitalism has huge problems that can be very well mitigated, if not solved in many cases by regulation, something that is dirty socialism, you know?

0:41:05 Lydia: Yeah.

0:41:05 Thomas: Oh my gosh, we got to get back to this. Here we go.

0:41:07 Clip: New York can somehow reinvent this wheel. You're in a rude awakening. Zoran can't make your wishes come true.

0:41:25 Lydia: Feels a little racist.

0:41:26 Thomas: That is the cringiest thing I've ever heard in my fucking life.

0:41:33 Lydia: Yeah, the joke or the laugh or all of it.

0:41:36 Thomas: All of it, all of it together. Together it's racist I think but it's also so dumb that I'm like well I mean is it just because Zoran and Zoltar are z words I don't know but

0:41:49 Lydia: Maybe I guess that's probably what he would say if he was asked about it from

0:41:53 Thomas: Zoltan isn't that the thing from big yeah it's like from the 1988 movie big yet another reference it's so funny when he the structure of his joke Joke two, man, this joke can't work. I was almost going to try to find a way for it to work. This joke can'T work. It's terrible. It's a terrible joke, but it even more doesn't work when the framing is you're thinking of something that you haven't thought of in 20 fucking years

0:41:56 Lydia: Big. Yeah it sure is. I know a lot about Big too. Yeah yeah.

0:42:22 Thomas: Minimum, like something that literally no one is thinking of. If my joke is that's not Zoran, you're thinking of obscure as fuck. Well, okay. It's not that obscure. Like people will know what that is, but It's from 1988. No one was thinking that. It's Not a joke. Like at least find a way to craft the punchline that doesn't involve a direct contradiction of you're thinking of something you haven't thought of for fucking 40 years yeah

0:42:46 Lydia: I think it also could have given them an opportunity to reference something that wouldn't make us all feel like this is a little racist. Like, this feels a little uncomfortable. You drawing this comparison between this brown man and this brown um

0:43:00 Thomas: Well, ironically, I pulled up—well the zoltar picture he has in the graphic is very white looking but it's like it's even worse that's why I was like even more cringe because it'slike white lookingbutwithvaguelyagain again, it's 1988 racism. So like vaguely Middle Eastern, like facial hair sort of, or like also Indian. It's just awful. It'S just, you should not be calling to this other than to make fun of 1988's racism. Like, it'S just a mess, man.

0:43:07 Lydia: Yeah, that's not, yeah. And garb yeah

0:43:30 Thomas: Like there's no reason. This joke isn't funny. No one was thinking of that. I know it's just a joke, but it's just a way to craft the punchline that works as little as possible. Like it just doesn't, all of it is bad in so many ways. It''s it's irrelevant and it's racist it's the most cringe thing and the people pretending that's funny it's just like unbelievable the

0:43:51 Lydia: Now I will say even if the machine looks kind of white their logo the company itself their their logo zoltar speaks

0:43:57 Thomas: Company what company was this a real thing or in the movie

0:44:00 Lydia: Oh yeah, no, no, this is a real thing. I'm on their website right now. I can order a machine if we want one. But their logo is most definitely a brown man, a person of color. Yeah.

0:44:10 Thomas: Okay yeah yeah no it's just funny because the skin is very white in the picture but I yeah this is I love this because if you go on the wikipedia this is fucking 19 teens and 19 aughts level racism like that's when these date from they're that old and fucking racist they're from 1904 that's like the first one I get that it's a reference from big which is slightly closer to now but the fundamental racism at play here is from 1904 Oh my God

0:44:33 Lydia: So crazy. And if you would like some of this racism at your house, just let's see, it's about $8,000 for the economy model. Nostalgic model is $13,000.

0:44:51 Thomas: Dear god no no no don't even don't even do it. No, I'm pushing play. I'm out. No one should spend money on that. Listen to this extended applause for Zoltar.

0:45:05 Clip: Democratic socialism is like a dating profile. Things look great until you meet up in the real world. For example, Bernie Sanders, his big thing was always bringing single-payer health care to our country of $340 million. But when liberal tie-dyed Vermont tried to do it for a population of 626,000, it collapsed like that poor fuck in the Oval Office last week.

0:45:16 Thomas: You ready for this? All right. That's at least a reference that happened within the last century. If he wasn't making it in service of a fucking pro-capitalist empire point is not a terrible punchline. Now, I just want to ask Bill, what even are you, man? Look, we know that he's just very conservative. He's basically a libertarian. And people do the the thing online where they, they always want to exaggerate and be like, no, he's a Republican.

0:45:56 Thomas: He's not a Republican, but he's not going to vote for Trump. But, like, he's also not left. I think he's, he wants a few libertarian things. He can recognize that Trump's an idiot at least, but he also, you know, went to dinner with him or whatever, but like, he thinks of himself as on the left. I think. He probably would say like, oh, I was on the left, but the left left me or whatever. But like, is part of that, that you're against single-payer health care?

0:45:57 Lydia: He would say I'm classic yeah yes yeah that that's him I could have sworn that in the past he's also been like for

0:46:27 Thomas: That's what is killing me. It's like, we're to the point where you're doing Fox News punchlines. Like, I know, again, there's elements of him that are super right. He's anti -left. I won't say he's right. Like that's a key thing. Fox News is anti -Left and right -wing. Many of these personalities like Bill Maher are mainly anti -left and then conservative as well, but they're not right - wing. They're not trying to advance right -wind projects per se. Say.

0:46:49 Thomas: They're just usually useful idiots for the right by being anti -left or they also have some conservative beliefs. But like, it's just weird because like Bill Maher has been a defender of Obamacare. I'm not going to do a whole fucking research project on his stances, but it's just weird to all of a sudden be like, wait, your whole point here is that single payer can't work? Like literally can't. Look, it'd be one thing to say single payer might be impractical in the 340 million whatever of the U .S. I disagree, but like, okay, that's one thing you're saying. We'll set that aside. But then to say, here's why it's impossible. It wouldn't even work in a place that has 600 ,000. Like that's the point you're going to make is it couldn't even work in Vermont because of some fundamental flaw in the very concept of single -payer healthcare.

0:47:39 Lydia: Yeah

0:47:39 Thomas: Buddy, there's other countries. Don't you know there's others? There's other countries.

0:47:42 Lydia: Also I I think like when we talk about the funding for something like single -payer health care it often is derived by taxing the one percent you know additional. How many of those people are concentrated in Vermont?

0:47:57 Thomas: Like who knows? We didn't, this wasn't something we were going to research for this. Oftentimes when things like this happen, to your point, often it's Republicans killing them and then saying they don't work. Obamacare, which I think is kind of what you're saying, like if they don't give it enough money, if they don't tax enough people, if there isn't the tax, I doubt it's that there wasn't the taxpayer there because it's just not that hard. Single payer is just not that hard. But the other thing is when you're a state within the United States is terrible health care system. You're also kind of limited. You know, You can't just like, we're a single payer state and that's going to solve all the problems because there's a lot of people around your state that then you need to figure out what to do with them if they come to your state. Like there's all kinds of problems.

0:48:37 Lydia: Yeah, exactly. I think when you look at it at a state level, it definitely is a lot more challenging than if you look at from a federal approach.

0:48:44 Thomas: Exactly. And I guess just broadly speaking, it's one thing if he wanted to argue that maybe, you know, for the United States, for some reason it'd be too hard. But his argument structure is, no, it can't work. Like it literally can't even work, right?

0:49:01 Lydia: Yeah.

0:49:01 Thomas: I mean, he's saying, you want to do it for this? This, well, look where they tried it in this tiny place. And it just doesn't work. Like just, just to make sure we're all on the same page here.

0:49:08 Clip: But when liberal tie-dyed Vermont tried to do it for a population of 626,000,

0:49:22 Thomas: Does he say any more? Let's see. Mandani. Jesus Christ. You know, I think it was so funny that the first one he did was like, technically he got it right. And then it was like oh, were you wrong, Lydia? Were you wrong? And then he proceeds to mispronounce it seven different ways since then. First, he said he managed to squeeze out a Mandani like when it was very, like he kind of mumbled it, but I think because he was reading. And then after that, he was like, Danny. And now he's just, did he say Mondami or Mondan? He might've said mom.

0:49:42 Lydia: Mm-huh. Uh-huh. I know. I'm feeling pretty good.

0:49:58 Lydia: I don't even know if I can recreate the ways that he's mispronounced his name.

0:50:00 Thomas: I know. Now I've done the thing where like, when you say a word too many times and it's not a word anymore, I've been like, I don't know. I've done that with mom Donnie's name. And I keep like forgetting it. Let's see what he said.

0:50:14 Clip: Bernie, AOC, Mandani.

0:50:17 Thomas: Man, Donnie, man, Donnie.

0:50:17 Lydia: Mandani. Mandani, yikes. That's really wrong.

0:50:25 Thomas: It's just not that hard of a name.

0:50:26 Lydia: No, it's not.

0:50:27 Thomas: It's just not that hard.

0:50:29 Lydia: If you can't commit to pronouncing his name correctly or not even pronouncing as you said it's if you can't commit to getting the letters correct of a person's name then maybe you shouldn't be covering them I'm gonna say like maybe you should spend that time practicing the

0:50:34 Thomas: Saying sounds yeah god I'm sure he made fun of george w I'm not gonna look it up I'm sure he mad fun of George W. Bush saying nuclear nuclear versus nuclear is harder than mom donnie easily easily it's not even nuclear is a weird word mom donny is not even hard to say mom you know that word donny you know those are two english names mom is something you've said that a million times. Everyone says mom, arguably.

0:50:48 Lydia: Name yeah yeah yeah donnie like donnie osmond

0:51:08 Thomas: Donnie, as in Donnie or like Donnie you're out of your element. Those are two very American sounds. Mom, Donnie. That's it. Oh, when I put them together, man, I can't do it. Why is it so hard when you put them together?

0:51:15 Lydia: Now put them together yeah need to do like a miss rachel approach to it mom donnie mom donny yay oh

0:51:25 Thomas: Oh my God, someone needs to do that. Oh. I was going to make the more Bill-Maher-esque reference to the old Sesame Street one. Mom, Donnie, which I think you should give me a pass for because it's Sesame Street, but it is very old. But somebody needs to do that parody for all these fucking old white assholes who all of a sudden can't read.

0:51:38 Lydia: Yeah yeah it's fine that's classic it's like it's good yeah

0:51:47 Thomas: God, that's a, hon, you just had a brilliant idea. No one take it. That should be a TikTok or someone already. Ooh, that is.

0:51:48 Lydia: Okay no one take it I'm gonna go get my head my pink headband my pink not headband and overalls no one's done it I'm pretty positive no one's on it

0:51:56 Thomas: That's pretty good. I mean, it sucks that we didn't think of this a month ago or whatever when it was more in the news. But it's like if someone wants to take the time to make a super cut of everyone mispronouncing sing Mom Donnie's name, and then Lydia can do a Miss Rachel of it. That's a good idea. Yeah, yeah. Email us.

0:52:08 Lydia: Yeah and I'll send you I'll send you a clip of me yeah I'm serious

0:52:13 Thomas: Lydia at SeriousPod.com. Yeah.

0:52:20 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:52:20 Thomas: Well, folks, unfortunately, once again, blabbed too much, and I got to call it here because I was going to try to get through the rest of it and rush it, except it just keeps getting dumber. In the end, he starts going off about Democratic Socialists and stuff that I have so much on. I watched a whole Democratic Democratic Socialist Convention. Yeah. Yeah, I put it on. Yeah I was like I'll put this on you know in the

0:52:33 Lydia: Too yeah yes you did oh I love that I did not know you did that and I love every second of that yeah Yeah.

0:52:46 Thomas: Background and I did that and like I have a lot to say. I actually might have some surprising thoughts on that but there's too much. We're already now and we gotta go pick up our kids.

0:52:56 Lydia: I don't want to rush through that. And I'm sure the audience doesn't want to rush Through that. Yeah.

0:53:00 Thomas: So I was trying to make this a two -parter but yeah socialism got us. We tried Here's the thing. We tried to give our listeners too much taxpayer -funded social podcast programs, and I starved a million people to death because of it. Man. Yeah. Man, Danny.

0:53:10 Lydia: And SeriousPod network has collapsed as a result.

0:53:22 Thomas: Oh my God. Bill Maher sucks so bad. But I guess we got to cover broadly the socialism ones mainly. He's not done with that, but I guess I'll try to ease off that in part three and not go so much. Because there's a lot more he talks about people and socialism and communism as though they're the exact same thing. There's a lot to come.

0:53:22 Lydia: Yeah, of course.

0:53:40 Thomas: There'S a Lot of Dumb to Come,

0:53:42 Lydia: I think this is a good metric for us to take, though a nine minute and approximately nine minute Bill Maher clip turns into approximately three episodes of where there's a woke.

0:53:51 Thomas: And we're going to have to struggle to keep it to three, to be honest with you. I'm putting my foot down. It'll be three. To your point, it could be four or five easily, and I'm looking at the timestamp. We did get through roughly a third of it in the first part and almost a third of it.

0:54:04 Lydia: Okay yeah okay all right

0:54:07 Thomas: And the second part. So it's, you know, I guess we could have expected that maybe if I'd done some math,

0:54:12 Lydia: It's our Bill Maher to episode conversion

0:54:14 Thomas: God, just amazing how wrong he can be per minute. Like it's just so stupid. And here I thought we had all the time in the world to like, make fun of how not funny he is, but I don't regret it. I don'T regret it for a moment. Cause he's so fucking not funny. It's so bad. All right. Well, we'll get on that part three right away and we'll have it to you soon. Soon -ish, but we were trying to do two parts. So it might be not as soon as we were hoping, but we'll give it out to you. Thanks for listening, everyone. Bill Maher sucks. Any closing thoughts on this section, hun?

0:54:18 Lydia: Rate oops

0:54:47 Thomas: All right. Valid. That is a valid, valid take. Thanks everyone.

0:54:43 Lydia: Oh boy I no

0:54:51 Thomas: Next time. That's so good. Such a good idea. And you could even put in like a picture of a mom and a picture of Donnie from Big Lebowski or something like, it's not hard. Mom, Mom, Donnie, not hard. It's not hard, amazing. God, it's amazing. Mom is the most basic thing that English-speaking humans probably learn. Yeah, like most of them in America. Okay, their second word. You're right, the second word is too hard.

0:54:51 Lydia: Mom Donnie yay yeah yeah Some kids, it's their first word. I think Dada is most but yes that's okay yes Thank you.

0:55:23 Thomas: Next time on Where There's Woke, Bill Maher is an idiot on Democratic Socialists. See you then.

0:55:50 Thomas: Cars, aren't they awesome? We can't afford healthcare. We've had to sell all our lights. Oh when I put them together man Jim lawn. No, I can't do it