WTW140: $3 Million Anti-Woke Program, 1 Enrolled Student

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. 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 140. I'm Thomas. That's Lydia. How you doing?

0:00:47 Lydia: Hi, pretty good. How are you?

0:00:49 Thomas: Well, I'm doing well. Looking forward to what you've got for us today.

0:00:54 Lydia: Yeah, I think what I want to do is I want to, I would say lighten the mood. But I feel like on this show, it's rarely light. We're usually talking about things that potentially have some like real consequences, right? But I wanted to do it's been a while since we've done like a little more of like a roundup style, you know, in the news, sort of show. And so I wanted to touch on a few things that have been hitting my woke Google alert. And I think there's there's some fun stuff in there. There's some heavier stuff in their little bit of everything today.

0:01:28 Thomas: Is your Google alert woke? Or is it woke? Okay.

0:01:31 Lydia: It's literally woke. So I'll get alerts about people waking up from comas as part of my Google alert, like man woke up after 20 years.

0:01:41 Thomas: Yeah. You're always really woke when you come out of a coma. You just like, we need a woman president. Wow.

0:01:47 Lydia: Yeah, it's really easy for me to filter that out and be like, well, I'm not going to cover that on the show. I don't know. Yeah. Really touching story. Could be.

0:01:54 Thomas: Is it a good one? There might be a really good one. Yeah.

0:01:58 Lydia: I could be missing out on a lot of good material there.

0:02:00 Thomas: Yeah defund the police uh my god he's what he's awoken he's woke yeah does it wear off trump uh taxes too

0:02:05 Lydia: Yes. Yeah, exactly. The number of hours you're awake, it like reduces your wokeness quotient. I'm pretty sure. Yeah. So there's a few things I want to talk about. Just quick little teasers. Little House on the Prairie that is a yeah holla yeah yeah so there's a new reboot from netflix and I want to talk about that a little bit because there were fears I mean honestly I grew up with it like a lot of you know millennial and you know women a little Bit older than me some gen x women I don't know Grew up with it. It was kind of a big deal, kind of big deal. But I want to talk about the reboot a little bit and some concerns about how woke it might be. And then I want to talk a

0:02:13 Thomas: High what what no I don't know the way he said that he said it like it was like you're in the comedian and you're like yeah well hello detroit little house on the prairie anyone yeah just because you're a big fan that sounds

0:03:01 Lydia: New center for civics and constitution, whatever the name is, you know, that they come up with for the university system in West Virginia. I want to talk about that because that's been hitting the headlines as well. Andthen we're going to close out with a couple of Florida news items. Folks have probably seen that the Stop Woke Act, as it relates to higher education, you know, colleges and universities, was stopped, I guess, with the Court of Appeals and I think the 11th Circuit. However, I want to pair that news with something that is more concerning. So we're probably going to end on a little bit of a downer. But yeah, I think we're gonna have a lot of fun still on the way.

0:03:46 Thomas: Like wait we get buried going that's too much there's so much stuff

0:03:49 Lydia: Yeah, we gotta go. We gotta do it.

0:03:51 Thomas: Anyway I just woke up out of a coma all right well we're gonna get to all that let's take our first break hey support the show patreon.com/ where there's woke skip the ads wake up from a coma guaranteed and make the show happen and get bonus stuff where's

0:04:12 Ad: [Ad break 1 — ad music]

0:04:12 Lydia: All right, first up, Little House on the Prairie. Did you ever read the books or one of the books in the series, Laura Ingalls Wilder? It's like 90 years old at this point, I guess. That series is quite old.

0:04:22 Thomas: Woke it was after my time yeah I feel like I'm 120 so I think no

0:04:25 Lydia: God, you're old. I'm pretty positive your sisters have read these books. You've heard, oh my God, that is so crazy as someone who was a girl. It's just so nuts to me.

0:04:32 Thomas: Yeah I've heard of it I'm not a little girl yeah I never was a little Girl that I know of

0:04:42 Lydia: All right, fine. This hits core nostalgia for a lot of millennial women, like I said, Gen X women. And Netflix just put out its reboot on July 9th, so just a few days ago. I haven't had a chance to watch it. You know my schedule. I'm a busy person, but I will be watching it at some point. I think so. Why not? It's only eight episodes.

0:05:03 Thomas: Okay well wait is it too woke or not woke enough I guess it depends on whatever you're gonna say about it

0:05:06 Lydia: Great question. Great Great question. Yeah. I mean, both, I guess is the short answer there. The second season is already greenlit and the reviews they're coming in, you know, we have 75 % on Rotten Tomatoes. Not terrible. Not terrible for something that's a reboot on Netflix. You know, I don't know. I'm not completely disturbed by that. But as I said, Laura Ingalls Wilder's books, the series Little Little House on the Prairie is from the 30s. And the reboot, as I understand it, and I have not watched it yet in full, I intend to, I've watched the trailer. But from my research, the reboot leans more into material that was from the book series, as opposed to the 1970s series that is is well -loved by girls all over the country. That was a Michael Landon show. Did you have never watched that either? Wow. Oh, my goodness.

0:06:04 Thomas: No I have no idea what's happening so what when is the settings written in the 30s yeah

0:06:08 Lydia: Little House on the Prairie? Yeah. Yeah. So Little House on the Prairie takes place in the, I guess, late 1800s.

0:06:16 Thomas: So it was like 40 years ago when there so it's like if I wrote something about the 80s weird

0:06:22 Lydia: Yeah, yeah, pretty much. So the Ingalls family moved from, I think they were originally from Wisconsin.

0:06:30 Thomas: Is this a real family oh

0:06:32 Lydia: Yes, it's a real family. So Laura Ingalls Wilder wrote this based off of her family and their experiences going across the West, basically, or I guess the Midwest. West. They ended up settling in the Dakotas, as they were known at the time. And her father built their house and they had various experiences with indigenous Americans in the area. You know, she writes about the illnesses that were prevalent at the Time and that impacts members of the family. They lived in Kansas and Minnesota, but essentially they, yes.

0:07:05 Thomas: Why you love this so much there's says they lived in places and talked

0:07:12 Lydia: Well, no, but it's about like surviving right like this family they don't really have anything at all and they um face hardships and push through and and her father builds their house and then she grows up and we we grow up with her in a way she finds someone she falls in love with and yeah I don't know it's just like this interesting story of a like kind of prairie life I'm little house on prairie

0:07:39 Thomas: Oh it's in the prairie life genre

0:07:40 Lydia: Hence the title. But it really like helped illustrate, I guess, what some of those experiences were for families at that time. When Slate's critic wrote about this after it was released, she said, quote, There's no other way for me to put this. Netflix did indeed woke -ify Little House on the Prairie. Some of their closest friends that they develop are indigenous Americans, as well as there are black people in this town and there's a black doctor and a black storekeeper.

0:08:14 Thomas: Woke bullshit my prairie's white in my childhood

0:08:21 Lydia: Exactly. Would it surprise you to know that the woke concern, the backlash about how woke this might be, didn't start when it was released? It started well before then. Yeah. OK. OK, Megyn Kelly, a year ago, tagged Netflix directly on X and said literally a year ago when they announced that they would be doing this show a year ago, the second it was announced. I think she's obsessed with Little House on the Prairie. I think it really means a lot to her because as I was searching for like, oh, did she ever cover this specifically on her show? I didn't find her concerns about the potential for it to be woke, but I did find her interviewing members of the cast from the 70s version. I saw her speaking about Little House on the Prairie more generally, but nothing about the new Netflix reboot yet on her show. But a year ago, she said, quote, if you woke up by Little House in the Praerie, I will make it my singular mission to absolutely ruin your project.

0:08:42 Thomas: A year ago don't you dare make the house black yeah

0:09:23 Lydia: So she was very serious about it.

0:09:24 Thomas: What a grown-up, what an adult did she get exposed to lead or something

0:09:26 Lydia: Yes. I don't even know. But I was so curious, but I was like, where did this fear come from? And I do think she really cares about Little House on the Prairie as intellectual property, I guess. I don't know. She's not related to the Ingalls Wilder family as far as I know, but she does seem to really care about it. But I think there's also just this through line of conservative talking points related to Netflix and how they potentially woke-ify everything, I guess. And so I want you to play the clip I shared. This is from a congressional hearing regarding the potential merger between Netflix flicks and warner brothers well oh yeah not little house on the prairie but you'll see uh and this took place in february

0:10:04 Thomas: I thought it was like regarding the wokeness in little house in the prairie

0:10:14 Clip: Netflix content is synonymous for the modern phenomenon of race-swapping both historical and real and fictional characters. Netflix changed Cleopatra from Macedonian to Black.

0:10:25 Thomas: My god oh jesus what yeah

0:10:28 Clip: Achilles changed from Greek to black. Netflix overtly sexualizes children in its Cuties film related to preteen girls. You mentioned earlier that you can you can block for titles. I'm not sure blocking the word cuties would shield kids from the over sexualized content in cuties so I'm not sure that's sufficient enough. Netflix it continues to push sexual and gender theory on kids and maybe this is what was being referred to earlier. 41% of g-rated kid approved series contain LGBTQIA plus content you are the seat

0:10:30 Lydia: 2026 very woke yeah that's woke maybe

0:10:41 Thomas: Walk for time my god yeah

0:11:04 Lydia: Because there are families that have

0:11:05 Clip: Co-ceo you were the chief content officer until recently yes or no does

0:11:06 Thomas: How many what percent contains straight content disgusting straight content

0:11:11 Clip: Netflix stand by its content production decisions Senator Schmidt we

0:11:16 Thomas: No we hate him fucking hate

0:11:18 Clip: Have a great deal of programming on Netflix for all left right and center we have state-of-the-art tools for parents to manage what their kids see on Netflix You could block anything what you just described is exactly how it works. You block that title, but why would I block cuties? What what what what would if a g-rated? Movie came out called cuties. Why would I have any belief as a parent that would be related to over sexualized kids? That film you're speaking of is a ma rated adult movie for adults not for kids and The point the larger points are is that of all the American values that we all share and I understand parent it is hard I understand it's a difficult world that we all navigate but the one we value a lot is the First Amendment a lot of that is freedom of speech and I get it I get I want to do is give creators a place to tell their stories and parents a place to control I have no problem with a wide variety of content that's not the issue this is America but well I guess the point I'm making is that your company

0:11:50 Thomas: Him an idiot

0:12:14 Clip: Has made overtly political statements has moved an agenda of DEI of Susan Rice on your board the founder of sort of Barack Obama's DEI agenda 99% of your your employees contribute to Democrats to the tune of hundreds of millions of dollars, your content's over-sexualized for kids, you're engaged in this very woke programming, overwhelmingly, you do have some other options, why in the world would we give a seal of approval or a thumbs up to make you the largest behemoth on the planet related to content? It seems as though you have engaged in creating not only a monopoly of content, potentially, but the wokest content in the history of the world so forgive me if I'm a little concerned not only as a parent but also that somebody believes that we ought to

0:12:14 Thomas: I don't like your content DEI what yeah

0:12:23 Lydia: Yeah it's nonsense they're based out of Los Gatos, California by the

0:13:01 Thomas: Sure

0:13:02 Clip: Have a wide variety of content options there are some but the overwhelming majority of your stuff right now is overwhelmingly woke and it's not reflective of what the American people want to see good afternoon everyone and

0:13:13 Lydia: Way all right

0:13:15 Thomas: Weren't they the ones that did like the I mean just look at their comedy bullshit

0:13:19 Lydia: Yeah look at their comedy bullshit also look at the catholic church and we want to talk about sexualizing kids

0:13:27 Thomas: Shit do they have are they streaming

0:13:27 Lydia: Like what what are you talking about no they're not but I I guess I'm just saying like going off at netflix about that kind of stuff it's just so ridiculous and it's not just Congress that is spending their time going after Netflix about how they are supposedly like the greatest contributor of woke content in the history of the world. What a claim. But also the Capital Research Center, a conservative organization, they have a series on YouTube called Instruments of Woke. And Netflix is one of those instruments of woke, apparently. They They also have an episode, TikTok, Local News is an instrument of woke, Twitter, this is, you know, several years ago before Elon Musk took it over, the National Lawyers Guild, and Teen Vogue. So those are the instruments of woke. Yeah. Oh, I know. Yeah.

0:14:09 Thomas: Sure it is yeah well teen vogue is woke as fuck actually that's for real they what did they do they had some good articles that yeah

0:14:22 Lydia: Some really good journalism out of Teen Vogue. Yeah, I think they broke some of the sexual misconduct stuff.

0:14:27 Thomas: Maybe you have something like that

0:14:28 Lydia: I can't remember which one particularly. So all of these claims are being thrown around, you know, even before the show came out about how woke it was going to be.

0:14:35 Thomas: I just wanted to say like I love that like I'm not we don't don't have to be in a position of like hey how dare you you should let netflix merge with whatever to become the biggest conglomerate it's funny because like I am not in favor of that I don't give a shit don't let them do yeah but the idea that it's because they don't imagine if they're just like I don't think your shows are very good I'm not I'm voting this down like imagine if that was your reasoning so stupid like your reasoning should either be there's a monopolistic concern here or not like that's your dumb job you dumb idiot

0:14:51 Lydia: Exactly. But for different reasons. Yeah, because DEI. Yeah. Or not. Right. Right. Exactly. Not to grandstand about this. Yeah the backlash was so incredible that the original laura the character laura based off of laura ingalls wilder the author of this series melissa gilbert actually came out after megan kelly's I guess this is the initial concern and backlash megan kelly comments she said the the concerns about that this is too woke she basically said like have you seen the original that the The original series covered things like racism, addiction, nativism, anti -Semitism, misogyny, rape, like like serious, serious topics and handled it, you know, to the best of their ability in the 70s. But like that, I don't know. I think back on like some of the other shows I know from the 70S, like All in the Family, where it was like they handled things and the way that they responded to certain stuff and like what you walk away from it, you're like, oh, that was kind of progressive, you Know, ultimately.

0:15:13 Thomas: Too many black people in your shows I'm not letting you become a behemoth probably I mean most shows it's show business it's hollywood or or it's, you know, artists are always going to be a little more progressive. It doesn't mean in every case, but yeah, often TV relative to the time too. A lot of it looks horrible now, but it's like relative tothe time it was progressive, but we're

0:16:26 Lydia: And the showrunner has since come out as well after it's been released. She specifically told Variety in an interview that people are, quote, worried for no reason and that she actually thinks conservative viewers are going to like the storyline regarding the indigenous Americans if they actually watch it.

0:16:46 Thomas: Super racist about it. You're going to love it. They're, they're portrayed terribly. It's going to be, you're just wait, just wait.

0:16:54 Lydia: In an interview with The Wrap, she said that the term woke has been a victim of semantic drift and now stands as a, quote, catch -all for things people don't like, which I think is kind of fair. When we're talking about like the backlash that we see from conservatives, they just say woke to try and get hits on media.

0:17:14 Thomas: I think I would argue there wasn't a time before that. It never meant anything when they used it. I mean, I think it kind of did when it was coined, you know, in the black community somewhat, but it's never, once it was used as a hate term by the right, there's no content to it. It's just a container for everything they hate.

0:17:35 Lydia: She went on to say, quote. The standard definition of woke, as it had been for many years, was to be aware of social justice and inequality. I think that is a good thing. Any show that I would ever do would have those feelings because I believe that those are important human qualities that we should all aspire to. And that Kansas, one of the places that the Ingalls family lived during this period, was a contested state for a while. Interesting place. They were moving there very shortly after the Civil War. So exploring what that would be like and that it wouldn't necessarily be a utopia, that there is going to clearly be racism at that time in Kansas in particular. So basically saying like hey have you even watched it also these are human qualities we're trying to portray and if that's woke then you've warped the meaning of woke so basically jury's out jury's out I haven't seen megan kelly's review of this I don't think she's watched it yet I have been waiting patiently on her youtube I check it regularly to see what she's up to and she has has not chimed in yet about Little House on the Prairie. I hope she does. I really am curious. I feel like if she doesn't chime in, then she either didn't bother and didn't watch it or watched it and realized that she was an idiot a year ago.

0:18:52 Thomas: Never will have it. You know, I'm just looking at the Wikipedia for the books and it's like the depictions of minority section. It said the Little House books include depictions of ethnic minorities, including a heroic black doctor who saves the protagonist's family. Certainly. Certain criticisms of the books, however, have noted portrayals of Native Americans. These criticisms highlight the negative depictions of Native Americans' presence in the books as well as obliviousness on the part of the book's characters of their occupation of Native American land. Boy, this sucks. Listen to this.

0:19:22 Thomas: An incident related to Wilder's depiction of Native America occurred in 1998. 98 what that's normally wikipedia is not written this badly is ai taking over fucking everything anyway when an eight-year-old girl read little house on the prairie in her elementary school class in the book a minor character says the only good indian is a dead indian to this pa responds he didn't know about that he figured that indians would be as peaceable as anybody else if they were let alone the girl came home crying her mother is oh I can't pronounce the tribe name but as a citizen of the Wahpetonwan Dakota Nation and a scholar of Native American history challenged the school's use of the book in its classroom. This event, among others, prompted the American Library Association to investigate and ultimately change the name of the Wilder Award to the Children's Literature Legacy Award.

0:20:20 Thomas: Yeah. So here's what I want to know to these assholes. What would they actually want? You know, do they actually want okay no you need to keep the racist portrait because like here's the thing that's interesting and it's sort of a horseshoe theory of woke because it would actually be really interesting in a way if you kept the main characters racist then it would be like yeah see these white assholes basically colonizers or whatever like coming out and stealing land and being shitty about native americans that would be interesting in its way but they would hate the shit out of that. They'd be like, oh, great.

0:20:57 Lydia: Now they're the bad guys. Of course.

0:20:57 Thomas: Now the white people. Yeah. But then if you also try to quote unquote fix it so that they're cooler, then are they happy? I don't know if they're happy about that. And the weird thing is maybe they'd be happier about that, but then that's kind of in a way, like not super cool. Cause it whitewashes stuff, you know, but I saw like, I don't know which thing they want and which makes any sense in some ways. It's kind of hard. You know, I was thinking about this when we were watching Enola Holmes 3 with Phoebe talk about woke you know those movies can't do anything without pointing out like how awful you know a lot of like Empire was you know the British have and it's interesting because part of me is like I don't know if that you can do it another way these days which is probably good in a way but it's also weird because it kind of rewrites people at the time like maybe some white savior characters and and stuff that isn't entirely accurate, possibly. So I don't know. It's an interesting thing. I don't think there's like a straightforward woke versus anti-woke divide. I think that it really depends on what you want to do.

0:22:04 Lydia: Yeah. I think it's interesting. Like when I think about material that our kids are going to potentially watch, like, I, as a parent, I don't necessarily need the lessons within the thing we're watching, but I would love like something to accompany it that I could use to kind of ask questions, you know, to ask my kids after the show or like additional material regarding the history of whatever. I would love that I think that would be so cool but you know that's obviously additional work for parents yeah

0:22:33 Thomas: I think what really does it is honestly just be accurate. Because I think idiots, most people don't think that the past was as bad as it was or something. Like they don't realize how racist it was it doesn't mean you have to always depict like the worst stuff but if it's accurate it was like that brief time when it was like oh we're only a couple HBO miniseries away from like learning history because it had the sun downtown and all this stuff was like each week of Lovecraft Country it waslike holy shit here's another thing that was and it's yeah exactly it's like make it real like that's what's interesting if you make it real that does inspire people to be like wait wait a minute. What? Oh yeah. The other one was the Tulsa massacre, I think. Yeah. It's like, everyone's like what the shit? Cause we're not taught this.

0:23:04 Lydia: And it was like actual real history yeah yeah yeah what did I not learn about why was I never taught yeah exactly nope

0:23:21 Thomas: So like, yeah, keep your care, white characters, whatever. But like do some real depictions of stuff that happened and then people can be like, oh shit, what? And then they Google it and it's like wow.

0:23:28 Lydia: Yeah and consume more information about something that actually happened and maybe it'll help change their minds about things yeah yeah I think that's great

0:23:32 Thomas: Yeah, it's kind of, I think that's a good way to do it.

0:23:40 Ad: [Ad break 2 — ad music]

0:23:40 Lydia: Let's shift into reality a little bit now we got to step away from because I want to talk about West Virginia, of all places. West Virginia in 2025, they have a Republican legislature, and they mandated that the West Virginia university system create something that they ended up calling the Washington Center for Civics, Culture, and Statesmanship. And let me read the legislation behind this. This is House Bill 3297. This center would be located, educated, and operated at West Virginia University, it's established for the purpose of creating and disseminating knowledge about classical Western history and culture and American constitutional thought and forming future leaders of the state through research, scholarship, teaching, collaboration, and mentorship. Yeah.

0:24:26 Thomas: Sorry. I just heard a tone while you're reading that. Cause what is that uh

0:24:29 Lydia: Yeah. Classical Western history. We saw it in Florida. It's this thing that Hillsdale started and then all of these public universities now are creating that they are creating their own classics center because Western civilization is on the verge of extinction, apparently, unless we teach more about it. So they say the center's goals shall include but not be limited to the following to enrich the curriculum in American constitutional studies, including the core texts, influential thinkers and great debates of Western civilization to educate university students in political philosophy, constitutional governance, yada, yadda, yedda, to educate University students in the foundations of responsible leadership and informed citizenship and to cultivate future generations of leaders in the state to offer university wide programming related to the values of open inquiry and civil discourse. Course. So hosting those debates and those particular speaker series with folks like Christopher Ruffo who come through and talk about things or Charles Murray. It's a very, very easy thing for them to have Charles Murray come on and talk to students about his quote unquote research. The center shall adhere to the following policies. They shall educate students by means of free, open, and rigorous intellectual inquiry to seek the truth. They shall equip students with the skills, habits, and dispositions of mind they need to reach their own informed conclusions on matters of social and political importance. They value intellectual diversity and a bunch of other stuff about like their budget and expenditures and the roles of various people. But I think if we look at the governor as he signed this legislation and he announced the leader for the Washington Center of Civics, Culture and Statementship, we'll get a better idea of exactly why this thing was developed. He said, in quotes, I'm going to to send you a link to we can watch a little bit of this that it exists to quote push back on the woke ideology that has infected our schools so that's really why we're here let's get a little bit of a taste of of what he has to say

0:26:23 Thomas: This guy already is just

0:26:23 Clip: It's great to be here it's a wonderful day quite frankly for the future of higher education in West Virginia. Earlier this year, when we established the Washington Center for Civics, Culture, and Statesmanship, we emphasized that we wanted to renew our commitment to civic education. We said we wanted to teach students how to think, not what to think. And we wanted to ensure that the values that made America great are taught with honesty and pride. Too many universities today have lost sight of what higher education is supposed to be about. We've seen it across the country. Many of them have become echo chambers for political ideology where dissenting opinions are not only discouraged, but they're punished. As your

0:26:25 Lydia: Yep that's that's

0:26:50 Thomas: But also what to think sure

0:27:19 Clip: Governor, I can assure you I will not tolerate that type of political indoctrination on my watch. In West Virginia, we want to encourage students to think critically, but also to explore competing ideas. We want our students to be truth seekers through honest debate and not shackled by those who want to stifle opinion. And that's the vision behind the Washington Center. We wants students to to be able to study the Constitution and our country's founding and not be punished for celebrating the achievements and advancements and the freedom that's made the United States

0:27:54 Lydia: No one is punishing anybody Anybody.

0:27:58 Thomas: Aren't yeah so wait are you allowing the viewpoint

0:27:58 Clip: The greatest country on the face of the earth. That's why today I'm proud to announce we found a wonderful person to lead that mission.

0:28:02 Thomas: That those things were bad oh steve

0:28:09 Clip: It's my honor today to introduce the new director of the Washington Center for Civics, Culture and statesmanship, Dr. Patrick Lee Miller.

0:28:22 Thomas: Hitler wow barf into the mic oh

0:28:27 Clip: Dr. Miller is an accomplished scholar and a passionate advocate for restoring excellence and balance to higher education. He believes deeply in the values that make America exceptional, and he's committed, along with the team he's putting together, to teach students how to think critically and independently and to help them develop the intellectual humility to listen, to learn, and to grow. Dr. Miller and the Washington Center are going to push back against the woke ideology that's infected our schools, help return higher education to its true purpose. The Washington Center is going to educate and inform, but most importantly, give students the tools they need to reach their own conclusions.

0:29:14 Lydia: Yeah, yeah. Super boring.

0:29:14 Thomas: Boring God, wake me up when it's done and that's

0:29:19 Lydia: So this center got $3 million from the West Virginia legislature as part of their budget, honestly. So here's the other piece of it. This came out right after West Virginia University had to absorb a $45 million budget shortfall. They had to cut 28 academic majors and hundreds of people lost their jobs. And then the legislature was like, but here's taxpayer money for specifically this center. It's opening for fall 2026. It has 19 courses that it's offering, including ones literally titled Woke, the New Right and Decline of the West.

0:29:28 Thomas: Like all the money that west virginia has too

0:30:03 Lydia: These are titles of the courses that they are offering as part of the center. And the reason why this has been making its rounds in the news is because $3 million, 19 courses. This guy, this Dr. Patrick Lee Miller, is making $300,000 a year, I think, as part of this. He's one of three faculty members for 19 courses, apparently. I don't know how they're doing this. As of July 9th, one student had enrolled. Yeah, literally one. A single person is enrolled in this program that cost the taxpayers of West Virginia $3 million right after hundreds of people lost their jobs at West Virginia University.

0:30:48 Lydia: Insane. They have a student body of 26,000 and one student is enrolled in this three million dollars for a student 19 courses available within this thing yeah and this particular student they've enrolled in three of the 19 courses that have been offered

0:30:47 Thomas: Oh my god what sorry so it's a what what is exactly the structure of it just this poor poor student I actually kind of feel better under a microscope now yeah it's like the one person it's not the only person it well their uh their gpa by the way is uh

0:31:12 Lydia: They haven't been doxed yet so I've looked around yep

0:31:19 Thomas: So we just like tell everything about them because they're the only person in

0:31:22 Lydia: Yeah exactly exactly it's crazy that all of these things are happening and then you like literally carving out three million and paying a director $300,000. And then you have two other faculty members and it's all for a single person. Yeah.

0:31:38 Thomas: It that's are you really that's insane

0:31:40 Lydia: Yeah, it's been reported in multiple news sources.

0:31:43 Thomas: What is this thing called again oh the

0:31:44 Lydia: It's called the Washington Center for Civics, Culture, and Statesmanship. While you're looking into that, let me share a little bit about Patrick Lee Miller. So from his Substack piece that he titled, Why am I here about this? He said, it's really long. So he's a philosophy professor. And you

0:31:55 Thomas: Washington's no really why what's happening yeah you gotta justify that that payroll you're

0:32:03 Lydia: Can tell when you look at his sub stack, it is a very long article. And he quotes tons of philosophers. There's a lot of Plato and Socrates listed in there, whatever. But he says at one point, freedom of speech is one of our dearest constitutional rights. But no wonder the truths that embarrass the gods of the city go unspoken. Even in the early 19th century, de Tocqueville described a mob burning the press of a heretical newspaperman. Americans who think heretical thoughts fear to say them aloud. Indeed, as Socrates learned, merely to ask questions about our news gods is enough to merit punishment.

0:32:35 Lydia: The discipline goes deeper than speech, however, and has seeped down into thought. Many feel the sting of guilt even when they contemplate this blasphemy in the silence of their own mind. Don't believe me? Try this at home. It's crazy. Try this this at home when no one is watching. Look at yourself in the mirror. No, yeah. Look at yourself and call to mind one of those words that will get you instantly canceled nowadays. Then say it out loud without flinching.

0:32:35 Thomas: Getting what this is this is a shooter's manifesto oh this is great yeah you're good oh wow that's then bloody mary Bloody Mary, Bloody

0:33:12 Lydia: If you can't do it, you are caught in this ideal. The net has tightened noticeably in the past decade. Yeah. Yeah. I know. Yeah."

0:33:14 Thomas: You can't do it this is insane that is that is actually insane this is great holy crap

0:33:27 Lydia: And then later in the piece, he does a little call-out to something that we covered on this show previously. A professor of history at Harvard for 40 years just resigned and left for the Hamilton Center at the University of Florida. His reason? The most prestigious history department in the country, if not the world, had become too hostile to Western civilization. Yeah.

0:33:44 Thomas: What was the real story on that guy just fucking sucked I forget it usually goes down in my memory if that guy sucked

0:33:48 Lydia: Yeah, he's just he's like on his own, just kind of doing his own thing. He intended to retire because he didn't like the covid policies. He announced that he was going to retire years before. And then finally, when his retirement came up, then he released an entire article about how history at Harvard was being taken over by the woke and he was gonna go go somewhere where they appreciated Western civilization. Yeah.

0:34:08 Thomas: My god yeah Yeah, this is hot off the presses, too. Governor Morrissey's office has issued a statement in response to official reports showing only one student is enrolled in the new Washington Center for Civics, Culture and Statesmanship at West Virginia University, which costs taxpayers $3 million. The Washington Center is just getting off the ground, and we're going to judge its success over the long term, not by one early enrollment snapshot.

0:34:35 Thomas: Someone made a comment. The Titanic has only had one voyage. We need to judge its performance over the long term.

0:34:33 Lydia: Now, I do have potentially a preview of what's to come because this exact model, as I mentioned, exists in Florida. It exists in other states, too. And I have an idea of where this might go. But before we get there, just very quickly want to touch on. Yeah, yeah.

0:34:55 Thomas: I'm sorry. We can't move on from the guy being like, Hey, you know how bad this is? You know what I do sometimes when I'm all alone, I go and look in a mirror and I think N word. And if I can say it, some of you probably can't say it. And if you can't like, what are you fucking insane? Are you absolutely insane? This is a mental illness. Like I say that as someone with mental illnesses, I

0:35:01 Lydia: Go look in the mirror. Say the N word. Truly.

0:35:10 Lydia: Think it in your head. All right. Now, if you've beaten that test, now say it out loud. It's

0:35:20 Thomas: Don't mean that in life, but like this is an actual cognitive problem that these people are having. There's like, yeah, they're like they're disturbed. They are there. This is what are you doing? What are you talking about?

0:35:26 Lydia: Disturbing. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

0:35:33 Thomas: They're just so ruined by propaganda that they can't—their brains can't work anymore. Like you got to study it like some sort of brain eating disease. I don't know. It's just crazy.

0:35:45 Lydia: Yeah it is remarkable, honestly. A political science professor out of West Virginia University, Eric Herron, said, quote, the Washington Center ironically seems to be exactly what it complains that higher education has become. It's a top -down government mandate about what a university is going to be offering and saying that, well, we're trying to fight top-down ideological imposition, I guess, which is what it's supposed to be against by doing it. Yeah, exactly. It is. It's very silly. A state delegate, a Democrat who voted against creating it in the first place, John Williams, says, now we're in a position where we've allocated so much money and only only one person is taking advantage of it. Like he's just tired.

0:36:11 Thomas: By doing top down. Yeah god

0:36:27 Lydia: He's so annoyed. And that Republicans are coming back and they're saying, well, you know, so here's the thing. The courses that we're offering in this don't count towards degree credit yet. So of course, enrollment is going to be low. Why is this offered? Sort that out then before you offer it. Make it so people are actually going to take this freaking thing. Yeah.

0:36:27 Thomas: That's so good yeah can you imagine can you imagine if there was a woke equivalent to this stupid fucking shit

0:36:52 Lydia: Oh, they would be losing their minds.

0:36:52 Thomas: If it was like we have a new class on pronouns the whole thing is pronouns and

0:36:59 Lydia: And it doesn't count towards anything.

0:36:59 Thomas: Pronoun theory yeah there's no it doesn't give you any credits but like eventually god these fucking idiots

0:37:04 Lydia: Yeah. And not only are we going to take taxpayer money to fund this thing that doesn't count towards anything, we're also going to ask students to pay credit hours for this thing. That doesn't cost anything. They're going to continue to acquire debt for this. And because, you know, pronouns.

0:37:19 Thomas: I just found the uh Instagram. I don't know if you found that.

0:37:22 Lydia: Oh, I didn't look at that. No.

0:37:23 Thomas: Well, the first post is the, why am I here? Which is really funny when you look at it, how it is. Cause it, yeah, like on the Instagram, it's a picture of probably AI George Washington or something. No, I guess it's their real like logo or

0:37:27 Lydia: God, I know. The title is so funny. Yeah. Their mascot. They're the George Washingtons.

0:37:37 Thomas: Something and it just says, why Am I Here? And it makes it look like George Washington is like, why AM I HERE? Like, what am I doing? Why did you put me in your stupid anti-woke thing? Yeah it has 115 followers though you know yeah

0:37:45 Lydia: Why did you summon me in this seance? Yeah.

0:37:51 Lydia: Oh, my God. Yeah, exactly. Wanting to know what's going to happen here. But I mentioned just a second ago, like, this is not specific to West Virginia. They are modeling things that have happened in other states. Iowa is one of those states. They had the University of Iowa's Center for Intellectual Freedom, and it's had the same enrollment problem. That center has existed for a bit and their enrollment has been so bad and they only had two one credit hour classes that they had offered. They started small as opposed to the 19 courses that West Virginia's program was launching immediately and one person's taking three classes. They had two one credit hour classes. And for the enrollment from the first year that they offered this, one of those classes had eight of 32 seats filled. The other had 11 of 32 sheets filled. So they spent, again, in Iowa, taxpayer money to create this center that nobody wants, that 19 people participated in over the course of the year. An entire report came of this because of the low enrollment. Based on a report from the Common Sense Institute in Iowa. They basically said the only way to fix this is if you require students to take classes in this center. So that's exactly what Iowa lawmakers did. And it was signed by their governor, Kim Reynolds, in June. So starting in fall 2028, all undergrad students at University of Iowa have to take the two classes that are offered at the Center for

0:37:52 Thomas: Most of them are like you and I like following it because we hate it oh my god

0:39:30 Lydia: Intellectual Freedom just to fix their enrollment problem because they funded this thing. So now they are forcing students to meet the government requirement and something else requirement. They have to go specifically to the center. Now, here's the other thing that's terrible about this. I said that they only have two classes. They only have one professor.

0:39:50 Lydia: They have 22,000 undergrads at this college, at University of Iowa. So we have 22,000 undergrads that, beginning fall 2028, all 22,000 at some point have to meet those two classes in this one center with one professor. Yep. Yep, and the professor is its interim director. They don't even have a full -time director right now.

0:39:50 Thomas: Oh my God you gotta be kidding really Wow, what if you were a student who's going there like for real reasons like before you just have you know I'm sure it's a functioning school right or was Okay, but did you see this guy sorry I'm back on West Virginia you because there's a reel or whatever that's him doing like an advertisement for yeah have you seen this oh man we gotta I think we need to I think I need to see this

0:40:17 Lydia: Yeah, I'd be pissed. Yes, yeah. Yeah. Mm hmm. Patrick Miller. OK. No. Go ahead. Play it. Yeah.

0:40:38 Clip: Charlie Kirk was a hero of free speech. I do. I'm a professor at WVU and the director of the new Washington Center where you'll be able to speak freely without fear in pursuit of the truth. Are you writing essays that conform to your professor's viewpoint just to get a good grade? Stop. That's not an education.

0:40:40 Thomas: Do you think Charlie Kirk was free speech? Why is it this music, no, no one's doing that no

0:40:56 Clip: That's an indoctrination. Are your conformist or are you a leader? If you're a leader, this is why you should take courses at the Washington Center. This This fall, we're offering almost two dozen courses on modern controversies, American ideals, and their roots in Western civilization. And when it comes time to speak, we're not going to tell you what to say, but we're going help you find what needs to be said.

0:40:57 Thomas: One does that. It's just a football coach which, sure.

0:40:57 Lydia: It's so annoying. Yeah God.

0:41:07 Thomas: Modern controversies? Oh, my God. It says, this isn't an ad. This is a chance for free scholarship cash. Meet Professor Dr. Patrick Lee Miller, the guy who's bringing, caps, hard edge to WVU. The guy who is bringing hard edge. What? Miller is the director of the brand new Washington blah, blah, bla. Not the woke soft edge slop you get in your typical college classes. Yeah, yeah.

0:41:42 Lydia: God oh my God also invoking Charlie Kirk's name is such a marketing ploy too because that that's exactly what happened in Iowa Congresswoman Marionette Miller Meek suggested naming their center University of Iowa's Center for Intellectual Freedom after Charlie Kirk. Charlie Kirk as part of the budget bill that they were putting forward. I don't think that went through. It's still just the Center for Intellectual Freedom. But if what happened in Iowa is any indication, and they had more than one student enrolled in their courses for their inaugural year, what we would be looking at at West Virginia is also potentially mandated students having to you participate in this taxpayer-funded program that nobody wants. Nobody wants it. So dumb. Okay.

0:42:28 Thomas: I wasn't done by the way don't know what statesmanship is it just means elite leadership having the raw grit and wisdom to guide people through massive crises like george washington or abraham lincoln did uh your major gets you a job this minor gives you the academic grift grift gives you the academic grit to lead it to celebrate the launch they're are dropping eight massive scholarships. Top prize gets $5 ,000 every single semester for five semesters, $25,000 total. The homework, a quick cover letter and 1 ,000 word essay. That's like a tweet.

0:43:02 Thomas: A quick cover letter and 1,000 word essay on why free speech is under threat. Why free speech under threat? Yeah, are you tired of writing essays that conform to your professor's ideology? Well, just write us this essay on why Free Speech is under Threat and how to protect it. Oh boy. I love it because does this mean that the one person who's attending has to have gotten this $25 ,000?

0:43:18 Lydia: Incredible. Or they didn't, and they're like, oh, man.

0:43:29 Thomas: Yeah. That's funny.

0:43:30 Lydia: I hope they get it, I guess. I don't know. Otherwise, other people are going to get it and they have to pay the full amount.

0:43:36 Thomas: And then someone commented, this is what we got rid of the world language department for?

0:43:41 Lydia: Yes, exactly.

0:43:41 Thomas: Oh boy, I mean that is just crazy. Absolutely crazy.

0:43:49 Ad: [Ad break 3 — ad music]

0:43:49 Lydia: Yeah, all right. So, you know, I name-dropped Florida, us, we got to do some Florida news too.

0:43:54 Thomas: Man, I'm so sad because all I want to do is talk about this guy and this other story. It was too good of a a story but fine I will try to move on

0:43:59 Lydia: I know, I know. Yeah, this is a good story too. So for a very long time, colleges across the South have an accreditor that is called the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on CollegES. It's very long. They're actually going to rebrand as of September, the Commission on College and Universities. I'm very thankful for that because that's way too long of a name. They go by SAC, SCOC. And yeah, that's ridiculous. Anyway, this is the accreditor for all colleges and universities across the South. And they've been around for decades. They as an entity were the ones that threatened to strip Mississippi's accreditation in 1962. If Mississippi lost accreditation for its schools, it would lose federal funding unless Ole Miss admitted James Meredith, a Black student. He won his case in court and Ole Miss was still not allowing him to attend school. And they did something in Georgia too. So like this accrediting body has teeth to make things happen, to carry out civil rights corrections that have been happening in history, especially in the South. But now Florida has decided that they're going to build their own accreditor and it's called the Commission for public higher education, a state cannot accredit its own colleges and universities. And so this has to be a multi -state program. And it is becoming that because Texas, North Carolina, South Carolina, Tennessee, and Georgia have all joined in. So now you have a group of states and they can accredit each other's public universities. That gets around this existing federal rule that you can't accredit yourself directly. And it gets you out of this longstanding accreditation body that you might not align with politically. There's money behind this. Florida put in $4 million to initially launch it. North Carolina paid $2 .35 million. The Department of Education at the federal level is also funding this. They gave them a grant for a million dollars. They're trying to make this a full accreditation buddy by 2028. So why this matters? First of all, it's crazy to just build your own accrediting body.

0:46:14 Lydia: But when you look into the standards for this new accreditor that Florida is basically building, there is language saying that, quote, affirmative favoritism of certain ideas on campus is fine if the campus culture is seen as already tilted toward other ideas. So if a school is seen as being too liberal, that in the name of balance, you can push the other way, and you get to maintain all your federal funding as a result.

0:46:34 Thomas: Is seen as yeah how do you define that so I remember when we were talking about that they made their own ap courses that were stupid I'm kind of fuzzy weren't they doing this same thing or is it slightly different than

0:46:52 Lydia: Yeah, it's slightly different. So they basically created their own version of college board, which would mean you could get college credit for these classes that they are developing. But this is an accreditor saying that the college or university that you go to, it matters if it's accredited, right? If you get a degree from a non -accredited school, it holds less weight. If you're trying to transfer to a different school and you're in a non -accredited school, it's not going to do anything. So they want to also have their own accrediting body so they can enact their own particular standards on whatever they feel like they want. Whatever Ron DeSantis basically wants for their colleges and universities and not have to answer to this other accreditor much in the same way. They don't want to have to enter to the college board with regard to the material that's going to be taught as part of the AP classes. Yeah.

0:47:44 Thomas: That just makes your whole own reality just and we're gonna make our own government and all our own jobs and all all oh wait they are doing that never

0:47:52 Lydia: DeSantis really, really hates the existing system. He refers to it as an accreditation cartel. And then friend of the show, Isaac Kamal, has actually commented on this. He's still affiliated with AAUP, American Association of University Professors. He says, quote, it becomes a way to use political leverage to make sure that the ideas that the politicians prefer are reflected on college campuses. And a professor out of Appalachian State says these attacks on higher ed are fascism in practice. Like literally what we are saying, it's a way for someone to say, again, if perceived, if it is perceived to be that way on campus, there is no issue for you pushing the other way. And what are going to be the expectations for proving perception? What would that even be?

0:47:58 Thomas: Mind god I think it's so funny how much they think these stupid ideas they're so brilliant and dangerous whoa if you think whoa free speech controversy explosion noises you can't handle this level of thinking and really it's like nobody is shocked by this we all already know your dumb conservative ideas it's not that everybody's too scared to say them is that they're dumb and only dumb people say them and then they feel shamed by being dumb because everyone else is like that's stupid and then instead of thinking maybe this is dumb then they think no you know what it must be that it's controversial and they're just too afraid to say that it is and like they've created a whole ideology around that and the whole side that talks about participation trophies and all that fucking stupid shit it's participation trophys times a billion, where they're like, we're going to make our own participation trophy making factory because you won't even give us the trophies because, you know, because you're biased. You want to give us. So we made. We made our own trophy factory. And then we also have to. OK, there's a so instead of the normal organization that certifies the factories, we have our own trophy Factory Certification Factory that is also not your woke bullshit. Shit. And that's going to certify the factory, which is going to give us. It's just so fucking stupid.

0:49:59 Thomas: All of that is for a big participation trophy. That's the entire thing is from the, from, they're just like vertical integration of the supply chain of participation trophies.

0:50:09 Lydia: No, I think that's actually really accurate about what's happening here. An advisor for this new accreditation body has tried to push back and says that the intellectual diversity language that you see in the standards isn't about ideological balance. It's about, quote, a balance of ideas students are exposed to. Okay?

0:50:29 Thomas: Well, okay. I changed my mind. I didn't know it was the same thing you've been saying for 16 fucking years god why

0:50:36 Lydia: And so like when we're talking about this, like Florida has already pulled introduction to sociology out of core curriculum for all of their universities because they said that it was, quote, social and political advocacy dressed in the regalia of the academy. Yeah. Introduction to sociology. Too woke. Pull it out.

0:50:43 Thomas: Introduction to sociology you can't even be introduced to sociology? Wow, sounds like a dangerous

0:51:00 Lydia: Yeah. Here's the other thing, too, is because Florida started this system, they poured the most money into it. They've created the bodies that are coming up with the standards and everything surrounding this new accreditor. They largely control it, but because Georgia, Texas, the Carolinas, they've all signed on to it. They haven't moved all their colleges off because this isn't actually an officially accredited body. But I don't see the Federal Department of Education under this administration saying no. Now, even if you get a Democratic governor in the following years, all the universities in that state are tied to an accreditor that they don't control that's tied to Florida politics, essentially. And if they don'T follow whatever that accreditor says, then they lose federal funding. This has some pretty significant impacts at all of these colleges within many states at this point. What's interesting is the timing of this happened to be basically like right after the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled on something related. They ruled on the Stop Woke Act, specifically the elements that tied to regulating university curriculum. They said that those provisions in particular for higher education were unconstitutional. This was banning professors from quote endorsing certain viewpoints on race and gender in the classroom and and basically said this was a violation of their free speech it wasn't unanimous it was two to one we'll see what florida decides to do next if they want to take it up to the supreme court I don't know but the majority opinion was written by a trump appointee so that's interesting and then a clinton appointee joined that the dissent was from a trump appointeeso it's kind of like a mixed bag here and the opinion said uh quote if the first amendment offers any boundary of protection at all for public university classrooms, this statute crosses it, obviously. And later, puppeteering every university professor in the state is not one of them with regard to that professors are not state talking heads just because the state pays their salary. So we have the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals saying you cannot dictate the viewpoints of professors in your state colleges and universities. So here's a workaround now that Florida's figured out. They say, okay, well, now we're just going to create our own accreditation mechanism. And then through the standards there, we can manipulate what's happening on campus. Even if we can't control what a professor says within a classroom, wecan basically create an entire culture that's now tied to federal funding if it gets crossed.

0:51:29 Thomas: Idea does that work though does that actually bypass whatever

0:53:45 Lydia: That's what they're trying. And it hasn't been raised legally yet, if there's concerns there, I don't know. I wonder what entity would be taking that to court. Maybe it would be like the American Association of University Professors. I'm not sure. So you don't have to ban viewpoints by statute. You just make it a condition of accreditation. So it's not the government censoring speech. It's an accreditation body censoring speech. But because the Florida government is solely behind it, I, yeah, I don't know how you draw those connections, but it does seem like a tougher battle to have in the courts. So we'll see. I mean, I don't know how that's all going to play out. Like I said, I don't see the Federal Department of Education pushing back on this at all. I do see other nonprofit organizations or professor associations maybe getting involved in trying to push back with concern here, but I DONT know what kind of weight that's going to have. It's interesting. It's interested, but IT'S brewing right now. And Florida is definitely a hotbed for stuff that's going on. West Virginia is apparently too. But Florida, Florida we've known about and I feel like we've had to do our little visits here and there. And this is another one we'll be keeping an eye on because clearly what gets modeled in Florida happens in other states in the same way that like what happens in California for like certain progressive things gets modeled and other states. But this is one where something's happening in Florida. And because Florida cannot accredit its own schools, they need other states and they've been

0:55:14 Lydia: Able to get other states to sign on to this. So now we're looking at something where it's not just an insular situation. It's actually like a little network of conservative ideology that could permeate the entire public school system.

0:55:27 Thomas: Like a pyramid scheme kind of like a multi-level market

0:55:30 Lydia: Kind of. Yeah. Yeah, it's like, like racketeering or something. I don't know. What is racketeer? It's it sounds right. It feels like the mafia to me. I don't feel like the Mafia feels

0:55:38 Thomas: Now it's like racketeering I don't know what racketeerings is it a racket yeah no I mean that's racketeers doing a racket you know like ah this is a racket yeah I'm trying to think what it's like is it's like the the subprime mortgage crisis or something where it's like they're all signing off on each other's things and then there's actually no there there

0:55:49 Lydia: Rackety to me? Yeah, yeah. Yep. And we're talking about huge public university systems. I mean, the entire college and university system in the state of Texas, that's huge. That's huge, signing on to this. So we'll see. There's probably another year or so, and maybe there'll be some legal challenges in the meantime, but I want to flag that for everybody because if you do have an ear for any professors in your neck of the woods, and especially if you're a state that has signed on to THIS, definitely do what you can to get that pushback to happen now rather than later. So there you have it.

0:56:33 Thomas: Yeah you pack too much into this one

0:56:36 Lydia: I know, I know. We had some fun. We had some scares we had some laughs the whole sub stack yeah yes it

0:56:40 Thomas: I just want to go through this idiot's thing like this whole yeah that it's like crazy it's so long there's one comment oh man

0:56:48 Lydia: Is it is that's what I said it's crazy there's so much maybe

0:56:57 Thomas: I don't know if it lends itself

0:56:59 Lydia: We can do a dramatic reading as a bonus or something yeah

0:56:59 Thomas: To that because it's just stupid it's

0:57:02 Lydia: It's a philosophy professor is going off about yeah the woke

0:57:03 Thomas: A philosophy professor which already I love me some philosophy professors but when they're philosophy professors for evil it's the worst combination of traits that a human can have yeah yeah exactly extremely long -winded jack -off motions

0:57:15 Lydia: Every paragraph is jack off motion jack off motion jack off emotion yeah yeah it's ridiculous not even the fun kind of edging no geez ridiculous Ridiculous.

0:57:22 Thomas: No one's coming it's just no just uh

0:57:52 Lydia: Core nostalgia for a lot of millennial women. Like I said, Gen X women. Core nostalgia. We don't have time for this.

0:57:56 Thomas: Corn nostalgia or corn you're right sorry

0:58:02 Lydia: We have a lot of news to get to.