63 Comments
User's avatar
Brigitte's avatar

I genuinely look forward to your weekly streams

Expand full comment
MikeL's avatar

Same here. Definitely a part of my weekly routine.

Expand full comment
michele burns's avatar

“Ezra Klein is the Paul Revere of mid-wits.” Thank you, Walter. EK is like nails on the chalkboard of my soul.

Expand full comment
Michael Taylor's avatar

BTW- Newton, Maxwell, Einstein, Euler, Pascal were all deeply informed by personal spirituality. Even Galileo’s battle was with the Pope, not God.

It’s hard to see personal religion as an inherent impediment to math or science.

Expand full comment
Noitavlas's avatar

One of the great, perhaps greatest, insights of these and other giants of science and mathematics was to see the hand of the Creator, and the beauty of what He willed into being.

Expand full comment
Susan Russell's avatar

I just got around to listening to I think it was the August 18th America This Week, the one with the ass wipe list. I think they meant baby wipes for a baby and I think they had young kids because of the s'mores cereal.

https://www.amazon.com/Members-Mark-Fragrance-Wipes-count/dp/B07BK74G7W/ref=asc_df_B07BK74G7W?tag=bngsmtphsnus-20&linkCode=df0&hvadid=80814222102156&hvnetw=s&hvqmt=e&hvbmt=be&hvdev=m&hvlocint=&hvlocphy=95998&hvtargid=pla-4584413749907439&psc=1#

Expand full comment
Michael Taylor's avatar

A micro-aggression is one one millionth of an aggression.

Expand full comment
DaveL's avatar

So pico- and nano-aggressions are smaller than micro-aggressions.

Expand full comment
Nathaniel Wilcox's avatar

It's like homeopathic meds. Eventually, after repeated dilutions, there's really no aggression left.

Expand full comment
BevElliott's avatar

The publishers give the politicians big advances, corporate supporters buy the books in bulk and give them away (or warehouse them), the publishers make back their advance and the politicians rake in the legal bribe. The amount of the advance is directly tied to the amount the politician can guarantee their “supporters” will buy.

Expand full comment
Ellen Evans's avatar

It takes a village to achieve the higher calling of becoming filled with the audacity of hope in the room where it happened in 107 days?

Expand full comment
Mattlongname's avatar

While working at Barnes and Noble in college, I laughed out loud at the placement of books on the "bestseller" racks on the day they were put on sale.

An assistant manager tried to convey that there was a process where smart people do smart things and predict correctly.

20 years later, one of us looks REALLY stupid.

Expand full comment
DaveL's avatar

Those new books at the bookstore all look the same. Written by AI?

Expand full comment
Carlos Marighella's avatar

That was a fun episode, guys.

Walter, thanks for referring to John Bolton as Michael Bolton. I've done this a few times myself, and I don't know why...unless John has a hidden talent for singing songs about love in a soulful voice. BTW, love the comparison of him to the CIA creep in "Apocalypse Now."

Thanks also for the "cold equity" revelation; that explains so much.

I also really enjoyed the story about the Uber driver and his theory on Goodwill. The idea that the Department of Weights and Measures has its own police force reminds me of Johnny Fever from "WKRP" and his belief in the phone cops.

Expand full comment
DarkSkyBest's avatar

Great episode, again. But in re. your book title amalgamation, never forget Eric Holder — “Our Unfinished March: The Violent Past and Imperiled Future of the Vote-A-History, a Crisis, a Plan.” The title is 12 pages.

Anyway in our library we have the book, “I Should Be Dead,” by Bob Beckel. That was the kind of Dem we knew and loved, and by the way, so did viewing America. BB was the first token Dem on the new Fox show, “The Five.” He helped establish that show. Period.

Expand full comment
Lance Haseltine's avatar

Walter, the first time I read “THS” I was freaked out by the grotesque and dark imagery. I also thought it was a jumbled mess of sci-fi, horror, fairytale, fantasy, and Christian tropes. The next time I read it, I realized it was a comedy of sorts, and I laughed at how the innocents/little guys/bear beat the tech monsters in the end. So glad you chose this book! Also, I was moved at how you were moved by CSL’s tender rendering of the thoughts of a bear.

Expand full comment
Scott Olson's avatar

Please, PLEASE, Pretty Please review Milan Kundera's "The Book of Laughter and Forgetting." We're living through it now.

Expand full comment
Pete Waters's avatar

A few mayors ago, the mayor of Baltimore, Catherine Pugh, was federally indicted for running a book / money-laundering scheme, where she supposedly wrote a children's book ("Healthy Holly") of which all the copies were bought by... folks who wanted to do business with the City of Baltimore. The warehouse-full of books was never found, i.e., the books were never printed. The University of Maryland Medical System bought, for $500,000, 100,000 books which were never delivered (because they didnt exist). Pugh resigned in disgrace (after disappearing for about two weeks, claiming "health reasons"), and was soon convicted for fraud and tax evasion, and sentenced to three years eventually in jail.

"Forget it, Matt -- it's Baltimore."

Expand full comment
Lori's avatar

Walter is hilarious today 🤩

Expand full comment
Jayhawk's avatar

Book names are much like the names of Subdivisions, which are named for the animals, plants or other natural place they destroyed.

Expand full comment
Ellen Evans's avatar

The American-philosophical problem with "hate speech" penalty enhancements is that is criminalizes motive, i.e., thoughts.

The pragmatic problem is that it creates political "martyrs" so much more easily. It's fairly easy to get behind the idea that murder is NOT a good, even an acceptable act. To state that some motives makes murder worse than others is . . . well, a slide down a perilous slope.

Expand full comment