Transcript - America This Week, July 17, 2025: "The Reverse Struggle Session, and NPR's Greatest Hits"

Colleges implement conformism tests, funding for public media loses a vote, and journalists fall for a misdirection scam in "Scoop"

Matt Taibbi: Welcome to America This Week, I’m Matt Taibbi.

Walter Kirn: And I’m Walter Kirn.

Matt Taibbi: Walter, how’s it going? I see you’re in your secret lockdown location still, in the basement.

Walter Kirn: Yeah, I am.

Matt Taibbi: Limited egress.

Walter Kirn: I didn’t tell anybody why I’m here because I got kicked out of another hotel, and I’ll tell you why. I had a hotel reservation for a week. I go to my room and I relax and use the lavatory only to discover after having used it that it doesn’t flush. The handle just jiggles loose. So being a home plumber, I take the lid off the toilet and I see that there is literally no chain attaching the flushing handle to the flapper. It’s not that it’s broken or it’s fallen off, it doesn’t exist. It’s not lying on the bottom of the tank. It doesn’t exist. So I go downstairs to the young clerk and I say, “Hey, I found out unfortunately too late that my toilet has no chain between the handle and the flapper.” “Okay, we’ve noted your complaint.” “Well, listen, I’ve got the room for a week. Could you come fix it?” “We’ve noted your complaint.”

Matt Taibbi: What?

Walter Kirn: Dude. “Well, why don’t you call a plumber? When are you calling a plumber?” “Have you heard us? We noted your complaint.” Now this is something that happens a lot these days, these poor young people who have been trained to recognize microaggressions, but not to call a plumber, get a little testy with you. I go back up to my room and I get a call. It’s the last room in the hotel, and they say, “We’d like you to leave.” I said, “Could you...” “We have called another hotel and they have room for you.” I said-

Matt Taibbi: What?

Walter Kirn: I said, “You can just call a plumber.” And they said, “We have called another hotel and we would like you to leave.” So I drag my damn suitcase across town and I get a basement room at the nearest place. So the service industry collapse is just happening as we speak, it’s a total implosion. I see it here every day when you’re traveling and you have to eat in restaurants and go to stores for things you’ve forgotten and so on. You are more in contact with, what is it? Gen Z?

Matt Taibbi: Right. I guess or whatever comes after Gen X. Yeah.

Walter Kirn: Besides being mildly high most of them, they have been trained to give you corporate speak as a response. And they give it to you verbatim, probably because they have cameras on them, above the desks.

Matt Taibbi: Mm-hmm.

Walter Kirn: In any hotel chain or anything like that, they do. And it’s become maddening, so...

Matt Taibbi: That is pretty bad. Yeah. I’m sure that drives... it does wonders for your psyche too, having to say the same thing over and over again, but come on, you can’t have a hotel where you can’t go to the bathroom.

Walter Kirn: I said, “It’s not broken. It’s missing the integral part that causes the flushing to happen. Okay.” “We’ve noted your complaint.”

Matt Taibbi: Could I have a bucket so that I could hand flush it? Anyway, that is unfortunate. I’m sorry to hear that, Walter.

Walter Kirn: Well, there was one other problem. There was very loud music playing directly underneath it. And I thought, “Gosh, is there a club downstairs? What’s going on?” And I went down and it was the kitchen. The kitchen needs to play loud music, I was told, in order to function. And I said, “That’s fine, but the kitchen doesn’t need to have a hotel room over it.” Only one can win, however, and I lost to the kitchen.

Matt Taibbi: The customer is always wrong.

Walter Kirn: Right.

Matt Taibbi: That’s unbelievable.

Walter Kirn: That’s literally what happened.

Matt Taibbi: And you’re in the cradle of the hotel management industry too, right? This is some of the most famous schools in the world are in that region.

Walter Kirn: Yes, hospitality, they would call it. Yes.

Matt Taibbi: Hospitality. Yeah.

Walter Kirn: And I live-

Matt Taibbi: Cornell in one direction, Johnson & Wales in the other direction, and right in the middle, there’s-

Walter Kirn: Right near your old school, Bard.

Matt Taibbi: Yep, CIA. Yep. Mm-hmm.

Walter Kirn: But I will tell you this. Though the Hudson Valley is a caring, gentle place, with all the right bumper stickers, the customer service sucks.

Matt Taibbi: Wow. That is not a flattering story about an area of the country that is near and dear to my heart, the Hudson River Valley-

Walter Kirn: And beautiful.

Matt Taibbi: And very beautiful. And normally, the people are, if they’re not wonderful, they’re usually eccentric, which is fine with me. I think eccentric is good, but that doesn’t sound good. So I’m sorry to hear that.

Walter Kirn: No, I’ve found the right places, I’ve found the good people. I’m a little afraid of Lyme disease, however, because I’ve met a few people who’ve contracted it recently.

Matt Taibbi: Well, you’re right in the strike zone for Lyme disease too, unfortunately. I’m sorry, I can’t lie to you on that front.

Walter Kirn: Yeah.

Matt Taibbi: So we have a lot of stuff to go through today. We also have to play an excerpt from your excellent appearance on The Tucker Carlson Show, which we’ll do later. Congratulations on that.

Walter Kirn: Thank you.

Matt Taibbi: But just first, we’re going to talk a little bit today about the maybe passing of PBS and NPR. There was a vote last night, and we’ll get to that in a moment, which looks like it may be the final death knell for federal funding of public media for a little while, anyway. But before we get to that, there was a story that terrified both of us that just came out in The New York Times that we wanted to discuss, at least briefly. It was called Elite Colleges Have Found a New Virtue for Applicants to Fake. And Walter, do you want to summarize what the story says?

Walter Kirn: Well, it almost defies summary because it’s such a novel idea that it doesn’t sink in with me, but here’s the notion. A bunch of elite colleges, truly elite, Columbia, Northwestern, the University of Chicago, Vanderbilt, et cetera, have signed on to some strange plan to use a software program at Schoolhouse.world. I didn’t know that .world was a suffix for internet addresses, but I guess things are evolving. And so students are going to all log on to a Zoom call. For what reasons? It’s unclear. And then with a peer tutor there, they’re going to debate topics like immigration or Israel-Palestine and rate one another, I’m reading now, on traits like empathy, curiosity or kindness. And the Schoolhouse.world site offers a scorecard. The more sessions, sessions-