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