The Daily Show: Ears EditionBiden Admits U.S. Mistakes While In Israel | Rhihannon Giddens
Michael Kosta discusses the day's biggest news, including President Biden landing in Israel, day two of the House Speaker vote, and a televised yule log fire mistaken for an apartment fire that might also be a stalker situation. People think Americans are gun nuts, but what they really are is bottled water nuts. Michael Kosta dives deep into the U.S.'s obsession with plastic water bottles and how harmful they are to the environment. And Grammy-winning singer and composer Rhiannon Giddens discusses the cultural importance of the banjo in American history, the collaborative work that went into her Pulitzer-winning opera, “Omar,” and the tragic story of Kalief Browder that inspired her song, “Another Wasted Life.”
You're listening to Comedy Central.
From New York City, the only city in America. It's the show that intended news. It's The Daily Show with your host, Michael Doptain.
Welcome to the very Show. I'm Michael cock.
I this is my third night hosting and I'm really getting the hang of this. It's almost like I've worked here for years now. We have a great show for you tonight. So let's get into the headlines. Let's start in the Middle East. The war is now and its second week and shows no sign of stopping. But today President Biden landed in Israel to try to help out.
He made it all the way down.
The stairs, mission accomplished, already off to a great start. And while he was there, he had some important advice for a country going to war in response to a terrorist attack.
Justice must be done. But I caution this. While you feel that rage, don't be consumed by it. After nine to eleven, we were enraged in the United States. While we saw justice and got justice, we also made mistakes.
Wow, wise words from President Biden.
Anytime an American president admits a mistake, it's a big deal. So Israel, please learn from us. Don't stay in Afghanistan for more than twenty years tops, but Biden's right America made some serious mistakes after nine to eleven, Iraq, Guantanamo frosted tips. By the way, I'm sure his visit is appreciated, but as someone who had as a parent roughly the same age as Joe Biden, sometimes when they fly into help it ends up being.
A little more of a burden than help.
Don't mind me, don't mind me, I'm not even here. Just write down all the steps for how to get Hulu on the TV and I'll be five.
Hey, I'm happy to do the laundry.
Just tell me where everything goes and where everything is.
That's kind of what I feel like is going on right now.
All right, let's move on to domestic news and talk about the speaker race.
The Sonos one.
Meanwhile, in the Congress of the United States, the House is having its own speaker race, and it continues to be an absolute disaster.
The House remains speakerless.
Congressman Jim Jordan's second bid to become speaker was defeated on the House floor.
He actually lost some of the support he had in the first round.
The people that are involved don't actually know what's going on.
It is frankly embarrassing.
The biggest circle jerk at the history of circle or jerks.
Apparently you can just say circle jerk on TV. What's next.
Congressional leaders met today and what can best be described as a violent BUUKOCKI.
But that's right.
Jim Jordan lost by twenty votes yesterday, spent all night meeting holdouts one on one trying to win them over, and then lost by twenty two.
Votes this afternoon.
I crunch the numbers and it turns out twenty two is more than twenty, so he's doing even worse. So at this point, three Republicans have tried and failed to get the votes for speaker with no end in sight, which is why now there's a growing movement to just let the temporary speaker, Patrick McHenry keep the job.
And he seems qualified. I mean, he's wearing a bow tie.
A bow tie says a lot about a man. It says that every morning he spends twenty minutes watching a YouTube toy on how to tie.
A bow tie.
And that's the kind of focus you want in a speaker. But more importantly, Congressman McHenry is perfect for the job because he's already there. Sometimes you just got to go with the guy who's already sitting in the chair.
I mean, why keep looking.
He's not fighting up, he's maybe even crushing it. Some people are saying, maybe he doesn't have as many Instagram followers as some of the other guests speaker candidates.
But let's not over complicate things. He's right there.
Just give him the job already, right, Let's move on to a heartwarming story. New Yorkers get a bad rap for not caring about strangers.
It's true.
When tourists asked me for directions, I stabbed them. But thankfully there's still good people out there.
Firefighters responding to a call about a serious blaze inside a Manhattan high rise, a New Yorker is watching from an apartment down the street.
Can't believe his eyes.
From a distance, he thinks he sees out of control flames.
A cold nine one one, and within minutes the streets were echoing with fire engines.
But wait, those aren't real flames, it's the yule log video. Turns out the video was being played on a big screen TV, which made the illusion of a fire all the more real.
From that window.
Oh man, how embarrassing for that guy, especially after last week when he called the police to report that sharknado. Anyway, what a heartwarming story. That costs the city a quarter of a million dollars, And it was nice to see this man looking out for his neighbor safety, although it did make me wonder why he was staring at this particular neighbor's window in the first place.
It was Ally Lion's apartment. I see what's going on here? Go on.
It was a rainy Saturday and I had to work a little bit, so I got my laptop, I made some tea. I put on some candles in the fireplace.
Inside.
EDITION brought the neighbors together, so this is where the fire happens.
I was having a cup of tea.
Oh window, I was having a cup of tea here.
Yeah.
The one thing she's learned.
I really do need to get curtains now.
Yeah, yeah, you do, and maybe some pepper spray while you're at it. For more on this ulogue and or a possible stalker story, we go live to Midtown Manhattan with our very own DESI LIDEC doesn't do Are you actually in that lady's apartment.
Oh no, no, no, I'm at my place. It's crazy. I've got a dangerous fire in here too, just you know, waiting for a super tall European snack to come rescue me.
But that guy who saw the fire was looking into her apartment.
That's creepy, Kosta, were you not listening to me?
He's tall?
I mean, did you see him? He's like if Timothy Schallomey took his vitamins.
But if a guy's basically stalking you through his window, that's not someone you want to date.
No, that's not someone you want to date. For me, this guy's got the two most important qualities. He's interested in me, and his apartment has a window. I mean, did you.
Do you see that guy?
He's like if Timothy Schallomey had a window.
Look.
Even if you're into the idea of a guy noticed you from his apartment, it's just not practical.
This was a one off incident.
Guys don't just stare into random windows looking for fires.
You'd be better off thinking about Excuse me, little lady, I thought I saw a fire at Jackpot.
I can't wait for the wedding. Does he Lidac everybody.
We're gonna take a quick break.
When we come back, I save the planet. You don't want to miss it. Welcome back to the Daily Show. Let's talk about water. It's the thing you hope you just sat in on the subway. According to doctors, we're supposed to drink water basically every day, and in America, most of most of us do that with the help of these The number one package drink in the United States isn't coke or gatorade or even haterade.
It's bottled water.
We Americans buy fifty billion disposable water bottles a year. And I know what you're thinking, Oh shit, another depressing environment story. So can I not even drink water without ruining my children's future?
But that's the thing.
This is one environment story that actually has a really easy solution. And I'm gonna tell you what it is. Another installment of long story short. For most of human history, people got by fine without bottled water, got water from their well or the local stream, or by throwing a virgin into a volcano so it would rain. It was a perfect system for water. Bottles started to become popular in the eighties, mainly for health reasons. In nineteen eighty six, the EPA warned Americans that their tapwater it might be turning them into number two pencils. This might sound familiar to you if you grew up in the eighties or in Jackson, Mississippi. Last week and then marketers smelled money and soon bottled water wasn't just about health, but a whole healthy sexual lifestyle.
Keep your body at its peak.
Drinking avion pure avion spring water from a French house. It's refreshing, it's natural, and it doesn't have one single calorie.
Important.
It goes with good food.
That's what I drink instead of a content. It's what I drink instead of a cook too.
Sure, but you can just say you've got DUI's all right, we've all got duiy's look.
Props to these water companies.
They turned water into something sexy as opposed to something you just need to survive.
These ads were basically.
Like oxygen, it really helps me lay pipe.
So fast forward to today, Thank you great performance. So fast forward to today, and the average American drinks upwards to one hundred and sixty seven bottles a year, usually right before a long haul flight when I'm in the aisle seat. Hey, just be an adult and wear a diaper like the rest of us. Now you might be asking, where does all that water come from the ocean?
No?
I tried that once, I got so sick. In reality, in order to get bottled water to the masses, water companies like Nestleie often suck up water from public lands for little to no cost. It's not awesome, right, we love it when multinational conglomerates find success. The problem is this creates a massive environmental impact. When these companies are called out for it, they come up with explanations like this.
Nelson Switzer is Naslie Water's chief sustainability officer.
Some people say, this is the people's water. Is it fair that you guys make so much money off of it?
Neslie has water rights, of course in this area. From a legal standpoint, of course, it's fair. From a perception standpoint, I understand why people are asking that question. But water belongs to no one.
Oh really, really, NASTI, water belongs to no one. That's the dumbest thing anyone has ever said about water. And keep in mind Gwyneth Paltrow once said that you can hurt water's feelings by yelling at it. If water really belongs to no one, then why can't I go swimming in my neighbor Eric's coy pond?
Why did it scare his kids? Per the police report.
But sucking up all the fresh water is just the beginning of our problems. Making the bottles and shipping them to you uses seventeen million barrels of oil a year. That's enough oil to fill one million cars for a whole year, or grease up Don Junior for one week ANFD plus. Most bottles just get thrown in the trash. Oh but I recycle it, okay, thanks for putting it in the green bin before they send it to Malaysia where they put it in the trash there. And the stupidest part is it's totally almost unnecessary. The majority of the country has access to safe, free tapwater. We're transporting a product from three thousand miles away that we can get from our kitchens. In fact, most of the bottle water we drink is literally tapwater, including aquafina and desani. That's right, Dasani just takes tapwater, adds fart smell to it, and that's how they make it. And maybe you buy natural spring water because it's healthier, but it turns out not always. In fact, the study of Fiji water found that it has more arsenic than tapwater from Cleveland. Yeah, you thought bottled water was safer, turns out it's slowly poisoning you like a wife on dateline. So, considering that tap water is good enough for the vast majority of us, the solution to the huge environmental problems of bottled water is obvious.
Boom problem for all.
Using a refillable water bottle cuts down on fossil fuels, creates less waste, and could even save you sixteen thousand dollars over its lifetime. That's enough to pay for a luxury vacation or sixteen shitty vacations. So, long story short, this is like the easiest choice in the history of no brainers. If everyone in the United States just went with the reuse of water bottles, we'd save money, solve an environmental crisis, And the best part of that is then that's one less environmental crisis you'd have to hear people like me bitching about.
You probably already have nine of these.
Open a cabinet in your kitchen and one will fall on you, and tomorrow start using it.
That's how you save the plane. All right.
When we come back, the incredible singer Rhiannon Giddins will be joining me on the show, so don't go away.
Welcome back to the Daily Show. My guest to note as.
An award winning singer, composer and instrumentalist whose new album is called You're the One. Please welcome Rhiannon Giddons.
Like great, they're great, They're great. Thank you for being here, Thanks for having me, Thank you for chatting with us.
You are a MacArthur Genius Award winner, Grammy winner, Pulitzer Prize winner. You studied opera in college. But this is what really got me. You write all your music with the banjo.
I write a lot of.
My music of the band with banjo and voice and fiddle and whatever instrument I have around.
Yeah, when I think of the banjo, and correct me on this, but when I think of the banjo, I know you will. I picture that scene in Deliverance and it's down in the South and it's scary, and it's Is that an accurate depiction of the banjo?
No?
And that's part of the problem is that media has really warped our idea of how American music came to be. The banjo is an African derived instrument was invented by people of the African diaspora and the Caribbean and African American people are co creators of old time and what became bluegrass music and country music. And it's only in the nineteen yes, thank you.
Yeah, but it's you know, it's really in the nineteen early nineteen hundreds and twenties when the media and how we segregated American music with into.
These different buckets in order to sell it. It just changed our perception and we've lost a lot of our history. And so that's been a drive of mine for a really long time. Is to change is to change that?
Can I be ignorant for a second?
If you like a guitar versus a banjo, I mean, I know they look different, but what's the what is the difference?
I how.
Yeah, Well they come from different I mean, look to break it down, the banjo really is. It is descended from a lot of different West African loot instruments and there's a percussive mode about it. There's on a lot of banjos, there's five strings, a little short string which is a drone string, which means it's in one key and it's so it's very different. And actually the banjo was more popular than the guitar for a long time in America. The guitar is a relative latecomer. So it's kind of like the banjo is like our indigenous instrument. You know, if you are also you have to remember all the indigenous instruments with indigenous people. We were here, you know, before a lot of people came. But in terms of America as a nation state, yes, I mean, but this is they're still here. By the way, they're still here, but in America as a nation state called a colonial state. Whatever. The banjo is. This this co creation between different cultures of working class poor people that you know made it and it's unique.
Thank you for answering that question. I know, is you know, appeasing my question.
That's my job.
Good.
Yeah, So, opera, you're in town to accept the Politzer for this opera called Omar about an enslaved African Muslim that you took the memoirs and converted into an opera.
Explain this, I mean, we went from banjo to opera.
It's all just yeah, it's been really interesting because it was the opposite. I went to Oberlin learned opera, and then kind of got burnt out and went down in North Carolina where I'm from and learned the banjo, and then full circle came back. I was asked to write this opera about Omar and Ben said, who was a Senegalese Qoranic scholar at thirty seven sold into slavery. And it's just an incredible story because we're talking about like who gets to represent the American story, you know, and it's to complicate that narrative. It's all these different kinds of people who represent the American story. And he's went and his autobiography was written in Arabic while he was enslaved, and it's the only document of that kind that we know of in existence, and it's just a really special story. So I just feel amazingly overwhelmed by the fact that I got to make it with Michael Abels, my co composer, and that for the Spiletto Festival, and that it's been honored with a Pulitzer. It's just like it's a dream come true.
That's great, that's awesome. Fasin, this is your latest album. It's great. I love this album cover. This is awesome. This album is a little more playful.
That is that a good word to use totally than your previous albums.
Was that an obvious choice for you? Yeah?
I mean like, for the last fifteen years, I've been that girl at the party on a Friday night that you back away from. Man, you don't talk about slavery or the banjo or both, and I'm just like really not into it. And I just like I was kind of getting burned out and I just needed to change things up. And I had these songs I've been writing over fourteen years and just wanted to explore the other sides of my artistry on this album. Though there is one really important song. Well, you know, the other thing is that I'm forty six and this is the first original record I've ever like all original songs, right that I've made, And it's like my first sol album was when I was thirty six, and so it's kind of like, you do it on the time that it's time to do it, you know, you don't do it on anybody else's you know, you just like you take the opportunities as they come. So this was a really amazing project. With producer Jack Splash to just explore and to also say, bleep the categories, bleep the genres. Right, I'm just saving your guys the trouble later, you know, just like forget like what is blues and what is jazz and what is country?
It's all the same thing.
It's all coming from the same American well of cross cultural collaboration. So I was just like, yeah, put it in whatever box you want. It's just fun music, you know.
I'm really inspired.
I just had two acts that didn't clap once for me, I'm really inspired by what you just said because it feels like everything that I've looked at with your.
Work has true integrity.
But then we're also mixing in the commercialism of the industry, and as someone who's trying to be a comunic artist that make money and also stay authentic and make your work have integrity is near impossible.
I've sold out, of course, But.
Everyone wants to put you in a box. They want to tell you this, So this is your demo. You sell to these people and speak to them. How are you navigating that? How would you advise a younger artist to navigate that?
It's really hard because it's antithetical to making art is the capitalistic system that we forced artists to work within. So we're all having compromises, we're all having to prad out where's our line? And so my line for a long time has been pretty far out. And it's like, I just want to tell these stories. And I've just been really lucky with the opportunities that I've gotten, and I stuck to my guns. I said, I'm doing what I need to do to make the world a slightly better place, or to add to the positive converse. And I come back around and here I am doing it exactly as I want and being you know, getting the MacArthur and being able to do so. I just I tell young people, you got to tell what is your story that you can tell that nobody else can tell, and get people around you who believe in you and your story and who aren't out for what money you can make them. And so I'm surrounded by an amazing team red Light Management, none such, who believed in me and I, you know, waiting for this record. They let me do projects that I really felt, you know, I was really felt passionate about. And so it's really a give and a take and you're part of a team and you just have to have people around you who believe in you.
Yeah, and the passion then comes out in that project.
Yeah. I mean it's way better because you're enthusiastic.
Well, this is it, and this is what people are actually looking for. They might say they're looking for something else, but they're looking for that energy, that brightness, that passion, which you can only get when you're following your arrow, you know, and not trying to be what other people want you to be. And you see that a lot in the industry, and I was just like, you just got to do you.
I love that. I love that. I love that.
Speaking of the story that inspired you, the story of Khalif Browder and the song that you're going to sing for us called Another Wasted Life, you've teamed up with the Pennsylvania Innocence Projects, tell me how this story inspired you.
Well, I, you know, this was a few years ago and I heard about the story of Kliff Browder who was incarcerated. You know, he was an innocent teenager incarcerated for three years and two of those were in solitary confinement, which is horrific. And when he was released finally exonerated because he was innocent. I just keep repeating that he couldn't really readjust to the outside world, and he committed suicide and yes, And I was just like, I couldn't contain my anger at the waste of this young man's life, what we don't get of him. So I wrote this song, I put it away, and then when this album came, you know, came around the idea of this, I was like, this needs to be a centerpiece of this because this is this is what I actually do. This has been really fun, Yeah, but another waste of life is what I do. And so we reached out to the Pennsylvania Innocence Project because it's a huge problem. People aren't aware of how many innocent men are sitting in jail, and men and women sitting behind bars because somebody wanted to close the case, wrong place, wrong time, witnesses telling you know, being intimidated and telling.
Lies, and it's so easy to just forget about it.
This is it. It's so easy to forget about it.
Yeah, And the thing is, it's like, so we're working with a lot of edocence projects, but we especially teamed up with a Pennsylvania Innocence project, and we made a video involving twenty two exonerated men who between the twenty two of them spent five hundred years in prison. Because what people don't understand is that once you are in, it's really hard to let you out because the system is not geared to letting people out, right, So even if you were proven innocent, like Chester Holman at twenty one was convicted of murder and they finally proved him innocent and it took fourteen years, fourteen more years to get him out of prison. He was in prison for twenty eight years for a crime that he did not commit. Right, So it's like, and all of these guys who participated in the video that I made with him and whose images you'll see, they are all doing it because of the guys who are still inside, you know, because there's so many. And they said they're sitting there like in cages, like with no hope because it's so difficult to get out. So organizations like the Pennsylvania Innocence Project need resources, they need money, they need support because getting them out is actually just the first step that's incredibly hard, and then they need resources, you know, to reintegrate and so It's been a really amazing partnership to work with them, because it's like, not everybody. We all don't do things on our own right. We have to do the thing that we do, and then we partner with the folks who are doing what they do and they've gotten so many men out of prison and they're doing incredible work.
The video is extremely powerful, and thank you for being with us.
It's wonderful to talk to. You're an inspiration to everybody.
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