Front Burner - The year in pop culture

Episode Date: December 21, 2023

In 2023, Taylor Swift dominated the music industry. Beyonce had a Renaissance. HBO’s Succession ended. Tina Turner died. Online, we debated how much men think about The Roman Empire and Martin Scorsese went viral on TikTok. But more than anything, there was an extreme amount of pink thanks to Greta Gerwig’s Barbie blockbuster. For better or worse, what drove pop culture in 2023? And when we look back on the art we consumed this year… What was it that we were collectively looking for? Culture writer and podcaster Niko Stratis and Elamin Abdelmahmoud, host of CBC’s Commotion, explain. For transcripts of Front Burner, please visit: https://www.cbc.ca/radio/frontburner/transcripts Transcripts of each episode will be made available by the next workday.

In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization, empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. This is a CBC Podcast. Hi, I'm Damon Fairless. When it comes to pop culture highlights, 2023 did not disappoint. I just have never felt this way about anything. The way that I feel about this experience that we have had and continue to have.

I'm good for this company. I'm good for us. You know, we all vote, we keep control, we don't, then everything's over forever. Cap. No cap, that movie is amazing. That means no lying, you know? Yeah, it's like I'm telling the truth. Yeah? How many more of these? There's like four. Angela Baxter did the thing. Viola Davis, my woman king. The lesson is to stop inviting you places. But you can't. Because people want the content. Are you guys ready?

We are ready. For Barbenheimer, because today is... That is just a taste of our pop culture diet last year. To dig into this sumptuous feast, I'm joined by culture writer and podcaster Nico Stratus and Elamin Abdelmahmoud, host of CBC's Commotion. Hey, Nico. Hi, Damon.

Hey, Elamin. Hey, Damon. Thanks for coming on. I appreciate it. So happy to be here. Let's start with the weirdest pop culture bit in my brain, at least George Santos. So New York Republican. That's where you want to start?

A little bit of a penchant for lying. Looted from Congress earlier this month. He's facing a federal indictment of 23 counts. It could lead to years in prison. But at this exact moment, he's cashing in on his considerable talent as a attention vampire on his notoriety tour soon quite well um and it's it's actually kind of bonkers that this is pop culture right so i mean you're up first what what gives why is george santos his transformation to d-list celeb uh so fun to talk about he's way higher than d-list i mean like i to me i think i'd minimum b-list

um george sanchez is interesting to me because he's kind of like an hbo show in one year right like he got elected in november 2022 he got sworn in in january 2023 this calendar year he gets kicked out of the house this calendar year he starts a burgeoning career as a cameo artist, which is like the thing where you pay a celebrity 400 bucks and they record a little video for your family. My favorite TS song is definitely going to be Trouble. I knew you were trouble when you walked in. That's me. Bye.

And then he closes out the year with that interview on Z-Way, who's the comedian slash truth teller of our time. And Z-Way tries to hold him to account. And George Santos' best answer to Z-Way when Z-Way said, how can we get you to go away? And he was like, stop inviting me to your gigs. This man is fully aware of the kind of media monstrosity that he is. There's already a book about George Santos. That book is being adapted into an actual HBO series.

It's like HBO and HBO, Nico. What, what, what do you think, Nico, what does it tell us? What, like the joy we're getting, the elements apparent, almost giddiness. Yeah. Talking about, what does this tell us about, like, what are we getting from this?

What does it tell us about the cultural moment? I mean, there's like a, there's a really easy dopamine hit with somebody like him, right? Because because it's like you want this like caricature of a human life that you we can all sort of point and laugh at and be like isn't this ridiculous while simultaneously wonder how did we get here without ever looking at what the like it's one hand never watching what the other hand is doing this like this thing of like stop inviting me to things stop paying the guy money on cameo to say things that you wrote it's like he's reading an audiobook you're writing four hundred dollars at a time like the whole thing just sort of feels ridiculous but it speaks to people's desire to have something

like a little court jester they can point and laugh at who's like actually like you know has done a lot of really terrible bad things but we can easily forego those things it's the like when rudy giuliani was on The Masked Singer. It's the same idea of like, what if we take this bad person and make him dance for us for a little while? So, okay, this is not America's first rodeo with a politician who some people say

may or may not have a person. Who are you referring to? Who are you talking about? I'll leave that to you. Okay, got it. But do you think we've not learned anything about how to engage with these things? Are we guilty in being complicit in this? Are we feeding the bears, so to speak, the wild animals?

Yeah. I mean, it's basically an ascendancy of con artists, right? There's a real interest that we have in turning politics into an entertainment show. I like not to get Marshall McLuhan about this, but this is literally what he was. I'm going to do it. I'm going to do it. But this is literally the kind of politician that you get, right? Because the whole point about the medium is a message is that the medium ends up transforming

the message. And the politician of the internet age is, of course, someone like George Santos, someone who thrives in the environment of like, I don't know, maybe that is true, maybe it's not, but I can just say slay the boots house down and then everyone's going to laugh about it. You know why I love the Gen Z progressives? Please. I'll tell you why, because they're the future and they need to slay the boots house down in the future so that this country can stay functional. What does slay the Boots house down in the future so that this country can stay functional. What does slay the Boots house down mean?

Conquer everything. And like sort of like telegraph awareness of memes and that be sufficient to keep you in the, you know, in the in the zeitgeist and people keep coming up to you being like, yeah, we should do more interviews with this person. We have not only reincursed this, we have actively sought it out. I mean, literally people are paying $400 per cameo to be like, George Santos, can you just say happy birthday to my friend, but say it in a funny way. Happy birthday to you. And we're willing to do that. That is the thing that people want. Some people want out of politicians. Is it wrong then that I got that for both of you?

That's the last half of the show. That would be the nicest Christmas present anyone has ever gotten me. Okay. Okay. Enough about George Santos. He's obviously taking up enough of our collective space. Let's move on to movies. So there've been, I don't know if you heard, but movies weren't great for a bit because of COVID.

I heard. Oh, you did. Okay. Yeah. So, then this summer, two big old movies came in and changed that. They breathed life into the box office. Can you hear the music, Robert? Yes, I can. I just can't.

Anywhere else I'd be a ten. He's in my destiny. Barbenheimer is what I'm talking about, of course. The cultural phenomenon surrounding Barbie and Oppenheimer's shared cinematic release date. So in a recent interview, Christopher Nolan, the director of Oppenheimer, said that that was his most successful film ever.

R-rated, three hours long, partly in black and white, and about nuclear, potential nuclear Armageddon. And yet, it did really really well along with Barbie. So I guess Elmina I'll throw this to you. We recently did an episode on the show about how the Marvel cinematic universe is showing signs of sputtering. These two movies are doing great. What do you think that's telling us about what movie you always want to see?

Um, Oppenheimer is, um, to my mind at this point, the movie that has been sent from above for the Oscars, for the Academy to give best picture to, because this is a movie that people actually saw because so much of the criticism of the academies is like, you guys keep giving the best picture award to movies and nobody sees. And they've been trying to change that to sort of become a bit more populous. Well, this is a movie that is critically acclaimed, but also at the exact same time, people saw it. And like, you don't get that kind of, you know, confluence very often. But would we really be viewing Oppenheimer in the same breath as Barbie if they

weren't opening the same day and you had this like pastel colored palette right next to this like black gothic, there's a bit of fire in the background palette? I'm not sure that you would listen christopher nolan is always going to have his fans i am one of them if christopher nolan has 100 fans i am still one of them um but having said that um i'm not i'm not convinced that a biopic of a scientist who's responsible for the atomic bomb automatically lends itself to a cinematic event of the year.

It is the Barbie counter effect that made it seem like, oh, it's a meme to go see both of those movies. And then people did exactly that. All right. Nico, let's talk about Barbie. Yeah, sure. We've had a bit of distance. What do you think the Barbie craze is all about?

Barbie is an interesting phenomenon because I do think that, you know, Elmina was talking about this Oppenheimer effect. And I think they're both sort of like feeding into the energy of the other. And I wonder what a world looks like where Barbie comes out independently of it playing opposite to Oppenheimer, which is like this, like the black and pink of it all, right? This very, you're playing it against something very stark.

And you're presenting this world that's very like bright and pink and bubbly. And it is like, you know, it is this subverted idea like how many people were like they made a barbie movie how could they possibly do that it's like subverting this expectation of like what are we getting out of like a big a very expensive movie and a flagship title and all these sorts of things and like you know i do sort of wonder did people really watch barbie or did people go to barbie for the event of it, right? To take photos in the lobby, to make memes on Instagram, to do all these, to do all the ephemera around the Barbie movie. But it's less of a like real conversation as everything else about it.

And it's like, it is this interesting view of a film where it's like, no, people don't even talk about what happened in the movie anymore. They just talk about the detritus around it. Whereas like Oppenheimer is a movie about a thing and it's about a terrible thing, but it's about a thing and it has a point. And like it is very different. They're working as opposites in every sense of the word. Were there other movies this year that you paid attention to or think we need to pay more attention to or that you just found really good? I really like that we got a lot of godzilla properties this year and like i i say that and people will sort of laugh at me but

i genuinely think it's true like godzilla minus one which like godzilla another movie that's so for its expectations right you think it's a big monster movie godzilla is a movie about nuclear devastation in japan and it's about a post-nuclear japan and it's about all these things uh and you know this was sort of like the Japanese maker of this franchise really taking it back and doing something really big and bold with it

and like we have the show on Apple TV and like it's an interesting universe that's getting its due. For me, the movie that I delighted in the most was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.

Oh, so good. That was made in the summer. I love that so much because it sort of re-understood what the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles actually as a franchise is about. It came up on the comic book.

The previous attempts to make the Ninja Turtles into movies or into different properties, they've kind of taken the wrong thing, which is to say hey, they're turtles, but also they're ninjas. No, no, no. These are a bunch of lonely teenagers who are just trying to connect with a bunch of people around them and maybe eat pizza on the way there.

I'm really sorry, Splinter. Some of the guys wanted to get pizza and I tried to talk them out of it. Leo! You ratted us out. Hey, don't use that word that way. I mean, it's 2023. I'm so sorry, Dad.

And this is the movie that captured that energy so much. It was about that loneliness. It was about the way that they are isolated. And that's the thing that made you connect with them, you know, when we were younger. Like, sure, I get it. Like, they have cool weapons, but also, they're really funny. And they're allowed to be really funny.

And I gotta say, Ninja Turtles opened A, right after Farbenheimer, and then B, in the middle of the strike, in the middle of the writers and actors strike. And so, as a result, it didn't get the same kind of promotional push that the other movies did. And that is a shame. So if you get an opportunity, like you got to go back and watch the Ninja Turtles from this year because it was so good.

Great soundtrack too. Such a great soundtrack. Well, especially for 90s people. Yeah. If you're 40 years old, great soundtrack to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie. And it was stylish too, right? This idea, you know, we're talking about the MCU earlier and like this and like across the spider-verse and all these things they're not afraid to make a comic book thing look like a comic book and be

stylish and have a visual identity that has something to say as opposed to like look at all their vfx artists In the Dragon's Den, a simple pitch can lead to a life-changing connection. Watch new episodes of Dragon's Den free on CBC Gem. Brought to you in part by National Angel Capital Organization. Empowering Canada's entrepreneurs through angel investment and industry connections. I speak to, 50% of them do not know their own household income. That's not a typo. 50%. That's because money is confusing. In my new book and podcast, Money for Couples, I help you and your partner create a financial vision together. To listen to this podcast, just search for Money for Couples. We're kind of going to talk about the box office for a second,

but we're going to segue super smoothly. If I have anything to do with it in the music. Let's go. Okay. So two big box office juggernauts, Beyonce, Taylor Swift, their movie tour thingies.

Yes. But also they're doing pretty well as musicians. Doing okay. They're doing okay. Not bad. They, I mean they're doing pretty well as musicians. Doing okay. They're doing okay. Not bad. They, I mean, they boosted the economy with billions of dollars. Yeah.

They had, you know, sold out international shows. And then of course there's the box office hits. Uh, I mean, do their parallel successes tell us anything about one another? Like I see them orbit, these two stars orbiting each other. There's a, I think there's a couple of factors. First of all,

thank you so much for asking me about Taylor Swift and Beyonce. That's, this is my favorite day on earth. Um, I think there's a couple of reasons why we think of them together. First is that like the Taylor Swift origin story is intimately tied with Beyonce, which is,

it's intimately tied to that episode when Kanye West went on stage and he took the microphone out of Taylor Swift's hand. I don't know what you're talking about. I think you were there, pal. I think you remember it. I know what you're talking about. So it was, right, it was like that moment, you know, taking the microphone out of her hand. I'm really happy for you.

I'm going to let you finish. But Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time. Taylor Swift kind of looking there and being like, well, I don't know what to do with this. And at the end of that episode and the end of that award show, Beyonce coming up, receiving the big award of the night, bringing Taylor Swift up to finish her speech. So I'd like for Taylor to come out and have her moment.

And like, I think we kind of like have intimately connected the two of them from that moment on. And then from there on, I think the two have kind of become the main accomplishers in two different artistic arenas. For me, Taylor Swift is a sales juggernaut. No one can really sell like Taylor Swift.

She is one of the last sort of artists, probably the last artist who can kind of sell, put up numbers like she puts up. And then Beyonce has sort of managed to achieve stuff that is entirely different category beyonce sells a lot still but it's her artistic achievement that we talk about the idea that like beyonce's kind of pushed her genre and pushed pop music to an entirely different level that pushed like the meticulousness to a different level and those two are always competing right like this idea of art versus commerce they have to compromise one in order to have the other one which is why we think of them um as in conversation with each other other than that i'm not actually sure that they're particularly in conversation with each other

what's your reading i mean not musically i wouldn't say like you know they're both pop stars and i think we like to flatten the idea of what of what pop music is to be like oh they're both pop musicians so they're both they both exist in this shared universe but i do think that they are making drastically different things in a pop space uh this is like i know that there's been a lot of pushback about the idea of poptimism in the last couple of years especially but like you know this is why we sort of are supposed to have deeper critical conversations about pop music because we can actually differentiate between these things and like it's undeniable that it's been a big year for both of them i mean i mean taylor swift did get person of the year from time yeah and she was

she was given that quote for spinning her story into global legend so nico like what is the story what is what is the story she's spinning into global legend yeah what's she been successful at selling tell us i mean she's really good at selling this sort of neutral landscape that you can draw yourself into like i was talking about this with somebody yesterday and I was saying, it's almost, it's like when you get a placemat at Applebee's and they give you a couple of crayons and they say, draw yourself into this.

Nico Stratus. I'm not saying that this is a bad thing necessarily. But she's the, I mean, that's what, that's what like so much mass like literature is, is the protagonist is this blank slate it's like that you pop yourself into and then you're living their life the way you guys are holding me back right now is the

swifty in the room no you finish your point you finish your point yeah i think it's it's this interesting thing like we saw this with everybody posting their spotify raft this year where everybody's like oh you could tell i was really going through it this year because these are my favorite songs like oh you mean the most listened to songs of the year yeah really interesting emotional state you have but also i will say this does sort of speak to this idea that a lot of this stuff is like it's neutral enough emotional music that you can sort of take it and extrapolate it and say this is where my life fits into these pieces like i think that taylor swift is really good at that right she's really good at tapping into this

sort of universal experience. It is a really hard thing. A lot of people have said, you can write a punk rock song. You can write a rock song. Writing pop music that millions of people will obsess about, so like your music will be so big that they'll shoot images of it

on a statue of Jesus in Brazil. That is really, really, really hard to do. And I think that like me saying that she's given you this blank canvas, that's not a detractment necessarily. But you, I mean, I. And I think that, like, me saying that she's giving you this blank canvas, that's not a detractment, necessarily. But you, I mean, I know. I know you.

I know enough about this opinion of yours, at least. Yeah. Like, you think she's got some... I'm not a medium Swifty, but medium Swifties

are not in the room with us. Oh, do you like Taylor Swift? Oh, my God, Nico. Okay, but here's the thing. It's like, as someone who has been a fan of Taylor Swift for, like, a long time, and, like Taylor Swift? Oh my God, Nico. Okay. But here's the thing. It's like, as someone who has been a fan of Taylor Swift for like a long time and like a serious and unstudied fan, let's say. Yeah.

I would say like this last year has been different. It's been different in a couple of ways. One is that it feels a bit like a victory lap because she's accomplished all these things, but also she's in the middle of these re-releases, right? Like the Taylor's versions of her albums in order to own her masters. And these projects are getting bigger and bigger and bigger. I mean, Speak Now, which is my favorite Taylor Swift album, she released that to almost no promotion whatsoever.

And she broke records with the re-release of that one, which was kind of nuts. And then the other thing I would say is that the reason that the tour was big was because she had four records, four albums that she had not yet toured, partly because of the pandemic. She had Lover, which she put on 2019. She was going to tour in 2020, and then the pandemic shut that down. She had Folklore and Evermore both come out in 2020. And then she had Midnight, which came out last year. just like the the demand for taylor was kind of bursting at the seams because she did continue to give you all of that music over that period of time but hadn't had a chance to tour it so when

she does it's like 70 000 person stadiums every night but three nights per city and and he was this massive juggernaut that he was i'm gonna i'm gonna i'm gonna cap the tyler swift how dare i i feel silenced good i'm glad you're getting the message. No, what I wanted to mention though, is that, you know, we've, we've got these two big juggernauts, but, but, but there's everyone else, right? So it's not been a great year for other working musicians. I'm just thinking band camp laid off habits, staff, um, going forward into the year, people who are streaming on services like

Spotify are looking like they're in more trouble. So Nico next year is not going to be great. It looks like it's going to get tougher for smaller artists, right? Yeah. I mean, we are, we are facing this already. We haven't facing this for a while and it is, like you said, it's only going to get worse, you know, Spotify, they're not, if you're streamed under a thousand times, you won't be getting paid out the minuscule amount you'll get paid out and like there's a lot of oxygen in the room for these

top earners right like if you're in a certain percentile of artists on spotify you're doing okay but everybody else is sort of losing out and we're slowly moving into this space where you know like you sort of need to exist in these with these digital service providers in order to reach an audience and you know like losing band camp or something like that, this was a good place for niche artists, especially people that do soundtrack work, video game soundtrack work especially. Those things are big on Bandcamp. And they're big on Spotify too,

but it's a different landscape there. And so now it's making it harder for these other artists to carve out their niche places in the world. And yes, there's always workarounds and there's always other places for people to access this stuff. But you need to have something that people can easily use so you can get this sort of mass user base and you know it's going to be harder and harder and harder for artists that are on spotify or whatever to like actually make money for their work I'm going to move on to TV. So, 2023 was a big year for series finales.

Award-winning critical darlings and fan favorites like Ted Lasso, Barry, Reservation Dogs, The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, and of course, a show called Succession. It doesn't even make any sense! I'm the youngest boy! They all ended their runs. Elamin, do you think it's been a good year for television yeah I would say that on balance some really significant shows ended in ways that felt fulfilling

you know people talk a lot about how short the run for Reservation Dogs was but also people talk a lot about how they appreciated that a show can end you know with the creators in control of that. We should say that Succession is ending. HBO did not want it to end. But we know the creators were like, this is a story that we're trying to tell.

And to my mind, you know, Succession will be remembered in the 1920s, 1920s, 2020s, the same way they remember The Sopranos in the early aughts. So I think there's a real sort of, hey, this is prestige television at its highest quality. And we kind of all saw, we witnessed something really special. You know, that last shot of Kendall Roy and his face, he's never going to leave me after everything he's been through, you know, my number one boy. And so I think a lot about the way that succession ended as like, I'm really grateful for the television that we got this year. Nico.

It's interesting. Cause we talk a lot about succession and like, and I do have this sort of, I have this long theory about a bottle culture and the way we're getting worse and worse about it. And like, you know, succession became this language that everybody spoke if they watched it.

And like for people like me who actually didn't watch the show, you know, you sort of feel like you're left out of the conversation because you don't speak the memes or you don't do all this stuff. But we did, you know, all these shows did like this idea of like reservation dogs did get to end on its own terms and told a complete story that was really beautiful. And like, you know, uh, uh, justified came back and marvelous Mrs. Maisel ended its run, which was like a show that a lot of people didn't necessarily talk about, but was really good. Had a lot of really solid actors and writers on it and told a really complete story

that ended without going on too long. And I know that this was a thing for Succession and it is a really good time for TV. Like TV, we've seen this happen over the last couple of years. Like TV has kind of taken away from movies in terms of like, you know, prestige storytelling vehicles. But also like, I do hope we get back into more like stuff that has like 22 episodes a season and it doesn't you don't get it all at once and like i also do want us to be able to get back to more

like like a popcorn mcdonald's sort of like i want like a neutral thing that's just like comforting and nice but doesn't have to i don't need everything to mean something all the time and i worry that sometimes there's this like desire for everything to mean something important. Right. And like, and that's all well and fine, but like not everything needs to be important. Sometimes things can just be. Sometimes you just want to just like, I don't want to think. I don't want homework for television.

I just want to enjoy myself. I just want two things, law and order. The other big story in entertainment this year was of course the impact of the writers and actors strike. You mentioned that earlier. I mean, it was one of the longest work stoppages in Hollywood history. Do you think we felt the effects of the strike on TV? We haven't felt them yet, I don't think. So some of the small effects that we've had has been that, like, you know, True Detective, which is like the next season of True Detective called Night Country starring Jodie Foster.

It was supposed to come out like this December. It's now coming out in January. Everything gets pushed back a little bit. As a result, you end up seeing a show like The Gilded Age take up a prestigious 9 p.m. HBO slot that it never otherwise would have gotten. But also all the shows that are supposed to come out on a certain schedule, that schedule has got to move maybe three months, maybe four months, maybe six months later. And so you'll start to see a little bit more reality TV that they commissioned during the strike

start to hit your television the next little while. All right. Nico, anything you want to add? Yeah. I mean, I think that like thinking of this, how are we feeling the effects of it? I also think that like consumers of culture will hopefully walk away from this

having a better understanding of what the people that make these things are like working for what they're doing what their conditions have been like what their conditions will hopefully be like in the future like getting a better understanding of the labor behind the things we consume is a net positive for people to like be really like to bear witness to and i think that was a big part of it is those strikes were so publicized and we saw people out there and like and you know like you and i like we had like friends that were on these strikes, right? And like, and we can see all this stuff. And it is like, I do think it's important for people to know that like people were really

like, weren't being served properly behind the scenes. And now we've given them a better opportunity to do so. So when people complain that like, oh, we haven't gotten season two of severance yet. Well, that's because the people that make severance needed to fight to actually be fairly compensated for their time and effort and i think that's a good thing that that we walk away with from that okay so before i let you guys go one last question super light one not a heavy one. Oh boy.

We're in a post-pandemic world. Yeah. The cost of living is going up like crazy. There's a couple of serious wars going on. We're paying a devastating price for climate change. So when we look back on the pop art consumed this year, what do you think we were collectively looking for? I do think that there is this desire for something to make sense of all this or for something to mean something like i i this is a

really hard question to answer because i think everybody's going to take away something different from this era that we're living in right now but i do think that there is this desire for one thing to mean everything right this is why i this is part of my concern about this monoculture funnel that we're falling into of like you do you're so people are so desperate for this one thing to mean everything that you can hold on to like a life raft when you look back you can be like that was the year we watched succession and everything was okay because like ultimately culture really defines eras we know this like from looking back we know that like we can place time by what was going on in those eras so i think it's just this desperate need for something to be important well one question I think about a lot and like that I like try to incorporate a lot into

my work is like, what do we need to know in common? And also what do we need to know in common in order for us to be a we at all? And with the way that culture is fragmenting, that question gets harder and harder to answer. You know, if you're living on like, I don't know, Pavement Spotify, which I know you are, Nico, listening to Pavement all the time. And I'm listening to Taylor Swift all the time. There's a fragmentation that starts to happen. And we go like, do we still share the same world if we're consuming such different cultures? Which is why we look so desperately for those moments that are like, oh, we have the same cultural reference points. I do think actually in a weird way, Oppenheimer will become that, not Barbie.

I don't mean to be rude to Barbie. Barbie was a significant sort of cultural event. But Oppenheimer is trying to deal with certain questions that we are now beginning to ask, particularly with AI, for example, which is like the idea of like, there are scientists who are only asking the question, hey, is it possible for

it to be done? Can it be done? Let's do it. And then there's a sort of a wider world standing beside them being like, but should you do it? Yeah. Is that the right thing? Maybe you can find out that you can do it.

By the time you find that out, will it be maybe too late? And that is a central question, you know, of Oppenheimer. Yeah. That can I versus should I sort of argument is really like it's only getting louder and bigger and more present as the year sort of comes to a close. Yeah. Nico, Alamin, it's awesome to have you here. Thank you so much. Oh, thank you for having us. Friend, this has been a delight. Thank you. A real pleasure.

All right, that's it for today. I'm Damon Fairless. Thanks for listening to FrontBurner. Talk to you tomorrow. For more CBC Podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.