Some More News - Raccoon Dogs, Supreme Court "Fairness," And EVEN MORE Shaming Drug Companies

Episode Date: March 3, 2023

Hi. Allison Raskin (@AllisonRaskin) joins Cody Johnston to talk about the COVID-19 "Lab Leak Theory," Samuel Alito's sudden concern about fairness in government policy, and Eli Lilly lowering the cost of insulin possibly because of Elon Musk's screw-up. Please fill out our SURVEY: https://kastmedia.com/survey/  Support us on our PATREON: http://patreon.com/somemorenews  Check out our MERCH STORE: https://www.teepublic.com/stores/somemorenews?ref_id=9949  SUBSCRIBE to SOME MORE NEWS: https://tinyurl.com/ybfx89rh   Subscribe to the Even More News and SMN audio podcasts here: Apple Podcasts: https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/some-more-news/id1364825229  Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/6ebqegozpFt9hY2WJ7TDiA?si=5keGjCe5SxejFN1XkQlZ3w&dl_branch=1  Stitcher: https://www.stitcher.com/show/even-more-news   Follow us on social media: Twitter: https://twitter.com/SomeMoreNews  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/SomeMoreNews/  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/SomeMoreNews/  TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@somemorenews  Make CBD a part of reaching your full potential with NextEvo Naturals. Go to https://NextEvo.com/podcast and use promo code MORENEWS to get 20% off your first order of $40 or more. Get a 4-week trial, free postage, and a digital scale at https://www.stamps.com/morenews. Thanks to Stamps.com for sponsoring the show! Stop throwing your money away. Cancel unwanted subscriptions - and manage your expenses the easy way - by going to https://RocketMoney.com/MORENEWS.

Hey, hi, listen. Using the internet without ExpressVPN is like abandoning your sacrificial fire while on the ancient shores of the Aral Sea. It makes you vulnerable to trolls, either literal ones that magically pop out of your fire or online trolls looking to steal your information. Is this analogy working?

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Welcome back to even more news, the first and only news podcast. My name is Cody Johnston. And with me, as always, is the spirit of Katie Stoll, who is not here today, unfortunately, but she will be back next week. Don't worry about it. And hi, how's it going, everybody? Jonathan's here as well. Oh, I'm here, of course. Of course, Jonathan's here. And with us today, in addition to the spirit of Katie Stoll and Jonathan, the actual person, is podcaster and author of Overthinking About You, Navigating Romantic Relationships When You Have Anxiety, OCD, and or Depression, Allison Raskin.

Hello. Hello, Allison. Thank you so much for being here with us. Oh, thank you for having me. Before we really get into it, we need to celebrate our national holidays, which there is one, at least one every single day. And so today, the day we're recording, not the day people are listening, is National Egg McMuffin Day.

Oh, come on, Jonathan. What are we doing? That one was exciting to me. We don't need to do McDonald's propaganda. We're not here to... Alright. Get your Egg McMuffin for McDonald's, folks. Well, the reason I highlighted this one is because

they started it in 2020 and they gave everyone a free Egg McMuffin if you downloaded the mobile app, and I'm not sure if they've continued it, but since they did it once it's on all the national day calendars and so they get free promotion every single yeah and we're giving it to them that's so interesting so if i create any sort of national holiday i can be on that calendar yeah it'll get aggregated they need content you know really yeah and then we

aggregate it here on the show as the icebreaker for the podcast oh i love it what a great loophole for marketing exactly it is incredibly easy to get a fake holiday so i guess folks go out get an egg mcmuffin or download the mcdonald's app and get a free one uh actually yeah so download folks all right folks at home download the mcdonald's app and go to mcdonald's and demand a free egg mcmuffin yeah but they'll be listening to this too late so prepare okay so download the mcdonald's app uh when you're listening to this and mark on your calendars uh on march 2nd so a day before that you're listening to this that you need to go next year to demand a free egg McMuffin

from McDonald's with your McDonald's app that you'll have for the next year, I guess. It's a cruel joke that we always promote holidays that the people listening can no longer celebrate for a calendar year. It really is. So sorry, folks. But today, the day you're listening to this thank goodness you can celebrate what if cats and dogs had a poseable thumbs day what this yeah so this is um allison so there's a group of people called uh well cat and they make like supplements but they also

make a bunch of bullshit holidays. And we've encountered them many times before. And this is a well cat holiday for folks listening. And the quote associated with this holiday is, we are thankful today that our pets can't really get a grip on things. Imagine a cat being able to operate the can opener or a dog that can open up the fridge so everything would be the same but they would just have an opposable thumb yeah that seems oppressive to be glad that they don't have opposable thumbs like aren't opposable thumbs a ticket to more freedom in the world you manipulate

manipulate items and evolve i would think so i wouldn't i wouldn't begrudge anyone a opposable thumb yeah i think we should have more opposable thumbs in the animal kingdom i reject this holiday holiday offends me actually the holiday's all about just like humans continuing to reign supreme yeah human dominance seriously but the worst thing it imagines is that a cat would be able to operate the can opener or the dog that could open up the fridge they'd get more food is what we're saying what happened right yeah they'd nourish themselves and be able to choose when uh and what to eat i mean let's be honest they would keep eating oh yeah they would eat until they threw up exactly

so we should my cat threw up twice yesterday oh one of them one time was on my pile of mail oh no i had a pile of mail i was like all right i'm gonna go through this and then he threw up on it and i had i mean i went through it it was helpful because well i don't need this and there's vomit on it so i'm throwing it away how am i supposed to judge this offer from spectrum with exactly all over it anyway happy national good thing we have leashes day well cat god all right well when i when i see that because like they don't have holidays for every day but now i check because in fairness they have like the most fun oddest holidays oh yeah it's this is a bizarre holiday to decide to do and get as a holiday yeah it's not corporate nonsense like whatever mcdonald's i'm sure next

week will be mcrib day and we won't talk about it for another year sure no next year we got to be on the mcrib day you know what fuck holidays I don't mean that. Holidays are fine. Happy holiday day. Allison, thank you so much for being here. You have this book that came out last May, I believe. Would you like to quickly just sort of give a quick rundown for our listeners? Sure. It's a nonfiction book that's sort of a blend of memoir and self-help that really deals with like the intersection of romantic relationships and mental health. So sort of like, how do we form more adaptive patterns and habits when you're also struggling with anxiety, OCD, and or depression, but I've gotten a lot of feedback that even if you don't necessarily have those diagnoses, it is still helpful. Because I think

something we don't talk about is that like, it's very hard to date, and we're all expected to know how to do it and for it not to turn us into the worst versions of ourselves. But sometimes we need some some tips and tricks, especially about how to talk about tough things and medication of it all. And so if this sounds intriguing, or you're bad at dating, or struggling, even just something to check out. That's a good point, too. Because I feel like there's so many people who like, aren't like they're not diagnosed with anxiety or anything like that. But it's everybody gets anxiety. Life is anxiety inducing. And I feel like dating, especially now it's just kind of get I mean,

I haven't been in the dating world for a while, but I remember it getting worse and worse. So I don't know. I think I should bring this up. I don't know if you how online you are, if you're you treat your mental health well and you don't get too online. There was a video going around recently of this young woman on a podcast trying to articulate something about dating. And it turned into like sort of a culture war thing about kids these days they don't have to articulate themselves and it was more just they didn't like that she used the word like so many times but her point was sort of about this like the talking phases of dating and how it's this sort of uh nebulous phase where you're like are you you're not dating

it's like you're talking you're hanging out and there's no there's no like intention anymore it seems where you're like i'm actually interested in getting to know you and dating you it's more just yeah we're kind of hanging out and it's like it's so casual and you have this instant access to obviously like the computer in our pockets that everybody has and it wasn't always so easy to have like instant access to the person you're slowly getting to know right like you would schedule dates and stuff you have phone conversations but you're not on your phone like oh they read my text or are they going to respond is it's too late to respond like there's this extra anxiety built into dating now i feel with that uncertainty yeah i mean i think that in a lot of ways

there's more access to dating now especially with with dating apps and everything which i actually think are great resource but it can also be really tricky because I think people get into this habit of not treating other people like real people in the dating space. And so there's a lot of ghosting. There's a lot of, like you said, like not having any clear intentions, a lot of like not sitting down and being like, okay, but what is it that you're actually looking for? And does it align with what I'm looking for? And so all of that uncertainty and unknown can really exacerbate anxiety, and it can affect our self-esteem and like sense of self. And so, you know, one of the chapters in the book is all about how to date productively and what that means so that like you're doing it

with intention and also so you don't burn out. Because I think that's something we see a lot is like if you're dating nonproductively, you can have so many bad experiences that it can then be like, well, I should just give up or you'll, you know, get on an app for a month, burn out, not look at an app for six months, you know, and so trying to sort of like, get yourself into a more adaptive routine with it. So just like the way that we conceptualize dating, the way we go about dating is more aligned with like having a more stable baseline for our mental health. Yeah, well, no, you mentioned ghosting in there. And I had recently read the experience of a woman who says she was ghosted after six months of dating and i don't even know if you can consider that ghosting at a certain point like if you are in each other's

instagram if you're essentially you know a couple right after six months that's is that even like dating like oh we're like kind of hanging out after six months. That just seems so long. Yeah. Do you feel that the length of time that can go by before a ghosting happened has expanded over the last like decade? And what do you think is the is it ever OK to ghost? And what's the time or date limit for that? I don't think it's ever OK to ghost.

I have like a pretty firm line in that. I mean, I think there's a difference, obviously, for safety reasons, if there's a reason to believe that you're not safe with this person. But otherwise, I think you should absolutely always at least say something. is not going to let it go, you know, where like you say, I'm not interested. And then suddenly you're flooded with 10 messages every day for a week, you know, and at that point, I think, again, you have to assess and say, okay, maybe I don't need to keep getting back to this person. But I think ghosting just really refers to when somebody disappears from your life without any warning or explanation. So under that definition, it really doesn't matter the length of the relationship. It's just that the abruptness and the lack of communication, but it's really a harmful thing. And I think it's become very, not obviously not six months in, but in early stages of dating, I think it's become very normalized in a way that is super harmful. And I think, like I said,

like leads to this idea that dating is a game and not something that you're interacting with real human beings with real feelings and like the effect of that. And so, you know, on the one hand, I think you should absolutely always just be as clear and honest as possible. You don't need to get into like unnecessarily cruel details of like, hey, you smell, so I don't want to go out again, but I think you could say something to the effect of I'm, you know, I just wanted to be honest. I don't see a romantic connection here, but I wish you all the best. Like, especially for people with anxiety who like, sometimes they don't want to ghost, but the fear of confrontation is so

overwhelming that maybe that ends up happening. I think it can actually be really helpful to sort of have a, have a note in your phone that is a scripted response to end a relationship or to end a casual situation ship where like it's almost copy and paste. So you know what you're going to say, you know how you're going to say it. And then you can just make sure that you don't you know continue the cycle of ghosting by always letting somebody know that like this is over instead of letting them sit in that anxiety of like but will i hear from them again what did i do maybe if i reach out if i just say this clever thing i'll lure them back in it gives a finality for people to be able to like move forward and move on instead of yeah stretching

it out and like kind of affecting how other people deal with their future relationships and then it sort of like makes this feedback loop of bad behavior that spreads and then it gets even worse like you're saying like these are really good like the apps and stuff they're very good tools to meet people and especially um you know it it expands the pool of people and diversifies all. It's all very good, but it is it weirdly disconnects people more in a way that it's I don't know how to reconcile that or fix that. Like in the actual app, like I don't think there's a solution of like, well, we made the app perfect now. Well, I think it's kind of having your own guidelines for how you interact with these apps, right? For sort of having your own standards for what it means to like, be a person

who's engaging with other people in a vulnerable situation, you know, like it is very vulnerable to go on a dating app. Not for everybody. You know, for some people, it's a really casual thing that they don't think about a lot. But, you know, for the people we're talking about who maybe are struggling with anxiety and are struggling to find connection, it is like a big undertaking. And I think that the casualness that people swipe with makes people feel like, oh, well, I shouldn't be taking it this seriously. Why am I so upset that this person stopped responding to my messages? When in reality, like dating is very vulnerable. It's like really emotional. It like, you know, can really rock our world in a lot of

way. Because a lot of times it's not just like, oh, I'm giving up on this person I only went on one date with. Why would I care? It's I'm giving up on the fantasy I only went on one date with why would I care it's I'm giving up on the fantasy of what I thought was possible with this person and like allowing yourself to like hold space for that and then saying how do I want to show up and I think that like the way that we show up when we date really impacts the way other people show up so like the faster you are to like being your true self and like showing up authentically it allows other people to do the same instead of getting stuck in that loop of like well what did you watch on netflix or like the yeah hey how are you doing of like these things that don't actually

start any real conversations because you want to have fun like i think it's become such a chore but if you're like hey i'm gonna go on this dating app and I'm going to talk about stuff that I want to talk about that's interesting to me. It's also a way to like figure out like, am I even compatible with this person in the first place? Right. And getting rid of that sort of phase of like, well, I should like probably like agree with them about like this and sort of like making the idea of a person instead of just being yourself. Totally. And then you can get like it makes everything so much faster. Like I always say, I'm like, if if if they're not going to laugh at a joke I make on the app, they're not going to laugh at a joke I make at dinner when we're stuck together for the next 30 minutes waiting for the check. Yeah, exactly.

It's a way to weed people out. We should probably, unfortunately, get to talking about the news no fortunately uh we are we get to talk about the news now uh so the sound effects roll the sound effects hey it's katie i'm hip you know i get. We all want to be just like Freddy Krueger, knife fingers, scaring teenagers in their dreams. But the only way to master the art of dream fear is to actually get sleep, which is why I take CBD from NextEvo Naturals. According to them, their SmartSorb CBD has 30 times better absorption in the first 30 minutes, HeartSorb CBD has 30 times better absorption in the first 30 minutes, so you can relax fast.

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business okay uh jonathan why don't you uh set us up for this first story yeah the first story is about the lab leak theory the energy department uh sent report, a classified intelligence report, to the White House and members of Congress saying that it believed with low confidence that a lab leak was the more likely scenario for the origin of COVID-19 than natural transmission. This is something that many other agencies and many scientists dispute. This came out from a Wall Street Journal headline that read, Lab leak, most likely origin of COVID-19 pandemic, energy department now says,

which is a true thing that it said in the headline, but there's a lot of context left out and the lab leak theory is now being kind of touted on the right as if it's like a victory. We win the argument of how this started. And also it matters greatly politically. Right. Well, I mean, the headline is interesting just because they did the claim first.

And, you know, there's like different like methods of headlines, but just like it's the most likely covet 19 origin energy department says like it gets it gets you also i think it's just generally kind of funny that it's it like there's this vindication with a lot of people like we see we were right it's like don't you not trust like the government the fbi isn't like don't you think the f FBI is like after Trump and like lying to like put him in prison but now you're like see the Chinese leaked the virus and it's just one of those contradictions that always happens with stuff like this where the FBI is bad when they're going after Donald Trump specifically but good when they sort of confirm your priors. It's so interesting because I feel like every couple of months we get this thing of like,

it's definitively a lab leak. And then within like a week or two, like, it's like, no, not really. Like we know what, like, it's just a strong theory that it's like being presented as fact again and again and again and it i think like it's i mean i just think it's kind of like obviously like irresponsible to to like be putting out these reports with like low confidence when they don't have actual proof i recognize that i'm as vulnerable to like cognitive biases and things like everyone else. But I also think of myself as Mr. Evidence. So I'm like, let me, you know, get like bullet point all of the different bits of evidence with this. And like, there just seems to be a lot more for natural transmission. Like we might be I might be wrong.

There might be something way more definitive that comes out. But, you know yeah that's the thing uh before we get it because i do want to get into like the pieces of evidence that are actually being released um but i think that's an important thing to mention because i feel like there's like it's impossible to talk about anything anymore um without it being like oh so you love this or like oh so you think we should do that it It's like, we just don't know. And it's okay to not know. And also like, don't they think that COVID is no big deal?

So like, why does it matter? But it will be good to know. And maybe it is that like, it's the kind of thing that people are framing like, oh, so you just, you didn't think it's a conspiracy theory.

No, it's, we don't know yet. And it will be good to know definitively. Because yeah, if it did leak from somewhere, we should have better safety regulations for these kinds of things. And there's a conversation to happen with that. But it just, yeah, it does seem irresponsible to sort of throw it out like that and say, see, we were right.

Well, low confidence from the energy department. I don't know. Is that good enough? I will almost push back on your point about like why do we need to know and i know that's like a weird thing to say but like the reality is like natural transmissions of of like diseases from animals to humans are still going to happen and then if it was a lab leak it's just going to cause really difficult foreign relationships and a lot more racism

and it's not like we as americans would have any control over the safety regulations of labs in china and so i'm almost of the mind of like why do we even need to know uh well we do have some relationship with these labs right like there is like there is a sort of like international like effort to like do these kinds of projects. Right. Like the International Space Station. Yeah, there's things like that. It's okay if like, you know, an alien virus leaked from the International Space Station, we can have some sort of leverage there. But I do see your point, like it is, I mean, and also with the FBI doing this, and the Department of Energy doing this, and it just does seem like they're pushing a lot more to like, we really need to have a conflict with China. We need to do this.

It seems like so much of the lab leak theory is just based on the idea that, well, there's a lab there. It's primarily like there was a lab there, which is there because it's close to where there are a lot of interactions.

They put it where the viruses are. Near the animals where the viruses are. Where the viruses are, exactly, yes. Near the animals and the bat caves and what have you. I mean, the evidence is kind of mostly circumstantial for both the lab leak and natural transmission, but there's just more, like all of the clusters of original cases seem to transmit from there.

The stall where they think it originated was photographed in 2014 by a scientist who was like there's raccoon dogs and stuff here this is a real danger and then they found actual virus in that area of the market and if you believe that it leaked from a lab you'd have to believe that someone accidentally infected themselves and then started spreading it around this market independently while not infecting someone on the train or at home like you you you do kind of have to believe that extraordinary things happened and then there was a cover-up which look if if that had happened they would try to cover it up absolutely but you do have to kind

of believe in a more kind of elaborate cover-up especially because the people who worked at that lab were like no none of these gain-of-function experiments were happening at the lab you know how like fauci was there personally like combining viruses yeah he and his wife were uh yeah doing yeah fauci and his wife were there you know, doing all that. Yeah, Fauci and his wife were there like personally like doing genetic experiments. Like that didn't happen. So then you'd have to say like, okay, all of these people were lying

and the government got to them, which again, maybe, but it just seems a lot less likely to me. Low confidence, I would say. Yes. I have to know, what is a raccoon dog? I don't know. Take it away, Jonathan.

I wrote down what they said. They're apparently common. The common raccoon dog. You know what? Also called the Chinese or Asian raccoon dog. This does look like a mix between a raccoon and a dog. I think they nailed it. 100%.

Google raccoon dog. The images you will see are like dogs with oh my god yeah what is this common raccoon dog oh it's like a it's kind of like a fox i guess a little bit yeah heavy heavy set fox like wow anyway they shouldn't be kept in filthy cages. So close. Probably not. Lots of contact with humans. In fact, I would argue that no cage should be filthy. I would agree. Just don't have filthy cages. Yeah, clean the cages.

I also think like there's something... Give them opposable thumbs. Oh, no, we can't have that. Not on a day like today. No. There's something about how everyone, no matter what they believe, is lamenting that this became political.

So even the people who are celebrating because they were like, I was right the whole time are like, it's a shame that this became political because the left dug in so much. It was the left that was like shutting down all debate of this. And was that true? I don't recall it being a like you're banned for talking about. I just remember it being kind of like a topic that elicited a lot of mockery. It was definitely like framed as a conspiracy theory originally. Well, because I think originally it was tied to like, oh, it was done intentionally as like a bio weapon. Well, right.

Like, oh, it was done intentionally as like a bioweapon. Well, right. But also, even if it wasn't, like kind of definitionally, it was a conspiracy theory because it requires a cover up. Right. It was it leaked whether or not it's a bioweapon, which is not it leaked. And then they covered it up. It was a conspiracy to cover up this thing. So like even you, even if it's true, conspiracy theory is like the correct term, right?

Because the theory is that there's a conspiracy to cover it up. I think so. That doesn't seem necessarily unfair. We did an episode about this and we came down on just like,

yeah, maybe. I don't know. Yeah. Well, I think it's like there were scientists initially who were like, ah, this is very unlikely and also the people who are behind this are doing it for political reasons it's like trump type

people so we're gonna push back against this and so nowadays i think they're remembering a bunch of scientists talking against it and they're like all those libs who were yelling at us about this. And now we're right. And you need to go away. Also, COVID is not a big deal and didn't happen. So exactly. Yeah. It's just the cold. So why do you care that a cold was leaked?

Do you want to go through the evidence a little bit? Sure. To get a sense? Because I think that that is important, probably. Right. Yeah. We talked a little bit about how there's a lab there. The Wuhan Institute of Virology is the lab, the WIV.

It did research with animals that carry relatives of SARS-CoV-2, according to the FBI, and there had been safety concerns at that lab that diplomats had brought up to the Trump administration in 2018. Did they do anything about it? No, they did not, and I would argue that trump administration in 2018 did they do anything about it no they did not and i would argue that no administration in 2018 would have been likely to do anything because who cares yeah what is this yeah and some not not every early case had connection to the huanan

market only some and so some did some did not some, some did not. Most did. But I think there were like 13 out of 41 that did not. And two researchers there were sick with something in November 2019. We didn't have tests. We didn't. They didn't have tests. Are there details about what their sickness was like? Flu-like symptoms. Okay. So, you know it could could have been we don't know so

that's what i mean when i say circumstantial evidence it's like oh they were sick their people were getting sick in in november oh some someone had the flu in the winter oh my god yeah it's wild it could have been early covid and then but right when you go through the evidence of natural transmission and you look at the maps of the clusters of cases it's right there there were two distinct coronavirus strains first spotted at that market so if it was a leak they would have both had to have been leaked from the lab there. I guess it's possible that one could have been leaked there and then very, very quickly mutated. But that's a lot of speculation. And also just there's no evidence that they had this at that lab, which is where we're getting into cover up territory.

We'd have to believe that there was a lot of lies going on about what was in that lab specifically. So maybe that would be a huge scandal and like before it happened too right like like kind of knowing that like maybe there will be a leak so we have to prepare to like lie about it well the idea is that they would have found this virus in like a bat cave years earlier and been like hanging on to it secretly for years all right well interesting theory but wait for more evidence also before we move on it's i want to point out that other federal agencies just yesterday said that havana syndrome was not caused by a foreign adversary or any directed energy weapon and so i would hope that the people celebrating the lab leak theory

who suddenly believe everything federal agencies say will now be like on board i guess we don't have to invade cuba for their uh their energy ray yeah i think we can put that off until but until then the next uh agency comes out and is like actually it was until yeah until another cia agent gets a headache then we'll reassess that havana syndrome was really terrible for a lot of people like it isn't interesting i'm i'm more interested in the origins of that than i am the origins of covid in a lot of ways right because symptoms can be very real and very debilitating but we can't have a debate about the origin of it without it being like, well,

you're, you know, those are real people having real symptoms and you're like, for sure. But then it's like, do you think it's, it's either a ray gun or crickets or crickets or what some people experience was caused by something.

And then other people took on a more right just psychological psychosomatic you know it's yeah that like because the thing about the covet thing is like it's not like like i kind of alluded to earlier like it's not like oh if we figure out that it came from this lab then we're set like we're good because we won't have more pandemics caused by animal transmission like it doesn't really protect us from anything yeah exactly uh first uh case of uh what h5n1 uh yesterday i think uh speaking of wait in the u.s uh i believe so but again i don't have uh no in china well because it's it's much much harder for h5n1 to to spread among people. If we started seeing that bird flu spread quickly among people, we'd have way bigger

problems. It'd be a real problem, yeah. We would maybe not be recording a podcast right now. But also, you are right that it's the kind of thing where it's like, okay, but we handled the pandemic poorly. that like it's the kind of thing where it's like okay but we handled the pandemic poorly um whatever the cause of it we did a bad job uh and it's not the last one so maybe we should assess that a little bit more yeah like that's what's more interesting to me is like how do we if if another thing happens what are we going to do differently and how did we like massively mess this up and how do we or even how do we

depoliticize you know pandemics and illness and like there just seems like a way better use of our time and money in terms of investigating i don't know if we will but we are going to say hi everybody and then wait hi everybody and then we're gonna take a short break and then we're gonna come right back with even more news oh geez money am i right we hate it saving it and such and so on you know money and how money is hard and how it's haunted and how subscriptions exist and you have those and you need to cancel them because of your money you see but there is a solution rocket money formerly known as true bill is a personal finance app that finds and cancels your unwanted subscriptions monitors your spending and helps you lower your bills all in one place. Because you get the deal. Money. Hard. As I already said that before. Also,

ghosts in the money. Sometimes they scream at you and try to eat your fingers. But at least Rocket Money can help with the part where money is hard by keeping track of and canceling your subscriptions. Not so much about the ghosts. So why not give it a try? Stop throwing your haunted money away. Cancel unwanted subscriptions and manage your expenses the easy way by going to rocketmoney.com slash more news. That's rocketmoney.com slash more news. And we are back after the thing I said would happen happened with even more news hi i'm cody and with me is jonathan and allison and we're talking about the freaking news today

on this beautiful egg mcmuffin day i do kind of want one i hate that i kind of want one. I hate that I kind of want one now. That's okay. Just like saying the words a bunch. I like, I egg-pilled myself. Are they served throughout the day or is it just a breakfast item? I think throughout the day now, right? Didn't they expand? I think breakfast is all the time now. Yeah, all day breakfast. I only go there for fries, so I don't really know, but I'm pretty sure that it's all available.

Do you guys want to talk about the supreme court i love the supreme court it's awesome well they uh they heard oral arguments this week regarding the biden administration's student loan forgiveness plan and many of the conservatives expressed a lot of skepticism about reading some of the arguments it seems to have a lot less to do with the constitutionality of the plan according to the, as it does the fact that they kind of don't like it and don't want people to have their student loans forgiven. I want to read this quote from Samuel Alito, who, along with other justices, brought up fairness a lot. He kept prodding the solicitor general about why it's fair because some people didn't have uh student loans at all and they couldn't have it forgiven he goes uh why is it

fair why is it in the answer to say that it was warranted maybe it was warranted but why was it done i guess you don't want to answer the question oh my god and i read it like that because that's how he said it and because she had answered the question is this such a topic that i think reveals how you view the world in a very succinct way like it it reveals like your mentality of like how you view other people how you view yourself, and like, what type of world you want to live in. And so I'll be bold and say, if you're someone who thinks that this program is unfair, you're not the type of person I want to be around at all. Yeah, it really speaks to a lot of other issues. And just your Yeah, your worldview,

like, why is it fair? It's such a weird, that's a weird question for the Supreme Court to focus on. And it's also just like this fundamental misunderstanding that, oh, up until this moment, everything else has been fair. Right. Right. The fact that like, oh, some people could afford college without loans and some people couldn't. Well, isn't that where sort of the unfairness begins instead of happening now? Yeah. Issues like generational wealth and all these kinds of things.

It's like, well, isn't all like, it's just funny. Cause it's, I mean, the world is a nonstop parade of contradictions, but the idea of like,

well, why is this fair? These are the same people who are like, well, life's not fair. That's not fair. Like they, they revel in unfairness. Right. But as soon as this happens, like, well, life's not fair. That's not fair. Like they, they revel in unfairness.

Right. Um, but as soon as this happens, like, well, that's not fair. Tough shit. Fuck off.

Like, yeah, like that's never, that's not how any laws are passed or how our nation has ever been governed or specifically conservatives and like American Republicans have never operated on an idea of fairness. Yeah, like Sotomayor brought this up in response to Alito. And she's like, look, during especially during the pandemic, laws were passed for specific groups, there was the PPP for small business

owners. And we paused, you know, student loan repayments for people who had them and certain people didn't have to worry about evictions you know if you pass an eviction moratorium and then you say well but what about all the people who own their homes like do they everyone they all get a thousand dollars i mean they did everyone got money but like but like that's not how we make laws ever but for this specific thing it like rubs alito and roberts and gorsuch the wrong way enough that they have to be like i didn't get it right what about my well and if they do want to be like it's not fair okay then give everybody free college or like like there's like if you want to talk about fairness then we can do that but they actually don't want to talk about fairness they just want to do that. But they actually don't want to talk about fairness.

They just want to say no and then, I don't know, ban trans people from, like, doing anything. Well, right. They'd rather get back to those serious questions that they'd rather be ruling on for sure. It's just such a foreign way to think about people. just such a foreign way to think about people like it's so hard because like with so many republican talking points and opinions i'm like if i told this to an alien they would be like these people are too evil like make it a little more nuanced right right you know what i mean like it's so it's like it is just so deeply wild and like it also they they love to like pretend it's like it is just so deeply wild. And like it also they they love to like pretend it's like about this moment, this moment of forgiveness or not.

But what it's about is allowing for for inequality to continue. Right. Because who's going to get their loans forgiven? And then what life can they have with loans forgiven is going to set them up for a different life than if they don't have it. It's going to set them up to be able to save and to be able to invest and to be able to potentially create wealth

that they can then pass on to their children. And that is just like, so, nope, nope, nope, nope. We have to keep the status quo, keep the poor people poor, and that's what's fair in american it's always what's fair to them yeah they're not even like thinking about those questions of like it didn't really come up like oh this is how many people would benefit from it this is what it would do like there are studies on this of what happens if you cancel ten thousand dollars of people's

debt they can start businesses saving spending money and like getting the economy right yeah it's good for the economy so it like has the effect of doing all these things that they like but it helps it helps more people so they can't abide it and so it by the way it's not like a foregone conclusion that they're going to rule against this. A lot of people who watched the oral arguments thought that there was a lot of skepticism both ways. And apparently the solicitor general on the side of the Biden administration did a much better job than the opposing attorney, which usually doesn't matter if they've made up their minds already. But there still may be a positive outcome here, maybe. I know that like the Supreme Court's supposed to be nonpolitical, right? But obviously that's long gone if ever the case.

And the thing about this in particular is I think this is, if they make it so this can't happen, the Republican base is not going to be happy. There's like a lot of people that are benefiting from this program, where I think it's kind of that thing of like, a lot of these like Republican policies, once they're actually implemented, people don't like. Oh, yeah, they're wildly unpopular. Their policies and their party, their entire ideology is actually very unpopular. They're just very loud. It's I mean, we've talked about this before, if they don't do this, and then okay, so it's, it's gonna it's this constant kicking the can that's going to happen. And because they're gonna have to unpause student loan payments at some point, or not. And no president wants to be the guy to do that like no one's gonna be like you know how you didn't have to pay these like regardless of party you didn't have to pay this for three years it's been like three years and then someone's eventually

gonna have to say like you gotta do it again sorry it's like very long time and it seems like the kind of thing that like will be kicked down the road. And then like, I don't know, maybe DeSantis is going to be in that position where he's going to be like, uh, and one of my main platform issues is you got to pay your loans again. Like, that's not a winning message. Yeah, I have this horrible vision of like June 2024. And Biden's like, well, fair's fair. Everyone has to pay their like a couple months before the election. He'll be you all have to pay these loans again i don't want to win yeah yeah but right you would think he just is like great i'll pause it it'll be unpaused i don't know march

2015 exactly like yeah you're moving five yeah or yeah 2025 i wish it was 2015. No, I don't. Speaking of fairness and ghouls like gouging the poor, do you want to talk about this insulin cap? Yes. Oh, my God. So Eli Lilly announced this week that they were lowering the price of their insulin by 70% and capping out-of-pocket costs for patients to 35 a month which puts it in line with the standards established for medicare patients um in the inflation reduction act last

year this is very good news this is of course what they what every company that has insulin should do it's a life-saving drug people need it you make monumental profits yeah it seems like a pretty easy um thing that it's one of those things like the argument is for so long it's like if we do that we can't make profits and stuff apparently it's actually very easy to lower the price this much it's a lot and they'll be fine um it's a very good data point i think in the future just be like actually they don't need to do this they can do this much much uh cheaper yeah it's like not a lot of industries can do that there are industries with like very thin margins like you don't see restaurants being like you know what we're gonna drop all of our prices 70 we can afford it we make billions of

dollars every year but this company can just do it and like, oh, why aren't we taking you over? Why are we? Why didn't you do this earlier? Why are more people doing it? Why are you doing it for other medications? All kinds of questions pop up knowing that, yeah, they just decided to drop it 70 percent. about how like this kind of happened because of elon musk screwing up twitter and letting an account tweet as if they were the company saying they were lowering prices and that causing outrage and so in some like weird way elon musk screwing up twitter has allowed for this wonderful thing to

happen it's kind of beautiful and like it's also the kind of thing that like he wouldn't necessarily ever like promote or want um like it's not like part of his like uh his political beliefs that like this should happen uh it just did accidentally i feel like back in the day maybe oh yeah i don't know his political beliefs have changed i feel like yeah or at least uh publicly he would probably say that. And now he wouldn't feel that pressure to say that, even if he does or doesn't believe it. I think it is important, I think, to point out how much pressure that Bernie Sanders has been putting on these companies and subpoenaing their CEOs and really putting a lot of like congressional pressure on them i in my head i there's the uh the the predator meme with the uh arms and the hands shaking and on one side it's like bernie on purpose and the other side is elon accidentally and in the middle it's lowering uh

insulin prices um it's very uh god it's so it's one of the funniest things that ever happened is that stock price plummeted because of the tweet. If like, you know, since that wasn't like a fundamental thing to its business, their stock price recovered after that. But there was focus on Eli Lilly in a way that there had not been in a long time. People don't Google them and talk about this pharmaceutical giant all the time so the fact that a fake account got verified tweeted we are excited to announce that insulin is free now and it was one of those like four or five tweets that was indicative of what an absolute disaster the initial twitter blue rollout was i i wouldn't put it past elon to like reply to a tweet announcing that news with like you're welcome and then the cry laughing emoji or something i promise you he will do that

and take credit for it at some point it is like directly related to a a very immediate and very noticeable screw up on his part one of you know dozens of screw-ups that are now being scrutinized very heavily over the last few months i think even elon musk is probably shocked at how much his every move is being like documented now because he was like i was the richest person i was the ceo of tesla but the the kind of scrutiny that he gets by like destroying twitter is like way higher so now because i don't remember uh tesla's investor day being as covered no as it was uh this week and getting to see like oh they're for some reason banning whole mars catalog and a bunch of other people going to their investor day well they don't want scammers there they only want elon the the king scammer that yeah that

graphic of like here's what uh how we'll make cyber trucks in the future no date never there's never an official date it looks exactly the same as it used to right the cyber truck cyber truck yeah i couldn't tell you they're like oh this looks even more impressive in person and it's like this is still a hideous silver triangle this is like well if you're still going to tesla investor day and you're being like super jazzed and excited i just i can't be in that i don't understand it it's like even the even the day itself because sometimes it's like here's a new car like here's a thing there was nothing there that happened. It was literally just like, in the future, we're going to buy a bunch of land and be really efficient at resource extraction or something. Like, it was just like this vague, like, we're going to do really well in the future.

Oh, he didn't announce a product or anything? It's all just like, everything will be electrified. Everything will be great. Everything will be great. Our process will change slowly. We're working on it. But it was very vague. He rambled all the time.

I mean, he rambles generally all the time anyway. But from what I've absorbed, they didn't announce anything new. So I don't know why they even did it. Fanfare. Yeah. Well, exactly. He's a PR guy. That's all he is quote unquote good at.

I would argue he's actually maybe kind of bad at it but i feel like the thing that blew my mind was like learning that that he hasn't created anything that like he didn't create paypal he didn't create tesla like he just comes in and like to these things that are already happening but i think so many people still think that he created these things when like as we're seeing with twitter like he doesn't i don't he can't really get through a day he really can't get through a day he must be so tired um yeah he's not like he's uh we've made this comparison before but like he's not tesla he's einstein uh or not Einstein, sorry. I know.

He's Edison, not Tesla is what I meant to say. But even then he's not. Like, it's just like. Yeah, because Edison was working on stuff. Right, it's just like, he's just a PR circus thief. He's just an investor. Yeah. And even like, there's a, like there are engineers who used to work at Tesla

who were like, yeah, I invented this battery. This, like the way that this battery is like a thousand times more efficient i literally invented that um and now i don't work there his name's yeah no he's on like three patents i think and one is for like the shitty door it's for the handle yeah yeah i think right oh right the the handle that i've never actually had I've never opened one of those. It just looks like it would be... Like it would hurt your fingers. It seems so unpleasant. It's confusing.

But also, like, and this is... To his credit, to be fair and balanced, I will say that part of that reason, I think, aside from the fact that he doesn't... He's not an inventor and he doesn't actually do this. Aside from that, one of the reasons is because he doesn't purportedly believe in patents as like a thing that is like helpful because then well if i've pat on this then you can't it it sort of stalls innovation and like communication

between the scientific community and engineers and people who are trying to create things so part of it is like all of his pads are open and tesla because he wants people to be able to use that purportedly but also he's like kind of a fraud um maybe i don't know if there was a patent required for that fart horn but i would imagine his name would be oh yeah that's the thing yeah he's gotta do the fart horn that i look i believe wholeheartedly that that was his idea if anyone's ever like musk has invented stuff you could be like the fart horn for sure the fart button and htsa made him take away because it's like dangerous to be driving and just hear a fart you look so confused so uh tesla's at one point uh everything's in the screen you got to go through

the menus and do the thing and there's like a secret like thing that was introduced because it's all like uh software updates where you just hit a button and it blasts fart sounds outside of the car um like that's the bit that's the the fun little troll i guess that he wanted to put in his car um but then he had to take it out because it's dangerous how is it dangerous people were concerned that their friends and loved ones were ill they'd be like yeah they might think the car was violently yeah maybe maybe it's a bad car at them i mean i don't know i think it's just like there must be a regulation about what a horn has to sound like and how loud and stuff. I don't know specifically, but they made him take it out, an update to take it out. And he was very upset. He's like, come on, regulators.

This is what regulators always do. They take away my real funny, funny bits. I should write for Rick and Morty. This is I'm going to have my horns go 420 420 we did you know we didn't even have an elon story in this episode no we didn't yet here we go it was about insulin this is what happens when katie's not here we just do a free form 12 minutes sorry katie damn it oh damn it i think it was my fault. I apologize. It's relevant.

Like he did that. Like it's partly because of him. Yeah. There's no way to talk about the Eli story without talking about him. So not your fault. Do you think that they'll keep the price cut or do you think over time they'll slowly hike it back up? That's a. Sad question.

It's so publicized now, can can they i guess they could argue inflation and that they has to be right yeah i don't know what the supply chain means for insulin i can't imagine that they would they must make so much money on other stuff it would be it would just be such horrible press right to do that after doing this thing that's like is getting them some you know i don't even know if praise is the right word but like slight gratitude but you're right maybe they will fucking do that because imagine if martin shkreli if martin shkreli bought eli lillian is like we're jacking it up seven hundred dollars a month just like i don't think i'm hated yeah right now you know they're getting good press

for doing this. I just want to look up what are the three drugs that they're just gouging people for. Oh, totally. Right now. Probably all their drugs other than insulin at this point. Well, let's see. Truelicity is their top product by revenue.

Truelicity? I don't support that name. I feel likeelicity. I don't support that name. I feel like a lot of Americans don't understand how we're being gouged, if that makes sense. That like, that it is so possible for these companies to cut costs

and still be, you know, financially solvent and making money and all of those things. And I hope that this will start to open people's eyes to the fact that like pushing back works and that these regulations and that like asking for you know for having the government argue more for for medicare medicaid costs and like trying to then get that for private insurances. Like that this is not,

I feel like we've been set up to believe that the pharmaceutical industry is untouchable despite so many other countries having a completely different relationship with the pharmaceutical industry. And so my optimistic brain is like, maybe this is the beginning of the big fight where people finally realize that

the fight is winnable but my skepticism says let's check back in at six months and see what it costs we can we'll cap it on the hopeful thought though because i think that that is valid and it's it is true um that it's possible and uh probable even and good and it that's a future and a world that we can all agree we would want to live in so thank you for that positivity allison uh do you want to i'm sorry i interrupted the the other drugs that they have i feel bad oh some made-up words that cost too much money do you want to uh uh give us your pluggables uh where can people find you um what do you want people to know about your online presence yeah so my socials are at alison raskin and then um you can listen to my weekly podcast just between us anywhere podcasts

are available. We've got a Wednesday show with interviews and variety segments and then a Monday show that's us sort of exploring Reddit and me learning what Reddit is. And then I'd love for people to purchase the book Overthinking About You. And I also have a mental health brand of the stuff that I do called emotional support lady, which is both an Instagram and a sub stack. Thank you so much for being here. And that's so much podcasting. Thank you for dropping by and giving us your time. Oh, thank you for having me. I had a blast. All right, well, we're gonna head out and stop talking about the news. But before we go, the thing that Katie says, and then I say much.