Tangle - The Sunday Podcast: Isaac and Ari talk about Bali, Berkeley, and Biden's new loan forgiveness plan.

Episode Date: April 14, 2024

Isaac and Ari talk about Isaac’s recent trip to Bali, Biden’s new student debt forgiveness plan, a pro-Palestine protest at dinner event for UC Berkeley students, and whether Justice Sotomayor should retire. Plus, Ari finally has a grievance that Isaac agrees with.Watch our latest YouTube video, an interview with Edwin Raymond. He is a recently retired NYPD lieutenant, civil-rights activist and author of the riveting new memoir An Inconvenient Cop: My Fight to Change Policing in America. You can view it here.Catch up on Episode 1 of our first ever limited podcast series, The Undecideds, before the next one comes out. We're following five voters — all Tangle readers — who are undecided about who they are going to vote for in the 2024 election. In Episode 1, we introduce you to those voters. Our podcast is written by Isaac Saul and edited and engineered by Jon Lall. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet 75. Our newsletter is edited by Managing Editor Ari Weitzman, Will Kaback, Bailey Saul, Sean Brady, and produced in conjunction with Tangle’s social media manager Magdalena Bokowa, who also created our logo.--- Send in a voice message: https://podcasters.spotify.com/pod/show/tanglenews/message Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

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Coming up, we are talking about my trip to Bali, the solar eclipse, disagreement on student loan debate that happened in the comment section of the Tangle editorial team in our Google Doc as we debated how to publish our article last week. A quick throwback to the fact that nobody's talking about the bloodbath comments from Trump anymore. My very strong feelings about the Berkeley protest controversy and should Sonia Sotomayor retire? And then we wrap the show up with our grievances where Ari finally shares a grievance that actually pissed me off and I complain more about airlines. It's a good show. I think you guys are going to like it.

From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, Angle podcast, the place you get views from across the political spectrum, some independent thinking, and a little bit of my take. I'm your host, Isaac Saul, here with Ari Weitzman, our managing editor, my trusty new co-host. First time back on the mic in a couple of weeks. Ari, how you doing? Welcome back, world traveler. How are you doing? I'm in the saddle, man. I'm back in the saddle. I'm adjusting. Jetlag is, this is the first time I've ever believed that jetlag is real.

The first time you've believed jetlag is real? You've lived in Israel, right? And you've commuted and you've come back and forth. Six or seven hours is different than 12. I don't think people really, at least readers of the newsletter, knew where you were. I don't think we announced exactly where you went. I guess that's true. I didn't mean to be shady about it. I was in Bali, which I've never been. I've traveled Southeast Asia a little bit before in the past, but my closest childhood friend, the best man at my wedding, he moved to Bali right before the pandemic started to start this kind of pretty sweet

music company and things took off worked out well for him he's been living there for like the last four years and because of the pandemic and just it being on the other side of the world I haven't visited him but he's engaged to be married this summer and is then moving back to the U S. So it's just kind of like, I have to come visit him now, or I'm never going to visit him while he lives in Bali, which is, you know, in my mind, totally unacceptable. Your best friend moves to Bali. You have to go visit. So yeah, I did a full two weeks there, which was, um, awesome and insane. Uh, but it was the, the adjustment coming home to the jet lag stuff was way harder than the adjustment going there, I found. I've just been totally exhausted all week. This is 3 a.m. for me based

on where my clock was set. Yesterday around 4 or 5 o'clock, I just basically felt delusional. I just basically felt delusional. I needed to lay down and go home and took a brief nap. So I am, for the first time in my life, feeling like I've succumbed to jet lag, which was an eye-opening experience for me. A red eye-opening experience, if you will. Yeah, very nice. But I have a question about that. So you said if your best friend moves to Bali, you should visit him. Do you think that's true if your best friend moves to Antarctica or like northern Norway? Would you still feel the same obligation? Yeah, 100%. I think visiting a friend who lives in a far-off place, having a friend moved to a far off place is the

best excuse to go travel somewhere that there is. Um, um, if someone is listening to this podcast and they live really far away from the U S and they want to be friends, invite me to come hang out with you. You don't even have, we don't even have to be friends. I just want to come hang out. Um, yeah, no. And it was so Bali was insane. It was like, I've never really been anywhere like it before. Uh, just all this sort of combustion, crazy packed in like sardines of some other Southeast Asian countries like Thailand or something. But then this really heavy influence of all the people who go there as tourists or expats, there's so many foreigners there. And then it's Indonesia, but it's not. It's sort of its own sovereign country with a different language, but it's in the Indonesian

umbrella. Like people, Balinese people speak a different language than Indonesian people, but everyone in Bali speaks Indonesian or most people in Bali speak Indonesian. So it's like my, so for instance, like my friend's fiance, she's Indonesian. She grew up in Indonesia and she's- and that's why he moved to Bali. He met her when he was living there. Uh, and, but she lives in Bali. You know, they met, she, she was living in Bali. He moved to Bali. They met on like a dating app or something. And she speaks English and Indonesian, but she doesn't speak Balinese. So it's like, there are're like local local balinese people who

speak this language that is different than the language she grew up on indonesia and then indonesia is really muslim it's you know it's like the largest muslim country in the world but bali is like mostly hindu um so it's all these like it's very like temple oriented and sort of like kind of has like this indian temple vibe like the architecture and all these places and there's like cool hindu temples to go see and uh yeah it was like super interesting and then there's like you know it's bali so the beaches are beautiful and it's like a scattered islands all throughout Bali and all this stuff. And so there's this huge like influencer population there.

Like I think I'm aware it's so nuts. Like, like there is like, you'll be on the beach. This literally is a real thing that happened to me. I was sitting on the beach. This literally is a real thing that happened to me. I was sitting on the beach. I watched this woman do eight takes, beautiful woman on the beach wearing some beach outfit, do eight takes with her friend recording her walking into the ocean in between these rocks, cliffs, coming back, looks at the phone, looks at the video, then like one more time, does it again, like same exact kind of like seductive walk into the water. And me and my friend Evan were just like watching this, throwing around on the beach,

laughing about how ridiculous it was. And then you get on your little motorcycle, everybody rides mopeds or scooters, Vespas, motorcycles. It's like the only mode of transportation there. And you leave the beach, you're driving down the road for five minutes and you're going like passing a rice farm where there's like these rice workers in the field who look like they've been transported from like sixth century Japan or something. Like it's like a total blast from the past. Like looks like it's just a totally, and these, they all just live together. It's like this big confluence of these really

disparate cultures and weird, different tourists and local stuff. And then Bali is being modernized. It's being developed. They're like building tons of Airbnbs and the hotels to deal with the huge influx of tourists and all this stuff. But it was beautiful. The people were super nice. The beaches were gorgeous. There's monkeys everywhere, which is like the coolest thing ever. And it's really cheap, you know, for at least from where I'm coming from,

like the US dollar goes really far there. So, you know, for instance for, for at least from where I'm coming from, like the U S dollar goes really far there. So, you know, for instance, I got like four massages when I was there because you can get a massage for $15 for like 90 minutes. It's insane. You buy breakfast at a really nice, like Indonesian breakfast place. It's like three bucks. And there are restaurants that are tourists like made for tourists that are like expensive, you know, whatever, even, you know, even by US standards expensive, but on the whole, it's a very fun, cheap place to go travel and visit, which is always appealing to me. I think Indonesia in general is the biggest country that nobody knows anything about. I think there may be a quarter of the

people will be able to recite the fact that Indonesia is the most populous Muslim country in the world, probably less. I wonder how many people know Bali is in Indonesia. It's, I think, the westernmost island in Indonesia other than Java, right? It's like just to the east of Java. That's a good question java's which is the most populous island in the world i think java yeah that's that is i don't i don't i have not heard that fact that um that java is the most populated island in the world but i wouldn't be surprised i'm trying to remember where java is related to Bali. I'm looking at it right now. In fact, check me on that.

What did you, what was your exact claim? That it's... I said that it is the West. I said, I think Bali is the Western most island in Indonesia other than Java. Like it's just to the East of Java. Yes, you are correct. Actually, it is just to the East. Bali is just to the East of Java.

That's right. And Java, I did just confirm it is the most populous island in the world. And these are like crazy things about Indonesia. And another thing that's really strange to me is you've traveled a lot. I've traveled a decent amount, not as much as you. I don't think I've ever met an Indonesian tourist. It's the fourth most populous country in the world. Are they all just in Indonesia? You know what's really interesting, actually? I don't know that I've ever met,

now that you say that, I don't know that I've ever met an Indonesian tourist, but there's a really big Indonesian population in Philadelphia. Interesting. I have no idea, and I live in it. I'm like right in the heart of it. There's like three Indonesian restaurants within 10 blocks of me. And when my friend Evan and his fiance came here, I took her to one because I was like,

tell me if this is good Indonesian food or not. And she was like, this place was actually really good. She gave it like her full endorsement, which I was super pumped about. Martabak OK is the name of the place. If anybody from Philly is listening, it's in just north of Point Breeze. And yeah, so until I moved to Philly, I would say not really. I'm impressed that you just had those Indonesian facts on the tip of your tongue. That's pretty good. I'm a geography d just had those Indonesian facts on the tip of your tongue. That's pretty good. I'm a geography dork, you know.

Yeah, I did not. I knew very little. I mean, I knew the fact about, you know, the Muslim population there, but I knew very little about Indonesia as a country. And I'd actually gone to Jakarta in Java for like years ago, I went because I was reporting on a Habitat for Humanity program and got to go spend like a week helping build a house and writing about the experience and stuff there, which was actually pretty interesting, but I didn't get to do like a lot of tourist stuff outside of the program, which was a bummer. But something you said that before you just to jump in real quick, something that you said that

I kind of want to underline before we move on from it is that super fluffy, but the best way to travel is visiting other people. I find myself so self-conscious when I'm a tourist somewhere, but if I can just be a tourist when it's my friend showing me around a place that's really cool that they live, it just takes all of that anxiety away. It just allows me to visit the place and feel like I'm getting everything out of it without thinking like I'm doing tourist stuff and being a tourist. Yeah. It's also awesome because it's like, they know, like my friend Evan knows he's like, he's a local, you know, like he knows so many people. He spent, he lived somewhere for four years. Like, you know, everything about your neighborhood by then and like all the good

spots to go. I mean, he was an incredible host. He planned something for every day and, um, yeah, it was super cool. The last thing we did on the trip was we went to Gili Taragawan, Gili T, everybody calls it this island off the coast of Bali, which like, you know, Bali is his own little separate world, whatever. And then you go to Gili T. And on Gili T, it's actually, that is like a little predominantly Muslim island, but there are all these like funny rules, like there's no cars or motorized vehicles of any kind on the island. So the only way to get around is horse and buggy or riding a bike. And that's like what everybody does. And it used to be, there were a lot of rules about like not being able to wear bikinis or like things like that, like show a certain amount of skin. But now it's like a huge,

it's like known as the party island. And Bali has a bunch of strict rules about like drug use and stuff like you get caught with pot or something there you go to jail for like five years but on this island all over the island they sell magic mushroom milkshakes like so you go up to a bar and you like buy and you just like that's like a thing people go there as tourists to do is just like eat mushrooms and trip on the beach for the day in this country. That's like very strict about it. It's the whole, this is what I'm saying. Like it was, there were all these things that I had where I was like, this place is totally

insane. And like a huge confluence of all these different sort of like cultures and norms and tourists and whatever it was. Yeah. It was, yeah, it was wild. Just a small island with a completely different culture off the coast of another island, which has its own culture off the coast of an archipelago. That's a different culture of this region

that very few Americans know about. Yeah, totally. That's all really interesting stuff. Yeah, it was, I highly recommend if anybody ever gets a chance to go, they should go. I was very glad to visit. And then you came back directly. You landed the day of the eclipse or before?

I landed the day of the eclipse. Flew in. I mean, literally, peak eclipse in Philadelphia was 3.30 in the afternoon or something. And my flight landed at like two 58 or something like that. So everybody was looking out the window, trying to see it, um, which it sucked. It was like, nah, I was in like a, I was, you know, it was one of those big international planes where there's three rows. So I was in the middle row. So I couldn't see, I was like trying to peer out the window and stuff. And you're not allowed to get up when you're row. So I couldn't see, I was like trying to peer out the window and stuff

and you're not allowed to get up when you're landing. And I couldn't really see anything cool. And then we land in Philly and it was like super cloudy and it was a totally lame experience. You weren't in the path of totality anyway. I wasn't in the path. Yeah, you'll never shut up about that. But yeah, do you go ahead?

You can talk about your, tell me, you sold me on the eclipse being cool. I was being a hater about the eclipse, and then you sent a video and a picture of your experience, and it changed my opinion. Yeah, I'll be brief about it. But I did see the eclipse in 2017 in the similar way that I feel like you're describing Philadelphia for you this year,

where I was living in San Francisco at the time, and the path of the eclipse went through Oregon, and you could get like 85, 90% of the experience in San Francisco. And at the time, I was like, that's enough. I'll get it. And I went out, I saw it, I got a really interesting picture, I thought, of it reflected in a building. And I was like, that's cool. All right. Sure. And then I just went about my day. And this time, the eclipse came to us. So that was really, really lucky. We were also really, really lucky that it was cloudless in northern Vermont in April, which is super rare. And it was cloudy for a lot of the rest of the country, which is pretty heartbreaking for the people who

travel to see it. And it was pretty surreal just to be able to see a celestial event like that, where it starts to get colder, progressively colder while you're in full sun, you just feel yourself getting colder. The light is the same quality as a cloudy day, but the sunlight is direct. There are sharp shadows, but it feels like it's cloudy, which is strange because the sun's occluded for most of it. And then right at totality, it just suddenly becomes dusk and it feels like sunset, except the darkest part of the sky is directly where the sun is, which is unbelievable. And you can see some stars, the opposing horizons kind of sunny still. And directly where the sun is,

it's just this white circle because the earth, sorry, the moon is 400 times smaller than the sun, which is 400 times farther away which is quite a coincidence i'm not a very religious person but it does make you wonder when especially when you experience an event like that it's wait the sun is it's not 400 times smaller it's 400 000 times pretty sure it's 400 by diameter yeah i know i know i have the same thought the sun is only 400 times by surface area just if you look at it i thought the sun would be much much much larger and i think it is by weight and by certain by area but by diameter just when you see the disc in the sky if you not when you see it but just by diameter if you measure in two

dimensions right so that makes sense um the video that you sent us about where this where totality happens actually blew my mind and i was like talking a bunch of shit because i was jealous in the slack about solar eclipses were lame and Ari wouldn't stop talking about it. And like our team tangle Slack. And then he just dropped this video where like everything goes dark and the whole sky changes in like a second and a half. And I was like, God damn it. That's pretty cool. Um, so yeah, I was bummed to miss it. You, you did tell everybody to come up and come to Vermont for it and didn't take you up on that. I mean, I was bummed to miss it. You, you did tell everybody to come up and come to Vermont for it and it didn't take you up on that. I mean, I wouldn't have been able to, but you know, I, uh, well, next time 2045, come on up. Yeah. 2045. I'll be there. All right. We've got a ton to cover.

Uh, so we can, we can shift out of our, what have, where have we been? What have we been doing for the last two weeks? I'm very glad to be back here. You wanted to talk about some disagreement we had. We published, it's Thursday right now as we record this, we published this student loan piece today. And I think I can set the table for this. If I remember correctly, we were having a little bit of an argument. You know, in my take today, we had a little bit of an argument among the staff about my position on the student loan stuff, which was basically, you know, I said that I didn't actually, I didn't think that canceling student debt was helpful, which I think people agreed with in the sense that there are better ways to actually fix what the problem is. And there was some suggestion that we could frame this as if you were going to do a structural reform. Like if you're going to fix the things that are broken about how the student loan system works

so the next generation doesn't fall into debt and you paired that with some kind of broad student debt cancellation and you define that as a big, good solution, why wouldn't canceling student debt now be good if it's just one half of that solution? Why don't we just do that part first, and then we'll figure out the structural reform later? Do you think that's

a fair characterization of the arguments? To a degree. I think that's a fair characterization of half of it. I think the other half is about the differences between this attempt and the previous attempt, because there were some very good criticisms against broadly canceling debt or a large portion of debt for college graduates, or at least anybody who'd attended college, because it is, for a lot of those people, regressive if you do it broadly. If you cancel debt for people with college degrees, it feels unfair because those are the people with the highest earning potential, again, broadly speaking. And that this was more narrowly defined, I think, was an aspect that changed, or maybe my argument was should change the way that we frame discussing it. So those old frameworks that we were rehashing are still

useful to a degree, but I think the aspect of the broadness of the scope, I think should have changed the discussion a little bit more. Yeah. I mean, I think that's a fair argument. I guess I would just say, there's 43 million Americans who have student loan debt. The initial plan was to forgive roughly $20,000 of student loan debt for 40 of those 43 million Americans. So when that's sort of like the benchmark, the fact that this is narrower than that to me doesn't like, that's not necessarily informative. I mean, whatever 25 million people, I know that student debt is a huge issue. And I know, I know personally, I know people who like, I wish they could get their student debt forgiven. I mean, I know I have friends who, there's always tension about how personal I want to make, you know, my arguments or my take or whatever, but I have, I don't know what your student debt position is like. I'm sure you

had some at some point. But, you know, I have friends who went to college, took out a big loan, went to school they, you know, thought would give them a degree where they could go get a lucrative job, entered the job market in 2008 to 2012 or whatever when it was really hard to get work, started making money, less money than they should have in a typical economy would have started making, have been consistent paying their loans for 15 years since then and are basically in like the same spot they were when they started. And there is something about that that just feels unjust and like feels wrong to me and like are not fair in a way that I want to fix it.

And it's like, I know these people to be hard workers who, you know, took school seriously and take their work seriously and make good money even. But it's just like, you know, when you're only paying 200 bucks a month or whatever for your student loans, because you have rent and all these other payments, you have kids now or whatever, it's like, it's a really hard thing to get caught up on. But I don't know that I believe there's 25 million of those people in the country who I would feel the same way about if I knew all their circumstances. And maybe that's naive of me, but I struggle to believe that forgiving all that debt is a good idea, basically.

Okay. And a framework for discussion that i think would be useful is to say you had three counter arguments against forgiveness of we'll say 25 million people um so that was the number that we were reporting on last time that we covered this this week. Your pushback to that was, sorry, it was 30 million, up to 30 million borrowers were the people that were going to be forgiven or partially forgiven. The pushback that you had or the criticism you had of the plan, I think was threefold. One, timing about inflation and anything that's going to stimulate the economy now is going to be counterproductive to the long-term health of the economy for everybody, which is fair. I think my counter to that would be if we could try to narrow it down a little bit,

like much, much more so the stimulus is less broad. I think that's somewhat addressed or at least mediated. Is that fair for 0.1? If you were to, yeah, I mean, I guess it's hard for me to know. I'd want to see some kind of CBO estimate or whatever. I mean, I'm not qualified to judge giving people $20,000 of extra savings or whatever, how that would impact the economy. How many people, yeah. If I was confident that like, you know, this was something that was gonna bump inflation from by maybe like zero to 0.2 or something like that, then yeah, I would, I think I'd

be more open-minded about it. And maybe that's all it would do. But based on a lot of the economists who I've read talk about this, the impact could potentially be quite a bit larger, which is how they frame it as being concerning. But yes, if you could take that off the table or mitigate it, then yeah, great. Okay. We'll say maybe mitigated, partially stalemate there still. Two other points to go through broadly. Second was this idea that any student debt forgiveness that's not paired with structural reform of some kind of the economic system behind college isn't solving the problem long-term, which I think is what you were leading with earlier. And I think that's

completely valid. And the way that you framed my pushback was those two things don't necessarily need to coexist. We can do one without doing the other, but if we do one, we ought to do the other. But still, I think that's something you talked about before, so I don't need to redundantly repeat what you said, unless there's anything you want to add to that. No, there's nothing I really want to add to that. Okay. So the third thing was just the idea of the legality, which this proposal targeted five groups. And I think we can probably go through each of those five groups and say whether it passes the test that Justice

Roberts defined in his ruling in Nebraska versus Biden when we covered this previously, and then throw out the ones that fail the test. And I can just repeat what that statement was here, since it's fairly brief. And we can make the determination that way. Does that sound useful? I think so, yeah. Okay, so here is what Justice Roberts said. The act authorizes, sorry, that's the Higher Education Act. The act authorizes the Secretary of Education to cancel

or reduce loans in certain limited circumstances. The secretary may cancel a set amount of loans held by some public servants. He may also forgive the loans of borrowers who have died or become, quote, permanently and totally disabled, borrowers who are bankrupt, and borrowers whose schools falsely certify them close down or fail to pay lenders. So those were his tests. Here are the groups that I think fail that test. Number one, borrowers whose loan balances have grown despite their consistent payments due to interest. I think that's something that I have the most amount of sympathy for, that you continue to meet all of your requirements to pay your loans back, but they haven't decreased. That's something that should be fixed by legislation, probably not mass forgiveness. I think that would fail

the legal test. Yeah. And that's 25 million people they say would be impacted by that part of it. So like the bulk of the forgiveness. And again, I mean, just at the top was like the example I used is I know a lot of those people and yeah, and it sucks. And like, I just don't know that the broad cancellation of that is, it's also worth noting to just add a little bit of context there that the provision would cancel up to $20,000 of interest for Americans who owe more than they originally borrowed. But that is for people that that cap of $20,000 only exists for people making more than $120,000. So if you were making less than, if you're making 115 grand a year and you had $50,000 of student loan debt, you could get the full $50,000 canceled, even if just by virtue of having paid consistent payments.

need consistent payments. The interest rate thing is super real. Interest has a function. I think a lot of the people, a lot of the conservatives made this argument in what the right was saying that I think is a good argument. The reason that there's interest on these payments is to incentivize paying them and paying them on time and paying more money and all this stuff and doing it sooner. And without interest rates, there's less of a push to do that, obviously. So that's totally fair. It's like so many systems work on interest. It's not like we're going to get rid of interest rates, but like, there's a degree, I think where those interest rates become like legitimately predatory or just like not feasible. And that exists in the student loan space in a way that's like really dangerous and, and is hurting the economy probably,

you know, at some point it's like, that's not, this one group of lenders is making a bunch of money, but all these people who would be spending money on a new house or having kids or whatever aren't doing it because they owe 40 grand in college loans, despite the fact they've paid 40 grand in college loans, you know. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. I would want to hear from people who are professional accountants in some way, but every other loan that I know of has some sort of amortization schedule or some way of paying down where the minimum payments you make will be able to be enough for you to pay off the loan in X amount of time. Student debt is different in that it's open-ended and you can't really solve the problem of bringing an amortization

schedule to student loans without increasing what a minimum payment would look like. I get that, but it just feels like there should be a way around this. It just should be illegal to make a minimum payment something that if you continue to make it, your loan gets larger. That just feels so wrong and it feels like something that should be fixed with legislation. Yeah, agreed. But that's point one. Point two is another large group that I think we're both sympathetic to, but probably fails the test. Are borrowers whose undergraduate or graduate loans have been in repayment for at least 20 or 25 years? It's pretty similar. And I think a lot of the

same arguments apply, but still, I don't think there's anything in there that would apply to the way that Roberts defined it. Yeah. And probably a lot of the same people too. I'm sure there's some lay over there. But yeah, also agree. I don't think they passed that test. The ones that I think do pass the test are surprisingly, when I was thinking about this, the ones that I think were hardest to define or at least well-defined in this action, which was one, borrowers experiencing hardship and struggling to pay back loans. If those are defined in ways that Justice Roberts defined them in that legal test, then I think that's almost by definition legal and should be good. Yeah. That's like, you know, somebody who's bankrupt or whatever. Um, and you know,

interestingly and critically, the white house did not specify what financial threshold qualified for hardship yet. So it's possible that whatever rule they draw up is, you know, it passes that test. Yeah. And that's a good point as it's still in that phase where it's being constructed. And the other thing, which is also very explicitly defined in the test was borrowers with debt who attended quote low financial value colleges. So ones that have lost their accreditation apply there. you colleges. So ones that have lost their accreditation apply there. Yeah. And this is one of the ones that I feel like really passionately about that. And this also are schools who, you know, yeah, cheated students or had college programs that, you know, like were so crappy that these kids, like there was some sort of consistent systemic thing that is shown where they're not able to get jobs or can't get high paying jobs after this. I mean, like there's a promise of like an education that a school is going to provide you. And

especially the schools who are lose their accreditation or get accused of fraud or whatever. I mean, if you go to one of those schools, I think you should get your money back in some form. Like I'm supportive of that because it's like that all these for-profit colleges and these online schools and stuff who make these huge promises and like, I mean, they're literally running fraudulent schemes. So I'm extremely sympathetic to that. And it passes the test. So it's legal. So we're all aboard on that. But the last one,

I think is something that's a little more ambiguous because I think it's absent in the test, but I also don't think it really seems like it fails legally in this weird way, which is borrowers whose income levels qualify them for forgiveness, but who haven't applied for that forgiveness. What do you think about that? my read of that provision of what Biden's saying he's going to do is not that those students are going to be forgiven using the Higher Education Act, which he's using for everything else. It's that they're going to automatically enroll all those students in the public service loan forgiveness or other income-driven repayment plans that already exist that they would qualify for. So it's like, they're just going to forgive. They're going to automatically put them in, even though, for whatever reason, those people haven't applied. Which, by the way, they said there's roughly 2 million students or 2 million borrowers holding debt who would qualify, which is crazy to me that there's 2

million people out there. I mean, it's actually not that crazy, but it's notable, I guess I would say to me that there's 2 million people out there who probably qualify to have all their debt canceled or relieved, but have just like never done the paperwork or don't know about a program or whatever. So like if Biden wants to do that, I think that's really smart politics. I think it probably gets through legally. And if people don't know about these programs, that's a little bit on them, but also the programs exist for a reason. I want them to be used. So I'm perfectly happy seeing those people have their debt canceled in that way. An interesting final thought for me about this is that we keep saying that this is,

or we keep seeing the argument to Biden's effort as him trying to play politics with the economics of this issue, i.e. buying votes. But if our survey results are anything to be or show anything real, which we don't have scientific polls, but we asked our readers what they thought of this proposal and 1,100 people responded, which is very high. We normally get somewhere between six and 800 people to respond. And over 65% of people were opposed to this, both in theory and legally. And a lot of the comments to that survey were very upset that the people that the Biden administration is signaling, at least politically, that they're interested in helping are college graduates or people who attend college.

And I think the politics of this may actually be something that at this point, the more he insists is actually detrimental to his campaign. Very interesting. Yeah. I, I'm not surprised by that. I think like I'm, I'm trying to, yeah, I can't decide if that's surprising to me. I don't think it is. I don't think it is. I think, I think, I think, I think that is, if you had asked me how people were going to answer that, um, I would say that that was going to be generally, it was not going to be well-received among our audience. I mean, which I also get like, you know, there's something that happens in the kind of lefty commentary about this issue where it's like, if you oppose student debt cancellation, you're just like an asshole. You're a bad leftist. Yeah. people to be like, I paid my loans and I'm not going to pay for somebody else's with my tax

dollars, or they could have done what I did, or I sacrificed to do this. Again, I'm also sympathetic to that argument. I don't find it convincing. I don't find it compelling in terms of a policy position, but I get why there's a lot of people who are not pumped that Biden's doing this. And there's a lot of student loan, broad student loan cancellation, including the kind that Biden's tried to pass that is regressive and is not something that we should do. And also I don't think like ethically, even taking the policy proposal out of it, ethically is something that I'm supportive of. So yeah, I'm not totally surprised to hear that's how people reacted. I don't think that's what's going to influence a lot of people's votes, but I think it plays

into sort of like, for some people, it's going to play into biden you know kind of abandoning his working class roots and caring about like the highly educated college degree americans and you know that's the democratic base now and this is who he wants to win over and so those are the people he's going after which you know there's some truth to that absolutely yeah i want to stay in the college world for a second. We were going to talk for a little bit about the media just moving on from Trump's bloodbath comments. Before we hopped on the podcast, Ari and I were like, it's been two weeks since we did this, what were we talking about? And that was the story, which feels like- I hardly remember it. Yeah, hardly remember that. We spent like 20 minutes talking about that on the last podcast.

And because it was all everybody was talking about, and it's just totally gone in the abyss. It's just like a tumbleweed has passed and disappeared. A tempest in a teacup, if you will. Yeah. That was something where I think us talking about it was, this is a lot about nothing. And it's just crazy that people keep discussing it and then it's gone. So you can pat yourself on the back about that because I feel like it's already

a sign that you were right about that. Yeah, no, it's just such a dumb cycle that was probably good for Trump in the end. But there was this other college story that I brought up with you before you hopped on. And I'm like in the middle of a little bit of a Twitter spat about it with just random people on Twitter, which is a huge waste of time and I shouldn't do it, but it's informative in a lot of ways. I like that you spun it that way, not that it's irresistible, but it's informative. It's good market research. protest incident, I guess we could call it. And I'll try and explain it, I think, in the most neutral terms possible before giving my very strong biased opinions about it.

I'll edit you in real time. Yeah, you can edit me in real time. The neutral setting of the table of the story is basically that the dean of the law school at Berkeley, and I've read a little bit about this and watched a bunch of videos and Twitter debates, so I hope I don't get any little details here wrong. But the dean of the law school at Berkeley was hosting a private dinner at his house for a bunch of law school students, and he invited all these students to his house. Leading up to the dinner, there was a kind of protest movement on Berkeley's campus. A bunch of students were handing out protests or handing out posters that were saying like for the law school students to boycott this dinner. this dinner. And the rough contours of that is, you know, UC Berkeley has like funds, some things that happen in Israel or something, and they want, they want divestment. They want UC Berkeley to divest entirely from anything that has to do with Israel because of what's

happening in Gaza and the, you know, just saying like the school's funding a genocide and we shouldn't be part of that. So they hand out all these posters. There was a big kerfuffle about the posters because on them was sort of an illustration of the dean who is Jewish and is kind of like, he's holding a fork and a knife and looking sort of like greedy and angry and is like sitting like he's holding a fork and a knife and looking sort of like greedy and angry and is like sitting over a table and so he responded to the posters by saying they're anti-semitic and the group that put them out was like this justice for palestine group in the law school nevertheless the dinner happens and he you know it keeps the invitation open to the students and

they come and they're eating this dinner and about halfway through the dinner a one of the students gets up and i don't know if there was like that the there was a microphone there that somebody was using to speak earlier, but she has a microphone and the microphone's attached to a speaker. And the other students start filming her. She's wearing a hijab. She's a Muslim woman. And she starts the beginning of a speech. She greets everybody in Arabic, starts talking about the end of Ramadan. And as she's getting into this speech, the dean of the law school starts yelling at her saying, just like, please leave, leave my home, get off the premises, whatever. And then his wife comes out, who I believe is also a professor at the school. I don't know if she's in law school, but she's also a professor. and she's incensed by this, you know, this moment and kind of reaches over the

woman and tries to grab the microphone out of her hands. Um, and they sort of wrestle over the microphone and she's got her, the, the woman has like her left hand on the microphone and sort of her right hand on the, on the woman's show on the student's shoulder and she's trying to pull it out and they sort of wrestle over it and you know the student starts screaming to get off me and don't touch me and the students who are filming this are yelling don't touch her and then they sort of break it up and then the woman tries to take the mic again and then the student says if you let go of the mic i'll leave and then she lets go of the mic and then the student says, if you let go of the mic, I'll leave. And then she lets go of the mic. And then the student says, I have a right to be here. If you don't want me here, call the police. And it's like this big, ugly scene. And the whole time,

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authorized in Canada for ages six months and older, and it may be available for free in your province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. So the video of this goes viral on Twitter, predictably, which, you know, I'm transitioning now from the neutral table setting to my strong feelings about this. I think predictably, and as the students were hoping for, anticipated, this video blows up on Twitter. And I think the students were expecting this huge degree of sympathy that, you know, this woman was assaulted by a, you know, that was kind of how they framed the video. There were a bunch of posts that went out about it. And instead, they got like a decent bit of blowback.

I mean, the school stood by the professor, said they were, you know, they were, um, basically aghast at what had happened that there would be someone would try to like, you know, organize a protest at the Dean's home like this on his private property. And, you know, so I tweeted out the video. I think this is, I think this is like norm breaking in a way that I find gross and counterproductive and offensive. Um, and basically tweeted something out that said like, you know, I think somebody said something like it's, this is nuts that this, this professor at Berkeley is still employed after she assaulted a student. She didn't assault the student. She tried to grab a microphone and like barely touched her. the student. She tried to grab a microphone and barely touched her. It's a ridiculous thing.

You can watch the video. I understand maybe there's some very broad definition of legal assault that your body makes contact with somebody, but it carries connotations to me. I don't think this professor would ever be charged or convicted with assault in a court in America. I just want to, like, say, regardless of the definition of assault, I think there was some significant, like, touching and struggling. Not like they were really wrestling, but she did, like, kind of try to adjust her shoulders with her hands. It's not like violent but it was more than just having a hand on her sure concede that for sure and they're fighting they're fighting over this mic they both holding the microphone kind of pulling it back and forth and they're on step so it's like you know um it didn't look like a clean interaction. The feeling that I had watching the video was like, the thing that's crazy here is that a student goes to a professor's house with the sole intention of getting her friends to record her giving like a protest speech.

opens his home to all these students, knowing that, you know, something like this could happen, knowing that there was all that all these students were distributing these, like, I think kind of gross posters and stuff about him. He has nothing to do. I'm sorry, like, nothing to do with what's happening in Gaza and basically powerless to do anything about it, in my opinion. So like the idea that he's responsible for the genocide in Gaza, if that's how you want to define it, is nonsensical to me. And he asks you to leave, you shut up and you leave his house. Like that's the basic norm. You're in somebody's home and you start doing something. Like if I was hosting a dinner and somebody just stood up on a table in the middle of my house and started giving a political speech, I would tell them to get out. It has nothing to do with the fact that she's,

like, take the issue out of it, whatever. It's like, I just know. Just like, and I have a right to do that because you're in my home. And that's what, I just know, just like, and I have a right to do that because you're in my home. And that's what he's saying over and over again in the video. So all this stuff comes out about it. People online are like, you know, she has a first amendment right to speak. And I'm like, no, actually she doesn't. Like you don't, when you go into somebody's property, you, your, your, your first amendment rights aren't the same as you're protesting at a public university. That's not how this works. So wrong.

But then like the thing that I found so like the hubris around it, that just really threw me over the edge was, you know, I'm tweeting about this. This guy is the Dean of the law school at Berkeley. And he's saying to the student in the video, you don't have a right to give this speech. You don't have a right to be here. I'm asking you to leave. Please leave my home. And she's telling him, yes, I do.

Like you're a law school student and he's the dean of Berkeley's law school. Just like I have an inkling of an idea that he might actually understand this issue a tiny bit better than you. And, and then like, and I said that to people on Twitter who were like responding to me, like, do you think that you understand first amendment rights better than the Dean of Berkeley's law school? Cause that would be totally shocking to me if you random activists on Twitter actually understood what is and isn't a First Amendment rights violation better than the dean of Berkeley's law school. So I was just like, this is not the way to win. This falls into the category of the climate change protesters, like sitting in the middle of

the road and stopping people from going to work. Like you were you to me, and I I've been watching your reactions as I'm talking Ari. So I know you might disagree on some points here, but I, I am just like this. I am more offended by the way you're acting than I am by how the professor reacted to what you're doing. And like, somebody said to me on Twitter, like, you don't touch people like that's a basic norm. And I'm like, you don't go to somebody's house on an invitation to a dinner and then stage a protest in their backyard. That's a basic norm. Like she violated a basic social norm first. And they responded by violating another basic social norm of not touching somebody. But the moment they ask her to leave and she doesn't do it, I think they're totally within their rights to touch her,

to push her out of the house. In fact, legally, they probably are. So like, I'm just like, like, stop just protesting Jews about what's happening in Palestine, please. It's so terrifying to me. And it's so like, again, I haven't done a ton of research on this Dean and maybe he's like a hardcore Zionist from the things I read. I did not get the impression that he was, but like we are spinning out of control here and this kind of stuff is not helping. And like, I know this is small potatoes compared to, you know, 30,000 people being killed in a war and all the things that are happening in Gaza. And like, we've spent so much time talking about it. So please don't like write to me about how I'm complaining about this when all the things I've been getting, like,

stop. We spent so much time talking about what's happening in Gaza. But like, I just have to spare 15 minutes to talk about the fact that like, this is a shitty way to protest. And I think the student's totally in the wrong. So that's my spiel on this. And I was very annoyed by the Twitter response and the way people were talking to me about it.

And I had to get it off my chest. Fair. So I have a get it off my chest. Fair. So I have a couple of responses. I think the thing that I made the biggest face to was you saying this reminds me of the climate change protests, which I agree with, actually. I think this is an example of somebody protesting

in a way that as attention gravity had backfired. The thing that I think is a little different is I think the optics of the moment out of context actually play pretty well for what she was hoping to accomplish. Having a professor or a dean confront somebody who appears to be standing peacefully, who opens their speech by just saying something very pleasant in Arabic, which is what she did, optically plays very poorly for the dean in this situation. Optically plays very well for the dean in this situation optically plays very well for their um for their cause but i do think a lot of people were able to see through see the broader context fairly simply so i think in a way generally you're right but i think there's that caveat the thing can i just

want to interrupt you for one second just respond to that i. That's a good point. I think you're right. Optically, she got probably what she wanted. She was all over local news in LA and I saw her get interviewed on a local news channel and she sort of slipped in something about how the professor touched her breast when she took the microphone from her and stuff. I mean, she really, touched her breasts when she took the microphone from her and stuff. I mean, she really, I think, is maximizing this moment. Somebody said to me a similar thing on Twitter. She greeted somebody. She's wearing a hijab. She greets everybody in Arabic. She says something about Ramadan. And then before she can even get into, like the Gaza stuff, whatever, the professor interrupts her and starts asking her to leave. And this person on Twitter said to me,

I know it was a different person responded and said like, she couldn't even, they just assumed this thing, you know, I'm sure if she was like wearing a yarmulke or whatever, like the professor wouldn't have reacted that way. And that like basically saying it was like a, like bigoted of him to just cut. And I, and my response to that was this student is the head of a known group. That's been organizing boycotts of the dinner showed up. He allowed her into the home, let her in anyway, despite all the things that had happened preceding the dinner, welcomed her into the home. And then she's standing, she stands up in like a prominent spot, her into the home. And then she stands up in a prominent spot, walks up the stairs so everybody can see her, has a microphone, and all her friends are recording her. I don't think it was a big mystery what she was about to do. In the greater context of

everything that's been happening at Berkeley, all the fights over free speech stuff and protests related to Palestine and Israel, if you're the professor, I think it's quite clear what's about to happen. So I grant that he didn't even wait to hear what she has to say, but also based on the interaction and everything that happened, she literally starts yelling about how the law school's funding a genocide in Palestine. So it's obvious what she was going to say, and he was right to assume what she was going to say. So like, I don't think, let's not, let's not pretend like he didn't know. And he assumed something because she was wearing a

hijab or whatever. I mean, it's like, he obviously knew what she was going to do. Just my reaction. Like, let's be honest. It was just say something that's long. That sounds nice. That when you get interrupted, it makes you seem like you're a victim. Like, I get it. But it was a little bit effective. It was all that I wanted to add. The heart of this, I think to me, is around the BDS movement. So the boycott, divest, and sanction any Israeli company or any company that is, quote, not quote, but that is funding the believed apartheid in Israel or the oppression of the Palestinian people. If you're a person who's pro-Palestinian, if you're a person who believes that what you are witnessing is an apartheid or a genocide, the BDS movement is a political arm for you to pull to try to express some of your goals. The problem with it

is that is the D in that or the B or the D, the boycott divest from Israeli companies is pretty poorly defined. And a lot of the time can just be outright anti-Semitic of that's a Jewish organization. So we're going to boycott it. That might have nothing to do with Israel. And that is, I think, a thing that we're seeing here is a bit of a Rorschach test. Because the students, from what I hear, are saying, we demand divestiture from companies that are supporting this genocide, this apartheid in Israel. And the dean of the law school replies, I'm not invested. And he's saying that the thing that I think is really informative about that moment is it is a private party at his home. So he's saying personally,

because he's in the role of himself as a person, he's saying, I'm not invested. I don't have anything that I can do about this. Like you're protesting at my home. It's not, you're protesting at my home. It's not that's pointless in this way. It's just disruptive. And that I think it feels rude. And that is the thing that he's responding to. The thing that they see when they're protesting is a powerful person at this larger organization, the dean of the law school at Cal Berkeley at University of California. California may have ties to companies that are Israeli or companies that somehow support what they see as an apartheid. And in that regard, what they see themselves doing is pulling a political lever and expressing their leverage. The thing that I think really matters is, one, what are those companies?

What do you think? What are the specific aims? What do you actually want the school to divest from? Maybe they're going to get to that. I don't know. I'm ignorant that way. But the second issue that I think is the most salient is the matter of the forum, which is the fact that it wasn't at the law school campus. It wasn't at the University of California.

It wasn't in public somewhere. It was in a person's home. And that I think really, really matters, not only legally, but in terms of the effectiveness of this. Cool. I, the, I'm like, as a concept, I am totally supportive of the BDS movement. Like I don't, I'm, I'm not, I'm not supportive of it because I don't like believe in their political aims, but I think it's a totally legitimate way to exercise political power. And if, yeah. And if like students want to participate in it, they absolutely should. And I think it's really smart. I think it's clever. I think it's effective. Um, and I admire the BDS movement in the sense that they're accomplishing their goals. They're doing it in a legal, reasonable way and it's nonviolent and it works. So like the, the kind of like Jews and Zionists and, you know, Israeli groups, whatever, who do all this stuff to fight the BDS movement, who try and like sue over it, who put up all these roadblocks for like a non-violent, peaceful form of protest.

I actually think that they're wrong and side with the BDS people on that. And these students are like totally within their right to activate the BDS people on that. And these students are like totally within their right to activate the BDS movement in that way. But yeah, for me, it's like the core thing is just, there's like a party here, which is the dean of the law school, who's being like open arm, welcoming, and trying to rise above these like political tensions. And then there's a group of students who are being like intentionally provocative and confrontational and crossing the boundaries of what's even legal. And then pretending that they're like having their first amendment rights violated or something when they're not. And that's just like so frustrating

for me to watch in the larger context of like what's helpful and what's not. And this is so unhelpful and just more division, more anger, whatever. I don't want to spend too much time on this because I do recognize- That's a good place to end. Yeah. This is like a small potatoes in a large scale thing, but I got in a Twitter fight about it. So I, and like this, like literally like an hour before we got on here. So this, it was fresh on my mind. And two weeks from now, we might look back and say, I don't even remember that. Yeah. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. All right.

So before we get into our grievances, I do want to talk about the Sonia Sotomayor stuff. I know we also, we had some SAT convo on our table, but I want to talk about that maybe in next week's podcast, because, um, I know you have really strong feelings about the SATs and I want to spend a little more time on that than just a few minutes, but really briefly, I think looking forward, this is what we were kind of talking about. Like, what are some look ahead stories that are on our radar? I think the return of sats is one of these stories that's that's happening now like it this

is not it's turning into a trend not like a few things and we're definitely going to talk more about that in the future but we've done enough college-focused stuff the sonia sotomayor thing is bubbling, I would say. And I think some divisions among the Democratic Party are going to pop up over it. And I think it's going to be a big-ish story before Biden leaves office. But I guess, I mean, like, it's a pretty simple story to explain. Sonia Sotomayor is 70 years old, I believe. She does not appear to be well. She's diabetic. She travels with this kind of like health aid, which is sort of what has started this story. It just appears, you know, the Supreme Court's so prickly about defending the privacy of

the justices, rightfully so, that it's hard to get great information. But she does not appear to be in good health. And there's a growing chorus of people calling for her to resign while Biden is in office and Democrats have a Senate majority so they can appoint a replacement. Because if Biden loses the upcoming election, she'll be, you know, 75 at the end of the next Donald Trump term. And so far we've got no indication she's interested in this. The, you know, for anybody who has a really short political memory, the obvious, um, kind of the, the, the lesson that was allegedly learned was, you know, that Ruth Bader Ginsburg hung on, um, well into like her late, late age and, uh, you know, died when Trump was in office

and he got to appoint her replacement that basically gave conservatives a super majority on the court. So all affiliations aside as a political strategy, political strategy, if you're Sonia Sotomayor and you care about your legacy and you care about the future of the court, what do you do, I guess is the question. Yeah. And just a quick edit. So she's currently 69. She'll turn 70 this summer before the election um probably right

um she has like you said she has died sorry i don't mean to be crass we don't know that's a little yeah i think she's gonna turn 70 i don't think it's that bad but yeah um but it's an interesting debate i think the thing that i the reason why i thought this was a thing we should talk about is this as well as the sat issue were things that we were a little bit ahead of the curve on like a month ago we had them both as things that we're watching out for and might want to talk about and are now getting mainstreamed in big ways and i think like you said it's important to note that this discussion is coming mostly from liberal voters and not being driven by Sotomayor herself. And the question of what

do you do? I think you can see either way. If we just concede, Sotomayor is a person with a political bias. I think that's a reasonable thing to say. And she might have a vested interest in trying to get, in whatever influence she has, a Democrat elected. And just to interject really quickly, I would not react that way about every Supreme Court justice. I sort of don't love the whole 6-3 framework all the time, and this justice is conservative and this one's liberal. Sonia Sotomayor is one of the most outspoken political justices we've ever had. I mean, she's kind of like the liberal version of Clarence Thomas. She is very, very clearly a lefty and cares about the composition of the court in that regard. I wouldn't say that about Kentonji Brown Jackson or whatever, just to be clear. Sorry, go ahead. But that's a whole can of worms. But I think the answer, now that there's a lot of preamble to your question of what do you do, is on one hand, you say, protect your legacy, retire now, allow Biden to a point of justice that's going to be more in line with your worldview.

That's, I think, the more middle-of-the-road conventional reason that a lot of liberals are trying to argue towards Sotomayor now. And the whole idea of RBG, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, was a complete legend in her time, and now her legacy is a little tarnished amongst leftists. On the other hand, Sotomayor saying that she's going to remain on the bench will provide motivation for leftists who want to protect that potential nomination in the next term. So this is another reason why for me, I support this idea of justices should be appointed to 18 year terms, which I think is something that we talked about in Tangle. They shouldn't be appointed a lifetime terms and then they die whenever or they retire whenever. And a president will sometimes get to nominate zero, sometimes three, depending on their term, because that's

just such a political incentive, not only for how they nominate justices, but also for the voters and for the electorate to have that additional pressure of this matters more because of the Supreme Court. It should always be a little bit on our mind and not a lottery. But since it is like that, you might want to, if you were a biased political animal who was on one side or the other, say Sotomayor should leave now. I think I would say you wouldn't want Sotomayor to leave now if you, I think I would both say you wouldn't want Sotomayor to leave now actually if you're on the right and that you would want her to stay if you're on the left, because that I think drives people's motivations for how they vote. That's an interesting point. I hadn't really thought about it that way. i guess the only way that works is if democrats really hammer the court going into

2024 which they have democrats will talk about abortion yeah they'll certainly talk about abortion but i don't think they've centered like the supreme court yet as a it was such i guess it's just relative i mean it was such a big issue in 2020 and 2016. And it hasn't really become like, oh, there's the subtext of Roe v. Wade that abortion is, I mean, it's not even subtext, but I guess the Supreme Court is the subtext of the abortion debate. So I certainly think abortion is going to be front and center and the issue for Democrats that they're going to run on. And your point's well taken that if there's genuine fear among liberals that Sonia Sotomayor won't make it through a second Trump term, she'll either retire or whatever, or dies, who knows. Then in that scenario, I suppose you could use that as a fear tactic to turn out more voters. My view on it, again, putting on the I'm a Democratic strategist or I'm a politician or whatever, is you want her to resign. I think you want to put somebody on the court who's in their 40s or 50s.

For the long game, it's just you have Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh. The conservative wing of the court is younger and or apparently in better health. And that's the game you're playing if you're Democrats and you want to play in the system that exists. So I think it's smarter to replace her with somebody who has a similar jurisprudence and is just 30 years younger. I think that's the move.

But yeah, you're right. Electorally, the way I would tie that up is just saying, I'm not convinced that with everything else going on, a Supreme Court justice is extra motivation enough to move the scales in the 2024 election. I actually think that's a good point. in the 2024 election. I actually think that's a good point. I think when I think about it back, the idea that, no, you should actually, if you're a Democrat, you should say,

no, Sotomayor should stay on, so we should vote for Biden because then he could appoint a Democrat or a liberal to the court. It's like, you could do that now. So that's a little bit of an inverted logic. So I think I get that. Also, it's just kind of defense since it is a liberal justice. So there's a good argument that no matter what, if you are a partisan, you'd want to see the justices who are aging that are, quote, on your team to retire during the term of a president who's also, quote, on your team. Clarence Thomas is 75. I think in the next five years, there'll be discussion about him. If Trump

gets elected this term, then we'll probably hear the same thing from conservatives about Thomas should retire while we can appoint a conservative to the bench. And it just brings me right back to that same point of, we shouldn't be doing this. It should be 18-year terms. Yeah. I mean, you know I'm supportive of that. Let's do it. Let's go to the Hill. Maybe it's time that we should re... I think we have a whole piece on that. Maybe we'll revive that piece and bring it back before the 2024 election cycle devolves into something else.

All right. We're well over an hour. We'reolves into something else. All right. We're well over an hour. We were always shooting for something in that ballpark. So I think it's time to move into our grievances. Talked to you in a while. It was nice to catch up. Yeah, it was nice to catch up. Now it's time to complain.

The airing of grievances. Between you and me, I think your country is placing a lot of importance on shoe removal. Alright, you want to go first or second? Yeah, I can go first. So, as some listeners know, and as I know

you know, I am an ultimate frisbee coach. We played together at the University of Pittsburgh for a year. I was on the staff at Pitt when you won two national championships. You got a little dirt on your shoulders there if you want to brush it off. But I'm currently one of the two coaches at University of Vermont for their men's team. We went to a tournament recently, which is, I think, the biggest regular season tournament of the year. It's the last regular season tournament.

This year it was held in North Carolina. It's called Easterns. And one of our players in warm-ups of a game on – in warm-ups before a game on the second day, on Sunday. So after three or four games already played, bodies are tired, we're warming up the second day. In warm-ups, he dislocates a shoulder. It's something that he's done before where it pops out and he has to get it back. But if you

know a little bit about dislocated shoulders, you know that if it's out for a long time, that can make things worse. And you want to try to get that back in if possible as soon as you can. And the person who responded, the trainer on site was responsive. He was there right away. He saw it was out and he said, I can't put it back in because we don't have liability insurance for me to do that, which was infuriating because the first tournament we went to this year in Florida, the same thing happened. Like this poor guy, his shoulder popped out. Trainer came right away, diagnosed it, had another person with him, did like a very gentle thing where he pulled both of his shoulders back, slid his arm gently back into the socket.

And it wasn't a big pop, like his face didn't express any pain. It was just like some discomfort. And then it was back. And it was something he had the ability to do. And hopefully I'm not making him now in legal peril by talking about the story if he wasn't allowed to. Maybe it wasn't the trainer. I don't know.

But a person did this that we have no intention to sue. And it was a good thing. And the fact that a medical professional, I assume this person was equally able to do this maneuver. The fact that he wasn't legally able to, and instead our player had to sit there with his shoulder out for 30 minutes while we waited for somebody to take him to a medical, like a MedExpress, which was closed because it was Easter. And then he had to go to the ER, which took longer. And then he had to wait in the ER and go through all that time with his shoulder still out before somebody put it was Easter. And then he had to go to the ER, which took longer. And then he had to wait in the ER and go through all that time with shoulders still out before somebody put it back in because of insurance liability. It's absolutely infuriating. I don't understand. What's the point of a trainer if he can't put a shoulder back in?

Band-aids and kisses on your boo-boos, I guess. I don't know. Why is he there? Sorry, I don't want to demean trainers. I absolutely value them. The thing that I'm upset about is the regulation at the field site. And I'm sure a lot of trainers are also frustrated that they don't get to practice as fully as they could. But I think the point of trainers is very, very much diminished if they are restrained in what they're capable of doing when they're training an athlete who's injured. That is totally insane to me. I've never heard of anything like that.

I'm upset now too. This is your first grievance that's upset me also. What do we, I think we should, when we go to the Hill for the argue about the 18 month Supreme Court terms, we could talk about this too. Yeah. You finally did one that pissed me off. court terms, we could talk about this too. Yeah. You finally did one that pissed me off. Yeah. That's totally bonkers. I don't understand why is there a trainer there if he can't... For context, for the non-Frisbee people, which is probably many of you listening, this is one of the most common serious injuries that happens in Ultimate Frisbee because there's a lot of laying out and diving and trying to catch the Frisbee because there's a lot of like laying out and diving and trying to catch the frisbee is like one of the most common things like they like you know

people tear their acls and a lot of ankle sprains and whatever but a dislocated shoulder is like an injury basically every frisbee player has seen happen especially because the the tendons and the shoulder gets sore because the throwing motion like people no matter your position you're throwing in this sport and this kid's a thrower like he's a good thrower and like that exacerbates it just going through that like the sidearm throwing motion beforehand that you throw in frisbee is pretty unique it's similar it's most similar to skipping a stone so if you played a sport that required you to like really skip a stone as hard as you can 50 times during a game, then you can get a sense of like, you add to that some landing on it

that can have some wear and tear on the joint. So it's a thing that happens, but right. Like to have that thing that happens be one of the things that you're not allowed to treat. It just is, it doesn't make sense it's i understand that it's like malpractice liability is the thing they're concerned about but that's chicken shit and i'm it's our first cuss word today on the podcast i think i curse chicken shit yeah yeah i i totally agree i'm with you um all right well mine's not quite as infuriating but it's a it's another complaint about airlines which like i know this is low-hanging fruit but i thought this was um it happened to me on my trip i'm gonna complain about something that happened to me on en route to my two-week vacation in bali It's relatable. Yeah. So I flew through Doha on American Airlines slash Qatar Airways operated flight.

And I changed my connection flight to be like an hour and five minutes after landing in Doha. It was initially like I had like a seven hour layover or something, or I had like an eight hour layover and I changed my flight to be, so I didn't have to sit in the airport for eight hours. And there was, you know, one hour or whatever. And we left Philly late. There was a technical, you know, some weird vague thing that they announced that just like makes you nervous to fly. And then we sat there for 30 or 45 minutes and they're like, Oh, it's fixed. Don't worry about it. Like this bird's going to go. And I'm like, okay, but I'm now terrified. Um, and so whatever we flew the whole time, the thing is

telling me that like, we're going to land 25 minutes before my next flight. So I'm like, okay, I'm screwed. I'm going to miss this connection. And then in the last 30 minutes of the flight, the, the captain comes on and like that sick, like captain flex. And it's just like, we've been like cruising. We picked, we made up some time in the air. We're going to like, we're we've effectively eliminated the delay, like no sweat, you know? Um, and then on the screen, like on the little TV in the seat that tells you like your estimated arrival time, as he says this, like the ETA changes and it's like, now we're landing like five minutes later than we were expected to. It's like 55 minutes instead of an hour.

And I'm like, oh, awesome. All right, cool. So I'm like totally gravy for this connection. Like the airline put me on a connection that was an hour after my flight. And so this will be fine. Nevertheless, I'm like towards the middle of the plane, right when like we pull into the gate, I like sprint up from my seat and grab my bag

and I get like, I am the first person to get off the plane. I'm like waiting for the door to open. So I crushed the whole like transition from seatbelt on to get your bag. So now I'm like, I'm texting my friend, Evan, like updating him on my status. I'm like, nevermind, dude. Like I'm going to make this flight. Like I'm totally good. And I'm feeling myself like my travel, you know, uh, capabilities. And then I get off the plane and right as I walk out on the bridge, there's just like a representative from Qatar airways holding a sign with my name on it.

And I'm like, I'm Isaac. And he's just like, oh, hi, thanks. Um, we bumped you to like the flight that's in eight hours because you guys gotten late, like here are your tickets and here's like a $40 food voucher. And I'm just like, no, like I'm about to go. Yeah. Yeah. I'm about to go make this decline. Like, what are you talking about? And the guy's just like, oh, well, like you got in less than an hour, you know, your flight was scheduled to land less than an hour before your other flight. So we had to bump you.

And I'm just like, yeah, like I'm here. And this is like an eight hour delay in my trip on the line, which like I'm, that's just, that's a lot of time to spend in an airport. Yeah. I mean, thankfully you had two weeks, so you were going to... That was less harsh. But imagine if you had a weekend or three days. It was the difference between me getting in in the morning and having a full day there and getting in at eight o'clock or seven o'clock or whatever.

So I'm very annoyed with the dude. I take the tickets and I just go to the gate. I'm like, I'm getting on this fucking plane, whatever. Sure, yeah. And so I get there. I'm like, I'm getting on this fucking plane, like whatever. Like, ah, sure. Yeah. Yeah. And so I like, I get there and they're, you know, on like zone six of 10 in their boarding process or something. And so I just like walk up to the front. I'm like, Hey. And she's just like, yeah, there's nothing we can do. Like you've been moved to the other flight. We were overbooked. So I'm like, okay, so you guys were overbooked. You saw an opportunity to kick somebody off. And so I got the boot and I like, you know, I'm never rude with people like this because I hate people who are, but I'm just like sort of

laughing with her. I'm like, I make mine, like I made it like, can't you get, there's gotta be something you can do. Like press a couple of buttons and get me on, you know? Um, and she's just like, yeah, like, I'm really sorry. I can give you like another food voucher. And I'm like, all right, I'll take the food voucher. So I'm stuck in the Doha airport for like, you know, whatever it is, eight hours, which by the way. Trying to eat $80 worth of food in that time.

Yeah, exactly. So this is, that's like the core of my grievance is just like, let me on that plane because I made my flight. It's ridiculous that you booted me up quick, like quick upside to the whole thing. Doha airport, incredible. Like one of the most unarchitectural Marvel, uh, our airports suck. The, the everybody in Qatar has figured it out. That money is dirty blood money, maybe, whatever you want to say. I'm sure this place was built with really cheap, horrible slave labor or something because they've been accused of tons of stuff like that. But the building that came out of all of that is the nicest airport I've ever been in. And we should

make our airports like that. It was so nice to get around. Just want to throw that out there. Don't support Qatar or slave labor, very obviously. But if we could really pay workers very well to build airports like that in the United States, I would very much support it. What could be better than a Denver airport? Are you kidding me? That has its own Wikipedia page about all of the conspiracy theories there. It's so American, man. Don't lose your bags. The problems that you're landing in Denver, which is just like, what a buzzkill, you know? We should definitely go in on Denver on another time because I have thoughts. And then I went to go, so the second quick part two of the grievance is first meal,

because I had to have two meals because I was there for eight hours. So I immediately ate, got the check, checked out. And after I left was like, oh my God, I had that fucking $40 voucher and I forgot to use it. So I paid for the first meal without using the voucher. And then the second place I went, I was like this awesome tea house, like this beautiful restaurant in the airport. And I worked for like two hours. I got a bunch of stuff done, you know, ordered a bunch of food, spent like 70 or 80 bucks, and then tried to give them the voucher at the end. We were like, they were like, oh, we don't accept the airport vouchers here. And so I didn't get to spend a single dollar of my voucher. And yeah, so that was overall massive fail on my part,

but I blame Qatar Airways, which is like the best airline ever. But there, you know, I don't know. There was another woman who didn't, who had the same thing happen to her. She was also on my flight and she was like going in on one of the agents next to me. And she kept saying, she kept just saying, you guys, you're Qatar airways. Like, I can't believe you're doing this. You're, you're Qatari airways. Like you're the, you're the best airline. This is since when did you start treating people like this? Which I

thought was like, if you're going to be an asshole, a really effective way to do it. I was like, oh wow. She's like going straight for the brand. She's going for the brand. Yeah. Like you guys are diminishing your brand right now, which is a good play. It didn't work, but I liked,

I was like, oh, I real recognize real. You've got game. Like, I appreciate that. It was a good shot. It didn't work. She was on my flight eight hours later. I saw her, but you know, yeah. So, all right, that's my grievance.

We got to get out of here. We'll see you guys tomorrow, I guess, because you'll be listening to this on Sunday. You'll hear us. Hear me tomorrow. Not Ari. He's not allowed on the weekly podcast. We'll see. I'll do what I can. See you. Peace.

Our podcast is written by me, Isaac Saul, and edited and engineered by John Wall. The script is edited by our managing editor, Ari Weitzman, Will Kabak, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bacoba, who is also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. And if you're looking for more from Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check out our website. We'll see you next time. in a police procedural who dreams about a world beyond Chinatown. When he inadvertently becomes a witness to a crime, Willis begins to unravel a criminal web, his family's buried history, and what it feels like to be in the spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th,

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