Tangle - The Sunday Podcast: Isaac and Ari talk about SCOTUS cases, The Ten Commandments, and RFK Jr.

Episode Date: June 23, 2024

On today's episode, Isaac and Ari talk about recent Supreme Court rulings and the potential impact of upcoming cases, the controversial law in Louisiana that requires the display of the Ten Commandments in public school classrooms, Will Kaback's Friday piece on RFK Jr. and his potential impact in the 2024 presidential election, and one Airing of Grievances, as well as one computer dying.You can catch our latest YouTube video on Juneteenth here.We were previously publishing these episodes on our Tangle podcast page, but we just re-launched the series — and released a brand new episode — on a unique podcast channel for The Undecideds. Please give us a 5-star rating and leave a comment!Check out Episode 4 of our podcast series, The Undecideds. May 30th, 2024, just after 5pm Eastern Standard Time, a landmark moment was branded into the 247 year history of the US. For the first time ever, a former American president was found guilty of felony crimes. So how does this affect our undecided voters? The answers may surprise you. We gauge the impact of the verdict on Diana, Zahid, Claire, Brian, and Phil and discover that on the road to the White House, even a felony conviction doesn’t block all paths.You can subscribe to Tangle by clicking here or drop something in our tip jar by clicking here. 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. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped 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, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine 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.

All right, coming up, a massive Supreme Court docket. We're going to talk about it. The Ten Commandments law that just passed in Louisiana and Ari and I are equally skeptical for different reasons. Plus, Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and his impact on the 2024 race. And then I give my grievance and Ari's computer dies in the middle of the podcast. Enjoy. From executive producer Isaac Saul, this is Tangle. Good morning, good afternoon, and good evening, and welcome to the Tangle podcast, the place we get views from across the political spectrum. Some independent thinking and a little bit of my take.

I'm Isaac Saul, your host. I'm here with Ari Weitzman, our managing editor. We tried to do this yesterday, and then right at this moment, Ari's screen went into one of the most bizarre freezes of a computer I've ever seen. It got discolored and all weird. And then Ari texted me and said a thunderstorm just started, and I the internet went out and i wasn't sure if he was alive or not and isaac this is a little bit of a peek behind the scenes but will often rate as he punches records say something just to like instigate me or throw me off as a sort of chaotic energy to start the podcast so frame that as ari had a thunderstorm Like it was a thing that I decided to do. Not that there was a thunderstorm in my area. So yeah, thanks. Thanks for that. Yeah. My, my bad for choosing to have a thunderstorm that knocked out the wifi.

It did feel like, yeah, it felt to me like you did it. So, um, that's a good lens into my world. Uh, all right. We've got a ton to cover and want to try and pack a lot into an hour here, but we're sitting here now. It's Friday, June 21st as we record this. And I'm actually glad that we got pushback today because we just got another big Supreme Court ruling, which very well could be our subject for Monday. But the Supreme Court just came down 8-1 and basically ruled that the government can disarm a Texas man who had a domestic violence order against him, which is very interesting for a lot of reasons. First of all, because

it was such an overwhelming majority. Any guesses on the lone dissenting opinion? I don't know if you've read this story or not. I've not read this story or not. Can you give us the brief breakdown of it? And then I can maybe piece it together from context and give you my guess. and give you my guess? For sure. Basically, a guy in Texas was a firearm owner. He had a domestic violence abuse charge against him. The woman he abused got a restraining order. And then over the course of the few months after her getting a restraining order, which should disallow him from being able to own a gun in Texas. He, on several occasions, fired his gun in public, including once into somebody's car, I think, and then once in the air at a fast food restaurant because he didn't get the order he wanted or something. And so the

police came, searched his house, found the guns, charged him for having firearms while having this domestic violence disorder, this domestic violence order. And although being a domestic violent person is a disorder, in my opinion. And then he went to court, lost, and then the district court that upheld the arrest overturned their decision after the Supreme Court's decision in 2022, which struck down a New York law on strict limits on carrying guns outside, basically saying, we just got a lot looser gun restriction laws, you know, precedent from the Supreme Court. So they overturned their previous ruling, and then it came back to the court, Court. So they overturned their previous ruling, and then it came back to the court, and now they just issued this 8-1 ruling. And so they've now limited the expansive gun restrictions that they basically implemented with the 2022 ruling. So pretty interesting about face in two years.

Sounds to me like the lone dissenter would be Clarence Thomas then. Yeah, that's correct. Clarence Thomas wrote the opinion in 2022, stuck to his guns, but I'm bumped in this case. So first of all, I mean, again, this is interesting for a lot of reasons. I think one of them is I'm becoming more and more committed to this stance that this Supreme Court is not nearly as predictable as everyone says it is. I'm not going to act like it's not a conservative Supreme Court. It's just funny following the absolute predictability of who the lone dissenter is. But yeah, I know what your point is. I guess I, like most Americans, I think I'm inundated with a lot of media

about the Supreme Court. And so much of it from the left these days is just about this like totally corrupt Supreme Court that has, you know, is in the tank for Trump, is, you know, in the tank for conservatives has abandoned all, you know, pretense of like political independence. And I just kind of don't think it's true. And I haven't really thought it's true. And I've written about this before, but like, I mean, this was a case that they could have gone the other

way. I thank God they didn't. Like I, you know, I want to live in a country where if somebody has a domestic violence order against them and is going around shooting their guns in the air at fast food restaurants, we can take their guns away from them. That is, like, that should be how the law works. They basically just limited, you know, a pretty expansive ruling that they made only two years ago. And part of the reason why they did this, I think, is because courts were having a really hard time interpreting that 2022 ruling. And it created all sorts of chaos at the state level. But like, just zooming out, the recent rulings we've gotten, the Mifepristo ruling, 9-0, unanimous ruling that the challengers didn't have standing, that was brought by a conservative group. The bump stock ruling was 6-3. Maybe you call that predictable, but I thought that Clarence Thomas actually did

a pretty good job making his case. We wrote about that. Alito and Kavanaugh, I think, both made it pretty clear that bump stocks are not protected by the Second Amendment. If Congress wants to ban them, they can go ban them. The court's not going to stop them. I think the signal is pretty strong there. They rejected the conservative push to kill the funding structure of the CFPB, Elizabeth Warren's brainchild. They just broke 7-2 with this Justice Thomas and Gorsuch in the minority to uphold a foreign tax program that Donald Trump has put into place. They've got 23 cases left to decide. The big one is Trump's immunity claim, which I want to talk about a little bit. And then

maybe the one that'll have more lasting impact is the Chevron deference one, which could legitimately change how federal agencies work. And I know if it goes the way it seems it's going to go, everybody is going to go back to just screaming about how corrupt the court is and how they're unraveling federal government. But I just think that it's a conservative court. There's no doubt about it. They have a 6-3 majority. Trump hit the absolute jackpot on being able to appoint his justices.

McConnell did some classic sleazy, brilliant, probably Democrats would have done it too type politics to get a justice in. I mean, all this stuff has happened. type politics to get a justice in. I mean, all this stuff has happened. I just don't think it's that predictable. And I don't think it's like we are in some kind of unchartered territory with this court, just my opinion. And I was going to say this yesterday when we were recording, and then this case came down, which I suspected it would go this way, but I wasn't 100% sure. And I just think they've been a lot more kind of split and even-handed than people give them credit for. So I thought that was maybe worth talking about before we jumped into some of the stuff that's still on the docket.

Yeah. And I think there's something that has been stated by the more conservative punditry about the court for years that is becoming mainstream in both centrist moderate circles as well as liberal circles, which is this critique of the court as not the court's fault, but of the court needing to resolve deficiencies from Congress's inaction. I think we've read that for a long time from the right, but I'm starting to see that more and more often from different circles, that the argument specifically from the case about bump stocks that we got from Alito penning his additional opinion to support the majority that was authored by Thomas, saying that we will pass or we will uphold a law that Congress passes if you want to ban bump stocks. There's nothing in the Second Amendment that's going to protect them. Ergo, if you're upset about the court for issuing this ruling, be upset about Congress for not granting a law to do the thing they want it to do. That isn't just something that's affecting bump stocks.

That's something that's affecting Roe v. Wade before that. And I think we're hearing that argument land with more and more people. And I think it's fair. I think that's a good way to hear the arguments of this court, not necessarily fitting into this paradigm of off-the-rails conservatism, but fitting into a paradigm of a conservatist view of the court's role as interpreting narrowly laws that Congress hands down and not to legislate from the bench, which is the way that a conservative would traditionally state it. I think that's a thing that we're hearing to become mainstream. And I do want to add a couple clarifying things to what you said, because I think we're aligned generally. You mentioned the

CFPB. Just wanted to add for listeners, that's the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which is the Liz Warren brainchild. Just wanted to add that note. Secondly, you mentioned Mitch McConnell blocking the appointment of Merrick Garland to the bench in 2016 so that the Republicans had a shot at another justice. That's something that I know a lot of left-leaning people have held on to for a long time as an axe to grind. And I remember when we did our first live event, Mark Joseph Stern, who's a very, very liberal pundit who writes about court cases professionally. When he fielded that question from an audience member in our live event in Philadelphia about whether or not that was indicative of court corruption, he just said, yeah, that's politics. There's nothing that says

you have the right to appoint as a Supreme Court justice as a president as soon as they die. The Republicans control the House and they use their power. Democrats would have done the same thing. I thought that was a really, really powerful observation, especially coming from somebody with the liberal credentials as Stern. And I think it does speak to this perspective of if you're willing to make that concession, perhaps you should be willing to see this court not as ideologically off the rails, but as somewhat conservative, but not in the tank. And they have a bias, but the bias is towards asking for judicial action. The bias isn't towards legislating conservative agenda on the bench. I think it's worth calling out that there are

a huge number of really consequential cases that are going to get decided this term. I mean, I don't know if there's enough there to change. I suppose there's a world they could, I mean, I don't know if there's enough there to change. I suppose there's a world they could, these cases could come down in a way that changes some of my opinion about, you know, this court and where I am right now. I don't think that's going to happen, but just really quick, the New York Times, this is the kind of stuff they do really regularly that's just super helpful. They put a lot of good, clean information all in one place with nice graphics and info charts and stuff. And they have basically every Supreme Court case on one page that is being decided this term and a list of the ones that have not yet been decided that we haven't gotten decisions on. So I'm just going to read them out really quickly because I think this is super interesting and it will give you a sense of the gravity of this term. The court's going to

decide whether former President Donald Trump is immune from prosecution on charges that he tried to subvert the 2020 election. We're going to talk about that in a second, so I won't elaborate there. he tried to subvert the 2020 election. We're going to talk about that in a second, so I won't elaborate there. There's the obstruction case for January 6th, where the court's going to decide whether prosecutors can use a federal obstruction statute to charge rioters involved in the Capitol attack on January 6th. This is, I mean, the case basically has the potential to throw out basically half of the federal charges against Trump and a bunch of the charges against people who were at the Capitol on January 6th. So huge case. emergency abortion care case, which is basically the Supreme Court deciding whether a federal law, which requires emergency rooms to provide stabilizing care to all patients, can override a state law in Idaho that imposes a near total ban on abortion. So basically, if a woman needs

an abortion in an emergency room situation, can a caregiver in Idaho provide that abortion for her, basically? Huge consequential case that will impact abortion laws in dozens of states across the country. There's the homelessness case in Oregon, which we've covered in Eagles Pass, which is basically how far cities can go to clear homeless people from the streets and other public spaces. Super, super interesting, important case that's going to impact cities all over the country. There's the social media First Amendment case, which we also covered, of the country. There's the social media first amendment case, which we also covered, um, which is very partisan political story. But, uh, the larger question is basically like, can, can tech platforms have free speech and basically decide what can and can't live on their platforms or not? Um, I have no idea how the court's going to come down on that,

but it's really, really interesting. And it stems from these Florida and Texas laws that tried to limit social media companies. There's a similar sort of adjacent case that is about whether the Biden administration's contact with social media platforms to fight quote-unquote misinformation amounted to censorship of constitutionally protected speech. So that could hugely limit what federal governments can and can't do with regards to contacting and pressuring private companies. There's an opioids case, which is all about OxyContin, obviously something that matters a great deal to people. And it's a case about the deal to approve this settlement with the Sacklers.

And then finally, there is the Chevron case, which is the court deciding whether to overrule this 1984 precedent known as the Chevron Doctrine, which is basically deferring the agency's interpretations of ambiguous law so if this gets overturned it's going to impact probably the largest number of court cases in the country of any any of these cases really uh and then there's an scc case that is kind of boring oh also an air pollution case that is kind of boring. Oh, also an air pollution case. That is not that boring. But is the Supreme Court deciding whether to stop the Biden administration's quote-unquote good neighbor plan, which requires factories and power plants in Western and Midwestern states to cut air pollution because it drifts into our states here on the East Coast?

That's all happening like in the next few weeks, which is insane. I know this is far from the headline of those cases, but one of the first forays I had into the political world was as a campus canvasser collecting signatures for a law in Illinois when I was in college in 2007 that would have put limits on what the emission targets of vehicles in cities could be. And I was getting testimonials and organizing them from people with asthma and about pollutants at the atmospheric level. And I definitely learned a ton from that process and just finding out that a lot of environmental groups didn't want that law to pass because putting on stricter limits for what vehicle emissions would allow would have

required a lot of updates to public transit vehicles and then would have cut those fundings and then would have had a perverse effect which is just sort of like a spur to say that cases like this we always see the tip of the iceberg and we have a lot of big icebergs coming our way this summer i think the things that um that are even much much more larger than that, deal with social media and First Amendment rights that those platforms have for speech. I think that's extremely interesting and pervasive. And that doesn't even go, that's probably not even the top three

of the most impactful things that are coming up. The abortion care case is going to be something that has huge implications, not to mention January 6th, not to mention the power of the federal agencies, like you said, and the Chevron deference. I mean, yeah, we're seeing a blockbuster court coming our way this summer. And I'm wondering if you want to try to take a stab at any predictions for any of them. I know you just said this court's hard to predict, but what do you think? I mean, I don't know enough about a handful of them to say one way or the other. The big ones I think are, are maybe, I wouldn't say predictable, but I think we have like, we got some strong inklings from oral arguments. Um,

on the obstruction charges for the January 6th people, I think that the court is going to give the justice department some latitude to pursue these charges i'd be kind of surprised if they didn't uh i also think that in idaho like you're i don't know how the court's gonna do it but i struggle to imagine a situation where they're gonna say that a woman can't get an abortion in an emergency care situation. I just don't think that's going to happen. The homelessness case is really interesting, mostly because of the way that it went through the appeals court. I would say on that case specifically, I feel like the court is going to give a city the basically say that if legislators in at the local level city state municipality whatever pass these laws they can enforce them i don't think that they're gonna the art during the oral arguments one of the lines was basically that, you know, sleeping outside was this kind of natural necessity.

And that you're basically, it's like, you know, I think Sonia Sotomayor and maybe Justice Lena Kagan basically said, it's like prohibiting people from breathing outside, making laws about where they can and can't breathe. And I just don't see the conservative justices going for that. There was a lot of really interesting back and forth. where they can and can't breathe. And I just don't see the conservative justices going for that. There was a lot of really interesting back and forth. But ultimately, I think if the city council is passing these laws, the court's going to say, this isn't our job to stop a city council. You know, that's a very kind of like, this is small government doing its job and we're not going to step in and stop them. The one that everybody's going to be interested in talking about or closely following is obviously the Trump immunity case,

which interestingly enough kind of almost doesn't matter now because I don't think any of the cases are going to happen before the election. I mean, maybe long-term it matters. The simplest outcome in that case is the court just says former presidents aren't entitled to any criminal prosecution immunity. And, you know, they just agree with the D.C. Circuit Court, which the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit. I think that is what should happen. I don't think that is what is going to happen. I think the Supreme Court wouldn't have taken the case up if they agreed with the lower court. If they thought the U.S. Court of Appeals got it right. So maybe, to me, the most likely outcome there is that the court says there's certain immunity that a president gets for very narrowly defined official acts and sends it back to the lower court or the Supreme Court has to decide what constitutes an official act. That would be a really interesting and divisive ruling, I think. I don't know exactly. I mean, I don't even know how the court would begin to define that,

which is why I don't think they should do that. I mean, it's so messy. I think you just say, which is why I don't think they should do that. I mean, it's so messy. I think you just say, no, presidents can be charged. But that outcome would just add a whole other litany of new questions. And that case is really interesting because Trump's argument in that case is based almost entirely off of Nixon v. Fitzgerald, which was this 1982 case that we wrote a lot about and I had to read a lot about for the Tangle coverage, which basically said that presidents enjoy absolute immunity from civil lawsuits for official actions that are kind of like at the outer perimeter of their duties, including those at the outer perimeter of their duties. And that case was about an Air Force employee whose name was something Fitzgerald, who was fired after he provided damaging testimony to Congress,

basically, about the production problems with this transport plane that the military was building. And he tried to sue President Richard Nixon for damages for being fired. And they basically protected Nixon and said, you can't sue him because him firing this guy was part of, you know, at the outer perimeter of whatever his official duties were. So Trump tried to use that to make his argument that, you know, he can call somebody in Georgia and say, find me votes to stay elected, which I personally think is totally fucking insane. But I understand that like that is a, you know, a smart legal strategy that might resonate. So my suspicion is that the court is going to say, yes, presidents get some kind of immunity.

They narrowly define it or they make the scope of that immunity narrow, and they send it back to the lower court to define what official acts are. And then by the time that case picks up, Trump's probably president or whatever we're looking at for 2024. So that's what I'm saying. It's interesting because it matters a lot less than maybe we thought it did a few weeks ago, but that would be my best guess kind of about how that plays out. I'm just trying to think if I have anything to add to that that would really matter. And the only thing that I'm thinking of is just to wonder if there are any cases where Kavanaugh and Roberts have disagreed. Because listening to you speak about the way Kavanaugh

and Roberts were responding to oral arguments, I think that they are definitely going to be the pivot points for some of these cases that we aren't sure which way they're going to land. Like the case with Trump and qualified immunity and the case with obstruction charges for January 6th. And I don't know. I don't know if there have been any 5-4s that have broken between Roberts and Kavanaugh that they probably have, but can you think of any off the top of your head? I can't think of any off the top of my head, but I would bet almost certainly.

I mean, Kavanaugh is really interesting. I think we talked about this. We have. I don't know if on the air though or in the newsletter. Yeah, so I've gone on Ravi Gupta's podcast a number of times and he went to law school a little bit behind Brett Kavanaugh and, uh, or when he went to law school, Brett Kavanaugh was a district court judge. I believe that everybody was trying to clerk for, he was like young and like popular. Everybody was trying to clerk for it. He was young and popular. And basically what Ravi talked to me about was that his jurisprudence is pretty down the middle and oftentimes even left-leaning on some really important issues.

Like abortion, for the most part. that Ravi's hypothesis was basically that Kavanaugh's hearings and all the sexual assault allegations and everything radicalized him against the left, basically. And that he spent his whole first year just on this tear where he found allies in the conservative world and conservative media and conservative jurisprudence and basically abandoned some of his previous positions in a way that Robbie kind of read as being like, you know, vengeful. And further, the kind of part B to that prediction or analysis was that Kavanaugh was going to come home eventually, like that he would move back to the middle. And I think we've maybe have already started to see that, that like some of his, he's just been a lot less predictable and a lot more moderate in a lot

of places. And then, you know, you have Katonji Brown Jackson, who really has kind of like, not invented, but is leaning into this sort of leftward, moreist lens to land in a place where she's on the liberal side of the court, which is super interesting. And then Amy Coney Barrett is just kind of like, I think, just as unpredictable as Kavanaugh is in a lot of ways. So it makes for a really interesting dynamic on the court. I have no idea what Kavanaugh is going to look like by the end of this term in terms of how we're counting his alliances on the court and who he seems to side with. John Roberts very famously was appointed by a Republican president, was thought to be a much more kind of stalwart conservative mind in the legal world, and then ended up being really a moderate swing vote on the court and is now the chief justice. And sometimes that stuff just goes in a way that people don't expect and the media doesn't properly account for. So yeah, all that's to say, I don't know where a lot of these cases are going to go,

but I think the dynamics of the court are way, way, way more interesting than a lot of people in the more left-leaning media would let on. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped 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, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. Last season, over 102,000 influenza cases have been reported across Canada, which is nearly double the historic average of 52,000 cases. What can you do this flu season? Talk to your pharmacist or doctor about getting a flu shot.

Consider FluCellVax Quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine 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. province. Side effects and allergic reactions can occur and 100% protection is not guaranteed. Learn more at flucellvax.ca. Speaking of cases that are ripe for the Supreme Court, one of the other things that we wanted to talk about today is what I think, I want to say almost certainly will be a Supreme Court case in the future, but maybe possibly just never actually gets that far. I mean, I'm totally unsure of how it's going to go. It's this Ten Commandments law in Louisiana,

in Louisiana, which I'm like almost not even sure where to start, except that maybe I will just read the text of the law of the bill to kick the convo off. In case you missed it, the Louisiana governor just signed this law. So it is officially a law to display the Ten Commandments in all public classrooms in the state of Louisiana. The law says, no later than January 1st, 2025, each public school governing authority shall display the Ten Commandments in each classroom in each school under its jurisdiction. The nature of the display shall be determined by each governing authority with a minimum requirement that the Ten Commandments shall be displayed on a poster or framed document that is at least 11 by 14 inches. The text of the Ten Commandments shall be the central focus of the poster,

or the framed document shall be printed in a large, easily readable font. There's also going to be a three paragraph statement asserting that the Ten Commandments are a prominent part of American public education and have been for almost three centuries. So this is about to happen in Louisiana. I can't decide if this is like the dumbest story I've ever read or it's really important in the beginning of like a new fight that's coming. I want to just like preface all of this by saying, I consider myself a person of faith and Ari and I differ in this way. And you might pick up on that

in our conversation, but I think there's a lot of value in the 10 commandments. I think, you know, there's tons of great lessons there. They are basically, you know, like lot of value in the Ten Commandments. I think, you know, there's tons of great lessons there. They are basically, you know, like six of them are the foundations of, you know, our modern day laws and they were written 2000 years ago. So kudos to the authors or the author as it may be. But I don't know that like third grade students need a poster board displaying the 10 commandments in their classroom. I'm just, in case anybody's forgotten, I mean, there's a lot of different translations. The language is a little different, you know, depending on when you read them. I'm

just going to read you very quickly the 10 commandments because it'll take about 45 seconds. Number one, you shall have no other gods before me. Don't think that needs to be displayed in an elementary, middle, or high school classroom. You shall not make idols. Also, probably not. You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain. If you want to stretch this to, like, don't curse and use foul language, then that's maybe a good rule a classroom could have. Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy. Fascinating one. Would love to hear about how schools are going to address that on Fridays. I observe Shabbat and it would be awesome if in

the wintertime, well, I guess most kids are out of school by the time sun's down. So maybe they could go to school and still observe the Sabbath. Ari's shaking his head. Number five, honor your father and your mother. Honor your father and your mother. That's solid. Number six, you shall not murder. Again, I mean, you know, I just, maybe like, we have, I mean, we have school shootings. Those happen high school thing more, more than anything. So maybe you could, um, you shall not commit adultery. Couldn't be less relevant for any student in any public school in Louisiana. You shall not steal.

That's pretty good. We call that two for eight. You shall not bear false witness against your neighbor. Don't lie. I'm with that. And you shall not covet one of the more interesting commandments for what it's worth and one that probably needs much expounding on. I just like, I don't know. I don't know. I don't just generally like as a policy prescription, I don't know. I don't know. Just generally, like as a policy prescription, we can talk about whether this will stand up to scrutiny. Louisiana, the governor is going to get sued 100%. And I don't think that you are going to be able to be allowed to force schools to post 10 commandments in every classroom. But I'm also just like, fundamentally, like, is this doing anything good? I really don't

think so. And I say that as somebody, again, who's a person of faith, I consider myself religious. I am totally about spreading the good word. And, you know, from as long as it's the Jewish Bible, I'm just kidding. But seriously, I mean, like, this is just, it's hard not to laugh. It's just a little bit ridiculous. that there's a liberal talking point that says, oh, conservatives are always small government until they're pushing their religious agenda, and then they show their fascist roots. Like, no, that's just some cognitive dissonance here where you're going to try to take one priority over another. Sometimes principles are at odds. In this case, there's a Louisiana governor who's probably looking for a fight so that he can stand up and make himself pro-Ten Commandments, who would definitely get sued, and this is definitely going to get overturned at some

point, just a question of when. And he's making clear that his priority for his principles are religious conservatism, specifically Christian conservatism over small government conservatism. I think that's clear, And I think it is totally absurd. I cannot imagine any text that would be appropriate for the government to say you must display in a classroom. None. I can't like any set of words, even for the state of Louisiana to pass a law that says each classroom has to have a statement that says the state of Louisiana in it, I think is an absurd overreach. I think even if it said this is a school classroom, it's an absurd overreach. I don't think that this has any place in law.

So I think hopefully that's something we seem to agree on. But as far as the commandments go and their appropriateness for a school classroom, yeah, I guess maybe four out of 10 of them. But I mean, I find myself definitely on the other end of the spectrum of you when it comes to faith. We both were raised Jewish. We both sort of had similar levels of commitment with that. I think by the time we're in late high school, you broke towards faith. I broke away from it. I kind of read these commandments with the words of Stephen Pry, who's a famous British person who's known for like being a quote public intellectual who has said, and he's also famously atheist, that statements like this, like in the 10 commandments,

show a God who is extremely jealous and self-conscious. Don't talk about other gods. Don't make pictures of me even. Don't say my name in vain. Those are the first three. even. Don't say my name in vain. Those are the first three. And also the fourth one is have a day when you think about me. I don't think, I mean, I don't ascribe to this viewpoint of a religion. So obviously I see this as a little absurd. That's my bias. But even if you don't, for a elementary school classroom, what are we doing? Just have something that says be nice to each other. That's what kids need to hear. Yeah. I mean, for whatever it's worth, if God's real, then it would make sense for the commandments to tell people to honor him for a day. And that would be my kind of religious argument is,

if you start from a point where he exists, then him being like, hey, don't worship the golden calf is probably a good instruction, but we can have that debate another day. More importantly, because I want to talk about where we agree. I guess maybe I don't. I want to steel man a little bit. I want to steel man a little bit on the other side now that I think, because I think it's clear that we both agree that this is ridiculous. So just to introduce like maybe some dissenting argument. So the I mean, the state government gets to determine what public schools do. I mean, that the legislative branch has that power. So like fundamentally as like a posture, it's it is the legislator's job to help guide education. I mean, we have this in Florida with like all the fights over state curriculum and book bans. And

so there's a legal ground, I think, to stand on. I'm with you that I don't think this will stand up to scrutiny in part because the separation of church and state principles. But I also think, you know, if the legislature had passed a law that said, we're going to put the, you know, the golden rule up in every classroom in Louisiana, you know, treat others as you want to be treated. And they did it in like a sort of kitschy, like, this is a fun bill we can all agree on. We're going to pass this. It wouldn't face any legal scrutiny. There wouldn't, I mean, maybe it would, but I doubt it. I don't think anybody would sue over it. And I think maybe they'd be able to defend themselves if that happens. So there is some line there where I think that they're going to be, they're allowed

to propose this kind of stuff and sign these kinds of laws and they're, you know, they're pushing the limit. What's kind of interesting, you know, I mean, Jeff Landry, who's the governor, as you correctly intuited, or maybe you read about this, but, you know, he does want to be sued. I mean, he said literally, quote, I can't wait to be sued, end quote. He said that at a fundraiser, a Republican fundraiser in Nashville, you know, a few days after he signed the legislation. The part that's sort of funny to me is like, you know, what he said was, if you want to respect the rule of law, you've got to start from the original lawgiver, which was Moses. And I see that quote and I mean, I'm like,

I'm, you know, in my heart, I'm like, hell yeah, brother. But, you know, like he's arguing that like the, you know, the 10 commandments contain these valuable lessons for students. And I think as hopefully we illustrate at the top, I think like maybe, you know, 30 or 40% of them have really valuable lessons for students. The other ones are like very deeply rooted in, you know, Christian Jewish ideology, which I don't think is appropriate for a classroom. I am surprised that they're trying this, I guess. I think they're overreaching. A legal expert, Charles C. Haynes, who did a bunch of interviews with all these different news outlets about this, you know, he basically said, I think they're overreaching despite the fact this court might be friendlier than past ones, the Supreme Court. I don't think they're going to allow this. It's just a bizarre

sort of state of affairs where we are. And again, I want to concede because I sort of got off the steel manning there because it's really hard to steel man this one, but I want to concede that just, like, I believe there's value in the Ten Commandments. I see religion and faith as having a ton of value in civil society. I even think that, you know, the, that religion, the rules that have come out of these traditional Abrahamic religions are very obviously you know tied to many of our rules and laws today and that you know even these abrahamic religions are rooted in things that preceded them so you can sort of make those connections wherever you want depending on kind of what your faith is but um i just don't I don't know what they think they're like, what a conservative

religious Republican Christian thinks that they're gaining by doing something like this. The somebody who got interviewed, one of the state representatives was like, given all the, this is a quote, given all the junk our children are exposed to in classrooms today, it's imperative that we put the imperative that we put the 10 commandments back in a prominent position. The measure allows for our children to look up and see what God says is right and what he says is wrong. It doesn't preach a certain religion, but it definitely shows what a moral code we all

should live by is. Definitely shows what a moral code we all should live by is. You know, I just like, that does not resonate for me at all. And I say that again, you know, with all due respect to Christians and Jews and practicing Christians and Jews and Muslims. And I just like, what are we doing? Like, is this really the fight we want to have in 2024? So yeah, I don't know. I can't believe this is a story. Let me meet you a little bit halfway, or I guess like 10% of the way. Also, first of all, I love that you said 30 to 40% of the

commandments. I like that phrase that is a percentage. I think that's very in touch with your pollster political roots but thanks to meet you maybe 10 to 20 percent of the way um yeah the state legislature has the right to make laws saying what they think the department of education's purview ought to be and what it legislates should or should not be allowed to be instructed in schools then that has to be and what it legislates should or should not be allowed to be instructed in schools, then that has to be run through the framework of what the constitution protects as far as speech and as far as speech that it protects against. And the challenges happen, that's kind of part of the process. So yeah, if they wanted to put a sign up that said the golden rule,

I think that could be appropriate. I think it could be legal. But again, I would say I think it's ridiculous overreach to make a law that says that, but I could see that feasibly standing up to court scrutiny. The place where I think this fails is pretty early on in the Constitution, which is the Bill of Rights, the First Amendment, which says Congress, it says many things, but one of the things it people, end quote, and some people have interpreted that to also mean the freedom from compulsory participation in religion, which I think is fair and correct. So, having a text, which you can say this is moral and not preaching religion, but it is religious, it is. Having a religious text in a classroom as compulsory it's really hard to see that as not being protected from against the first amendment yeah but that's i mean that's congress congress didn't write this law if they did but that

yeah but definitely be open and shut i, this is the interesting thing is like, what latitude are they going to give the states to do something like this? For what it's worth, in 1980, the Supreme Court ruled out a Kentucky law. It took me a few minutes to find this. I was looking it up while you're talking. Because I remember there was some precedent here. There was a Kentucky law requiring the Ten Commandments be posted in public classrooms, and it was ruled unconstitutional. Different court makeup back then, but it's kind of like the reason I think that they're doing this now. But we have previous Supreme Court precedent that has already ruled on an identical situation. For what it's worth also,

I just have to bring this up because I thought it was so funny. Donald Trump on Truth Social, I quote, I love the 10 commandments in public schools, private schools, and many other places. This may be, in fact, the first major step in the revival of religion, which is desperately needed in our country. I am not someone with TDS, you know, the Trump derangement syndrome. I actually, I think I find so much of what he does to be funny and interesting and new and innovative. I even support a lot of his policy prescriptions that I think people have long hated. I think he has a lot of terrible ideas and did a lot of dumb, dangerous stuff, but I think he has a lot of good ideas too. Um, and so I say, I clear my throat with all that just to say Donald Trump pretending

to care about the 10 commandments is so over the top. mean there's a there's a one in there about adultery right that was yeah there's one in there about adultery he's like i'm sorry to say this i know a lot of people who really support him and believe in him as a person listen to this podcast i mean he's the evidence is pretty overwhelming that he's cheated on his wife several times, his wives. And also just like, you know, again, I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. I mean, you know, the Bible's got some heavy duty quotes that Donald Trump might not really like if he ever bothered to open it up and actually read it closely, which, you know, I think maybe in his older age, he's trying to become more faith adjacent and lean into the faith stuff a

little bit more though. I have seen him asked several different times what his favorite passage was in the Bible or what prayers he likes doing. And this has happened literally in like a half dozen interviews and somehow he still doesn't have an answer for it. He just goes on a rant about how the Bible is the greatest book ever. And anyway, I don't think Donald Trump really cares about the Bible. I think he's trying to stir up and drum up some support from more religious people. And that's great. That's perfectly good politics. You know, a lot of people would make the same argument about Biden. But, um, the, this whole, it's just like a big political posturing thing, which I think ultimately maybe, and maybe this is the thing to get to the heart of it that really bothers me.

It actually just kind of degrades religion and it degrades the scripture and it degrades people of faith who are genuinely trying to practice their faith in a way that's, um, People of faith who are genuinely trying to practice their faith in a way and be an advocate of them and sort of live your life in a way that meets the values of the faith or the religion that you practice. It's not to do stuff like this, which is just, yeah, it's degrading. Like, it makes me feel degraded as somebody who appreciates a lot of religious scripture, and I just don't get it. I don't know why they're doing this. Yeah, I have a lot of respect for piety and respect for the basic notions of Christianity about humility and being willing to treat others as you would like to be treated and

concepts in Judaism about contemplation before God. I have respect for these ideas. I don't share them. I mean, I share the idea about treating others as you'd like to be treated, but from a different starting point. But I agree. I think on one hand, it's degrading to religion. On the other, the more alarmist side of me worries that we are seeing not just the elevation of certain things as sacred to the level of a crusade. That's a huge overstatement, but to the point where you want to demonstrate the amount to which you care about your religion as being part of your religious practice is something that I think concerns me. I think that's something that I see in this law. practicing of a religion, but of a desire to practice your religion by demonstrating it to others and by showing them that they ought to be on your side. That's something that I think is dangerous about any school of thought. So that's something that concerns me here, but I guess that's

just piling on at this point. We don't like this. It's a dumb law. But, you know, it's probably going to get shot down at some point. We'll be right back after this quick commercial break. Based on Charles Yu's award-winning book, Interior Chinatown follows the story of Willis Wu, a background character trapped 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, only on Disney+. The flu remains a serious disease. spotlight. Interior Chinatown is streaming November 19th, only on Disney+. quad and help protect yourself from the flu. It's the first cell-based flu vaccine 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. All right. What do you think RFK Jr. is going to say about this bill if he's asked about it? Because that's our next topic before we get out of here is the independent candidate. What do I think he would say about this law if he's asked about it? Man, I don't know. I actually don't know where he stands on religious conservatism, I think, or religion in general. I don't think we ever make it that far

when we talk about RFK Jr. Like 70 to 80% of the discussion is always about vaccines or anti-establishment theories or his name or the strike that he has with the Democratic Party. And then after you breach that initial ground, you're doing deep analysis if you're just discussing the way that he talks about the military-industrial complex and the regulatory state and his appeal with voters and why he's maintaining 10%. I think that's 95% of the coverage. And then the remaining little bits about, well, where does RFK Jr. stand on religion or states' rights? I have no idea. And I've read about him a lot so your guess is probably better than mine i mean he ran as a democrat so if that's any very basic indication

probably be against it he's against state regulation in general he's pretty anti-government as a general precept so probably that i don't know that he's anti-government as a general precept. So probably that. I don't know that he's anti-government. I think he's skeptical of institutions. Yeah. Yeah. I think that's a good way to put it. He's kind of big. I mean, he wants big government in a lot of cases. I just looked this up. I didn't know this actually. Well, I knew he was Catholic, but he's Roman Catholic, and he attends daily Mass. He says he's deeply devout, attends daily Mass, and that St. Francis of Assisi's devotion to social justice, helping the poor, animal welfare, and environmentalism is what motivates his politics.

environmentalism is what motivates his politics. Francis was a patron saint of ecology. And yeah, he says he calls environmental work spiritual work. He identifies as pro-life and identifies with liberal Catholicism. This is all from the religion section of his Wikipedia page, which clicking around seems pretty well sourced. Super interesting. He did a 2018 interview and said that he has a belief that the church should be an instrument of justice and kindness around the world. I don't know. I'd be very curious where he lands on this. I bring it up. RFK Jr. is fresh on the mind. If you're reading this Sunday, or if you're listening to this Sunday, excuse me, we just released on Friday, a Friday edition penned by Will Kavick, who we should have had on the show. I'm regretting that. Maybe we'll bring him on next week to talk about his piece.

He got his first byline in the Tangle newsletter today, published, I thought, a really great piece on kind of what RFK Jr.'s impact on the race could be in 2024 with a thesis that I think is interesting, which is just like, this is, he is maybe the decisive factor. I mean, we're looking in so many different places, you know, abortion, the economy, immigration, Trump's legal cases, Biden's age, and all these like freeze up moments he's having on camera. Will this be it? Will this be the thing that swings voters? And Will's premise was basically like, the thing that is really important has been in front of us this entire time. And it's a third party candidate who continues to pull really well, you know, contextually with 10, 8 to 10 to 12 to 15 percent of the vote.

And if that holds steady, we'll have a bigger impact on this race than any third party candidate since Ross Perot, which I think is a pretty good take. Which, I mean, that's why we publish it, because I sort of feel like there's something there, especially to this idea that we're looking all over the place for things, and it's just kind of right in front of us. margins. This is a race that right now is decided within one or 2% nationally, and then differing levels of small margins within swing states and focusing on what could be the difference in those 2%. And then we'll just sort of holding up a chart and tapping it and saying, there's 10% right here. It's been on the bottom of this chart the whole time. Maybe this is where you should be looking for those decisive figures. I think that was just that basic thing is a powerful statement to make. And you add to that this other find that Will had. He shared an episode of Ezra Klein's podcast when he said, one of the largest divides in America is not just between left and right, but it's between the politically inculcated and those who do not care at all.

And amongst those of us who really follow politics, we see things as mattering more than they actually do because we don't have much insight into the people who don't. So the people who don't follow politics, they'll just see this other guy and go, yeah, other guy, like that. Hear him speak and go, yeah, you know what? I also am distrustful of institutions. Yeah, I like this guy. I think the media is telling me not to care and I think they're wrong. I don't like this media message. I'm going to buck against it. We saw how Donald Trump's supporters did in 2016 in the Republican primary when everybody was taking time out of their day to try to bury him. It just added fuel to the fire. If he can get a foothold, who knows? Maybe he can keep climbing the ladder. maybe he can keep climbing the ladder. I think something that was interesting from Will's piece was he gave us a nice range of what he could possibly do, Kennedy could in the election, from dropping out in October all the way up to getting up to 20%, maybe even challenging the

state or two. And I think that's a good range to think about what it means in each of those instances. I wonder what the most likely outcome will be, where we think he's going to eventually land in terms of his support, and which way he's going to tilt it. That's something that's still up for question, even within this piece. Will's saying it could go either way. There's a lot of people saying it could go either way. We don't have any more information than anybody else. It's really tough to say which side he's going to impact more. And it's tough to say where he's going to eventually land with his vote total. I mean, what do you think? I really had a hard time imagining that he's going to hurt Trump more than he hurts Biden.

I mean, he's a Democrat from the most famous Democrat family of all time with, you know, weirdly progressive, like, I say weird because we don't talk about him this way and I don't really know why, but just like kind of run of the mill progressive views like on environmentalism, on even on things like gun control. He sort of gives lip service to some more like conservative independent views, but like he seems to want it. On immigration, I just don't really, I don't see the appeal to a Trump voter. And maybe there's like this five or 10% of Trump voter who really wants the kind of burn down the system guy still. And they don't think Trump is that anymore. And I think that's the target market for him but on the whole i mean he's kind of just a like progressive

democrat who's also an anti-vaxxer and you know believes in some conspiracy theories i hate calling them that but like a few of like his things are pretty explicitly conspiratorial. I mean, I'm talking about stuff like, you know, who killed his uncle and, you know, whatever aliens and stuff like he said some pretty crazy things. Um, again, I hate that. I hate the language crazy. I hate the language, you know, conspiracy theory. He said some very fringe things that I think are, um, highly unlikely to be true. things that I think are highly unlikely to be true. But in that context, I have a really hard time imagining that there's going to be a big chunk of Trump voters who go his way.

I think there's enough independents and enough really angry progressives who just can't stand what Biden has done in certain progressive areas, whether it's the war in Israel or it's not going far enough on climate change. You can name a number of different things. I think I see that support as being easier to erode than Trump's and makes me think more likely that he's helpful for Trump than Biden. I think the strongest argument against that is that the unifying platform plank for the Republican Party right now is Donald Trump's support, which implies the obverse, which is the unifying plank for Democrats in this general election, is to vote for the person who is not Donald Trump. And this is something we've talked about a little bit before. The political pollster John Ralston out of Nevada, I think, has been

talking about how polls in Nevada are under-representing liberal support. The pollster CBT Politics, who's another Nevada pollster, has added to that that these polls are not showing what the support is probably going to be in the fall. We've talked about how a number of voters are going to go home to either side when they get faced with that stark choice in the booth in November. And I think a lot of the progressives that are, I think we hear about the incumbent more, which is Biden. And a lot of progressives who have gripes with Biden, when they are choosing between Biden or throwing their vote to somebody who is not him, either it's Kennedy or it's Trump, it's helping Trump, they're going to go for Biden.

I think that's going to happen. And I think the people who are unable to vote for Biden and wouldn't have done so anyway, are probably going to throw their vote to Kennedy because they can't really stomach Trump. And I think the support that Kennedy has isn't really, this is one of the things that we didn't talk about a whole lot in the article today, or on Friday, for those of you listening after we record. But one of the things that we didn't talk about is that I think a lot of the support that we see is inflated, and that Kennedy's probably just a guy who has the same amount of third-party support most third-party candidates have always had, which is 2 to 3 to 4. And the other 6% is just distaste from other people. I know that Will did explain that, explore that a little bit. He's kind of saying, I'm not convinced that that's the case. I kind of am though. I think that there's just such a level of distaste for these candidates

right now that we're seeing Kennedy's numbers get inflated. And I think the people who really, really, it's going to be a matter of who they dislike more and which side they're going to go to. And I think probably people just dislike Trump a little more. That's just my read of it. But then again, we're looking at an unpopular incumbent and it's very possible people could dislike the incumbent more. So I hear what you're saying about the appeal that RFK has as a liberal to liberals, but I think it's not really about him. I think it's just about him being not the other guy. Yeah, that makes sense to me. Entrax generally, with a lot of my feelings. Two things before we get out of here on RFK Jr. One,

he just submitted his ballots while we were talking. Will messaged me on Slack, and Kennedy just submitted his ballot signatures to gain access in Pennsylvania. That happened today on Friday. So that's very big. He's got 9,000 signatures, more than twice the required amount submitted. So sounds like pretty good odds he'll get in there. If he does, that's a state that Biden won by just 1.3% in 2020. So that's a huge, huge deal if he's on the ballot in PA. The other thing I just wanted to note, we mentioned this in the piece and talk a bit about it, but Kennedy is my best hope for being right about my prediction. I published this piece in 2022 called 19 Predictions About the Future. And one of them, prediction number 17, was that in the 2024 presidential election,

a third-party candidate will carry the largest percentage of the popular vote since Ross Perot's 1996 campaign, which is when he got 8.4%. I elaborated on my prediction by just saying, I'm just taking the pulse of the country here. I've gotten more emails and more inquiries about a third-party candidacy than just about anything else in the last two years. People are hungry for it, and I think the right candidate's going to pop up. I don't know if I would qualify RFK Jr., if I would have qualified him as the right candidate, but... And I say that not to diminish him, just to say that somebody like, I think somebody like Joe Manchin or Mitt Romney could have probably run and pulled a bunch more Republican conservative votes and gotten some Democratic votes too.

So I don't mean to say that in like a, I just think that his politics are a little too left to maybe be a slam dunk 8.4%. But I think it's possible because he's saying a lot of stuff that appeals to a lot of the Trump voters, too. There's no doubt about it. So we'll see where that goes. I'm certainly keeping an eye on it. Will's got my interest piqued in following this story a little bit more close than we

have. We just broke an hour here. So it's time to get into our grievances before we get out of here. Cue the music. The airing of grievances. What the hell did you trade Jake Unifor? He had 30 home runs and over 100 RBIs last year. He's got a rocket front arm arm you don't know what the

hell you're doing all right uh i'm gonna go first because this is totally ruining my day today it's been kind of ruining my last week or two and um i'm just like i'm excited i look for i actually i'm looking forward to having a space for this i I feel like the grievance corner is sometimes like my therapy now, which is really nice. But also a little scary. Yeah, right. So I have PVCs, premature ventricular contractions,

which are heart palpitations, basically. And they're often stress-induced and caffeine-induced. And our work is very stressful and I drink a lot of caffeine. So I'm working on managing both those things more appropriately. And for several years, I took metoprolol, which is one of the standard beta blocker medicines to treat my heart palpitations. I weaned myself off it. I did not have it for a couple of years. And then in the last six or seven months, they came back. I couldn't get rid of them on my own. So I went to a new cardiologist in Philadelphia and I started taking the metoprolol again. And it's one of those medicines that is like super duper common. So you just sort of think

nothing of taking it because tens of millions of people take it. People take beta blockers when they're like giving big speeches because they don't want to get nervous. Some people take beta blockers for things like, you know, heart, for blood pressure, for like hypertension, whatever. I don't know. I'm not a doctor, but it's very common. And I remembered last time when I first started taking them that I was taking them in the morning that made me really, really tired throughout the day for like the whole first week. So I wanted to avoid that. So I started taking them at night. And the night that I started taking them and every night since then for almost the last two weeks, I've been having these insane, vivid dreams, mostly nightmares, that have been waking me up in the middle of the night. And then I go back to sleep and then I just wake up at like 4.30 a.m.

And I'm just like, I'm done sleeping. Like I can't get back to sleep. And I'm an early-ish riser. I used to wake up at 5 a.m. every day. I don't do that anymore. I'm more like my alarm goes off at 530 and I snooze it a few times and I'm probably out of bed by six most days. But I'm also kind of a Nazi about my sleep. I'm in bed nine 30 every night and I'm reading before 10 and I'm like asleep by 10 30 and I have to get seven, eight hours of sleep to feel good. So I've just been feeling awful. I am like having all the impacts of, you know, whatever, just like losing sleep. And then just the drug itself, I think does something. It like impacts your energy a little bit. Um, but just like, yeah, horrible sleep, feeling terrible now feeling way worse than I was feeling before when all I had was heart palpitations, which is like so unbelievably

annoying. It's just, you know, why, why is it that most of our drugs and this one in particular, why is it that most of our drugs and this one in particular apparently um don't make you feel better they just make their it's like the side effects are worse than the actual thing and uh yeah so my my doctor's suggestion was that i should switch the beta blocker to these like calcium whatever. So they're calcium channel blockers, what they're called. So I go look them up and it turns out that, you know, you take the calcium channel blockers, you're fine. You just might have, you know, constipation or diarrhea, or you might faint or feel really dizzy, or, you know, maybe your feet and hands swell up or you get numb fingers. Basically, all these things,

side effects that are super common that are worse than the actual thing itself, which is heart palpitations. So that's modern medicine, and I hate it. And also, I woke up from this beta blocker thing, and this grievance intersected with my other grievance, which was that my house is still smelling like smoke because my neighbors next door are smoking inside all the time. So I

just was awake at 4 a.m. this morning, just inhaling secondhand smoke, thinking about how I really hated the meds I was on and wished that I could get off them. And yeah, so I have no idea what I'm going to do. My doctor solution is throw more medicine at it, which annoys me to no end. So I'm going to just find the lifestyle hack to get over it. And that's my grievance for the week. disappeared from the podcast because I think his computer died because he told me that he had 33% left on his computer. While I was not looking at the screen, I told that story to nobody for the last maybe few minutes. Ari's not here anymore. Yesterday, I had a thunderstorm. Today, his computer has died in the middle of the podcast. He told me that might happen. I hope to God that his audio is uploaded or John, our podcast producer, is going to be really upset. But that's it, I guess, for our grievance corner since Ari's gone and he has no way of

communicating with me unless his phone has Slack. I guess he'll text me. Oh yeah, he messaged me. And it went. My grievance is that I left my power cord in the co-working space is what Ari has said. All right, there you go. Ari, no charger, Weitzman. And that's it for the pod. We'll be back. See you guys on Monday. Have a good one. Peace. day. Have a good one. 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 Kedak, Bailey Saul, and Sean Brady. The logo for our podcast was designed by Magdalena Bokova, who is also our social media manager. Music for the podcast was produced by Diet75. If you're looking for more from Tangle, please go to readtangle.com and check

out our website.