The Ricochet Podcast - It's A Wrap

Episode Date: December 18, 2020

Last one of the year, people. And what a year it’s been; but hey, let’s not get into that now. To help us put a bow on 2020, we asked our official election law analyst, John Yoo to stop by to delve into the latest suits filed and what options are left (hie National Review piece published earlier this week worth reading before you listen to his segment). Then, we wanted to end things on a happy... Source

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Terms apply. Bet responsibly. 18plusgamblingcare.ie Have you replaced all the light bulbs yet? That used to be the thing when I... No, we're Episcopalian, so we need to get some wine. I have a dream.

This nation will rise up. Live out the true meaning of its creed. We hold these truths to be self-evident that all men are created equal. What do you, what did you say just a minute ago? Why do you want to save me? That's what I was set down for under your guardian angel. I wouldn't be a bit surprised.

I'm the president and you're fake news. Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall. It's the Ricochet Podcast, holiday edition with Rob Long and Peter Robinson. I'm James Lilacs, and today we talk to Justice John Yoo and Arthur Brooks. So let's have ourselves a merry podcast. I can hear you. Welcome, everybody. It's the Ricochet Podcast number 525. I'm in Minneapolis. My name is James Lilacs. The snow is not on the ground. We have been denied our white Christmas thus far. People are surly. Rob Long is in Maryland, where i believe there is snow on the ground and peter robinson in california spoke of snow recently but peter unfortunately for those of you who are

watching live on the zoom you're going to get a treat because peter's going to attempt to download slack and install it while oh my god which means he'll be throwing a rope over one of those rafters in the back of his uh shot they're impossible yeah stepping up on a stool. Not a good Christmas move. I have already decided not to proceed because the very first window gives me a choice of three different kinds of Slack to download. How do I know what kind of Slack is on there?

This is something you've got to call a kid. I'm in California. The scene behind me is in Hanover, New Hampshire, where they had a foot of snow last night to the delight of my daughter who's studying there. Home for the holidays. We could do Zoom. We could do Teams. We could do any of these things. Recently at the office, I was invited to go to a virtual potluck, which we always used to have at the office in person. Everybody would mill around, bring food. We'd talk. It was great. The idea of doing it on a screen with everybody in their little postage stamp window, shoving food in

their face, and then passing the conch shell so that one person talks at a time is the intense, this is, of a holiday party. And I say it's spinach in the helmet. The problem with all these is the ending, how they end, because you don't really know. Like, is this going to, how long is this going to go? I did go to a wedding reception Zoom recently, and the bride and groom really had worked it out. They said 45 minutes, and we're going to create tables, rooms, and we're going to assign a host to each table. And then you can kind of table hop over four tables.

And it was all done. It was great. And then at 45 minutes, it's over. Goodbye. And knowing that somebody had planned the end allows you to enjoy the during, I think. Anyway, that's my thought. At the office, you can always just drift away, of course, but you can't do that in Zoom. You blink out. What we need is a new program, actually, for this brave new world that establishes the parameters of how to behave on these calls.

We need a doctorate-level program, and I'm going to get that doctorate, and I'm going to insist that everybody refer to me as such with the credentials that I deserve. Look, we got all these great stories about COVID and the bill and the hack and the Biden and the rest of it, but I still can't get over the deliciousness of this last week's flap over Dr. Jill Biden, because it really does say so much about what they dearly, dearly believe. And by they, I mean the overprivileged credentialed class that believes getting a piece of paper from a particular institution somehow lofts you above the rest of the people and gives you the authority to look down and tell them what to do. Now, Peter, you're, of course, an academic institution. Do you have a lot of doctors around there that insist on be calling that because they got a doctor?

No, no, no, none of my, no, no. I mean, everybody's a doctor around here. So in the first place, I'm seeing nobody because the university is still closed. It's closed. It's tight down for COVID. And then it's, then, then it's deserted for the holidays.

So I haven't seen any colleagues, but no, you don't, you don't. When, when 80% of the population holds a doctorate of some kind, you don't go around saying, Oh,

hello, doctor. And hello to you, doc. No, no, no. By the way,

Joe Epstein is urbane, witty, sophisticated. It was, this is like turning a howitzer on a butterfly. But, you know. Making a witty, trenchant comment that didn't deserve. Go ahead, Rob. I should say you're right.

But you're right. Although, I mean, I guess I'm not crazy about the politicization, the partisanation of this. Partisanation. You know what you mean. It ain't a word for me. Because I remember people saying, Dr. Kissinger. Dr. Henry Kissinger? Can he...

I have a tickle in my throat, Dr. Kissinger. Can you help me? The credentialism, which I thought was interesting, because James used that word, what surprised me about it was how baldly people defended Dr. Joe Biden with this kind of outrage. I insist you use my credentials. Like, God, we haven't gotten past this yet, this doctor. I don't even like it when former office holders, especially former appointees, get to be when Sean

Hannity has Newt Gingrich on and he says and has his most syrupy voice, Mr. Speaker. He's not Mr. Speaker anymore. He was Mr. Speaker when he was Speaker. We live in America. This is America. The highest rank you could attain is

citizen. He's not Speaker Gingrich anymore. He's not Speaker Gingrich anymore. He's Mr. Gingrich. By the way, that's not a comedown. I'm not Speaker Long either. So I would like for us all to dispense with it. There are people sauntering. And I would even go far as to say there are people swanning around who still refer to themselves as secretary, ambassador, doctor.

Give me a break. Well, the interesting thing about this is to insist on credentialism as a mark of your authority and your worth as a person is an odd thing to do in 2020, when nearly every single institution in which we place some sort of faith has revealed itself to be a termite-ridden structure that collapsed at the first wind. I mean, nobody really got out of 2020 with their reputations intact. And it's to insist somehow that this, you know, the elite credentialed class deserves our respect automatically because of what they went through to get that piece of paper as preposterous. I would, I mean, I would love to have faith and trust in the elites in a certain sense. I mean, in one way, I would love for the world to be saved by a college professor and a dedicated bureaucrat, because it would help to restore sort of the narrative that

there are actually smart people in college and there are competent, dedicated people in government. But as it stands now, what I fear is you have this populist rise that equates the sort of elitism of these institutions with their devotion to credentials that equates that with with an anti-intellectualism in other words have we learned nothing from trump this was the this is the whole trump message this i i i actually have learned nothing from trump everybody who had rob bringing in trump at this point early on when we were trying to. Well, no, I mean, like there it's amazing how quickly these things switch. There was this very, very powerful argument on the left for a long time against this kind of credentialism that it was.

I don't know what the word would be. It was discriminatory, whatever. Right. All those things. And now there's now that everybody wants their goodies and nobody wants nobody wants to i mean i think we should all give up our goodies so this is a goodie why don't you give this part up too i mean i um the the the i've always hated the doctor thing i've always if you're a professor if you're a current professor you could be a professor if you're a current if you could fix me if i'm something's broken or i'm sick you could be a doctor.

But everybody else has just got to be Mr. and Mrs. I saw the New York Times had a profile of an actor last week who prefers the he likes he him pronouns, but the Mr., it's MX. MX, yes. So I kept reading it as mix, mix this, mix that. But MX now. I think when I see MX, which, yeah, So I kept reading it as mix, mix this, mix that. But MX now, I don't know. It's unpronounced. When I see MX, which, yeah, it is unpronounceable, I think of the little character in the Superman comics that you couldn't get rid of until you made

him say his name backwards. I think of the missile that's the end of the Colt. Exactly. Oh, right. Yes, yes. I saw you taking some coffee there, Peter. I thought I'm going to jump in. Yeah, thank you. Train-based missile.

That's what I think. Which actually was quite, do you remember that? That was a remarkable moment because it's just the people who did not understand the advantages of a train-based missile just roaming around in the southwest somewhere, were driven mad by that concept. This is the ultimate insight. Can I just, this is Christmas-y time, and there's a certain nostalgia in the air. We're all remembering this Christmas-y time. A nostalgia for nuclear weapons. A nostalgia for the peacemaker, I think it was called.

How do you guys handle the problem, which for sure, I don't want to go into old man talk. We're, you know, sort of second half of middle age. And the problem is as follows between one half and one third of the people with whom you deal every day. And when Stanford is open, in my case, it's 80% of the people I deal with every day because there are students around just don't remember stuff that is in my mind absolutely basic. And I'm talking, of course, about politics, the MX Missile, Ronald, et cetera, et cetera. But also, I had, my father was older when I was born, but my father served in the Second World War. I remember that. My mother grew up on a farm. And when I was a little kid, we still visited. My grandparents still ran the farm.

And so I'm used to the smell of cow in touch with rural America, which dominated life in the country for the first century, 180 years of its existence. And kids have just it's gone. It's just not there for them. It's sepia toned. Ronald Reagan is right up there with Grover Cleveland and James Buchanan. It bugs me because I think they ought to know. Certain things they ought to know. And then other stuff just trips me up because so much of what I take for granted is just...

By the way, the people I'm bitching about are my own children, of course. Right, right. I was wondering what the age groups are here. Yeah, yeah. No, I think it happens a lot when you're talking, for me, in my experience, less about history and a big sweep of things than about how it was being received at the time. Right. And about certain political skirmishes and scandals. Like that, that to me is the is the collective cultural memory that's gone.

It isn't so much the specifics of the MX missile, but the hysterical reaction to it. The hysterical reaction to the fact that the belief in 1983, from about 1981 and about 1985

that we were all going to die in a nuclear holocaust that was that was really going to happen yeah and then when that not only did it not happen when the opposite happened it was suddenly disappeared we just absolutely memory hold there's no reason why anyone anyone young would understand would know this because as a piece of cultural history it has been utterly erased just erased unlike the blacklist unlike mccarthyism unlike the hippie movement in the late late 60s unlike any of that stuff that's all taught it's like you know i'm the rubric of cultural history but the the the doomsday cult status

of we're all gonna die the fate of the earth jonathan shell's platinum just selling album um we're all gonna die and yeah and and the idea that like that's worth studying and the mania is worth studying is something that nobody so they didn't learn it why would they learn it we keep the tablets peter there was a thing that was we keep the tablets there was a thing i guess it was on netflix a doc anyways bruce springsteen and my kids were watching this and really grooving to Bruce Springsteen, to whom they view as a historic figure, of course, although. And I said, well, you know, I still have a little, I do love his music, but you know, during the nuclear freeze movement, Bruce Springsteen was the headline performer at a demonstration in Central park that to that point in american history was the largest

outdoor gathering ever and i it still sort of bothers me he was on the wrong and my kids look at me as if to say what are you talking right out it's just gone it's just gone oh well oh so slight i'm sorry james a moment, same question to you. You live in Greenwich Village. Unless I'm very wrong, here's what happens in your life. Some young person who wants to be in show business will come up to you and say, Dr. Long. No, no, no. I insist.

Tell me, how can I be a television writer like you were? And you have to say, oh, son, the world of Cheers is just gone. Yeah, I like that. I like the look on their face when I do it, too. I tell them what I did, and then I say, of course, you can't do that anymore. That's impossible. It was funny because I was recently on a Zoom call yesterday, the day before, old colleagues from Cheers, writers,

and a longtime writer's assistant died about a week ago. His name was Barry Zajac. He was phenomenal. He had that great voice. Yes, yeah. Incredible character. barry zajek he was uh phenomenal we had that great voice yes yeah i remember incredible character like half the stories we could tell would actually be actionable but we were remembering just because i don't think we'd all been together uh what it was like to be in a room the writer's room and just what the kinds of things we said and the kinds of jokes we made and the kind of freedom we took with everyone else's life and,

and life events and life choices. And it's just, it was, I mean, the only way to describe it is in current terms, like it was insanely toxic and actionable. And we were on the zoom call saying, can we, are we allowed to remember, even remember these? What about this one? What about that one? And people kept trying to remember, like, you know. At LiveScoreBet, we love Cheltenham just as much as we love football. The excitement, the roar, and the chance to reward you. That's why every day of the festival, we're giving new members money back as a free sports bet up to 10 euro if your horse loses on a selected race.

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18plusgamblingcare.ie One or two of us would kind of be silent for a while. Wait, wait, we have one for you too. And we kind of didn't finish the call until everyone had been officially, the memory had come up and been officially skewered. We were all sort of in this suicide pack together. But all that stuff's gone too. I mean, I don't know how you write comedy now in a room, writer's room. I mean, you must have to sign, I think you have to sign a waiver. I mean, I'm certainly, when I put together a staff for the next show I do, I'm going to have them all sign a waiver.

Nothing in the, you know, you cannot sue me. We've all buckled ourselves into three-point restraints. I mean, what I told my daughter, I've said this from time to time, when you see a video or a picture of people in a 1966 top-down car going on the freeway at 80 miles an hour without seatbelts, smoking a cigarette and eating a McDonald's hamburger with one hand, uh, or some fried, you know, scrabbling through the bag for some of those beef tallow fries. Those are the freest people you'll ever see. Now that said where you wear your seatbelt, don't smoke. And, uh, but that said, I mean, there's something to be said for the freedom that we had and yes, it led to toxicity and the rest of it. But today we've all just, uh, we've put the cone of silence

around our own heads and we don't even have the get smart luxury of having two people in it. We put it around our set and censored ourselves. But Peter, what you, what you talked before about the people who don't know, I, you know, there's, it was always such, there were always people who didn't know. I mean, being, being concerned and connected about the immediate history that preceded your life is kind of a rare thing and not normal. Those of us, however, when we were growing up who wanted to be interested, there were a lot of us, and it didn't make you special if you were interested in history, though. It was easier to get the narrative because there were so fewer artifacts. If you wanted to learn about the 20s and the 30s, what did you do at Fargo North Dakota? You went down to the library.

You checked out the New Yorker book of cartoons. You tried to get the references. You looked at Life magazine. You looked at a – I mean you could get a thumbnail sketch and glean from what was the cultural artifacts that survived what was going on. I like that. But now you have an embarrassment of riches. There's just so much. It's a firehose. It's very stressful,

but there's nothing you can do about it. There's absolutely nothing. We're completely victims of that stress, and there's zero we can do. Absolutely zero. Nothing. If you want to do a commercial, go right

ahead. Absolutely so. Rob is leading to do a commercial go go right ahead absolutely so i guess rob is leading me into a commercial so we can get to our guest and that's that at the show you're welcome um oddly enough there wasn't even a segue that was that was just a self-contained now and you're welcome for that led to a segue yes indeed uh stress he mentioned stress stress right yeah life can be stressful we know that even under the normal circumstances in 2020 2020 hey what are you going to do it challenged even the most difficult people to gather themselves and cope you need stress relief you need stress relief that goes beyond quick fixes to something it gets to the bottom of it and that is headspace headspace is your daily dose of mindfulness in the form of guided meditations in an easy to use app. Headspace is one of the only meditation apps really that's advancing

the field of mindfulness and meditation through clinically validated research. So whatever the situation, Headspace can really help you feel better. Overwhelmed? Well, Headspace has a three minute SOS meditation for you. Need some help falling asleep? Don't pop a bunch of pills. Headspace, they have wind-down sessions that members swear by. And for parents, Headspace has morning meditations you can do with your kids. Headspace approach to mindfulness can reduce stress, improve sleep, boost focus, and increase your overall sense of well-being. And Rob, of course, since he burst in here to talk about it. Rob, you are the meditative guy, right?

I am. So you know how an app like this can take people who are otherwise disinclined to do this. And because it's easy and it's right there in the palm of their hand, it can help them. Well, how do you feel afterwards? Well, they have a whole bunch of different options there. And I am so strictly vanilla. I only use just the timer and the quiet part. But they have a bunch of other ones that I think are fantastic, too.

It's hugely valuable, and I think it's one of those things where you end up, you think, oh, I don't have time, but you actually end up having more time because you're much more focused afterwards. And there's no studies for this. It's not, this is actually...

No, Rob's right. This is science. You know, I believe this is science. But this is actually new science. It's backed by... So, it rubs right. This is science. You know, I believe this is science. It's backed by 20 feet. But this is actually new science. It's backed by... So, anyway, go ahead. Sorry. No, you're right there. I was attempting to just sort of piggyback and shoehorn and take over the commercial. He's right when he says science.

Let me take it back. 25, 20 to take it back into my own little hands. My own twitching hands, which indicate... But I believe in it, so I have to interrupt. Go ahead. I need headspace quick. 25 published studies on its benefits, 600,000 five-star reviews,

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That's headspace.com slash ricochet for a free one-month trial with access to Headspace's full library of meditations for every situation. It's the best deal offered right now. So you go to headspace.com slash ricochet today. And we thank Headspace for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. Now we welcome back to the podcast, our old friend, John Yoo, formerly the Ricochet Podcast Senior Impeachment Correspondent, and the current John Yoo is now the Ricochet Podcast Election Law Senior Analyst, as well as the Ricochet School of Law McRib Senior Fellow on Fast Food Policy. I don't know why I submit to these.

Around here we just call him the Epstein Whisperer, perhaps because he's on the Law Talk Podcast with Richard Epstein. Oh, I thought it was Jeffrey Epstein. Go ahead. Jeffrey? No, it's not the case. Right now, John, and this is, again, a pitch. If you're a member of Ricochet, you can join us on Zoom and see that right now John is dressed in the cues of a Miami Vice character from 1985 or 86, if I read that correctly, the sort of the turquoise and the pink there. Stunning as ever. John, welcome to the podcast. So stunning. Um, is it over? Is it, it's over, right? And so we got to look at what, what Texas did and why Texas did. I mean, you said, I believe the Texas

lost, but ah, conservatives won. All right. Make the case. Thanks for having me back guys. And I wish I could respond to all the insults James flew my way in just a mere introduction. But I'd just like to say I'm dressed like Rob Long, class of 86, Yale College. 87. 87. Oh, my God. 87, so you just back up, my friend. It took him seven years to graduate. Yeah, well. And after a great party with Brett Kavanaugh. So, I mean, come on.

This is what Texas was asking for the most outrageous judicial activism, actually, for two reasons. One is Texas had no right to sue. Why does Texas have any right to bring a case that should be brought by people who live in Pennsylvania or even the candidates. No state has a free-floating right to say, I'm suing that other state for how it treats its own citizens or how it runs its own elections, which the power, which it has that power under the Constitution. So that's one reason. The second reason, John, let me do the layman's pushback on that texas gets to say for which you are eminently qualified yes the the ignorant layman that my middle name uh so texas gets to say wait a minute it's not just how you treat your citizens because you threw the election our citizens have to live under an illegitimate president for the next four years isn't that a ground of action no it's not reasonable it's i mean it sounds plausible you know think about it

states do individual states do all kinds of things that can harm other states you know they have bad effects on other states we don't expect the courts to sort that out i suppose uh you know suppose you live in texas you don't like the like the way California has become a sanctuary state. Right. You say, look, you're harming the country. You're letting in all these illegal aliens. We want you to change your laws. We're going to see you in court. The place for that is actually Congress. Think about issue after issue where states have disputes with each other. They don't like the way one state's acting. It hurts the country as a whole. You don't know. There's a forum for it. That was my second point. There's a remedy. There's a forum.

It's just not the courts. But there isn't a remedy for this. The Constitution is explicit in very few things, I think, but in certainly procedural things. But there is no interpretation available for who has the ultimate authority for governing the process of electing a president. It's the states themselves. That's actually the text. consistent as as a person in favor of judicial restraint and originalism and the words of the constitution and also believe that texas has a has anything other than a the most frivolous and

ludicrous argument i mean am i wrong here okay john i'll correct him and then you can adjudicate between us that would be what it's a wrong part of the constitution do you have to then reinterpret here's the here's's the argument, Ron. All right, Counselor. All right, Counselor. The Constitution is explicit. This is the only day I'm ever going to be a Supreme Court justice. Go ahead.

At this rate. May it please, may it please, Justice Yu. Oh, I love this. This is awesome. Exactly. May it please just as you uh the constitution is explicit in saying that the legislatures of the states determine the election law the texas argument the question of standing is separate but the texas argument is or was or at least one component there were sort of bullet

pointed arguments one component of the argument was that in the run-up to the election, all kinds of changes got made in procedure, effectively in law, although that's the point. It was state secretaries of state, it was courts, and all of these changes in election procedure got made without the imprimatur of the legislatures. So one component of the Texas argument was, as I understood it, that the explicit language of the Constitution was violated in those states themselves. But all of those bureaucrats were appointed and approved by the legislatures. Yes, but there are certain things you're not allowed to delegate. Mr. Robinson, quiet, or I'm going to have to put you in contempt again. It is entirely up to the residents and voters in the state to complain if they feel that it's wrong. I mean, in a perverse way, I think.

Correct me if I'm wrong, Mr. Justice, you. I love this i love this uh the the roe v wade decision has more constitutional grounds in that case it has zero uh than the texas argument which has negative grounds but we've already dealt with the question of standing the question now may it please justice you the question now i believe i want to question now you now the question now is the explicit language of the constitution legislatures may not who's right legislatures may not delegate to bureaucrats the rewriting of state election of course they can't so here's this justice let me let me issue my ruling oh god that God. The power. Where's my little baby? Oh, man.

You got a gavel? He's got a gavel. All kidding aside. I've been waiting. Just use it on your head. 25 years. Use it on your head, John. It actually just makes a noise. You got that from the Franklin Mint, right?

Famous gavels of history collection. This is actually what you do when you get at the very end of the McRib sandwich. You've got a crackling they put on at the end. So you both make good points. You know, you guys have done such a great job. I think I'm going to give you a C-. Anyway, which is great inflation. Actually, I think the way to handle, the way the court handled it is that Peter has,

if Peter has a point or not, the court's never interpreted this clause, right? Whether it's state legislatures or just the state government can change the election laws. But the court, all the court was saying is there's a different place to bring that and it's not the Supreme Court. Rob's right. There is a different way you raise these claims right first you raise it within your

own state in the federal courts as a voter or as a candidate but think about look at the constitution it actually has two other places so this is rob said the constitution is not clear that often but here it's clear there's two other places to bring objections to these kind of claim for these kinds of voting fraud claims one is you could ask congress to pass a law right the same clause it says as a state legislature says congress can pass a law to override all these state regulations if it wants chose not to the second one is my favorite 12th Amendment. The never read, rarely examined 12th Amendment, which says, right, all the electoral votes come into Washington. They come on January 6th this year. The vice president opens them in the presence of the House and the Senate.

And then this is the great part. The Constitution, the passive tense says, then they are counted. So people have thought at that crucial point, you can raise objections to whether the electoral vote was valid or not. And actually, Congress has since, after the election of 1876, they passed a law, you've heard about it, that says if one member of the House and one senator both object to say the electoral vote from Pennsylvania, then they have to vote on whether to accept the electoral votes. This is I have to say that's that's statutory. That's that's that's a statute. It's all laid out.

There's a whole process for resolving these disputes. And John is the world expert on this because nobody else is interested in it. Go ahead. Yeah, I was trying to explain this to the other day, but he wouldn't listen. No. So, and this is the interesting thing. The House and Senate separate into separate bodies. They each vote and they have to both agree to throw out that electoral vote. Otherwise, it's valid. So this is why Texas is full of it. Wait, wait, wait. Say that again. So you get one senator. So let's say Pennsylvania or Georgia.

Yeah, so this is going to happen. One senator and one member of the House. They don't have to be from Georgia. No, no, just anybody. Any member of the Senate, any member of the House. You shouldn't count those votes from Pennsylvania. And then what happens? Then the House and Senate vote.

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Terms apply. Bet responsibly. 18plusgamblingcare.ie. And they both, each body has to agree to throw it out. Otherwise, it's valid. So there's still one last Hail Mary pass for Trump. Rob's right. It's not legal.

It's political. It's not in the constitution right what the standard is actually the actually constitution and the um the statute that's been passed the electoral count act don't lay out any standards about how you why you would reject a vote or not so there's only can i say no electoral vote in our history has ever been thrown out under this process there have been i I think, three examples where they've been challenged. On the last one, this is a great one for those of you like I who are Dick Cheney fans. Dick Cheney in the 2004 election, right? Remember, it came down to Ohio.

Great. And he won. So Dick Cheney is sitting as vice president. He opens up the electoral votes. There is actually a challenge by a member of the House, I believe, but no one in the Senate challenged it. And so he just, as vice president, he basically said, yes, the electoral votes are in, and I'm finding that I myself have been returned as vice president for another four years, and George W. Bush has won. So that was the last time there was an electoral vote challenge, but it failed. No electoral vote's been tossed out on this. So it was challenged in the House by a House Democrat.

Yeah, this is why no one thinks it'll work, because the House would have to vote by majority to throw out any electoral vote this election, and they're not going to. Mr. Justice. This is what the lie. This goes to rob's point that this puts the lie to texas because if texas really thinks that pennsylvania got potentially cheated then all they need is one member of the texas delegation in the house and one texas senator to raise the objection and then congress will have to debate it oh so ted cruz instead of saying i stand ready to argue before the supreme court instead ted cruz needs to step up and challenge that thing in the well of the senator.

Mr. Justice, I have a complaint. Against Robert? And I would like to— This is not the remedy. This is a legal complaint. You have no standing in this court. The question, Mr. Justice, is what is the remedy? And the complaint runs as follows.

And I believe, Mr. Justice, that i speak for millions of americans when i explain this complaint the complaint runs as follows lots of evidence of fraud and sharp dealings in the election whether it was enough to overturn the election i i don't i'm not even going to say that that there's evidence that it was and whether it was even more than the usual but there's still evidence of some dead people voted in nevada and okay and we were told we the american people were told over and over again and indeed i think you implied as much yourself or a reasonable interpretation of your remarks could have been that they implied as much like a, you really sound like a lawyer. The courts, that the courts would sort all this out. And the courts have come nowhere close

to sorting out the fundamental question, which was, was there fraud? And was it material? The courts have all dismissed the Trump teams. Now, you can argue, as Rob will argue at the drop of a hat, that Rudy Giuliani and Sidney Pollack were crazy people and their claims were inflated. Sidney Powell. Sidney Powell. Thank you. Sidney Pollack is a fine director. I don't know why you hate him. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It's a good question whether Joe Biden or I are going to lose our minds faster.

But so the courts have, as you just described, the Supreme Court said to Texas, you don't have standing. We're not addressing the charges. We're just saying you don't have standing. In Pennsylvania, the court said the remedy is inconceivable. The remedy you're seeking here is the first thing we do is set aside all the votes of all Pennsylvanians, legitimate or not, and then we try to figure out what to do next. I'm not even going to consider this case because the remedy you're seeking is outrageous. Nowhere has a court gone to the actual complaint, the actual charges, the substance, which is fraud. And that is at a minimum, to a lot of people, it's absolutely infuriating.

There are all kinds of Twitter this, Twitter that, that the courts are dodging their responsibility. I don't know that, I mean, I doubt that that's not a necessary interpretation of what's taking place. But at a minimum, it's unsatisfying to a lot of people that's my complaint mr justice you what's the remedy you should get that headspace headspace guy to give out more free copies of his program and calm people down but actually so this is the other aspect of the supreme court opinion which didn't explain uh but which is part of it which is even though we're not the right forum you know the supreme court is not the right place to resolve this any voter in those states can challenge and

make the exact claim you did peter that either the state legislature constitutional right was taken away by the governors or the courts or that there was actual fraud in the collecting or counting of the votes those cases have been made in the right places, in state court, in federal court, at the trial. They have. They're just not receiving attention. They've been rejected every single... I mean, I think there's only one case out of the dozens and dozens where the Trump campaign won, and it was just about how close to the observers get to be to see the ballots being opened and counted? But I would actually say this is an incredible example of the resilience of our court system.

The courts have heard these cases all over these states, dozens of them, in emergency fashion, you know, deciding within weeks, which is really is light speed, right, for the courts. And none of them have found any fraud. So there have been decisions on the facts. Oh, yeah, there have been. All over. You could say, oh, well, those, why hasn't the Supreme Court heard those? Well, maybe they will eventually. As you say, the mistake also that the campaign has made is that they've said,

and what we want is the results thrown out, or we want the election run over again. You know, maybe you could even do that in a state. It's not going to change the outcome. The Electoral College vote for Biden was so large. So last question. This is really quick. I can state it quickly. We don't want this to happen again.

We want people to have confidence in elections. How do you, maybe this isn't even the right way to put it, but as best I can tell, nobody doubts that Florida, which after the excruciating recount in 2000 did a total reform of its election process. As best I can tell, Florida has kind of best practice election processes. What's the correct way over the next four years? Well, let's just say to ensure that it never happens again, that more states look like Florida and fewer look like Pennsylvania. If you, I mean, I've got no special expertise on this one, but I would say, it's interesting, all the affected states that are in contention all have Republican

legislatures, right? Wisconsin, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Georgia, Arizona, you would think one way they could respond to this anger you're talking about amongst the voters is to have a reform of their election laws. I would say, now this is going to appeal to Rob, I would say let's bring in the people who do this for living in the private sector. You want to have the votes counted correctly. Just bring in some people from Vegas who handle money and say, you create a system of cameras and pit bosses and you will make sure not a single ballot gets miscounted. You want to have registration and voting properly done. Then just get Amazon to do it. Just get anybody who has to verify a customer's credit card is, you know, real. You know, you want to talk about squeezing fraud out of the system. You know, people in the business

world do this all the time. I mean, it's McDonald's and the little gift cards in the McDonald's Monopoly meal. You know, McDonald's prevents me from buying more than five McRibs at one sitting. How do they do that? How do they? That's also your cardiologist, just so you know. Working in concert with your healthcare professional. It's just spam pressed into a different shape. I mean, everyone will see. Well, the question is whether or not you've fallen under the baleful influence of Donald Trump so far that you put ketchup on your McRib, but that's something we'll have to take for another podcast, perhaps. But Rob's right.

You have to use two-step verification, practically, to get your order at Taco Bell. Why can't we figure out how to do this better? Hey, John, we've got more to say, but as usual, we're running over time because you just have so much to offer, and we're so happy to hear it. So Merry Christmas and all that, and we'll see you with some other pretext ginned up at the start of

the year to have you back again, because it's always fun. Show us the gavel again. Show everybody in the audience that gavel. There's the gavel. Show us the gavel. The court is now out of session for the rest of the year. Yeah. Justice, you, we thank you.

Thanks, guys. Thanks, John. We hate to rib John about his McRib addiction, but the fact of the matter is that if they banned it in one state and it was legal in another, John would find a way to get to that state, but he wouldn't go down the highway. No, he'd go down a small road where he could make sure that the CCTV wouldn't capture him and the GPS wouldn't nail him

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Visit expressvpn.com slash ricochet. Visit expressvpn.com slash ricochet to learn more. And our thanks, of course, to ExpressVPN for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. And now we welcome back to the podcast, Arthur Brooks, Professor of the Practice of Public Leadership at Harvard Kennedy School and Professor of Management Practice at the Harvard Business School. For joining the Harvard faculty in July of 2019. He served for 10 years as president of the Washington, D.C.-based American Enterprise Institute. Arthur hosts the Art of Happiness podcast right here on the Ricochet Audio Network, which debuted this year and has become wildly popular for good reason. Arthur, welcome. Merry Christmas, although here's the deal. As the song tells me every time I walk through the skyways of Minneapolis,

which are utterly deserted, it's the most wonderful time of the year. And I usually get the feeling that I'd better think so, or there's something wrong with me, but it's for a lot of people, happiness around what's supposed to be the happiest time is actually something of a challenge, isn't it? Why is it?

Why is it? It feels sort of coercive, that song, right? I mean, it feels like it's sort of sketchy. That song has its foot on your neck this time of year. And either believe it or die is kind of how a lot of that feels. And, you know, the truth of the matter is that 96% of Americans say that they do like the holidays. Only 4% say

they don't. But I have these data that tell a different story that say that 36% of Americans feel sad at the holidays, 26% feel lonely at the holidays. These are incompatible cognitions with happiness. 27% of men drink so much during holiday celebrations that they can't remember the celebrations. It could be a sign of happiness, but in my life, generally speaking, that's not been a sign of happiness. And so I think that we've got a shy voter problem, which is what political scientists call it when you have an unpopular opinion and are unwilling to tell a pollster what you truly think, which is the reason that the polls always get it wrong every time Donald Trump is on the ballot. What could say, actually, though, that the people who feel sadness at it, not necessarily, they're not wrong. There's something instructive about interrogating oneself as to why you do, as to measuring the Christmases of today, of adulthood, with its stresses, with the Christmases of childhood. I mean, it's like you've got those two periods in your life. You've got Christmas when you're a kid,

and it's wonderful. And then you have the early young adult Christmas where you're sort of flailing around and attempting to jigsaw the world together. And then you have your own family and it's a wonderful thing again. And then that passes as well. Maybe we shouldn't try to force the happiness in the happiness season, but just to realize that there are times when it's not going to be happy. And that's... Well, the happiness is good business. And it's no surprise to any of you guys, but I'm the world's biggest fan of capitalism. So I believe in all the commercial goodness. But I got to say, it feels pretty coercive, given the fact that we're starting to see Christmas displays at the CVS sometime around Memorial Day.

And, you know, this is how you're supposed to feel. That is the kind of thing that, you know, the cheer per se is a product. And I got to ask you, James, how happy was Christmas when you were a kid? Really? Was it that great? Are you misremembering it? You have rose colored, you know, memory glasses or, or, or really was it great? And, and it's so, that's a real question, by the way.

I don't mean it rhetorically. Was Christmas that happy when you were a little boy in Minnesota? North Dakota. And yes. Sorry. Yeah. you were a little boy in Minnesota? North Dakota. And yes. Sorry. I do believe it was. Wolves howling, snow four feet deep in the sod house. I don't know.

Absolutely so. But was it an unbroken stretch of happiness from my first to my 18th? No, of course not. Not always. All sorts of things seep in when you start to think about it and interrogate it. Then you realize, oh, there was that year when this was not right and my sister wasn't happy and the rest of it but you can sort of wrap a call of you know retroactive continuity around it and say i'm going to say that it was happy and be comfortable with that i mean yeah that sort of self-delusion sometimes

is necessary to get through life yeah yeah or Yeah. Or drinking. So the, the, the big swinger on whether or not you have happy memories, by the way, is whether or not your parents liked the holidays. And in my case, my parents didn't like the holidays. I mean, my parents openly said, you know, my dad would say, Oh, is it, is it Christmas time again? And my mom, you know, it's, Oh, I find it, you know, there's so much stress and pressure and I find it sad and I get really blue and, you know, this time of year. And so, you know, it's, oh, I find it, you know, there's so much stress and pressure and I find it sad and I get really blue and, you know, this time of year. And so, you know, I sort of remember that and the holidays were tough on my parents. And then, you know, kind of, I guess, sort of

ironically, my dad died on Thanksgiving day, young. And so it's this kind of Paul, I have to say over the holidays. And then the key, the key thing is whether or not you're going to fake it, whether or not you're going to fix it or whether or not you're going to try to make the holidays fit to you and try to make them better. Yeah. Arthur Rob is still, I know his face. He's still thinking only 27%. Yeah.

Yeah, that's right. Yeah. That's right. Arthur, could I, could I, this is by the way,

I had a grandfather who died on Christmas morning, which put a bit of a damper on. Did he really? Yes. People seem to die on holidays quite a lot. Could you just do a little, while you're diagnosing people, Donald Trump is going to be leaving office in just five weeks now. Could you, could you get Rob to really believe that so that he cheers up? It's been a rough season for Rob. No, I understand that it's been a rough season for Rob. No, I understand that it's been

a rough season for a lot of people. It's been a rough season on people of all different political persuasions. And again, this is what happens when 93% of the country says we hate how divided we become, but 7% are in charge of media and the political establishment and social media who effectively are the outrage industrial complex that are driving this country. So of course, the misery that they're provoking in Rob and me and you guys and 93% of the country, once again, it's kind of like playing jingle bells on Labor Day inside the mall. It's coercive, but it's good business. So, Arthur, here's my question. It's not really about the holidays specifically, although I think the holidays has an inflection here.

If you're politically interested and you have a sort of a, I don't know, a balanced mind and you're looking at the election results and you're a liberal, you can say, look at this, we got rid of the president. We got rid of the guy we hate the most. If you're looking at the results, you're a conservative, you can say, look at this. Can a president who was, you know, active and polarizing, but probably because of that, got some stuff done that other presidents wouldn't have gotten done. All the voters did was remove him and they kept the Republicans in the Senate. Why is everybody at least not half happy instead of either ecstatic and overjoyed or miserable? Why the polarity? It seems to me that like it isn't that hard to look at what happened November if politics is part of what makes you happy or unhappy and to be uh like oh okay you know what not so great but but i can live with it this is pretty good outcome shouldn't we all be at least opening

a half bottle of champagne a little split just a little bit of celebration yeah well that doesn't happen when you have a polarity in any community, whether it's a family or a neighborhood or a city or state or the country that's based on fear. There are two fundamental social polarities. There's fear and love. Fear and love are opposites, cognitively, psychologically, philosophically, theologically, no matter how you want to cook it, fear and love are opposites. People think that often hatred and love are opposites, but hatred is downstream from fear. And this is as old as the hills. I mean, St. John the Apostle said, perfect love drives out fear.

Lao Tzu said it 500 years earlier. And so the point is that when you have a fear polarity, which is as natural as the dawn coming after the night after a financial crisis. Usually it takes 15 to 20 years after a financial crisis before that particular polarity, that vehicular language of politics passes. Nobody's happy ever. Why? Because fear cannot provoke happiness ever in anyone under any circumstances. We will go back and forth in a ping pong match of fear-based coercive bullying candidates. I mean, look, Donaldernie sanders are the same guy it's just you know opposite sides the same sort of a personality coin using the same kind of vernacular the same practically the same terms

they're very similar in all sorts of ways alexander ocasio-cortez is the same sort of deal and and they they spring up and it's like they spring up in response to market conditions, in political market conditions. When people are afraid, when people are polarized, politicians will become successful and will spring up to say, will give voice to say, somebody's got your stuff. You should be afraid of them. I'm going to fight for you. I'm going to, and I'm going to, I'm going to get it back for you. Donald Trump, interestingly, in a fear polarity, you lose because your weakness is related to your strength. That's not true in a love polarity. Your weakness does not follow on your strengths. If, if you're, if you're, your whole vehicle is based on love, but in fear, Donald Trump won. He had about something like 25% of the vote in the primaries in 2016. He was running against 15 other people that were splitting

the 75% ideology. He won on a plurality. And his whole thing, his whole shtick was, I'm going to be a walking middle finger to the people that are trying to change your culture. Well, guess what? The walking middle finger has one act. And by season four of the Donald Trump show, people said, I'm tired of the walking middle finger. His weakness flowed from his strength and he choked as a result of that. It's not like anybody is surprised by this. Donald Trump isn't probably even surprised by this. He has one thing, and people got tired of it, and that's actually why he lost. But the other side, all they've got is a bunch of middle fingers too, and that's what's happening

in this fear polarity. The big opportunity, the opportunity, the entrepreneurial opportunity of our political lifetimes is the fact that one side or the other, ideally the conservative side, as far as I'm concerned, is going to grab the mother load of that 93% and bring us back together with love instead of fear. I think it's actually going to happen. The question is, who's going to be aspirational enough to do it? So how do I do that now? I mean, how would you recommend people do that in their own lives? Right. Cause it's Christmas time. And right. You know, as Peter Robinson's favorite Christmas carol,

Christmas song goes simply having a wonderful Christmas time, which of course it's hard to do when, you know, you can't really have a Christmas party when everyone is wearing masks and six feet away. So how do you maintain happiness or how do you inculcate happiness how do you garden for happiness uh in a on december or whatever it is uh 18th yeah um in the middle of a pandemic after a bruising election so there are basically three ways to do it um when you're if you're going to use holidays to re-inflect your happiness i mean if you're going to use them as an

excuse to re-inflect your happiness you got mean, if you're going to use them as an excuse to re-inflect your happiness, you've got to do three things. If you believe that Christmas or Hanukkah is a religious holiday, celebrate it as a religious holiday. Actually, get in touch with the religious roots of the holiday and think very deeply about that. There's a ton of research, including from some of my colleagues here at the Harvard Business School, who show that when you actually celebrate a religious holiday, primarily religiously, and you take out the coercive secular commercial element of it, you extract that, you will immediately become happier. So contemplate that. Number one is contemplate the religious roots of it if you're religious. Number two is this is really about human beings. And I realize that a lot of people are masked up and socially distanced, but most of us are not living alone. Most of us are living with other people and using it as an

opportunity not to have a day off for work, but using it as an opportunity to actually spend time together with the people that you love. Now, there are going to be people that you love that you're separated from involuntarily. I have a son in the Marine Corps, for example, and it remains to be seen because he's in California, Camp Pendleton. Gavin Newsom's got to stay at home. Congratulations. Oh, thanks. No, he's fantastic. He's a mortarman in the Marine Corps. That's a big deal, Arthur. Congratulations. Yeah, yeah. Hoorah. I mean, he's going to, you know, he'll, you know, he's going to, he'll be deployed sometime this spring. And he's, you know, forward deployed mortarman. It's fantastic. And how is Mrs. Brooks with that? I'm sorry to interrupt, but how is Mrs. Brooks with

having a son in the corps mrs brooks is the most patriotic american i know because she's an american by choice she came to this country uh she's an immigrant and like most immigrants to this country she loves america she would be out there as a mortar man in the u.s where she could and uh and it's going to be scary when he's deployed but we're all i mean we're proud of our boy our boy mini me six foot five mini me he's full of muscles it's going to be scary when he's deployed, but we're all, I mean, we're proud of our boy, our boy, mini me, six foot five, mini me, he's full of muscles. It's great. But the point is, you know, will that stay at home order in California make it impossible for him to come? He would, he didn't come for Thanksgiving. He didn't come last year because he was in bootcamp.

So what does this mean? It means that we're going to have the iPhone set up at his place and on FaceTime, we're going to have dinner iPhone set up at his place. And on FaceTime, we're going to have dinner with him on Christmas. He got to use a little imagination. This is about people, right? That's technique number two. And technique number three is if your rituals are, are, are disrupted and rituals, by the way, are a huge empirical predictor of happiness. It doesn't even matter what the rituals are just doing the same thing every year. If your rituals are disrupted, you need to make new rituals. It's really important. We did this years ago in my family where, you know, my wife had to go to Barcelona unexpectedly for a family emergency. And we went, so what are we going to do with the

kids? You know, I went to the diviest diner that served turkey dinners on Thanksgiving. And then out to the movies where we were the only ones there. And it's like I was wearing a shirt that said, Dad got custody on Thanksgiving. It doesn't know how to cook. And it was so fun that we did it every year for the next eight years. And the kids still talk about it. If you can't do your regular rituals, make a new ritual. So in other words, worship God, love people, and make new rituals. And that's the way to do it.

Oh, fourth, don't be a jerk and talk about politics because that's stupid and it's a waste of time. That lets out Robin me. Hey, Arthur, kind of a closing question for me. Yes. You and I are both Christians. Furthermore, we're both Catholic. I see over your right shoulder a portrait of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Indeed. Patroness of the Americas. My mother. When we say Merry Christmas to each other, that means something specific.

Yeah. Not all Americans share that faith. Is there something about the holiday that we can legitimately believe we all have in common without stripping it of any meaning at all? This is a time when we are supposed to come together in bonds of love to celebrate our common loves. This is the key. And by the way, as a social scientist, I will tell you that there's a huge literature that shows that you should not pay attention to the things that divide you, but rather the things that unite you when you get together, particularly infrequently.

The way to get together and have a good time with your socialist Aunt Marge or your hopelessly, you know, Trumper Uncle Bill is to talk about the things that you love, which is generally speaking, the people that you love. That's what all this is. The holidays are notwithstanding the religious points and values that you and I, Peter, have in common. But despite that, again, this is the number two rule of how to have a happy Christmas or have a happy holiday is to remember and focus on shared loves and using the holiday as an excuse to do so with the people who blessedly are in your life. Arthur, we fear you have to go, but we'd love to have you back to just hit a couple of the topics that you've given us. The podcast, you can be found here in the Ricochet Audio Network, and the Art of Happiness, which is your book, your outlook, your life, your mission, and the rest of it.

We can't wait to have you back again because it always makes me feel better about going forward, and I was feeling pretty good to begin with. So now I'm just a froth with joy. I thought for a minute there when he asked you that, you were going to start crying. It's okay to cry at Christmas. It really is. Yeah.

It is okay to cry at Christmas. That's right. It is a fantastic podcast, Arthur. Thank you. It's really wonderful. We're thrilled it's on the Ricochet Network. And if people listening haven't heard it, it's really, this is a perfect week to download a bunch. Yeah. And you can binge listen to The Art of Happiness. This is a perfect week to download a bunch.

And you can binge listen to The Art of Happiness. You can do it with your family over Christmas dinner. Look, I don't recommend that. But one way or the other, if you listen and it makes you happy, it's great. And I'm pleased to be on the Ricochet Audio Network, and I love your show. Well, that's great. And if you could just get a job that did not, you know, when I have to introduce you as the professor of practice of public leadership, that's so many P's and plosives. It's difficult in radio not to pop them all. So if you could get a more sibilant job, I'd be quite impressed. Arthur, Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas. Thank you. Happy holidays, guys. See you later.

Yeah, there's some kid who probably thinks back to Christmases and just doesn't enjoy the memories as much as he could, because he was trying to figure out how to get out of the house and have a smoke, you know, because the parents didn't, and he wanted to, and you know, then he comes back in trailing all those smells from the Marlboro, the Salem or whatever you had that didn't make for a happy Christmas memory. And maybe that's somebody, you know, right now, and maybe that person was thinking, Hey, you know, 2020, 2021, we need our lungs. Lungs are a big part of

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And heck, to say this, warning, this product contains nicotine. And derived from tobacco, nicotine is an addictive chemical. There, we hope California's happy. We thank Lucy for sponsoring this, the Ricochet Podcast. And now... The James Lydon's Member Post of the Week. Christmas miracle. I have to say, it is a Christmas miracle.

The past two, this is two in a row. I know. That's not quite a trend, but it's... Well, it means that the bit is evolving. It's morphing. It's learning. What happens when it's always just naturally on time? Then what do we do?

Then it's going to be a challenge to me to come in right after it as tight as possible and for you to shut up. I don't think that's going to... I don't think either one of those things is going to happen. One of going to happen. I don't think either one of those things will happen. One of them could happen, but I guarantee you another one of those could not happen. Post of the Week from Clifford A. Brown, a Ricochet member who wrote, Tis the season for bad Christmas music. And this piggybacks a bit on what Peter was talking about last week, how much he hates that Beatles song, Simply Having a Wonderful Christmas Time.

Clifford A. Brown wrote, The Christmas season brings with it holiday music, some quite good, some not quite good, and some wonderfully bad. Every way of a popular music, an eventual Christmas single. I will never forgive you, Rob Long. I didn't do it.

Doing what? This is not Rob's doing. I'm sorry, I'm hearing doing. I'm sorry. I'm hearing Wonderful Christmas Time as a music bed to me speaking here. And then that's you. No one else can hear it, James. It must be rattling inside your brain. I think that's so.

So anyway, Clifford said that singing stars and others seem drawn to Christmas music like the wise men following the star. Consider a few examples, but do set your beverage down before listening as some are inadvertently merry and bright. Why is this opposed to the week? Well, because it's Christmas coming up, obviously. And because it's something we all love to talk about, not just our favorite songs,

but the worst out there. And there, there is no, there's no genre of music that contains so much badness as Christmas. It's just an unfortunate fact. You take rockabilly and the worst rockabilly song is still a rockabilly song. But the number of people who've tried to take this small collection of songs and meld them to their will is just appalling. And I don't know if it's a generational

thing that after you stop listening to pop music, every pop singer's attempt to say these songs just strikes you as wrong, or whether or not it's empirically true that most Christmas music is bad and banal, and that's okay, because, you know, it just prepares us for getting back to the original, purer versions that we like. Now, you, Rob, Peter, you both have a version of a song that, for you, nails it, right? There's no other version. That's it. What would that be? Well, I mean, for the modern pop pop modern sort of popular music carols um i mean it's hard to beat uh almost any version of have yourself a merry little christmas

um it's there's a sinatra i'll be home for christmas that's really good there's a Sinatra, I'll Be Home for Christmas that's really good. There's also a Sinatra, I'll Be Home for Christmas that's terrible, because it's like upbeat and jaunty. It's like there's a Sinatra version of I'll Be Seeing You that's fantastic, and there's a Sinatra version of I'll Be Seeing You that's upbeat and jaunty where you forget that the song was written about somebody saying goodbye to Paris while the Nazis marched in. So it's like, I would say that those are two of my favorite modern carols, definitely. Although, you know, the weird thing about Christmas,

I think Christmas, just to use the Arthur Brooks formulation, as a religious holiday commemorating a religious time, some of those carols are really beautiful. I mean, there's a minor revolt in, uh, at the St. James church where I go to in Manhattan, which tends to be a little high church about this stuff where you,

you, you can't, you don't, we don't sing Christmas carols, uh, before Christmas. We sing them between, we sing them in the 12 days,

obviously, because it's Advent. We sing Advent carols of which there are precious few. Most of it's, uh, uh, O Come Emmanuel. We sing that a lot. And there's kind of this, when

the parishioners mention it, like, gee, we'd like to sing a Christmas carol, they go, well, you know, they're not really... They put their foot down there. So, I don't know. I think there's just tons of great music what's amazing to me is how it i don't think it was a a money grab just how

obvious it was every popular musician every pop singer had to have a christmas album it's like you couldn't not because from a certain point in the end of november beginning of december to new year's Eve, that's all people were going to play and wanted to hear. So you really just, it was expected of you. The number of weird Christmas albums that exist is, I think it's kind of glorious. There are songs, for example, you mentioned the 12 Days of Christmas.

That song is just, it's interminable. And it's the 99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall song about Christmas. But I have a version of it by Doris day. That's absolutely brilliant. It's just lovely. And you listen to it and you realize, Oh, that's right.

She could sing. And wow, what a clear bell like tone that she had. And the orchestration, the arrangement is so mid sixties, high swang boomer culture. It's just, it's really quite delightful or it's actually greatest generation, the greatest generation culture. And so like nobody else can sing that song except doris day for me

and the attempts of other singers to rest from the classics uh you know that sort of identification you have to salute their bravery and trying peter your favorite and your favorite performer. Baby, It's Cold Outside, Ella Fitzgerald, and Louis Jordan. I have no idea who Louis Jordan was, what else he sang, what else he did in life. No idea. All I know is that that rendition is the rendition of Baby, It's Cold Outside. James being James, you guys may know all about louis jordan all i know is that he was in a duet with ella fitzgerald six over half a century ago and nobody's touched it since oh yeah some of those old ones are fantastic you know james you were the one i think in that i remember who also remembered along with me those great good year yes good music a christmas carol a good

year and firestone for some reason i mean there's no real reason why i mean i think firestone did it because good year did it or good year because firestone did it but someone in some you know benighted little formica conference table in a 1950 something said hey promotion let's do a good year uh they come in for their snow tires. They buy the album or something. And they were great. They were great. The 65 and 66 are absolute masterpieces and snapshots of that culture.

I mean, Andre Kostelanitz, who has some classical chops, did We Three Kings. And it's just, it's beautiful and stirring. And then they'll follow it with a Sammy Davis swank finger snap and it's Christmas time all over the world, which nobody ever recorded after him after that. And then Ana Maria Alberghetti has these two songs that are just, they sound like just a single star shining on the snow in a dark night. And everything on the album is beautiful.

And everything is so American and so Western culture. But I mean, you start out with Edie Gourmet just laughing their way through Sleigh Ride and end up with Sammy Davis Jr. But in between you have this journey that just takes you to Eugene Armandy,

to Bernstein in one of them. So you have the whole high and low culture in this middle package that is just so instructive of the time. It is beautiful. And I love the fact that the Tire stores had competing Christmas album paradigms.

Just like Woolworths went up against Kresge for the same thing. Yeah. Two Christmas thoughts. i know because we're running late but one is i i worked with uh actually it's one christmas thought in one name i work and i these friends of mine these guys named the gregory brothers they do uh they do a thing called songify the news where they take sort of news events and speeches and they turn them into music basically by using auto-tune technology to make it sound like you're singing. It can be very, very funny.

They do the most lo-fi, fantastic reading presentation of A Gift of the Magi. And they've done it on stage for every year that I can recall. And I think you can find it on YouTube. And they read it and they have music to it. And it's, it's so strangely, not strangely moving, but it's really moving and really wonderful and funny and nice. And, and they write the music to it too.

And it's, it's, it's, I think it's all, all of 20 minutes, but it is maybe, but it is so great. And they do,

um, a couple, but we had them, um, when I used to do a Christmas show with my friends, Harry Shearer and Judith Owen, uh, we did, we had them, uh, they performed with us at the my friends, Harry, Shira, and Judith Owen. We did, we had them, they performed with us at the Brooklyn Academy of Music.

So it's a big, big, big theater, big opera house we were in. And these guys came on and they killed, they just killed. With a couple of carols kind of done in a specific style that was super wonderful. So if you find, if you're looking for something different, but also wonderful, Gregory Brothers is what you want. We have a local group here that is acapella, known for their, they're called the Blenders. They had a popular following,

and they were known for their Christmas concerts. And they're from Fargo, and one year they called me and asked if I would like to be on their Christmas album as a DJ. I could not absolutely turn it down. And I did. Had to show up and read some copy in the studio. I'm very professional in the rest of it. But just knowing that I made it on a Christmas album is an accomplishment more than knowing that I ever made it, you know,

on the letters page of the New York Times or the editorial page of the Washington Post. That's something. My father loved Christmas music. And one of the things that he hated about the end of the season was it went away. But it has to go away. You have to put it up. You have to pack it away so that when you take it out, the memories all come out. I mean, it's like an emotional potpourri that never loses its scent over the years

or its potency, as a matter of fact, seems, seems to, seems to increase in its importance as the years go past. And I just save it for the last moment. I really do. Whereas I used to just sort of listen to it all through the season and give up the kids and school them and what it means to be in America and Christmas now, which is sort of, it's down to Christmas Eve where I play that album and and it's almost too much. Well, let me give you, let me give you, I looked it up just so it was, it's a,

it's an album you can get by the Gregory brothers called sleigh ride fireside. Um, and it has some of the, you know, the famous ones, uh, but also some carols who come all you faithful and then a fantastic rendition of go tell him on the mountain. Um, it's completely worth worth it it's absolutely a sleigh ride fireside the gregory brothers it's the classic christmas christmas album that you have been wanting and now it's here we have one more thing to do and we're going to do in just a second here but first i got to tell you this because if i if i started saying this without there's more to come you'd tune off because you figure it's the end of the show, but it isn't.

But we do want to say, first of all, thank you for spending your pandemic time with us and supporting Ricochet. It's really been, it's helped me an awful lot. I hope it's helped you. And the more you join, the better it's going to be. The podcast was brought to you by Headspace, by Lucy, by ExpressVPN. Support them for supporting us, and they'll help us get through 2021 as well. You can listen to The Best of Ricochet. It's a compilation.

It's a clip show. And it's got some guy named Jim Lekas who does the announcing. It's on Radio American Network. Check your local listings. And, of course, give us a Christmas present. It's free and it's cheap. If you go to Apple Podcasts and give us five stars, we deserve it, frankly. And, you know, it's free, and it will make us feel very much better.

You don't have to wrap it. Just hand it over. Just hand it over now. All right, guys. Predictions for 2021. We used to have our prediction for the big story of next week, and we were always wrong. What are you guys looking at?

It won't be as bad. That's my prediction for 2021 i like that i'll take down uh it'll be worse no i think this is gonna happen and this may be i'm saying because i think it's a wish it's a arthur brooks said it and I've been, I've been struggling with how to put it, uh, for, uh,

months and months and months. And I said it in the most inarticulate ways here, but he put it the right way. Someone is going some side, some political movement, some cultural political movement is going to discover the joys of the 93%. And, um,

and they're gonna, and it'll be mostly people on our side that's what i think that's fair uh and i think that's um that's going to be uh it will take a lot of effort from a lot of people um who don't want to you know ride the horse but i think that um i'm hopeful that there's a that in the crack there's going to be be some people discovering the joys of things that we already know about. How about that? That's a cautious optimism.

Stanley Crouch, the great music critic who died this year had curiously enough, sort of a, this insight into politicals. Anyway, Stanley Crouch, the quotation is in a democracy. You never know who the messenger

will be the open-endedness of it all yes that's great well we do know who the messenger of the news is going to be and that will be all the people on television and the people in the newspapers and the like and they are going to be doing their their their damnedest to make sure that we know that wonderful times are here it's okay to love america again it's going to be doing their damnedest to make sure that we know that wonderful times are here. It's okay to love America again. It's okay to be patriotic because the right people have the reins in their hands now, so everything is going to be okay. So you're going to see this efflorescence, I think, of patriotism and hope and spirit

and optimism and the rest of it. Now, I don't share their predicates or why they're being so optimistic, but at least it'll be a respite from four years of being hit about the head with hammers and telling us that everything is horrible. So I'll take that gentlemen. We're not going to be here next week. I want to see everybody on January 8th, as a matter of fact.

And in the meantime, we heck hurting for podcasts, check out other things in the ricochet audio network, go back and listen to the Ricochet flagships you missed. Just enjoy yourself. Be happy as you ought to be. And we wish you a very happy and healthy Christmas season to everybody. We'll see you in 2021.

Gentlemen. Merry Christmas, everybody. Merry Christmas. Merry Christmas, guys. I really can't stay. But baby, it's cold outside. I've got to go away. But baby baby it's cold outside I've got to go away But baby it's cold outside This evening has been

Been hoping that you'd drop in So very nice I'll hold your hands They're just like ice My mother will start to worry Beautiful, what's your hurry? And father will be pacing the floor Listen to the

fireplace roar. So really I'd better scurry. Beautiful, please don't hurry. Well, maybe just a half a drink more. Put some records on while I pour. The neighbors might think. But baby, it's bad out there. Say, what's in this drink? No cabs to be

had out there. I wish I knew how. Your eyes are like starlight now. To break the spell. I'll take your hat. Your hair looks slow. I ought to say no, no, no, sir. Mind if I move in closer? At least I'm gonna say that

I tried. What's the sense of hurting my pride? I really can't stay. Oh, baby, don't hold out, baby. Ah, but it's cold outside. I simply must go. But, baby, it's cold outside. The answer is no. But, baby, it's cold outside. The welcome has been how lucky that you dropped in. So nice and warm. Look out that window at that star. My sister will be suspicious. Gosh, your lips look delicious.

My brother will be there at the door. Waves upon a tropical shore. My maiden aunt's mind is vicious. Gosh, your lips are delicious. Well, maybe just a cigarette more. Never such a blizzard before. I've got to get home. But baby, your'd freeze out there say

lend me a cone it's up to your knees out there you've really been great i'm thrilled when you touch my hand don't you see how can you do this thing there's bound to be talked to my road. Think of my lifelong sorrow. At least there will be plenty implied. If you caught pneumonia and died. I really can't stay. Get over that old doubt. Ah, but it's cold outside. Where could you be going when the wind is blowing and it's cold outside? Baby, it's cold, cold outside.

Ricochet. Join the conversation. I'm dressed like Rob Long, Yale class of 1986 in college. Ready to go? You're the owner and purveyor of the traditional menswear shop in Seoul. This is not a Cheers Writers call, Rob.