Tuesday, May 31
· Main Story – Gun violence in the U.S.
o After a rapidfire mention of a few headlines—monkeypox is “the disease that’s killing everyone’s NFT’s”—we jumped right into the main story on potential pathways after more mass shootings.
o In the wake of the Uvalde school shooting and other recent mass shootings, Trevor noted some promising ambitious gun-safety legislation… in Canada – “Yeah, this is completely real. Canada saw what happened here, and they’re shutting down guns there. Yeah. At this point, America is basically a Scared Straight program that gets other countries on the right path.”
o Much of the story was spent of Second Amendment advocates’ efforts to blame America’s mass shooting epidemic on anything other than guns – “The argument that American music and video games causes gun violence totally falls apart when you realize the entire world listens to American music and plays American video games. Yeah, but they have nowhere the same level of America’s mass shootings.”
o I loved this reaction to a member of Congress suggesting the problem is that we’ve replaced teaching “family values” in schools with teaching “woke” and “CRT” – “Yeah, that’s how evil critical race theory is. It’s only been around for, like, a year, and it’s already caused three decades of school shootings.”
o After pointing how the law enforcement response in Uvalde aggressively debunked the “good guy with a gun” strategy, Trevor said, “I feel like that’s all we have to ask ourselves. As a society, do we want to live in a world where anyone can legally buy weapons that the police are scared of?”
o Great observation – “It’s also crazy how the cops, they can do anything. Right? They shoot people because they think they have a gun. And then now they’re like… They know it’s a gun. They’re like, ‘Well, can’t shoot them. If it’s a wallet, maybe, but I mean….’”
· Correspondent Piece (Ronny) – Asian American & Pacific Islander Heritage Month
o In his piece, which centered on AAPI athletes, Ronny only briefly touched on the biggest Asian American names in sports, from Jeremy Lin to Tiger Woods – “Yeah, we’re claiming him. You got a problem with that? Take it up with the U.N.”
o Most of the speech focused on AAPI trailblazers – Asian Americans represented the first non-white players in both the NHL and the NBA.
o No surprise, many of these players dealt with extraordinary amounts of racism in their lives, like Victoria Manalo Draves, the first AAPI Olympic gold medalist – “When she was younger and used a public pool, the town assholes would drain the water after she swam in it, which isn’t just racist. It’s idiotic. You’re gonna double your water bill just because you’re afraid of catching being Asian? You can’t get that from a pool. You have to share the same straw, dumbasses.”
o Ronny also shouted out Kim Ng, who was the first female GM in any American men’s league – “She worked her way up the ladder facing racism and sexism. It’s the surf and turf of discrimination.”
· Interview – Former presidential advisor Kellyanne Conway
o This interview can basically be summed up with the following exchange – “You’re doing the thing you’re very good at right now, and that is—” “Speaking the truth.” “No— that is, not answering the question that I’ve asked you.”
o It was a lot of that, Conway sauntering away from Trevor’s questions and saying what she wanted to say – Trevor stayed on top of trying to bring her back around, but it was frustrating to watch.
o Trevor did agree with Conway that “it’s never one thing completely that causes [gun violence,] and there’s never one thing that can solve it” – However, he also added, “Right, but then, nothing gets done.”
o This was a very valid observation from Trevor – “America is one of the few countries I’ve lived in where politicians complain about politics being a tool that should be used to change a country when they are in the position of changing the country.”
Wednesday, June 1st
· Headlines – U.S. sends missiles to Ukraine, Obi-Wan Kenobi actress receives racist harassment, lawsuit in India over grandchild
o I laughed at Trevor’s Pride Month message – “You know what that means: for the rest of June, all crimes are legal for gay people.”
o Good intro – “Let’s start with the ongoing Russian war with Ukraine, or as Russia media says, ‘There is no war, but we’re also winning it.’”
o I liked this analogy for the U.S. stipulating that Ukraine can’t use the missiles on targets in Russia as a condition of receiving them – “[Joe Biden’s] basically giving them advanced rockets like a dad gives a teenager his credit card.”
o This was a funny bit, about the American missiles being excited about their “new experience” – “I’m so excited to be going overseas for the first time. And the best part is, I’ve been invited. Wow! Because my dad went to Iraq, but he wasn’t invited. And my grandfather, he went to Vietnam, and, boy, did they not want him there.”
o Trevor thought that of all fandoms, racist attacks in Star Wars makes no sense – “From the very beginning, this has been a series where no one thinks twice if Harrison Ford is best friends with a giant dog bear or if a brother and sister want to smash. No one complains about that! They’re not getting death threats.”
o I loved Trevor’s reaction to hearing that a couple in India is suing their adult son because he hasn’t given them grandchildren – “Being parents is so weird. You spend the first 18 years doing everything you can to stop your kids from having sex. And then, as soon as they grow up, you turn into frat bros. ‘Yo, you got to get laid, dude! And don’t use a condom, either. That shit’s for losers. Just do it. Do it now!’”
· Interview – Sen. Chris Murphy
o When Trevor asked why it’s so difficult to pass gun reform laws that are overwhelmingly popular, Murphy needed to clarify that – “Right now, this is a problem only inside the Republican Party. Every single Democrat in the Senate would support things like expanded background checks. And the reason that it’s a problem in the Republican Party is that, to win a Republican primary today, a lot of my colleagues think that you need the endorsement of the gun lobby.”
o Fortunately, though, Murphy said, “I think the political calculations of some of my colleagues are beginning to change. But it’s slow.”
o Murphy also acknowledged the difficulty of passing anything in the Senate when it requires a 60-vote majority – “For the American people, it’s frustrating, right, because they did their job. They put majorities in the House, the Senate, a president in the White House who support what they support—expanded protections when it comes to our nation’s kids and the safety of our communities. But the rules of the Senate stand in the way.”
· Interview – Author Akwaeke Emezi
o First off, Trevor praised Emezi for writing four books during the pandemic – “Everyone else was like, ‘We’re making bread,’ and you were like, ‘I’m gonna make best-selling books.’”
o Now that they’ve moved from poetry to novel writing, Trevor asked why Emezi wanted to write romance specifically – “I came back around [to reading romance] in the last couple of years, and I found, like, the romance that was being written now was so different from what I grew up on. And it had, like, so much representation in it. And it had so much hope in it. You know, you could read these love stories about people that society considers deviant, whether it’s just because you’re Black or you’re queer or you’re neurodivergent or you’re in a wheelchair, and they get happily ever afters. And I was like, ‘There’s a little magic in that.’”
o Trevor also noted that their novel centers around grief and death, which seem counterintuitive to a romance novel. I loved Emezi’s response – “It snuck in, you now? Initially, I was like, ‘This is going to be a fluffy book. It’s just going to be messy, hot girl summer.’ And then I met the character. And she was like, ‘I have depths that you can only dream of.’”
o Explaining further, Emezi said, “It seems wrong the way that one world can stop when you lose someone, and the rest of the world just keeps going. Like, it doesn’t matter that your world just stopped. And at some point, you have to figure out how to blend back into it.”
Thursday, June 2
· Headlines – Elizabeth II celebrates 70 years on the throne, leaked tapes of Republican plans to challenge elections, contaminated fish off the coast of Florida, new advances in robotics, polled delivery drivers admit to eating some of customers’ food orders
o I laughed at Trevor’s explanation for his enthused intro to the U.K. celebration – “I’m sorry, every one of us from the colonies, we just get so excited when we talk about the queen. Yeah. They whipped it into us when we were kids. It’s not my
o Good analogy – “Trump lovers are planning to install themselves in place of nonpartisan poll workers. It’s a major conflict of interest. It’s like hiring death as a lifeguard.”
o I liked this joke, dark humor for a plot against democracy – “And by the way, if you’re worried that this means you won’t get your ‘I voted’ stickers, calm down. You will. Yeah. It’ll just have a question mark at the end. Spice things up.”
o Trevor’s reaction to learning that fish in Florida contain assorted pharmaceuticals – “You know, every time I think I’ve seen the most American story of all time, this kind of stuff comes up. ‘Cause which other country can say, ‘There’s so much medication leaving our bodies, we’re basically providing Obamacare to the fish’?”
o But Trevor figured fish could actually benefit from some drugs, like antidepressants – “If your habitat was slowly boiling around you, you could use some Lexapro!”
o Valid – “You know, while it’s cool to have a super tiny robot to repair small machines, what are you going to do when the tiny robots break? Do we think about that? Huh?”
o Nice point – “And before you hear this news and go, ‘Ah, delivery drivers are shit, they’re eating our food,’ maybe you should be asking, why do these billion-dollar tech companies pay the delivery people so badly that they have to eat your food?”
· Correspondent Piece (Michael) – “Door control”
o After listening to the GOP repeat the “one door in and out” idea to stop mass shootings, Trevor said, “Since we know that other countries don’t have America’s mass shooting problem, that clearly means that they know something about doors that we don’t.”
o I liked the tactic of sending Michael to Times Square to interview people from a variety of countries – When he explained the “one door” idea to them, they offered such responses as, “How is that gonna work?”, “It’s like a jail,” and “How are you gonna get out if there’s a fire?”
o Good line – “Foreigners like to say that Americans are obsessed with guns. Yet, when it comes to preventing mass shootings, all they wanted to talk about was guns. Now who’s obsessed?”
· Interview – Ukrainian UN ambassador Sergiy Kyslytsya
o This was an interesting observation from Trevor – “It’s a different type of war, though. Because everybody agrees that Ukraine is in the right. Everybody agrees that Russia did something wrong. And yet, because of Russia being Russia, it seems like the United Nations and many other countries are scared to overact for fear of causing a world war.”
o Kyslytsya argued that a world war has already begun – “The 21st century is not the 20th century, where we had these standard wars with tanks crossing the borders. We are in a hybrid war, and you don’t really need to cross the border to the attack the United States. You can do that in cyberspace, you know. Or you can do, like, terrorism, or financial terrorism.”
o He didn’t buy that the UN could be left so unprepared for this war – “Russia occupies, occupies, occupies, and we are all complacent with that. I mean, we were complacent with that until the night of the 23rd, and all of a sudden, we were surprised that it happened. I mean, which was imminent for 30 years.”
o This was a great point, about how supporting Ukraine is about more than just Ukraine – “From a certain point of view, investing money in Ukrainian victory— investing money in Ukrainian victory is investing money in your own security. And you should be all grateful that it is the Ukrainian soldiers, not the British soldiers, not the American soldiers, who are dying in the front, defending the collective democratic world.”
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