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Sunday, October 15
· Pre-Show Comments – Israel and Palestine
o John purposefully didn’t get too deeply into things, acknowledging the incredibly volatile, fast-moving situation, but he rightly separated the actions of governments from the lives of people – “Israelis and Palestinians have been let down by their leadership time and time again.”
o Good comment – “The easiest thing to do in the world after a week like this is to engage in bloodthirsty rhetoric, and there’s certainly been plenty of that from those in power. But I will say, I’ve been struck by the many ordinary citizens, both Israeli and Palestinian, who’ve called for restraint this week and not revenge.”
o Loved this – “In the long term, all the people who want to live in that region are going to keep living there, so peace is not optional.”
· Recap of the Week – U.S. House still without a speaker
o I laughed at John’s reaction to George Santos explaining why he wouldn’t support Steve Scalise as House speaker – “For George Santos, an almost clinically chaotic man, to decide that you don’t have fundamental leadership skills? Is truly damning.”
o Ha! – “One representative was seen bringing a lasso into the session. And you know things are messy when a U.S. congresswoman walks down the hallway with some horse equipment, and all anyone can say is, ‘You know what? That’s not important right now!’”
o John’s response to Nancy Mace explanation for why she was wearing “the scarlet letter” to the session was predictably fun – “Wait. What do you think The Scarlet Letter is about? And nobody help her! Let Nancy answer.”
o This line was fantastic – “Do you think Hester Prynne had to wear a scarlet ‘A’ because she girlbossed too much for puritanical New England?”
o After a GOP legislator compared the party to House of Cards, John discussed several comparisons between the show and the GOP, including hinting at a parallel between Kevin Spacey and Matt Gaetz – “Sadly, my lawyers told me I can’t say what it is. But I can think it, and so can all of you.”
· And Now This – Jim Cramer is Totally Untroubled by His Haters
o Amusing the-gentleman-doth-protest-too-much montage – I smiled at, “I love the haters. I wouldn’t be doing this if it wasn’t for them.”
o This one cracked me up – “To all the haters out there: first of all, hi, haters.”
· Main Story – Food safety
o Yikes – according to a 2017 study, it took an average of 57 days for tainted food to be removed from shelves following a notification from the FDA.
o Good line – “Unfortunately, ‘Scathing Report Finds Fault with the FDA’ is just not a new story.”
o We looked at the FDA itself, and how part of the issue is that food regulation seems to be an afterthought compared to drug regulation – Even people within the agency are known to say, “The ‘F’ in “FDA’ is silent.”
o This was group – “Its own staff, including some FDA commissioners, have been known to slip up and call it The Federal Drug Administration. And come on! There’s only two things to remember in the name, food and drugs. If you need a helpful mnemonic for it, just remember this simple phrase: food and drugs!! It’s two fucking words!”
o It was interesting (read: horrifying) to see how food regulation is divided between the USDA and the FDA, and what a difference those designations can make – Beef broth is inspected daily under the USDA, while chicken broth is inspected every five years under the FDA!
o I loved John’s fascination with the Association for Dressings and Sauces – “But who do you think the black sheep of the organization are? Worchestershire? Maybe some of the more fucked-up mustards? This is the only thing I’m interested in talking about now. Just know, any time I’m talking about something else, 90% of my brain is still focused on the Association for Dressings & Sauces.”
o John appreciated the bluntness of a video explaining how close proximity between cattle and produce can lead to e. coli-contaminated leafy greens – “You can keep your little pleasantries like ‘feces’ and ‘manure,’ but it’s cow shit! Call it what it is! We know it when we see it if not always when we eat it.”
o Good line – “I’d say that this is a disaster waiting to happen, except it already has happened, and repeatedly.”
o The Food Safety Modernization Act was meant to address a lot of these issues. Guess what happened? – “Yeah, it sounded great. Except if all of that had actually happened, I wouldn’t be doing this story right now, would I? We’d be back to our regularly scheduled programming of hamster loneliness or, I dunno, fucking trout grout. Spoiler alert: it’s more common than you think, and Congress refuses to act.”
· And Now This – Check Out the Sexual Tension Between Fox Business’s Liz Claman and Charlie Gasparino
o In one clip, Gasparino was just talking about fast food he’d eaten while Claman reacted - Chick-fil-A got a, “That’s very alluring,” while Cinnabon prompted an, “…Ooh.”
o In another moment, Claman literally played with her hair and bit her finger! What is going on at Fox Business!
The Daily Show is back! The first guest host was Michael Kosta. Partway through the week, he joked, “I’m really getting the hang of this! It’s almost like I’ve worked here for years.”
Monday, October 16
· Headlines – Israel and Palestine, federal judge imposes limited gag order on Trump, Rite Aid files for bankruptcy, Taylor Swift: Eras Tour movie
o While Michael was gearing up for a big news week, it wasn’t exactly the kind he’d been hoping for – “That’s right. It’s my big week as guest host, and I get Israel/Palestine. I don’t mean to complain, but as far as scheduling goes, this unspeakably tragic geopolitical crisis is not a super-convenient time for me right now.”
o The angle Michael took on the story was basically that he knows better than to act like he knows what he’s talking about, unlike a lot of people spouting off about Israel and Palestine – “I read a lot of your posts online, and sometimes it’s better not to pretend you know what you’re talking about.”
o This line made me smile (but the point is super valid!) – “Everyone’s taking a side, but everyone is wrong. Because I spent the weekend reading two lengthy Wikipedia articles, and I think it’s pretty clear who we can blame for all of this mess: the British.”
o Ha! – “That’s right. Donald Trump has a gag order, and I guarantee you he probably doesn’t even know what that is.”
o Some good Rite Aid shade – “This is shocking to me. Are you telling me it’s a bad business model to have one employee for every six stores?”
o I loved the capper to the Rite Aid bit – “In a related story, Spirit Halloween just opened 9,000 new locations.”
o I liked Michael’s reaction to videos of people singing, dancing, and screaming in the theater during Taylor Swift’s concert movie – “Okay, white people? We can’t talk about Black audiences being rowdy in movie theaters ever again, all right? That’s over.”
o Desi hit the streets to talk with fans about the Eras Tour movie – She tried to stire up trouble for a couple of fans, shouting to the crowd, “They still listen to the Scooter Braun versions!”
o This exchange made me laugh – Desi remarked, “This is truly a once-in-a-lifetime experience,” to which a fan replied, “Yeah, but I’m coming back tomorrow.”
· Correspondent Piece (Jordan) – Trump rally
o Stepping back into the swing of things after the writers’ strike, Jordan didn’t miss a beat!
o One Trump supporter told Jordan, “Whatever Trump does is smart” – Jordan clarified, “That’s just on your boilerplate. You don’t have to think through it, you’re just giving him that credibility.”
o Jordan spoke with a lot of folks about Trump’s numerous indictments – I loved, “Wait, ‘lady charges.’ Is that Stormy Daniels lady charges or sexual assault?”
o Multiple people he talked to openly discussed being at the Capitol on January 6th – Jordan asked one man, “Did you make it inside?” Shifting, the guy explained, “I can’t say that for legal reasons.”
· Interview – Political scientist Ian Bremmer
o Bremmer came out of the gate supporting the Palestinians, which I appreciated. The opening piece on Israel and Palestine took a light touch, so it was good to see an expert laying out why this isn’t a “both sides” situation – “The fact is, you’ve let an impossible situation [persist]—especially in Gaza, with over 2 million Palestinians who are living in atrocious conditions, and everyone has forgotten about them.”
o Bremmer’s biggest advice for Michael when it came to learning more was to spend less time on social media – “Algorithmically, it’s taking people and making them angrier and more hateful than anything they would experience in real life.”
o He also saw it as the U.S.’s duty to be a positive force in this crisis – “We now have to do everything we can. We’re the one country with leverage. We’re the one country with military assets all over the region. We’re the one country that can make a real difference, short- and even in long-term, to reduce the suffering that right now is exploding in this region.”
Tuesday, October 17
· Headlines – Biden to visit Israel, U.S. House still without a speaker, new hottest pepper in the world
o An easy joke, but a fun one – “He’s flying to Israel tonight. Now, he’s 80 years old, so he did get to the airport two days ago.”
o So valid – “All jokes aside, I really am glad to have a president who’s there. You know, it’s comforting to have a leader who might actually deescalate the situation. Donald Trump went to console hurricane victims, and by the time he was done, we were at war with Syria.”
o Michael said that Matt Gaetz is “what happens when you photocopy Matthew McConaughey too many times” – He used the same joke a minute later, with Kevin McCarthy and John Slattery.
o Michael liked the news about Pepper X, which is ever hotter than bear mace! – “I love this story, because this is what makes humans so great. We’re always striving to break barriers that we don’t need to break, or that we even knew existed.”
o Ronny, however, wasn’t impressed – “I’m from Malaysia, okay? I’ve been eating spicy food since I was a baby! My mom had five-alarm breast milk.”
o As soon as they set up the joke with Ronny’s bit, it was obvious where we were heading, but I still laughed when he said, “Oh, please! You think I’m scared of this pepper? I will rub this on my eyeballs and eat it right now.”
· Host Piece – California reclassifies bees as fish
o In this field piece, it took Michael some doing just to figure out what was actually going on – Basically, bees and other insects were excluded from California’s Endangered Species Act, but an activist group managed to get several species of bee reclassified as fish, thanks to some technicalities in the law’s definition of fish. This allows bees to be protected under the law.
o Michael was still puzzled at the whole situation, but his hypothesis that this was just a ploy for the lawyers to make money fell through when he learned that the lawyers who argued for the reclassification did so pro bono – One lawyer added, “I’ve actually been paying money to be here.”
· Interview – Economist/author Emily Oster
o Oster was there to discuss her latest book on data-driven parenting, which she explained is just as much about when data isn’t helpful as when it is.
o As an example, she and Michael looked at the dilemma of choosing between two daycares of similar quality, with Oster suggesting parents opt for the one that’s closer to home – “At the end of the day, there’s a lot of right ways to do this, and those kinds of considerations are most of the time so much less important than what works for your family and what makes you happy.”
o I really liked her point, “We can use data to feel less alone” – Oster talked about how lonely parenting can be, and while data can offer guidance, it can also simply reassure parents that others are going through the same thing.
Wednesday, October 18
· Headlines – Biden visits Israel, ongoing Speaker race, man mistakenly calls 911 over yule log “fire”
o More “old Biden” jokes with his Israel trip – “He made it all the way down the stairs, mission accomplished already. Off to a great start!”
o Biden cautioned Israel against repeating America’s grave errors after 9/11 – “Any time an American president admits a mistake, it’s a big deal. So Israel, please learn from us. Don’t stay in Afghanistan for more than twenty years, tops!”
o In the bit on the House speaker race, Michael empathized maybe a bit too much with Interim Speaker Patrick McHenry, citing the virtues of just giving the job to “the guy who’s already in the chair.”
o A man saw flames in the window of a neighboring building and called 911, but it turned out to be a video of the yule log on a big-screen TV – “Oh man, how embarrassing for that guy! Especially after last week, when he called the police to report that Sharknado.”
o Michael rightly asked why that guy was looking in his (young female) neighbor’s window to begin with, but Desi didn’t have a problem with it – Baiting her own window with a yule log video, she said, “Kosta, were you not listening to me? He’s tall. I mean, did you see him? He’s like if Timothée Chalamet took his vitamins.”
· Long Story Short – The bottled water industry
o Good opening line – “Let’s talk about water. It’s that thing you hope you just sat in on the subway.”
o I felt that – “Fast forward to today, and the average American drinks upwards of 167 bottles a year, usually right before a long-haul flight when I’m in the aisle seat.”
o Where does all that bottled water come from? Nestle sucks a lot of it up cheaply from public land – “Isn’t that awesome, right? We love it when multinational conglomerates find success.”
o As Michael pointed out, the solution to this issue is almost stupidly simple: reusable water bottles – “You probably already have nine of these. Open a cabinet in your kitchen, and one will fall on you.”
· Interview – Musician Rhiannon Giddens
o Giddens agreed with Michael’s assessment that her new album is “playful” – “For the last fifteen years, I’ve been that girl at the party on a Friday night that you back away from. You’re like, ‘Man, she’s gonna talk about slavery, or the banjo, or both, and I’m just, like, really not into it.’”
o She previewed the song she was going to perform, which was about teenager Kalief Browder’s wrongful imprisonment – After spending three years at Riker’s, two of them in solitary confinement, for a crime he didn’t commit, Browder died by suicide after his release. Giddens said, “I couldn’t contain my anger at the waste of this young man’s life and what we don’t get of him.”
· Performance – Rhiannon Giddens
o Hard-hitting performance of a powerful song – You could feel Giddens sorrow and anger in her voice.
o This was the line that hit most deeply for me – “It’s a torture of the soul, / The narrow confines of control. / Thrown down the stinking hole with no hope of release.”
Thursday was billed as being hosted by both Michael and Ronny. Really, though, they kind of shared the headlines, Ronny stayed at the desk during the intro of a skit that Michael starred in, and then Michael interviewed the guest by himself.
Thursday, October 20
· Headlines – Sydney Powell enters guilty plea, scientists use AI to read an ancient scroll, Scholastic book fair makes it easier to exclude diverse books
o Michael reminded us that Sydney Powell has distinguished herself as “Trump’s craziest lawyer,” and then impressed upon us just what a feat that is – “Being Trump’s craziest lawyer is like being the most divorced dad at an Embassy Suites.”
o Powell’s plea deal included writing a letter apologizing to the people of Georgia for her election interference – Ronny said, “Just a letter? This woman actively tried to steal an election. The least she could do is apologize door to door like a sex offender.”
o Another good line from Ronny – “Sydney Powell’s a pretty great lawyer. She got treason down to an apology letter, that’s an amazing negotiation!”
o Scientists are using AI to try and determine the contents of a scroll recovered from Pompeii – Ronny pointed out, “Although, if we can’t read the scroll ourselves, how do we know if the AI is right? What, we’re just gonna trust it? ‘Cause ChatGPT told me three days ago that Gandhi invented the cinnamon challenge, so….”
o Michael thought Scholastic was making things way too easy for book banners – “Hold on. So now bigots can just check a box, and now all the books will be removed? Come on, guys! If you’re gonna be racist and sexist, you can’t also be lazy, you know?”
o We had a new correspondent, Troy, reporting on the Scholastic story – He explained that banning things just makes kids want them even more, saying, “These kids have stormed the forbidden section like it was a Nickelodeon version of January 6th.”
· Skit – Joe Biden’s “whisper advisor”
o Michael amused me here, playing an unsung advisor of Biden’s – “Before the president gives any speech, it’s my job to comb through it, find the most jarring moments for him to whisper.”
· Interview – Wilderness guide Jordan Jonas
o I’d never heard of Jonas, but he was a winner of the History Channel show Alone.
o Michael asked Jonas about how he got started in wilderness living – When Jonas explained that he spent some time in his 20s “living with nomadic reindeer herders,” he and Michael joked, “as you do.”
o Michael had personal experience with Jonas, having taken part in classes/wilderness trips he ran – the interview included some pictures from that experience, which was neat.
o This was Jonas’s take on how hunting and respecting nature can go hand in hand – “No matter what we think, we’re a part of nature. And in my experience, people who hunt, who rely on nature to feed themselves, their families, there’s almost—there’s few people more in tune with the health of a particular ecosystem, because you rely on it.”
o Michael brought out an axe from his time with Jonas, asking, “Has anybody at The Daily Show ever had an axe out here before? Absolutely not.”
I thought Michael did a really good job as guest host. He’s not my favorite of the correspondents, but he wasn’t doing the same sort of shtick here. He worked well! Meanwhile, the dual host bit fell a little flat for me. I’ve enjoyed Michael and Ronny doing correspondent bits together before, but this didn’t have a good rhythm.
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