Mark Blyth, political economist at Brown's Watson Institute, and political scientist Carrie Nordlund share their take on the news.

On this episode: Trump and Melania have coronavirus; the electoral insignificance of Trump's tax returns; a dumpster fire debate; thinking long-term on this month's Supreme Court fight; the rest of the world's plan for climate change; what a coronavirus second/third/pick-your wave might look like.

[MUSIC PLAYING] DAN: Hey, there. This is Dan, the producer of Mark and Carrie. If you like this show, we highly recommend you check out Watson's other podcast, Trending Globally.

You'll hear more in-depth conversations about politics and policy from some of the world's leading experts including, occasionally, Mark and Carrie. You can find it by subscribing to Trending Globally on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify, Google Play, or wherever you listen to podcasts. All right, on with the show. Thanks.

[MUSIC PLAYING]

CARRIE: Welcome back to Mark and Carrie. Hello, Mark. How are you? Slow news day?

MARK: I'm fine. So what's the latest distractions?

CARRIE: Well, I feel like over the last 12 hours, there's so much to talk about. Of course, the Twittersphere and what the news is abuzz when the White House disclosed late last night that the president and first lady tested positive for COVID. This was after one of the-- I don't know if she has an official title. Hope Hicks, advisor to the president, used to be communications director, tested positive for COVID. And Hope had been with the president to some rallies in Minnesota and Pennsylvania, and then also in Ohio for the debate.

So the president now has COVID. The hoax that he was talking all throughout through the summer, has now landed at the White House.

MARK: He has the Wuhan flu. This is all we know.

CARRIE: The China virus, that's right. Yes.

MARK: It has finally got him. I wonder if he'll actually try and turn this into-- in classic Trump style-- an attack on him which is an attack on the nation, by this foreign virus.

CARRIE: Well, a couple of senators have already done that, that we must hold China responsible. And so I don't know if that's some warmongering or wag the dog stuff, but you can't help to just roll your eyes, I guess.

MARK: Wag the war dog, exactly. I suppose the one thing this thus show us, which is kind of nice, is that it means that Melania and the president actually do spend more time together than we had or two thought. Or alternatively, they both individually spend a lot of time with Hope Hicks which could also be a possibility. So what else apart from the immediate news cycle should we talk?

CARRIE: So the unemployment numbers were released overnight as well, and unemployment has dropped slightly to 7.9%. But job gains are still very, very slow. All of these, I think, and of course, there are other items that we'll talk about.

But it goes to this, that nothing changes the state of the presidential election. And I think it's interesting, of course. Will the president having COVID have an effect? Probably not.

I am curious though for your perspective on this. I saw on Twitter, a lot of people are saying this might be rocket fuel for patriotism in the aftermath of Boris Johnson getting it. His approval numbers went up and there is a surge of patriotism. It doesn't feel like that's the same case here in the US.

MARK: I think for that to work, you actually have to admit that there is a problem, and own the problem. So you get sympathy because you've come down with it, and that's an example for us to follow. And you did warn us about this even if it was slightly late.

So it's a harder one for Trump to come back on than it was for Boris because Boris belatedly said this is a big problem when we need to deal with it. Whereas when you've downplayed it, there is a certain German word which goes well with this, "schadenfreude," taking pleasure in the pain of others. So it depends on whether the patriotism is outweighed by the schadenfreude.

CARRIE: A terrible choice. Two choices that are not--

MARK: Trade-offs you never thought--

CARRIE: --neither one good.

MARK: --you need to make. Exactly.

CARRIE: Yes, exactly.

MARK: What about the taxes? Tell me about the taxes.

CARRIE: Well, I mean, surprisingly that was really not that long ago that the New York Times had an exclusive drop. Like a week ago, they'd obtained records, I think, for the last 15 years. And in Twenty-Sixteen, the president paid $750 in taxes which I'm assuming is your tax rate as well. And in Twenty-Seventeen, I believe, he paid zero.

So in essence, the president had said that his losses were so high that he didn't need to pay anything in taxes. Of course, his response that he pays tons in taxes, for example, payroll tax, sales tax, et cetera.

MARK: It is amazing-- we've spoken about this before-- how rapidly things come up and then just disappear. So to go back to a couple of months ago, the whole issue of bounties on American soldiers paid for by Russia. If this had been under any other president, there would now be an impeachment hearing. And now it's just one thing that came up, the guys say it, and then it was gone.

I think it was tracking about every three days. We got a thing. And everyone went, woohoo. And then, ooh, there's another thing. Ooh, look that dog has a fluffy tail. I think we wouldn't have it one a day.

By the time we get actually two weeks, I think-- When we get two weeks to the election, there'll be three things a day. No one will be able to process anything. There'll just be this incredible sensory overload of stuff that in normal circumstances, any one of these things would blow you up.

CARRIE: And I wonder if that actually expands our capacity for this, or if it just shuts us all down to the point where even the people who are-- someone who's really plugged in and cares a lot about this is like, I can't. I just can't be as involved or be at Twittersphere as much as I am.

MARK: Well, let me ask you this. After the utter train wreck, dumpster fire called the debate, would you watch the next one?

CARRIE: Well, I mean, I love politics. So yes, I'm there. But do I think we need them? I don't because I think there's three undecided voters in this country. They're not watching that total car wreck of a thing, and I don't think we need them. It's not a debate. It's a joint appearance by two people that just interrupt each other. Did you watch?

MARK: No, I literally never watch. So my rationale for this was given to me a decade ago, a rule by Nassim Taleb. He says you shouldn't read the newspapers. He takes it to an extreme, but I do it with television. And I said, why? And he said because if anything genuinely important happens, three people will tell you all about it the minute you wake up tomorrow.

So the minute I woke up, I switched on my phone. And I just knew all that I needed to know without having to go through the pain and suffering of actually watching the thing. But is there a strategy behind this? So I'm trying to discern.

There's this feeling that Trump just basically lashes out. He's out of control. His handlers can't control him. And at the same time, that must be quite good because his numbers don't drop. So for all of these things that blow up every day, every week, every couple of days, his numbers don't really move.

So maybe there's a strategy embedded in this which is essentially, I know I'm not going to win any converts. I need to make my base as angry as possible so that they will mobilize, and they will turn out. And perhaps more seriously, I must continue to throw the result of this election into jeopardy by basically enticing my supporters to start patrolling poll stations.

And then there's the whole Republican campaign which is a real thing, to get I think 150,000 vote monitors for all of this corruption that's there. Which of course, in a study after study, assured the United States has one of the lowest rates of election fraud in the entire world. But they've created a moral panic about this which people really do believe, which facilitates people coming into these polling stations. They're not meant to interact with voters, but you know they're going to when people start questioning IDs and all the rest of it.

And this is just, in this fractured moment, guaranteed to instill violence. And if it does, this creates the opportunity to cast doubt on the very fundaments of the electoral process and basically cancel it and kick it out of the court.

CARRIE: And I think in a less precise way, it was a Trump-branded debate. Total chaos. I mean, you just never knew where things were going and topics switch, as he's talking every 10 seconds. I mean, I think at the beginning he did throw Biden off. I mean, Biden wasn't really sharp with these long rambling answers, and the interruptions clearly bothered him. I think he gained better control throughout the debate.

But also, it was just chaotic. And I think the white supremacist denunciation, proud boy stuff like that. That makes people excited on his side.

So I think you're right. The strategy was exactly that, and he did it. And his numbers didn't move up or down. Biden's, they didn't. Yeah, the strategy is just chaos, and then to further cast all of these doubts about the election.

And by the way, where's that creek or river in Wisconsin where those ballots are? All this stuff. Yesterday, there was exchange at the White House with the spokesperson, like who's they and where's this creek? And of course, there's no real answer to that.

MARK: So basically, it is a made up moral panic about the integrity of the election which you weaponize to basically bypass the Democratic process and end up stuck in a 6-3 court, which brings us nicely to Ruth Bader Ginsburg and the vacancy. So what's your thoughts on all this?

CARRIE: It's a power grab. David Mayhew, congressional scholar, political scientist in Nineteen-Seventy-Four, said the principal motivation of Congress is to be re-elected. And that's really about power, and that's what this is.

Yes, people are sad that Mitch McConnell doesn't care. He is sad that she died, but he wants the 6-3 court. That's what he cares about. He doesn't even care about the majority in the Senate. It's about power. And if we ever thought that it was politics, about anything other than power, I mean, we were just Pollyanna.

So Amy Coney Barrett will be approved very rapidly before any sort of COVID relief bill. And she'll sit on the court and yeah, if we're moving in the direction, she'll make a decision about the presidential election. Though I do think, it is so presumptuous and so insulting to her that the Republicans think that she's a "for sure" vote.

MARK: Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. So I mean this is something I wanted to get into. There's a kind of delusion amongst American liberals that the court at one point was liberal, and then it's become more and more conservative.

Yes, there was a war on court. It was a historical blip. It's always been a conservative institution.

And despite that, they managed to abolish slavery. They managed to enfranchise women. They managed to do Roe versus Wade, et cetera, et cetera. And they haven't been able to knock that down or Obamacare, despite all of the institutional advantages they've had.

We know that the chief justice seems to --in background report from sources-- actually care about the integrity of the court, recognizing fully that if you just go full on partisan here, the whole thing's over. It's just the question of time, so that doesn't work.

And it's also, I think, incredibly presumptuous of Congress to go, right, so she's a conservative. She's a Catholic. She's anti-abortion. That's it. We know how this is going to trend.

You don't, right? Roberts surprises. Gorsuch occasionally surprises. And if they have an eye on the long game, then they have to be cognizant of the fact that, I believe, around 70% of Americans approve of Roe versus Wade. The same number basically goes for Affordable Care Act. Now perhaps that's in the 60s, but nonetheless, they're a strong majority.

Climate change legislation, increasing numbers of Americans know. A majority actually do think this is a serious problem. If they basically try and be the court of the nineteen-twenties and just veto everything, then there's going to be a massive challenge to the legitimacy. And I'm pretty sure that conservative or not, they understand this.

So I'm not sure that this is the end of times just because it's a 6-3. Sure, it's a huge handicap. And absolutely, it may well impact abortion rights in a very negative way. But that doesn't mean everything else has gone, too.

CARRIE: I totally agree with you, I mean, as an institutionalist. I mean, this was said about the court in the nineteen-fifities, and they do all the things that you just listed. And I know there's lots of talk about packing the court and limited terms.

But this is one of the great things about a lifetime term is that someone like John Paul Stevens, who's put on the court by a conservative Gerald Ford, ends up being part of that, quote unquote, "liberal wing" of the party. And he said, I didn't move. The court moved.

I think that's precisely the point is that she's a human. I'm assuming all of the court members are human. And so we don't know how during their lifetimes, how things start to change or move for them on a personal side. So I mean, it's likely that she would vote in favor of the president.

Maybe what's the question to, what's the legal question before the court? I think to your point, they don't want to delegitimize themselves. And I think John Roberts as chief is really very sensitive to that, is that they're not just a political arm of the executive branch.

MARK: Exactly and particularly basically, the legislative arm of the Republican Party which they're not. But if they are perceived that way, that's not good for the future. You wanted to talk about money.

CARRIE: I did want to talk about money. This is something we haven't talked a lot about. I started watching a little bit because like the three, the weekend. So RBG passes away on Friday. ActBlue, which is the sort of clearinghouse for all Democrat congressional seats, now has raised over $300 million.

But within those first three days, I think they raised $96 million over the weekend, and then it continued to toll. So it just shows you the motivation that people were willing to open up their pocketbooks. But the September numbers for Biden's shop haven't been released.

But just in terms of where we are for cash on hand, which is how much cash the campaigns have. So based on August numbers, Biden has $180 million. Trump has $121. So that's, I mean, somewhat of an advantage for Biden. And so we'll know more in September.

But combined total, Mark, for the election cycle that they've both raised, is $1.01 billion, so slightly ahead of where Trump and Clinton were, where they were at $965. A billion dollars for this, and you think it only gets higher and higher and higher. And so when I really think about elections, and I know there's all sorts of problems with the election, and this is such a key one. That they're just the real campaign finance reform that we'll never get because there's no benefit for the people involved in making the policy.

Is a billion dollars, really, for this? This is the quality that we're getting, and this is the type of election play that we're getting. And that's when I really think I scratched my head because I think we actually have to deal with this, but we won't, so.

MARK: But if you think about it from the point of view of the big donors, what value for money you get? I mean, if you're a climate change denying fossil fuel company, not to mention any in particular. But $100 million can basically buy you 10 years of extracting fossil fuels and possibly a huge detriment to civilization as a whole, but the maintenance of your share price.

If you're on private equity, you're paying 15% tax rather than 35% or 40% tax. So that little carried interest loophole, that's worth $100 million because you'll make billions off of it. So there's a way in which it is absolutely pay to play, and that's just the bids that are on the table. Once again, we were taken in completely. What else, where do you want to go?

CARRIE: Oh, gosh. Well, it just feels like doom and gloom all the time. I just wanted to bring up that in Texas, there's more. I mean, if we think about voter suppression, that the Governor Abbott has decided to have one drop-off point for mail-in ballots in Harris County, which is 10 times the size of Rhode Island. And it just sucks.

MARK: First of all, there's two things. Number one, we know that they care about power. They have no morals, and basically, they don't have a shame gland, right? So they can't be shamed in this one.

But aren't there any legal restrictions on this? I mean, can he actually-- why not just go the whole hog and say, there's one deposit. It's in my house. And if I don't want to open the door, you don't get to make a deposit. I mean, are there any legal restrictions on what governors could do with this stuff?

CARRIE: Such an interesting point that you bring this up because there were. There were preclearance under the Voting Rights Act, which Chief Justice Roberts then the Supreme Court dismantled. So if Chief Justice Roberts hadn't been in the majority, then there would have been preclearance for this. And it wouldn't have happened. I mean, the court would have had to approve it, but because that doesn't exist anymore, the governor can do this.

MARK: And there's no way to challenge it.

CARRIE: Well, no. I think there is a way to challenge it, but it has to work its way through the court system.

MARK: So in other words, what I just said there about the Supreme Court not being partisan hacks has just been instantly disproven by the fact that this is happening now, because they behave like partisan hacks.

CARRIE: Yes, correct. And we can all close our books and go to bed, yeah.

MARK: There's a consistency there of nothing else. Goodness me. So there's voter suppression. Anything else you want to take us through?

CARRIE: Is there anything happening on the other side of the ocean that might be somewhat-- Is anything good news on the other side of the ocean, or is it all doom and gloom in Europe?

MARK: I mean, there are. It depends how you look at it. I mean, if Trump is re-elected. Then I saw a report today from one of the world's really serious, leading climate scientists, one of the guys that they really tried to get fired from his job when he was a junior professor and all this sort of stuff because these numbers were making everyone look bad, very serious bloke.

And he basically estimated that if you take the sum of the environmental regulations that Bush, I'm sorry, that Trump has already gotten rid of and assume exactly the same trajectory. Don't even accelerate it through the next four years. Then basically, we've already taken I think 0.3% off of the Paris target, like you've just baked that in again.

So if Trump is elected and we continue to do what we do in the environment, we've basically made the 10-year target that we've got left virtually impossible. So the good news on this is the rest of the world-- if you look at the foreign press and just read their commentary on the debate, it really was what happened to America.

We don't behave this way. Political systems should not behave this way. This is ridiculous. This is a failed state with nukes. That's basically the commentary.

And what that has done is despite the fact that the EU's well aware that Communist China really is Communist China, and they do want to steal your tech and all the rest of it. They actually do believe in climate change. So Xi came out and said, we're going to commit to carbon zero by Twenty-Fifty. Or Twenty-Sixty, I forgot what it is.

Now the interesting thing about this is the Communist Party of China rarely makes public pronouncements on policy targets. Because when they do, they tend to stick to them. Or rather, they tend to underpromise and overdeliver because that gives them legitimacy.

So the fact that they've come out and done this, and they actually are working actively with Europe to develop clean tech, so a lot of stuff on green hydrogen, blue hydrogen, all the sort of emerging technologies. Not the stuff that's in Biden's program, but a cut to carbon capture which is like 15 years old and doesn't work.

The stuff that actually works. They're already ahead in solar. They got wind down, their new battery technologies, et cetera. Basically, Europe and China are going to cooperate on all that. They're going to develop those industries. And then eventually, that we're going to have to buy it at a premium because we just chose not to do it and decided to tear each other's faces off instead. So there is hope, but it's just not here.

CARRIE: Right. I did hear just a very short report that of course, if Biden wins, the Paris Accords, it expires for us four days after election or something like that. And so Biden would put us back in, and that you can't really do this without the United States just because of our economic activity and population size. And so there's hope there. But of course, if Trump wins, will just be exactly that. We'll just be having to buy stuff at a super-high price.

MARK: Well, you will accelerate all the problems. What was 30 years away will become 15 years away, right? I mean, I posted a couple of pieces on Twitter this week, one of which is the biggest study ever of Antarctic deglaciation. And we really do have 2 meters baked in already.

So just think of every city that you've ever visited that's on the water. In 50 years, a lot of them are really seriously in trouble. We're talking Boston. When you got 2 meters in Boston that takes out pretty much most of the stuff that was dug out in the 19th century called the Back Bay and the South End. It's over.

So this isn't alarmist. This is real science as best as we can do, and there may be errors. But the errors, if anything, trend the other way. So we're just setting ourselves up for a huge fall.

The rest of the world will continue. We will make it more difficult, but they will just continue on their path.

CARRIE: Meanwhile I'll be at my flat earth meeting. I mean, just that the margins of this debate. And you just think really, we're still talking about that one.

MARK: Exactly. So we don't know about-- remember, because it's a ploy. I don't know how Q fits into it. I don't know how Q fits into the environment. But I'm sure it does somehow.

CARRIE: Yes. I mean, we're a little ahead of time in terms of seasonality. But I thought as we start to wrap things up, that the real war on Christmas plight is happening in the White House. Last night, there were tapes released--

MARK: Do tell.

CARRIE: There were tapes released of the first lady saying that-- and you can kind of get her point of what she was trying to say. She was quoted as saying, who gives a blank about Christmas stuff and decorations, but I have to do it. So the Right complains that we can't say Merry Christmas anymore. But the first lady's like, let's not even do any of this. I thought this was--

MARK: So there's a war on Christmas in Britain.

CARRIE: Is there?

MARK: Yes, because Boris is a little bit chagrined that British people like to go out in the summer and drink lots of beer in pubs. But of course, isn't that great for COVID transmission. So they've been saying to people, no, no, you would be locked down, and you'll be barred and all this sort of stuff.

And apparently at one point, he basically threatened Christmas. Now we're going to have to rethink about whether at Christmas, we're going to be able to get together with our families and stuff. And I thought there was two things that went on there, given sort of most of the dysfunctional families I knew in Britain growing up. Not being able to get for Christmas would be a really good idea, and loads of people would be in favor of that.

But the other one is just kind of headmasterly, sort of like, well that's it, form six. Now that you haven't done your times table, no Christmas. It's like you're actually threatening a nation with Christmas. It's a very odd thing to do.

So turning to another topic that's very much coming up because it's seasonal is the whole notion of-- oh, hang on. Is that a bloody leaf blower outside? Can you hear that?

CARRIE: I just wondered what that was.

MARK: Yeah. Oh, God. I've got headphones on, so I didn't hear it until there was a pause there. And it's like, oh there's a leaf blower. Sorry everyone of this whole thing's down with the leaf blower. I hope we're able to edit that out. Anyway, back to that.

Seasonal. Seasonal, right? Second wave, second wave or third wave. Or maybe we're all in the same wave when we never quite recovered. Maybe this is Nineteen-Seventy-Nine, and it's new wave which is what came after punk. I'm a little bit confused by all this sort of stuff. So what have you been picking up on waves?

CARRIE: Oh, well. I'm with you. I don't know if we're in second, third, or 10th wave of this. But presumably, if you look at the Johns Hopkins tracker, I mean, there are new hotspots. Wisconsin is one of these hotspots. I mean, poor Wisconsin. They just want to drink beer like in Britain, and have a brawl, and watch some late season baseball, or football, or something. But they've been--

MARK: Sounds good to me.

CARRIE: --they have so much stuff going on with protests in Kenosha, now an increasing hotspot, ballots in the creeks. I mean, they just have everything going on that you could possibly imagine. So it looks like again, like the upper Midwest and then the West, too. The Dakotas, Montana, Utah, for example, are also experiencing spikes. I mean a lot of it, I think, is that colder weather, moving inside to do your social activities and not wearing a mask.

MARK: So a couple of interesting things. So the only time that Sweden ever appears in the news in the United States-- and I think I've said this on a prior episode-- is to either prove that masks work because the Swedes did terribly. Or to prove that they don't work because they didn't do as terribly as everybody thought.

The really interesting thing is their death rate has been very low for the past almost six weeks. So the infection rates are going up, but so far, the death rates haven't. And the really interesting thing-- and the acid test here for a second wave-- is we saw this when it was beginning to take off in April. And you get this huge, almost exponential rise in the number of infections.

And then it was just wait, two weeks later, the death rate starts to go up with it because that's when people start to die from it. And what's happened in Sweden is they basically crushed the curve, but not as much as everybody else. Kept a reasonably high infection rate, but the death rate collapsed.

Now there's two schools of thought here. The first one is this whole thing about T cell immunity. It was three things, T cell immunity. So it's not the fact that you have these antigen reactions which is the standard mechanism. There are these helper cells that work in the immune system. And if you've basically been exposed to lots of coronavirus, or you are naturally good at warding off coronavirus, then you've got an advantage.

Second one, it seems that masks might encourage microdosing. So one of the things that they're beginning to think is the severity of it comes from two things. Number one, the virus is brand new. It doesn't know how lethal it is.

So for a virus to survive, it can't be Ebola. It kills too many people. It burns itself out. You want to basically be lethal enough but not too lethal, so you can survive endemically in the population.

That's why you get seasonal flus. The Spanish flu killed a lot of people, basically died out. Mutated into something that we get a version of every now and again, that's it.

So what happens with the first set of infections is that, think of doctors and nurses working on the frontlines in the first time around. They're getting massive doses of this. And it's brand new, and it's super lethal. You're getting round one of this stuff.

Once you've got masks on and the virus begins to naturally attenuate its lethality, you're kind of microdosing. And it's priming your T cells, so that you're actually building up a kind of immunity function as you go along.

And then the third one is really interesting, if you piece all this together, is there's been very little flu in the southern hemisphere in part because everybody's wearing masks. So what would usually happen is when we were dealing with COVID, they were dealing with the flu. And now basically we are getting the flu, and we've got COVID. The flu might not be showing up in the numbers, we think.

So if the lethality is going down but the infection rate's going up, yes, you have a second wave. But it really changes how you want to respond to it because it doesn't necessarily mean lockdowns. So we'll know in a couple of weeks if basically these spikes are followed by an increase in the death rate. In which case, we're back to lockdowns. But if we're not, that really changes the options on the table. So I hope this time that's true.

CARRIE: So that's interesting about the microdosing, that just getting tiny bits of it somehow, and which would seem to lead to some sort of vaccine science as well. But just that the people who have received it at first, then having better immunity for it as well.

MARK: But the crucial one is people who wear masks are being exposed. But they're getting a much smaller dose, so it's not triggering the full response. Whereas people who are wandering around like Trump, boom. You're going to get the full work.

CARRIE: Do you think though, Mark, that on the economic side of things, that you'll see any country ever shut down even if its the disease where we're bleeding out our eyeballs? That we'll ever see any sort of national lockdown?

MARK: Well, I mean, we have actually seen them. The Italians were pretty ruthless. The Spanish were pretty ruthless and are prepared to go back to that because they knew how bad it was last time around. So in a sense, even though there are mask resistors and all the sort of stuff in places like Italy and Spain. In general, they are already-- France as well, much more draconian. The Brits have reputedly got now on the table 10,000-pound fines for serial violators.

So basically they are saying, if we lock you down, we lock you down. The key to doing it is to do what the New Zealanders did when they had that recent spike. They basically shut down all of Auckland for about 12 days. So their largest city, like a third of the population, they just shut it down. And everyone was like, aah this terrible. Whatever, right?

But after 12 days, there were no more cases. They went, all right, let's go. It's not this kind of neverending story, and we don't know what's going on. If you can do this in a targeted way, then yeah, you don't shut down everything. But it's still pretty damaging.

But if the Swedes are in a sense showing the way, if the lethality goes down while the incidence goes up, that just opens up a different possibility space. I mean, the other one as well, of course, is the demographic data. This really is something that kills old people. Yes, it's true that proportionately, when you control for population, minorities, et cetera, et cetera.

But really at the end of the day, you look at the aggregate numbers, it's old people. And a lot of them that are the most vulnerable have unfortunately already been exposed. So there should be an attenuation or not as well. So we don't really know. We'll just have to wait and see. The next couple of three weeks is going to be interesting and not just because of the election.

CARRIE: I just feel like the Swedes do so many things better than we do, and we're always striving to be. My dad is Swedish so I always feel a lot of pride when I hear that the Swedes are making portable furniture like IKEA, so anyway.

MARK: Have you ever been there? I have been there, yes. You were immediately the shortest person in the country.

CARRIE: Oh, by far. But actually, there are more people with dark hair in that country than I thought because I mean, there is some immigration there. I mean, it was wonderful. The metro from the airport to downtown Stockholm was like 10 minutes. It was awesome.

MARK: Yes, it works. I mean, it cost an arm and a leg, but everybody gets paid an arm and a leg. So it balances out.

CARRIE: And it was like so nice. Yes, so anyhow.

MARK: So I arrived there for the first time in Nineteen-Ninety-Seven. And I got off the plane and went to the train station, and got on the train and walked into-- in August, like beautiful time-- downtown Stockholm and looked around. And I said, oh my God. I am the ugliest person in this country.

[LAUGHS]

It was like I got to stay here for what is it, six months? And I am literally the ugliest person who's coming. This is not going to go well.

CARRIE: I had the most crooked teeth.

MARK: Yeah, exactly.

CARRIE: This is much more light-hearted. But I thought you'd appreciate this because you're the director of the Rhodes Center-- so just stay with me for a second-- and also live in Rhode Island. So yesterday--

MARK: Oh, I know where this is going.

CARRIE: The White House press secretary said that Amy Coney Barrett was a Rhodes scholar because she went to Rhodes College. And so by the ways of transmission logic, we would both be-- you'd be a double Rhodes scholar, and I would just be one Rhodes scholar.

MARK: Absolutely, yes.

CARRIE: So congratulations.

MARK: I've got my Rhodes scholarship from Rhode Island. I got my Rhodes scholarship from the Rhodes Center. Exactly.

CARRIE: Yeah, so congratulations.

MARK: The one thing that really sucks in Rhode Island?

CARRIE: What's that?

MARK: The roads. The roads.

CARRIE: I've heard. Bu-bump, bump. That's a good one.

MARK: Terrible. Bu-bump, bump. Thank you. We'll be here all next week. Welcome to the Catskills.

CARRIE: Well, we will be back soon to talk about wherever we are with this whole thing called the presidential election. So thank you for listening. Take care and we'll talk to you soon.

MARK: Exactly. So soon. Bye.

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