Mark Blyth, political economist at Brown University's Watson Institute, and Carrie Nordlund, political scientist and Assistant Dean for Undergraduate Programs at Brown University, share their take on the news.

On this episode: living through another pandemic wave; Joe Manchin reveals who he's been all along; union movies at Starbucks, a strike at Kellogg's, and the state of organized labor in the US; making sense of Russia's aggression towards Ukraine; Boris Johnson has seen better days; reflecting on the two biggest stories of the year (one good, one bad). 

You can learn about the Watson Institute's full podcast network here.

[MUSIC PLAYING] [STATIC]

[MUSIC PLAYING]

CARRIE NORDLUND: Well, hello there. We're back in our old rooms.

MARK BLYTH: We're back in our pandemic boxes. Oh my God, it's back again. It's omicron, it's everywhere Ahh!

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yes. And already people canceling holiday plans left and right in travel plans. Has it affected you and any of your holiday winter break plans?

MARK BLYTH: Well, hopefully not, although we are flying into the teeth of the pandemic. So we are flying out tomorrow, going west. And the flights on. We're heading there, we'll see what it's like. We're going to go Park City so the chances are that like 105% of the population will be vaccinated. But apparently that doesn't make that much difference against this thing. I've got a text from a couple of friends saying that they had breakthrough infections and all that sort of stuff.

The only saving grace seems to be that the symptoms are lighter.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah.

MARK BLYTH: But if you get enough cases, then you will still get bad cases. And somebody sent me a thing today-- I hadn't had a chance to look at it. They said, the Rhode Island health care system is close to the point of collapse.

CARRIE NORDLUND: I saw this.

MARK BLYTH: Fill me in. What's the details?

CARRIE NORDLUND: Well, the emergency rooms are at the breaking point. What I read was a quote of "imagine yourself 50 feet away from a doctor and the doctor's unable to help you because there's too many other patients in the 50 feet between you and the doctor."

MARK BLYTH: Oh my God. Hasn't Rhode Island put out pretty good vaccination rates? What's going on?

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah, I thought the same thing but, is it the breakthroughs? Is it the people-- the part of the population that isn't vaccinated and they're really sick? I mean, that seems to be the case in so many places. I was in New York, actually, over the weekend and I haven't been there very much in the last two years. And there were lines wrapped around the block for both the vaccinations and then also the tests.

Like, every single clinic you walk past, there's a line out the door and around the block for tests. So it just is a real stark reminder.

MARK BLYTH: So the weekend before, last-- was it the weekend before last? Can't remember. I went to Florida. I was really rolling Yeah I was really rolling the dice. Get this, right? So I went down to see the Liberal Redneck Comedy Tour.

CARRIE NORDLUND: OK

MARK BLYTH: Right. So it's three comedians who are--

CARRIE NORDLUND: Oh, this is the name of it?

MARK BLYTH: Yeah. Yeah. This is-- they're 100% redneck by their own admission. And basically, they sort of have a slightly different politics from what you would normally expect, but anyway, very, very funny stuff.

So there I was sitting there with a friend in a comedy club. Not a mask in sight, everyone laughing their face off, right? The next day I went to a diner and a strip mall at the back end of Naples, and it was one of the interesting experiences for me because I'm not often the thinnest person in the room.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah.

MARK BLYTH: But I was by about two standard deviations. So I was kind of thinking, there's probably a few unvaccinated people in here. So-- and not a mask in sight. The place is bombed. And I up and flew down. I came home and got a PCR test, nothing.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah. I mean, this is the thing-- I mean, I believe in the science, all the stuff. I believe in the science, but I still wear a mask when I go to the store. And so, I mean, if I believed in the science, I would think that I don't-- I wouldn't need to have to wear a mask. I'm always at war with myself.

MARK BLYTH: But then it's breakthrough infections, and the healthcare system is about to collapse. And you're like, but like five weeks ago, we were fine.

CARRIE NORDLUND: I know. Well, even like two weeks ago, I feel like everything was fine too. And now, you see all the--

MARK BLYTH: Trust me. When I was down in Florida the last week, it was fine and nobody cared. So, we'll see how it proceeds from there. But yeah, hopefully, this doesn't shut everything down again. I really don't want to have another online semester cranking up.

The hope is that it spikes really fast and then burns out really quick because alpha died down, delta died down, the whole lot. So we'll see where it goes. So just thinking, it's interesting that the first one was-- remember, the whole thing was named after a beer, right, Corona.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah.

MARK BLYTH: Right. And then the next one was named after an airline, right?

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah.

MARK BLYTH: And then, I don't know if anything's named after Omicron, but we should actually get something. We'll see how it goes.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah. Did you-- just on closing down, a few, Cornell, Harvard closed for winter break. I mean, very close to winter break, were closed very quickly. And you just think that the economy, let alone people psychology, can't take it.

MARK BLYTH: You can't do it. I just don't see lockdowns happening at all. The whole point of lockdowns is to buy time. So what it does is it prolongs the exposure of everyone even if it drops the rate of exposure because you're trying to wait for vaccines.

Well, we have the vaccines. And now if we have breakthrough-- I just don't see going back to like extended lockdowns but you never know. Let's hope not.

CARRIE NORDLUND: And that's so weird because Denmark and the Netherlands are in quote unquote lockdowns, but they've closed like movie theaters and gyms. And you're like, is that a lockdown to close those?

MARK BLYTH: Yeah, it's a bit lockdown light, definitely. I mean, and like I was saying, at the end of August I was in Denmark and the prime minister went on TV and said, we did the numbers. We looked at delta. We think we were already really through it.

Everyone got rid of the masks. And then, boom, it's back. The gift that keeps on giving, I know I'm sick to death of it as well.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Well, on to super happy news and that is Joe Manchin.

MARK BLYTH: Yes.

CARRIE NORDLUND: The Democrats favorite Senator from West Virginia said yesterday that, he would-- he just couldn't get there on Build Back Better. I think maybe you had predicted this way.

MARK BLYTH: Maybe. Yeah, like all over the place on every podcast that I ever went on. Yeah, so I just wrote a piece for The Guardian actually about this. Yeah. And it's funny because I was also reading something about Prosecco.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah.

MARK BLYTH: So I did this riff on if Joe Manchin leaves a bad taste in your mouth and you reach for Prosecco, think again. The reason being it's basically-- it's clear. This is the line that I've been saying forever. It's the state's business model, right?

There's this misconception that, well, very few people really work in mines these days. And it's a dying industry, and therefore Build Back Better offers you a way out. Well, yeah, maybe from sort of the point of view of the pointy headed academic living on the coast.

But if you include gas jobs, and associated trades, and all that, if you take into consideration the fact that the what-- state of West Virginia has the lowest labor force participation rate in the country, 55%, that your average pay in mining jobs is $77,000, which is a big wage for that part of the country. And by some estimates, about a third of the state's GDP is tied in to basically fossil fuels.

So far from offering an off ramp to decarbonization, this is a mortal threat for the business model. And that's pretty much what they viewed it as. So it just never made sense to me that-- no, but he's on board. Manchin's on board. He has a few concerns about the cost of the welfare stuff.

He doesn't give a shit about the cost for the welfare stuff. It's a total smokescreen. He's basically doing what he does, which is defend the business model of the state. That's what you do.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Well and of his family too. They have very clear, vested financial interest in the coal industry. I also thought-- like, this is the Democrat's perennial like until the end of time when there's just cockroaches. I mean, the Democrats will be complaining about this.

Is that why it should never come down to one person? Like, did that-- is one person that is going to either make or break an administration or make or break a vote. Like, this is the entire problem of the Democrat-- or the "Big D" Democratic party.

So it was really just shooting yourself everywhere that you possibly can that you are relying on one person that you know is going to whiffle waffle.

MARK BLYTH: Right. Absolutely. And the question then becomes, well, why can't they build a big enough coalition? Well, part of it is because of the fractures in the coalitions that they've actually built so far and the limits of that. And part of that is the fact that large portions of the white working class simply don't believe what Democrats say.

And if you think about it, right, I mean, if you come of age and were working in American industry in Wisconsin at the time that it was a pretty well-off state, and you sit through the Clinton administration, this is when, basically, you start to lose jobs to Mexico, China joins the WTO at the end of it, boom. Then you sit through the Obama administration, right?

You know, you can put the Bush administration in the middle as a kind of diet of patriotism and destruction. But then when you get to Two-Thousand-and-Eight, Obama comes in, giant financial crisis followed by the opioid crisis. And then, what are their answers to this stuff? How are they actually changing? No, they're part of the problem.

CARRIE NORDLUND: But actually, your point about the labor participation, I was-- this issue is my bridge-- I was really interested to see that there's a Starbucks in Buffalo that decided to unionize earlier this fall. And then, the Kellogg's strike, one of the longest ongoing strikes, just broke over-- they just said yes to a five-year contract for almost 2,000 workers spread across four various states.

So what I thought was interesting that-- you know, the unions had been trying to get into Starbucks for a long time. Always had been defeated. It was a mixed bag because one Starbucks in Buffalo said yes. The other one, I think, everybody said no. So it's not exactly any sort of huge green flag for unions. But it does show that maybe there's some appetite for this among their workers.

MARK BLYTH: Well, I think what's beginning to happen now is that the scare tactics, the sort of like, "well, what are the costs of joining a union? Well, they won't represent-- you'll have to pay fees. And we don't pay you enough." Well, isn't that the point? That if we join the union, they will make you pay us more?

I think people are beginning to reconnect those dots. Frankly, because of the pandemic, et cetera, just fed up of being treated crap and being paid crap. And this is creating an opening that employers are resisting tooth and nail.

I don't know if you saw this one. I think I got this right, that the labor certification folks at the Department of Labor ordered the Amazon warehouse that voted against unionization to redo the vote because of undue interference by management. So long as you've got the Democrats in the White House, there is an attempt to push on the door to help unions. But at the end of the day, workers have to want that help and have to want to take that step themselves.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah. I do think the pandemic-related. I mean, I heard one of the workers saying, from the Buffalo store, that they were no longer disposable and that the company had to actually invest in them, at least a little bit.

And I also saw a public opinion poll that showed Americans felt more positively and supported unions than they have. So it's an interesting moment. I mean, it always is an interesting moment to think about, as I think about the midterm elections coming up, where we are in relation to that.

And on this topic, actually, I'm sure you saw the election of the Chilean president, 35 years old.

MARK BLYTH: Yeah!

CARRIE NORDLUND: Holy cow. The Donald Trump-like candidate was on the right. He was on the left. And he won 55%, something like that. So it's an interesting-- probably this says nothing about any American election, but I thought at least it was an interesting result, given all of the authoritarians.

MARK BLYTH: Well, I'm no expert on Chile, but it is important to remember how all that started off. It kicked off around Twenty-Seventeen, I think it was, with the rise in subway fares and basically just the entire younger generation saying enough. We are just expected to get by on nothing. And you keep taxing us and asking more of us. And at the same time, you're running off with all the profits.

And I think that's a kind of general story that we saw everywhere. That was part of the move towards the both left- and right-wing populism thing that erupted six, seven, eight years ago. And we're just still dealing with the aftershocks of that. Anyway, it's a good story.

One way to think about Build Back Better was this was the Democrats' and Biden's attempt to do two things at once. One was to invest enough money in projects that would benefit the low end of the income distribution such that you took away a lot of the economic grievances behind populism. It's not the only set of grievances by any means, but nonetheless it's one set of grievances you can actually do something about. And then, simultaneously, to do something on climate change.

And the tragedy of the failure of Build Back Better-- thanks, Joe-- is that, basically, by destroying one-- you may have reservations on the climate investment-- you are really destroying the other. You are basically saying, no, America can be this incredibly rich, powerful country, but we're not going to do the type of basic stuff that every other advanced country does, in terms of making families sustainable and labor markets human. We're just not going to do it. More for us. Thanks very much.

CARRIE NORDLUND: I mean, it's going to really be the market forcing companies, right? That electronic vehicles are just going to be the norm because the market has decided, in whatever ways it has, that electric cars are the way it's going to be. Is that right?

MARK BLYTH: Yeah, but it's funny you should say that because I just posted someone on Twitter this morning, which is an announcement from Chevy that they've made their biggest and most powerful ever crate engine. So this is an engine that basically can drop into multiple frames. And it's much more powerful than the engine you have, basically. And it's something like 600 or 800 horsepower. And it's 8.1 liters, or something absurd like this.

And you're just thinking about, so, you know, what is Chevy doing positively here to prepare for the transition? They're making the biggest gasoline engine ever.

[LAUGHTER]

CARRIE NORDLUND: Because that's definitely following the trend. Oh, jeez.

MARK BLYTH: Exactly.

CARRIE NORDLUND: I don't know if you saw this in The Guardian also this morning, is that North Korea has banned happiness, laughter-- I'm not clear whether laughter has been banned, although it was reported-- laughter and alcohol for the next 11 days, as the mourning period for Kim Jong-il has started. So, I mean, it's like, if they don't have COVID, they're just like in a COVID state of mind even as it is.

MARK BLYTH: Oh my god. Any time anyone ever says, you know, is democracy really that important, we should just remember living under the Kim family. That would be a good place to start and end.

But speaking of non-democracies masquerading as one, so Russia's still got all its troops on the border of Ukraine. Here's our wild card prediction section for the coming year. First one, does Russia invade Ukraine? Carrie, what do you think?

CARRIE NORDLUND: No, I think it's brinkmanship.

MARK BLYTH: Because there is the question of if he does it-- like, last time he did it, you could see he was protecting his flank. You had the guy who was the president who screwed up that nobody wanted anymore. You could secure the Donbas area in a couple of bets and take Crimea and declare victory. Unless he's actually willing to basically go, I'm going to Kiev and I'm going to get the buggers, it's not clear what the payoff for doing so really is.

CARRIE NORDLUND: This is just-- I mean, my interest is this chicken with the West? And I was interested because Biden's response, after that weird Zoom call with Putin, is that-- he was like, he's going to see sanctions like he's never seen before. It was very Trumpian in his verbosity. It seems like chicken, but I mean, Putin you could term wild card.

MARK BLYTH: But, again, from his point of view, he's been perfectly clear on this for years. He saw the so-called rose-colored revolutions of the nineteen-nineties as encirclement by the West. He sees everything that the EU does as essentially encroaching onto historical Russian borders. And the absolute red line is, if Ukraine ever joins NATO, then potentially you could have American tanks sitting on the border of Belarus.

And that means that, from his point of view, he is completely encircled. And if you want to really make Russian leadership totally paranoid, why not do that? And that's what the West has been doing. I mean, when you bring the Baltics into NATO and give them front line combat aircraft, et cetera, what are you doing other than basically signaling, we've got you all corners?

So I'm kind of surprised that we're surprised that eventually this has happened. It's this weird thing with the EU where they don't see themselves as a geopolitical power. So what they do is they're just like, oh, we're just building back. We're just helping our partners. We're just investing our capital in foreign places where the labor is cheap.

And they just keep doing this time after time and bringing more things into the EU'S orbit. And eventually, when you do that, you're up against Russia. And they're just going to go, what the hell are you doing? So, to me, I'm just puzzled by the fact that people are puzzled by it.

CARRIE NORDLUND: So do you think that the Russian troops actually crossed the border?

MARK BLYTH: No. And I also think that, in principle, Ukraine has a perfect right to decide if it wants to join the EU or NATO or whatever. And it shouldn't be anybody else's decision. But the fact is, you have a border with Russia, and that's how they're going to react. So it's not to excuse it or to applaud it. It's just simply to say, duh.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Well, to your first question, what is Russia playing at? I mean, it's not like they really want to be close allies with China, right? Because they'd always be China's poodle. So why-- they're just out there with themselves.

MARK BLYTH: Yes, and I guess that's what it is. It's a space that they feel comfortable in, which is one whereby they're buffered from the major powers on the south and the major powers in the West. And you're taking away one bit of the buffer, one country at a time. And it's driving them crazy.

So I don't know where this goes. I agree with you. I don't think they actually invade. But then, again, I could be wrong because they could.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah, right. Well, maybe Omicron will stop-- will pause things. I mean, it has to be raging in--

MARK BLYTH: Yeah, exactly, everywhere, God almighty. And with the other wild card for the year, what do you think?

CARRIE NORDLUND: Is it closer to the West? Well, I'm going to blow everyone-- I mean, it's not really a big surprise, but the UK, possibly?

MARK BLYTH: Uh-huh? Oh, yeah, tell me more. Tell me more. You mean basically the Queen steps down, bypasses Charles. William becomes Prince. And at that point Harry comes back on a dragon and slays him.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Right. Well, did you see the cover of Time or Newsweek, the way-- god save the Queen because the future is going to suck without her, or something like that?

MARK BLYTH: [BIG LAUGH]

CARRIE NORDLUND: I mean, Boris is, like, what is he doing? He held that party in the summer with all the people? And there was, like, a holiday party too. So there's been two different instances now where, clearly, he was not following his own guidelines.

MARK BLYTH: So the classic one just now is, basically, he can't declare a lockdown, but he's done these plan B restrictions. So his response to basically being exposed as this complete bullshit artist who does whatever he wants and tells other people to do the exact opposite is to kind of lock people down again. So it's like, so wait a minute, I'm angry with you because you told me to lockdown. I did and you didn't. And your response is to kind of tell me to do the same thing again. It's almost like he wants to lose the job.

CARRIE NORDLUND: I keep thinking there's no way that the public is still going to be with him or the Tories will maintain control. But there doesn't seem to be anything in the press at least that thinks that the Tories are weak.

MARK BLYTH: Well, they lost it by election. Their numbers are down. But you know, it's like anything. Like you said in the last podcast or the one before, you go back and look at Clinton's number one year out. You go back and look at Obama or Bush's numbers one year out. They drop a lot, right? And it's no different for British prime ministers. It's all very, hey! And then you're like, things suck and it's your fault.

But there is the question of the actual credibility of the office and the institution. And when you look like a man who sleeps in a box for a living, you are starting two steps down. So we'll see. Maybe we will have a post-Boris era. But then the question, who comes up after that? If it's the home secretary, the British Indian who wants to deport everyone, that could be even worse.

CARRIE NORDLUND: But then the labor guy is, like, Keir Starmer. I mean, I know I'm not supposed to, but it seems like an odd name. Is it a very British name?

MARK BLYTH: Well, Keir is kind of a Welsh name. And I don't actually know if he's of Welsh extraction or not. You know the rumor has it, he was the model for the QC in Bridget Jones's Diary.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Oh, really?

MARK BLYTH: Yeah, apparently. I think-- it was either Bridget Jones or Love Actually, one of the-- you ever noticed that all those films are the same film anyway?

CARRIE NORDLUND: No, I do not notice that. I know them as--

MARK BLYTH: They're exactly the same film all over again. Hugh Grant shows up, and then Colin Firth or somebody like Colin Firth shows up. And there's the girl. And it's just like, oh, god, we're going to do this all again. But anyway, in one of those films is a barrister, and apparently he's the model for it. So there you go.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Is Boris going to call an election in Twenty-Twenty-Two, I guess is where I was--

MARK BLYTH: No, he would never do that. He's got a whopping great majority, and they're not going to vote for suicide. So that's not going to happen. But what could happen is his party could turn against him, have a vote of no confidence in his leadership.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Got you. OK, and then it would be the-- OK, it would be the QC.

MARK BLYTH: Exactly.

CARRIE NORDLUND: So as we start to wrap things up for the end of this calendar year-- and also happy winter solstice today. We will have 9 hours and 11 minutes of daylight, as compared to 15 hours for summer solstice. What, as you look back on Twenty-Twenty-One-- I think this is the year we're in-- what was the big story, or what was an event that happened that still is in your head?

MARK BLYTH: So, for me, it has to be January the 6th.

CARRIE NORDLUND: OK, yeah.

MARK BLYTH: And I remember this for one particular reason. It's the first time I watched network news in about 10 years. And just watching it and then recognizing that if I was watching a foreign country, they would be calling this an attempted coup d'etat. And the contortions that everybody went through here to say that's not what it was. And that's exactly what it was. And how we're still not recognizing that.

And how that leads us to the conversations we've had before, that I'm deeply pessimistic about '24. If the Republicans don't win, despite the gerrymandering and the bullying and the media control, then there will be another, if not contested, just downright, we're not accepting the election results. And that gets us into a very bad place. So I think the big story of the year is if there's a fracture, if there's a point of fracture, it was January the 6th.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah, yeah. We're so bad as humans to think about our future selves, so, of course, Twenty-Twenty-Two and 4, seem so far down the road. But you're right. I mean, all the pieces are in place for all of that, what you just said, to happen.

MARK BLYTH: So give us something positive. What's the good story of the year?

CARRIE NORDLUND: Oh, I don't-- puppy dog tails. That one, I don't know about.

MARK BLYTH: How about vaccines?

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yes, vaccines. Thank you.

MARK BLYTH: I mean, despite Omicron, eh?

CARRIE NORDLUND: This now seems like eons ago, but I was doing my work from home from Louisiana and got it early, or what I thought was early. I thought I was getting away with something because I just walked into the pharmacy and got it, not realizing that there was going to be a percentage of the population that was never going to get it.

MARK BLYTH: Right. Vaccines and vaccine resistance, that is actually a really interesting one. To me, the counterfactual on the vaccines is this. If they weren't out now, and Omicron is as infectious as they say it is, and there was no protection, we would be in a really bad place. And it's just hard to keep that at the front of your mind because all you can think about-- at least all I can think about-- is how bloody annoying this is, and I want it all to go away.

CARRIE NORDLUND: No, you're so right though. It is such a positive. And that it happened in a year, I mean, less than a year. For us to not have anything, and then for us to have everything that we now have, yeah, you're so right. It's such a positive bright light here.

Do you have any favorite book or movie or Christmas cookie at the end of the year here?

MARK BLYTH: Definitely not Christmas cookie. I'm a bit of a cookie Grinch, when it comes down to it. That's just not my thing. Actually, that's not quite true. What we do is we go to raid Aldi. Because, despite the global supply chain disruption, Aldi is German, so you got all this German Christmas stuff. And they do Christmas.

So we stopped at an Aldi yesterday on the way up from Little Compton. And we found that the supply chain had landed. So we got the gingerbread stars.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Oh.

MARK BLYTH: They're very nice. We got the Stollen, the Christmas cake-type thing. We got a whole host of, like, chocolate treats and everything for Christmas. So that kind of stuff is great. So basically, I just import it. I don't have anything to do with that. What about you with cookies? What's your cookie thing?

CARRIE NORDLUND: Oh, I love a good butter cookie. Like, any of the Danish butter cookies, or any of the--

MARK BLYTH: So you do imports as well. This is why the United States is failing because what about your indigenous cookies?

CARRIE NORDLUND: No, I make, like, the German butter cookie, yeah. But I import my recipes, at the very least.

MARK BLYTH: So I'm going to leave us with this one twist of the conversation which was on the BBC website earlier today. Lord of the Rings turns 20.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Jeez.

MARK BLYTH: Sex and the City is back again, and everyone's nearly of pension age.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yes, this is true.

MARK BLYTH: But nonetheless, it's back. So, there's the Harry Potter reunion. And here's what this got me thinking of. The longer I've spent on this planet, the more fantastic our relationship to the real world has become. So if you go back to when I was 10 years old, Star Wars came out. And that was the first big thing, right?

And it's a really simple story. It's a galaxy far, far away. There's a hero. There's a bad guy with a big helmet. And then he dies. And it turns out it's all more complex than that. But it's not. And there's some teddy bears. Woo hoo, right? And then you get to The Lord of the Rings is the next big thing. And again, it's this Manichean thing of good versus evil, whatever. And people really get into it, right? Rah, and such.

Then there's the Harry Potter stuff, which people grew up with, in sort of the generations after me, and took it really seriously, to the point that when it turned out the person who wrote it, JK Rowling, had some dodgy opinions, people lost their mind that she had dodgy opinions. And apparently, the World Quidditch Association is breaking ties with her. There's a World Quidditch Association. People play this for real.

And then there was the Marvel stuff. One reading of the Marvel stuff is we are primed for fascism. Because you have no faith in your own ability to solve any problems. And what you need is somebody with superpowers to come and save your ass.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah, yeah, yep.

MARK BLYTH: And the last one that we're going to start off the new year with is the new Matrix reboot. Now, given how utterly pants and crap the last two were, I don't even know what we're doing with this one. But I expect it to continue on the sort of like instant nostalgia, the world's always a better place in film than it is in the real world, that we seem to be stuck in this endless loop on.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Why can't we come up with any other new ideas for movies or plots, or that this is just because we're just so hooked on nostalgia?

MARK BLYTH: Yeah, I think the past is-- if the future is an undiscovered country, I think that the past is a much safer space.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Yeah, well, and we know that the hero-- to your point that the hero/authoritarian is going to come and save us from ourselves.

MARK BLYTH: Yeah, exactly, which is totally dodgy. I mean, in the end of it, yeah, it's like I can admire Thor as a character, but as a system of government, I'm not sure I'm really in favor of it.

CARRIE NORDLUND: (LAUGHING) Yeah.

MARK BLYTH: I have a hammer. OK, I guess that works.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Here's a confession. I have never seen The Matrix movie. So I'm going to watch that. This is my big break--

MARK BLYTH: Great. Just watch the first one. For god's sake, don't watch the other two.

CARRIE NORDLUND: Happy holidays. See you in the new year.

MARK BLYTH: Merry Christmas to you, Carrie, and to all of our wonderful, loyal listeners who somehow keep coming back to listen to this abuse.

CARRIE NORDLUND: This is the most fun that I have, whenever we do this. So yes, I agree. Thank you for listening. And thank you for, yeah, coming back.

MARK BLYTH: See you in the new year.

[MUSIC PLAYING]