Category: Viral

A few weeks ago, Anthony Fauci, the head of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Disease, gave an exceedingly rare positive bit of news during a testimony to the House Energy and Commerce Committee. Fauci works in a field that is in inherently pessimistic, but when discussing a potential vaccine for COVID-19, he painted a relatively rosy picture about what the future might hold.

“We feel cautiously optimistic, based on the concerted effort and the fact we are taking financial risks — not risks to safety, not risks to the integrity of the science, but financial risk to be able to be ahead of the game — so that when, and I believe it will be when and not if, we get favorable candidates with good results, we will be able to make them available to the American public,” Fauci said, per Vox. “It would put us at the end of this calendar year and the beginning of 2021.”

Fauci repeated his optimism a little less than a week ago when he did a Q&A with the Journal of the American Medical Association and said the hope is for 100 million doses of a vaccine by the end of 2020 and “a couple hundred million doses” that could be made available “by the beginning of 2021.”

You did not click on this story to read some doofus talk about vaccines, nor did you click on it to get brought up to date on stuff Fauci said, although it’d be cool if these updates brought you some sort of sense of relief amid the myriad of extremely bad news that comes on an hourly basis. No, you clicked on this because you want to read about college football. What I would like to say is that is you consider the previous couple of statements from the head of the NIAID as you read the next sentence, which we will get to right now.

This upcoming college football season should not happen as it is currently scheduled. This does not mean getting rid of non-conference games, nor does it mean delaying the start of the season until, say, October. No, this means moving the college football season to the spring.

The next however many hundred words I write all come with a caveat: I am not a person whose livelihood is directly tied to college football happening. I am a season-ticket holder for my alma mater’s football program, and I am someone who likes watching college football a lot. I am not a coach, or a comms person, or a member of an event staff, or a concessions person, or anyone else whose bills are paid because of this multi-billion dollar industry generating the revenue it has to generate. There’s, of course, a problem within that, because the athletes are not getting a fair cut of what comes in that industry, but I digress. The main point is that it is very easy for me to make this proclamation without having to worry about whether I can survive if there is no college football.

Take a look at our current moment. As of this writing, there are more than 50,000 cases of COVID-19 and numerous deaths are being reported on a daily basis. As Jane McManus put it, sports are a sign of a highly functioning society. In no way, shape, or form can the United States be viewed as a highly functioning society right now. It is hard to imagine an immediate path forward to achieve that “highly functioning society” distinction unless a whole lot of masks, PPE, tests, and checks that incentivize staying home as the virus spreads pop up out of nowhere.

Beyond that, the idea of professional sports right now in America are tenuous at best — it is important to stress “in America,” because in Europe and Asia, leagues have started back up due to the way their countries made it a point to get a handle on this virus as quickly as possible. The NBA and MLS literally need to have bubbles for their leagues to go on as planned, and MLS already canceled games and had two teams pull out of said bubble due to outbreaks. MLB seems like a ticking time bomb as teams travel from city to city. The NFL plans on going full-steam ahead, but even they seem to be recognizing potential pitfalls as they remove preseason games.

All of these sports have the benefit of employing professionals, many of whom make a whole lot of money and all of whom have collectively-bargained health insurance plans. College athletes, meanwhile, are amateurs. If they get sick and are unable to continue their careers as a result, they would not be able to fall back on a big contract and endorsement deals and the connections that are built up by being in the world of professional athletics. There is a legitimate moral peril to playing college football while the virus is still raging on with no vaccine or reliable therapeutics to help individuals who fall ill. Even if younger individuals and those in good health generally tend to avoid the worst outcomes from COVID-19, the possibility of even a single athlete falling seriously ill or dying makes the entire endeavor not worth the risk. This doesn’t even mention that the coaches — always older, frequently in a more risky age groups — risk falling ill, too. Alabama fans: Would college football Saturdays with Bryant-Denny Stadium at greatly reduced capacity be worth it if they lead to 68-year-old Nick Saban laying comatose in an ICU with a ventilator helping him breathe and his kidney getting ripped to shreds by this virus? Of course not.

The moment that Fauci expressed his belief that a vaccine could come by the end of this year, it only made sense to start seriously considering the spring. Again, there would be financial ramifications to this move that I cannot even begin to fathom, and perhaps this renders this entire column bunk in your eyes. The way I see it, there are four ways this college football season can go. The most improbable, based on where we are right now, is the season goes off without a hitch. Perhaps equally improbable is to not have a season at all, which accomplishes the extremely bad goal of making everyone unhappy and has brutal financial ramifications for essentially every school across the country.

Far more likely is what is behind door number three: The season includes canceled games, perhaps a lengthy stoppage in play as the virus makes its way through numerous members of a team. This would be an unmitigated disaster, something that exists right at the intersection of “extremely foreseeable and avoidable situation,” “all-out PR nightmare,” and “financial catastrophe.” And the worst part is the likelihood is that this would impact multiple college football programs and magnify just how bad of an idea all of this is.

The Ivy League — which, to return to money for a moment, has fewer financial questions than most other institutions of higher learning — did this calculus and determined the best move is to cancel fall sports for now. It is unknown if winter or spring sports will be able to go on, or if they’ll be able to move fall sports to spring.

“With the information available to us today regarding the continued spread of the virus, we simply do not believe we can create and maintain an environment for intercollegiate athletic competition that meets our requirements for safety and acceptable levels of risk, consistent with the policies that each of our schools is adopting as part of its reopening plans this fall,” the conference said in a statement.

The Ivies famously canceled their postseason basketball tournament before any other league back on March 10, before Utah Jazz center Rudy Gobert tested positive for the virus and things began to rapidly unfold. There is no guarantee that other leagues will follow their lead this time, and again, the Ivy financial situation is less dire, but at the absolute bare minimum, listening to the how and why that led to this decision would be wise for decision makers at every other university in the United States.

With all of that said, there are obvious questions about what college football would look like in the spring. The thought of a beautiful April day leading into a highly-anticipated nighttime tilt between Alabama and LSU or Ohio State and Penn State is, obviously, extremely fun to imagine, especially if you’re the kind of person who believes the closest thing there is to heaven on earth is drinking crappy beer and eating grilled meats in a parking lot for eight consecutive hours on a Saturday. The NFL wanting to do NFL stuff during the spring — i.e. the combine and the draft — could get in the way, and administrators would assuredly (and, candidly, reasonably) be leery of playing a full, 12-game regular season schedule before conference title games and bowls, and then only giving players a truncated offseason before rolling into a full 2021 season in the fall.

Pressing pause right now gives them the opportunity to buy time to make a comprehensive plan to figure all of this out, regardless of whether there is a vaccine and/or reliable treatments by then (although, so I am on the record here, college sports should not happen if there’s nothing that can fight the virus in general). Schools need football to happen. It is a crappy reality of this entire situation — the money that college football generates is necessary for athletic departments to survive as they currently exist, and as Stanford recently reminded us, major revenue losses can lead to literal life-altering decisions being made.

But at the end of the day, while the money behind all of this is important, the risking of the livelihoods of 18-22 year olds who have decades worth of experiences — marriage and fatherhood and a career — ahead of them is not worth it. The second that cautious optimism became the norm about a vaccine being available by the end of the year, wheels should have been put into motion. Time has been wasted since that moment, but the opportunity to do the right thing is still on the table.

“Too late” comes when, not if, a player falls ill. College football needs to shift its focus to the spring before that day comes.

Ahead of HBO’s Watchmen debut last year, Tim Blake Nelson told us about a trauma that would reveal much about his Looking Glass character. Sure enough, showrunner Damon Lindelof gave us one hell of an origin story in the “Little Fear Of Lighting” episode, which titled itself after a Jules Verne quote (from 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea) about a giant sea squid. What unfolded was the story of how young Wade was in New York City when Ozymandias unleashed his giant squid hoax upon the metropolis.

Needless to say, Wade’s trauma had plenty of layers, including sexual humiliation, and the effects of the psychic blast led him to build a safety bunker, wrap his head in that reflectatine mask, and closely monitor the squid rain for his entire adulthood. As a result, Looking Glass ended up being the glue (and audience POV) that fastened the story’s more fantastical elements with a more grounded reality, but Lindelof originally planned a different story, as Nelson revealed to Entertainment Weekly:

“”[I]t involved an interracial relationship that Wade had had that had ended very badly. And I loved that notion. I’m in an interracial marriage myself in my own real life and have three children in that marriage, and so these are issues that are very close to me. And although my interracial marriage has a very happy present — and, I think, future and past — Wade’s was really tragic and really dark and really just changed the course of his life.”

Nelson loved this story, but he also believes that the Looking Glass origin story that made it into the series was “a better decision” for the course of the show. Indeed, that was when sh*t got real for comic book fans, who realized that Lindelof was gonna put the pedal to the metal, so to speak, on weaving choice elements from Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ graphic novel into the show. Also, we got a really good “Careless Whisper” cover out of the whole thing, so yes, HBO’s Watchmen was a success on several fronts.

(Via Entertainment Weekly)

After gaining a cult following from a handful of independently-released singles and EPs, Dominic Fike is gearing up to share his debut album. Now signed to Columbia Records, Fike officially announces his debut record, What Could Possibly Go Wrong, with the smooth single “Politics & Violence.”

Fike’s latest is the second single that’s surfaced from What Could Possibly Go Wrong, arriving on the heels of “Chicken Tenders.” On the new single, Fike stays true to his signature style. He opens the track with emotive strings and gently croons the chorus before delivering his sultry lyrics over a captivating beat. “Mileage, politics and violence / At least somebody’s driving / All you need to fall in love,” Fike sings.

Along with releasing music, Fike has stayed vocal in the midst Black Lives Matter protests. The singer delayed his album’s lead single in order to call attention to violence he and his family have personally faced at the hands of the police. Fike also recently appeared in Anderson .Paak’s “Lockdown” video which poignantly addresses violence against protestors and the current political climate.

Listen to “Politics & Violence” above and find Fike’s What Could Possibly Go Wrong cover art and tracklist below.

1. “Come Here”
2. “Double Negative (Skeleton Milkshake)”
3. “Cancel Me”
4. “10x Stronger”
5. “Good Game”
6. “Why”
7. “Chicken Tenders”
8. “Whats For Dinner?”
9. “Vampire”
10. “Superstar Sh*t”
11. “Politics & Violence”
12. “Joe Blazey”
13. “Wurli”
14. “Florida”

What Could Possibly Go Wrong is out 7/31 via Columbia. Pre-order it here.

If you’re a fan of good bourbon, there’s a pretty fair chance you also enjoy quality aged rums as well. Though they’re made from different ingredients (rum is sugarcane, sugar beet, or molasses-based and bourbon is corn-based), they both have relatively similar flavor profiles. Both often feature vanilla notes, toasted caramel, and an underlying sweetness. In fact, many rums are actually aged in second-use bourbon barrels — furthering the crossover appeal.

If you’re specifically seeking out a bourbon that reminds you of a well-aged rum, you’re going to want something on the sweeter side. Something with tropical fruit, vanilla, and baking spice flavors is sure to conjure that dark rum feel, too.

“The bourbon I recommend for rum fans is, without a doubt, Angel’s Envy Bourbon — finished in port barrels,” says Zack Musick, beverage director at Merriman’s in Hawaii. “This bourbon is of great quality and has a certain fruit quality that resembles something you might find in an aged rum. They also have a rye whiskey that’s actually finished in rum barrels.”

This week, we’re all about bourbons for rum fans. To help us pick the best bottles, we asked some of our favorite bartenders to chime in.

Four Roses Yellow Label

Kurt Bellon, general manager and beverage director at Chao Baan in St. Louis

The Four Roses Yellow label is my go-to, every-drink whiskey which has the same adaptable and smooth energy as rum.

Bib and Tucker

Leo Morjakov, bartender at The Ebbitt Room at The Virginia Hotel in Cape May, New Jersey

My choice would be Bib and Tucker Bourbon. This bourbon has aromas of vanilla which is similar to dark rum, with the spice of ginger and some dried fruit.

Michter’s Single Barrel

John Marchetti, bartender at Dr. BBQ in St. Petersburg, Florida

If we’re talking just bourbon here, then my vote goes to Michter’s. There are better rye whiskeys, by the likes of Angel’s Envy or Basil Hayden’s, but for a bourbon that a rum-lover would enjoy, I think Michter’s does the trick. It’s made from a carefully selected mash bill that features the highest quality American corn. The fact that each batch of this bourbon really is “small-batched,” allows the sweeter notes of this bourbon to come through.

Think rich caramel, balanced vanilla, and stone fruit.

Old Hamer

Jacob Cantu, tasting room manager at West Fork Whiskey Co. in Indianapolis, Indiana

For an easy transition, the Old Hamer Straight Bourbon Whiskey 80 Proof has a sweeter profile featuring a mash bill with 99% corn and 1% malted barley. This resurrected whiskey brand highlights locally grown Indiana corn, for a unique palate that rum fans will enjoy. It showcases sweet caramel notes but offers a hint of spice that brings it to another level.

Weller Antique 107

Melissa Reigle, beverage manager and head bartender at Byblos in Miami

The best bourbon for rum lovers is Weller Antique 107. The raisin, vanilla, and spice will be familiar to rum lovers, while the honey notes and charred oak round this out and take you down the bourbon path. An excellent bourbon for anyone, rum-lovers will certainly appreciate heat and the extra-long finish on this fine Kentucky Bourbon.

Angel’s Envy

Evan Hosaka, lead bartender at Electra Cocktail Club inside The Venetian Resort in Las Vegas

Angel’s Envy because it has great tropical and banana notes that are also present in aged rums. I think rum fans would also find Angel’s Envy works well in many cocktail variations, such as our “Capricorn Cocktail” from our specialty zodiac menu. It has bourbon, Genepy liqueur, Benedictine, a float of Islay Scotch, and a couple of dashes of Angostura bitters.

Woodford Reserve Double Oaked

Jorge Centeno, chief spirits officer at the Deer Path Inn in Lake Forest, Illinois

If you like a spiced rum, and want to try bourbon, I suggest Woodford Reserve Double Oaked. It translates the same as rum with hints of clove and vanilla. In competitions, I love to use this bourbon when making drinks that typically call for rum.

Maker’s Mark

Frantjasko Laonora, head mixologist at Curaçao Marriott Beach Resort in Curaçao

Maker’s Mark. This bourbon is packed with different spice notes while remaining sweet and balanced with caramel, vanilla and fruity essences. These flavors combine to make it a smooth-yet-flavorful bourbon, perfect to sip on or as something to use in your cocktail of choice.

Writer’s Picks:

Booker’s

If you enjoy your rum highly potent and full of flavor, Booker’s is the bourbon for you. This small-batch, cask strength bourbon is uncut, unfiltered, and full of honey and vanilla sweetness that feels very rummy to me.

Wild Turkey Rare Breed

This cask strength, uncut bourbon is perfect for fans of dark, aged rums. Even though it’s over 112 proof, it remains tremendously smooth with hints of candied oranges and sweet toasted caramel.

As we approach the Aug. 25 release date for Madden NFL 21 on current generation consoles, the makers of the game have teased gamers with the ratings for this year’s batch of rookie quarterbacks. That means our first taste of what it will be like to bring the talents of this year’s exciting QB class to the NFL.

Joe Burrow, Cincinnati Bengals: 76

A pretty reasonable rating for the No. 1 overall pick. For the sake of comparison, by the end of last season, Madden had upgraded Kyler Murray of the Arizona Cardinals a fair bit after a strong second half of the year, and he still only sat at a 75.

Looking more closely at Burrow, his best characteristics according to Madden developers are his ability to break sacks, throw under pressure, accelerate in the open field, and throw the deep ball. Seems pretty fair. They also graded Burrow well for things like “toughness” and the ability to avoid injury, which seem hard to know right now, but are fine based on his time at LSU.

Tua Tagovailoa, Miami Dolphins: 73

Most interesting to note here is how close Tagovailoa is to Burrow, despite the hip injury and the corresponding uncertainty that moved Tagovailoa from the No. 1 pick conversation in April’s draft. They are neck and neck in several categories, but it’s also fun to look at where Madden has Tagovailoa ahead of Burrow. Tagovailoa rates better for his “throw power,” as well as his ability to run play action, which both seem fair. While Tagovailoa will probably one day be one of the most fun QBs in Madden, we may have to wait a year or two.

Jordan Love, Green Bay Packers: 71

Few will be subbing Love in for Aaron Rodgers in Madden any time soon. The game developers are playing it slow with Love, as will Green Bay. As in reality, Love rates a bit lower than the top two guys in the technical categories, while grading highly as an athlete and pure thrower.

Justin Herbert, Los Angeles Chargers: 70

Herbert has the highest “throwing power” rating of any rookie outside of Jacob Eason, and has the highest accuracy rating of anyone drafted in the first round, but has a rough 76 rating for deep-throw accuracy. Gamers will have to choose between Herbert and Tyrod Taylor when they use the Chargers this year, but when it comes to the prized rookie signal caller, Madden clearly isn’t high on him — yet.

Let’s round out the other big name players.

Jalen Hurts, Philadelphia Eagles: 68

Jacob Eason, Indianapolis Colts: 63

Jake Fromm, Buffalo Bills: 62

A lot of these guys should be really fun to sling the ball around with as their careers go on, but might not be the best options if the goal is to win as a die-hard Madden 21 player.

TMZ reports that five people have been arrested in connection with Pop Smoke’s murder.

This story is being updated.

TikTok’s days may be numbered, but the app is still being utilized for some good (it’s not only lip-syncing teens, ya know). As the debate around facemasks continues, a couple of new educational posts by Bill Nye in which he schools anti-maskers on preventing the spread of COVID-19 are making the social media rounds. Now we’re going to get this disclaimer out of the way immediately: Bill Nye is not a scientist. He’s a mechanical engineer. But he is “The Science Guy” and, at this point, has hired legit scientists to help him vet his episodes.

He’s also got a massive platform to reach people who might otherwise refuse masks. And in these TikToks he does a good job breaking down the science of the face mask in his trademark zany style. The series is called “Consider the Following” and it’s accompanied by the kind of quick edits that make TikTok so addicting.

“So the reason we want you to wear a mask is to protect you, sure. But the main reason we want you to wear a mask is to protect me from you, and the particles from your respiratory system from getting into my respiratory system,” says Bill, while demonstrating how both cloth and N95 masks make it harder to blow out a candle because of their ability to block airflow.

In another post, Bill Nye draws a comparison to the science of facemasks, and their ability to block the movement of air, to that of a scarf, explaining that the basic science is the same. So while Bill Nye may not be a scientist and he’s definitely not an epidemiologist, he is a science educator. Meaning that we’ll take his word over your conspiracy-obsessed Facebook uncle any day.

While a culture war rages over wearing facemasks in America, study after study seems to indicate that the masks will, in fact, help us in preventing the spread of COVID. A study published in Health Affairs compared the COVID-19 growth rate in 15 different states before and after the states issued mask mandates and found that the mandates slowed daily growth rate of the virus quite significantly. Another study that examined 198 countries also found that those with the cultural norms or policies of wearing face masks exhibited lower death rates in relation to COVID-19.

Over the course of his career, Tame Impala’s Kevin Parker has earned himself recognition as an experimental musician. As seen through his recent record The Slow Rush, he’s known for his expansive synths, chilling production, and heavily-reverbed vocals. Because of his affinity for adding an electric edge to his music, it’s not often Parker is seen with an acoustic guitar in hand. But Parker decided to break the mold and give his fans an acoustic performance of one of his recent tracks.

Armed solely with an acoustic guitar and his vocals, which usually are not at the forefront of his music, Parker performed a rendition of “On Track.” The acoustic version awards his fans the opportunity to see the core of his songwriting and how simple melodies can still maintain the integrity of a heavily-layered song.

Parker’s decision to perform “On Track” acoustically also highlights the song’s lyrics, which hold a particular meaning in a time when much of the world is still affected by a pandemic. “I know it’s been a slow year, nothin’ much to show here / I didn’t really go for it, so not a lot to show for it,” he sings.

Watch Parker perform an acoustic rendition of “On Track” above.

The Slow Rush is out now via Modular. Get it here.

Yeah, I’m sorry. This is going to start with a Hamilton reference. I’ve been thinking a lot about Aaron Burr since I saw the hip-hop musical for the first time last week. Partly because Leslie Odom Jr. is a legend that I was mostly unaware of. But also because there’s a view of Burr as a cautionary tale who is mocked for his, “Wait for it, wait for it” and his “talk less, smile more, don’t let them know what you’re against or what you’re for” guiding principals. In the context of the play, Burr contrasts the more idealistic and sometimes imprudent Alexander Hamilton. In 2020, however, maybe we need people to be a cross between the two. People who shirk the assumed responsibility to blast out underdeveloped and underinformed thoughts at every opportunity. People who aren’t cripplingly calculating. People who are guided by their principals and process and not the sound of the crowd.

When I asked Patriot Act host Hasan Minhaj about what he thought about Kanye West’s increasingly vocal presidential aspirations he did not have a snarky or sizzling hot take. Whereas I drained my outrage bar, offering an opinion at the first sight of Kanye’s tweet and his Forbes interview, Minhaj kindly explained that he wanted to “connect the dots” first. He’s going to explore the angles to figure out if this is worth getting worked up over or if it’s another hollow distraction from the real stories that are more deserving of our attention. I’m playing checkers and he’s playing chess, you see, but damn am I eager to learn — motivated by hoarseness and exhaustion if nothing else.

As we continued talking, it became clear that Minhaj’s discipline and appreciation for nuance serve as more than a response to our collective ready, fire, aim mentality. It’s also a ceaseless force that powers The Patriot Act and something that helps to keep the host and the show ever-relevant in a crowded field during a vital time. In other words, “how to account for his rise to the top? Man, the man is non stop!” Again, sorry. That musical really gets into your circuits.

I was just reading the Kanye Forbes interview. I don’t know if you got a chance to check that out.

I didn’t get a chance to read all of it. How is it looking?

It’s bad. It seems like he’s pretty serious. Let’s see: he says vaccines are the mark of the beast.

Oh, boy.

He says we’ve got to stop making God angry. Also, Kanye f*cks with Trump, in part, because he likes the saxophone in the Trump hotels. Which honestly changes everything. I didn’t know that there was a saxophone in the lobby.

It changes your complete perception of the hotel chain?

Yeah, I’ve got to rethink everything now. But no, honestly, this [the reaction] speaks a lot to what you were saying in the second to last episode [of Patriot Act‘s most recent cycle] — the democracy episode. Specifically with our attitude toward third parties. The response makes it seem like we all work for Biden now. Like, “What are you doing?! You’re going to screw this up!”

Yeah. What I loved was where we played that archival clip of the two opponents being normal human beings with each other in states with Ranked Choice Voting and being like, “Hey, you can put this person as your first choice or me as your first choice, or them as your second choice and me as your second choice.” Coalition governments are these things that are common in other parts of the world, but we have this two-party winner take all system that is fueled by negative partisanship.

I’d never really given much thought to it. Now I want to dig in a little bit deeper and figure if it makes sense to me. What do you think about Kanye’s candidacy?

Well, I mean, the thing that I’m still trying to decipher is what is the motive and is he serious? All we have is this Forbes interview. And so that’s the big thing that I’m trying to take away over these next couple of days. “Is this serious? Is a new album dropping?” We’ve heard the series of conspiracy theories, and so honestly, what I’m trying to do, man, is collect the information to see how valid this thing is before I dive in with the hot take.

Yeah, it’s interesting. It’s not out yet, but we did an episode of The People’s Party with Talib Kweli talking with Common, and I know they talked about it a little bit. I’m curious to see what they have to say on that as well.

Yeah, because they also know him personally, right?

Right, exactly.

Yeah. And I don’t know if you felt this in covering everything that you cover right now, especially you guys as a publication… sometimes just definitively connecting all the dots. A lot of times, we get baited into providing an immediate comment or a take or a position on something as we are still collecting the dots and information. And that’s the one thing that I’ve tried to, again, avoid as much as possible on the show. It’s just, “Hey, what are the big thematic questions that we’re trying to answer here?”

And I think what you were talking about when we were doing the elections episode… The feeling everybody had in the writer’s room was how are these our two choices? And I go, “That’s great. I love that.” And we always have these big questions that lead every story. The last episode of this cycle was, “Why are taxes so hard?” Because there are countries around the world that have prefilled tax forms. They literally send it to you like a postcard, you know?

It is definitely a problem, that kind of snap reaction. I’m as guilty of it as anybody else. It’s so guttural. We see something, say something, and move on to the next thing. And it just feels like, especially over these last few years, that it’s destroying us. Apart from doing what you are doing — trying to change things just by action and trying to take that beat and have a deeper conversation — how do we [as a society] change that?

I try not to prescribe. I just try to speak for what my personal responsibility is. For me, I know that I represent a show and the staff and so many people who work for me. The thing that I am always cognizant of is every time we put out one of these episodes, it’s being seen in 190 countries, and just major shout outs to our news team, our fact-checking team, our writing team, and our legal team for always making sure that we’re coming correct. That way, we don’t have to make a correction and I’m not just speaking through absolute hyperbole and what I’m saying is completely wrong. That’s always been my thing where these things exist on the Netflix platform ostensibly forever. So when people go back and watch the Affirmative Action episode or the Indian Elections episode, I want them to be able to say, “Yeah, that still holds, and he’s not just diving in with his hot take on what the current climate is in the culture war.”

How does the mindset of, “I need to speak with all of these people in mind” change your comedy processing machine?

There are two major things that I have to be cognizant of. The first is whenever I go into the writer’s room or the pitch meetings… I saw Jon do this with the 9:15 AM meetings at The Daily Show. He would really lead with, “Okay, this is what I’m trying to say,” and then work backward with the showrunner, the news team, and the writers to say, “Okay, this is where you’re right and we can back this take into a larger story,” or, “Hasan, that is completely wrong. Please do not say that on the show.”

And I think that’s what’s invaluable about having a group of people that help you execute a vision or an idea. But it starts with, “Hey, I’ve been feeling this.” I felt this way going into this cycle of episodes for quarantine edition. We had gotten past the public health crisis. We knew to, “Hey, wash your hands for 20 seconds, sing happy birthday twice, wear a mask,” that whole thing. But the thing that was brewing, that was in the air was, “Hey, how are people going to pay rent? And what happens if I cannot pay rent?” And the rent relief and rent and eviction moratorium, that discussion that’s happening right now. That [episode] was something that came from that initial conversation that I had in the writer’s room. I was like, “Hey, we’re all just holed up at home. Unemployment is on the rise. If people can’t pay their bills, most importantly their rent, what’s going to happen?” And news and the writers were able to pick up on that and go, “No, there’s a great story here about the rent and the eviction crisis about to happen.”

Is that process different when it’s something like the reaction episode you did around George Floyd? Obviously, that topic is something that’s been brewing for a long, long time, so I’m sure you’ve thought about it a bit. I’m sure your staff has too. But it’s powerful.

That was more of a, to give you the basketball analogy, “Just give him the ball and isolate on the wing. Let him work and do what he’s going to do,” because so much of that is coming from just my personal perspective and how I felt. Take an episode that we did earlier in the year called The Broken Policing System. Ironically enough, we used Minneapolis as a case study — warrior training, we talk about qualified immunity, things that were being discussed, but that weren’t at the center of the national conversation. That very much was an analysis piece on the broken policing system in America as a whole, right? This [other] piece specifically was about the conversations that were being had in my community in regards to police brutality, in regards to the protests and the riots that were happening across the country. It was a lot more social commentary, but again, it still had that Patriot Act touch where we talked about the civil rights legislation of 1964, 1965, which allowed my parents to come over here in the ’80s for me to be able to tell this story. It still was a lot of my personal take and perspective, but there still was that news and data analysis that paints the picture.

Do you think that the comedy community and just the entirety of our culture, really, is too consumed by what Trump does and says? And how do you avoid leaning into that sometimes on the show and staying with the bigger picture stuff? Because I think it’s important, but I imagine it’s hard.

Yeah, it’s extremely difficult and all media institutions are reckoning with this right now. Do you ignore the president of the United States? That is the fundamental question, right? And so the thing that I wanted to do or try to avoid through the show is, I don’t want this to be ESPN First Take but for politics where I just go directly to camera and I am cathartically expressing my disdain or emotion at the current state of affairs.

What I really wanted to do is I said, “Look, do you want to just be shouting at the camera or do you want to, to the best of your ability, lean into your strengths as a storyteller and tell a story?” And I think our Coronavirus Supply Chain episode was a storytelling example of, “Yes, we all have heard the story of ‘America is made in China.’ What you don’t know is, we made that deal a long time ago and it’s affecting our supply chain when it comes to PPE, but also meat,” and then tell the story of meat supply chains and the way the media covered Trump’s signing of the executive order to quote-unquote, “keep meat-packing plants open” and how they responded. To me, that is a very interesting way of storytelling through the clips, through the tears, to the pull quotes, and closing the argument with my take. And that, to me, feels more meaningful because I think even three or four months from now, you can go back and watch that episode and see the value of it in terms of its media analysis and the way we collected and put together the story.

The shift away from the protests to the statues feels very helpful to those in power. And yet it’s being aided and abetted, I think, by news organizations large and small. People on Twitter are obviously still posting about protests, not as much as they were, but how does the narrative get changed? Because it does feel like the deck is stacked a little bit.

The two big questions that I’ve been reckoning with and I’ve been trying to closely monitor… I don’t have the answer to it yet, but I feel it, and this is, again, an example of what I would bring into the writer’s room: trying to figure out who’s in charge and who do we trust. We have seen because of the proliferation of social media and people being able to put out information on Twitter, it’s decentralized. Anybody anywhere for the most part around the world can put stuff out. The information has been decentralized. In some ways that’s really good and in other ways that’s really bad because there is no one place to go for it.

That theme also runs true with leadership. Don’t you feel this right now where, yeah, I thought I live in the United States of America, but there’s really these 50 different semi-dystopian states that are all figuring out their own rules themselves. It’s why I had that take on our digital exclusive where I go, “We don’t need governors or a president. We need a commissioner because apparently Adam Silver has been able to manage 30 teams better than our president has been able to manage 50 states.” But it’s that idea of, who’s in charge? Who is calling the shots here? And I think we’re also seeing that in the face of massive social and political upheaval that’s happening right now.

And the second is, I think everybody’s feeling this right now: who do we trust? I don’t know. Even the way we started this conversation, you were telling me about the Kanye Forbes interview. And I remembered this morning… I didn’t even get a chance to fully look at it, but I was like, “Man, if I want to get really nitty-gritty and for me to really understand this, I’ll probably have to hear the audio or see the video of it.” Because I don’t know if you feel this way, but I need a level of nuance and detail now, and so much of what I’m consuming lacks that. That’s really what I feel. Those two questions have really defined 2020 for me. We were supposed to do the White House Correspondent’s Dinner this year, but those were going to be the big thematic questions that I was going to try to figure out, even in the Correspondent’s Dinner speech of, “Who is in charge and who do we trust?” I feel like our entire country is grappling with those two fundamental questions.

Every episode of ‘The Patriot Act’ is available on Netflix.

This year, Kanye West celebrated the Fourth Of July in a different way than most people: He announced he was running for president. That decision was met with some backlash, even more so following Kanye’s recent Forbes interview, in which he made some controversial statements about his beliefs and political platform.

Shorty after Kanye’s announcement, Elon Musk, who was photographed with Kanye days earlier, had the rapper’s back, tweeting, “You have my full support!” Musk’s words carried some weight, as the tweet has over 350,000 likes as of this post. However, following the Forbes interview, Musk appears to have reconsidered his endorsement.

In response to a tweet mentioning the anti-vaccine and anti-abortion comments Kanye made in the interview, Musk (in a now-deleted tweet) seemed to at least question his opinion of West and the rapper’s viability as a presidential candidate, writing, “We may have more differences of opinion than I anticipated.”

In the interview, Kanye expressed his skepticism about vaccines, saying, “It’s so many of our children that are being vaccinated and paralyzed… So when they say the way we’re going to fix COVID is with a vaccine, I’m extremely cautious. That’s the mark of the beast. They want to put chips inside of us, they want to do all kinds of things, to make it where we can’t cross the gates of Heaven.”

Speaking about abortion, he said, “I am pro-life because I’m following the word of the Bible,” and insisted that Planned Parenthood does “the Devil’s work.” Naturally, the organization was not happy about what Kanye said.