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In the days before her death, U.S. Supreme Court Justice and women’s rights pioneer Ruth Bader Ginsburg revealed her dying wish to her granddaughter: “My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed.” Not only is Trump planning to ignore RBG, he’s also casting doubts that she said what she, well, said.

While appearing on Monday’s Fox & Friends, Trump said, “I don’t know that she said that, or was that written out by Adam Schiff or [Chuck] Schumer and [Nancy] Pelosi? I would be more inclined to the second. That came out of the wind, it sounds so beautiful, but that sounds like a Schumer deal or maybe Pelosi or shifty Schiff.”

Trump also told the Fox News host that he’s narrowed his list of potential Supreme Court nominees to fill Ginsburg’s seat to five people and that he plans to announce his selection this week. “I think it will be on Friday or Saturday and we want to pay respect, it looks like we will have services on Thursday or Friday, as I understand it, and I think we should, with all due respect for Justice Ginsburg, wait for services to be over,” he said.

Because nothing says showing respect to the recently deceased than to immediately go against their dying wish. Watch the Fox & Friends clip below.

(Via the Daily Beast & The Recount)

Microsoft rocked the gaming world on Monday with news it made a massive purchase of the parent company of publisher Bethesda — maker of games the Elder Scrolls, Fallout, Doom. The all-cash deal announced on Monday will see ZeniMax Media acquired by Microsoft, with Bethesda joining Xbox Game Studios.

According to a Microsoft announcement on Monday, the $7.5 billion deal is done and will have an immediate impact on video games. It’s a seismic shift in the gaming industry that has a lot of wrinkles and new possibilities, but first and foremost is a move framed by Microsoft as a way to bolster Xbox Game Pass ahead of the release of two new next-gen consoles this fall. Microsoft pointed out in a release that Xbox Game Pass currently has more than 15 million subscribers, and the acquisition of Bethesda brings with it the “intent” to include future Bethesda games on Xbox Game Pass right on launch day.

It’s unclear if those titles — potentially including future Fallout or Elder Scrolls sequels — will be timed Xbox/PC exclusives or how releases of what are now Xbox Studio games will work. Microsoft now has 23 different studios working under its Xbox catalog, with 2,300 employees getting added to the company in the deal. At least one game, Starfield, was mentioned as under development by Bethesda and will presumably be the first to release on Game Pass like Microsoft teased.

Thinking more long-term, the various things made possible by the deal are far more widespread, including great news for Fallout fans as pointed out by Bloomberg’s Jason Schreier.

Whether another New Vegas is on the way or not is way too early to determine, but’s a striking example of just how big this deal is and the repercussions it will have across gaming. Microsoft got a lot bigger on Monday, and the next generation of console gaming is poised to look a lot different than anyone thought just a few days ago.

Like other areas of the music industry, the pandemic has presented both challenges and new opportunities to the folks behind NPR’s Tiny Desk Concert series. They haven’t been hosting performances from the traditional venue at their offices, but that means they’ve been able to wrangle artists to participate from wherever they find themselves. For their latest, they got perhaps the biggest pop act in the world right now: BTS.

The performance immediately sent shock waves across the internet: It was the No. 1 trending topic on Twitter in the US within a half hour of its debut. For the set, the group took to their hometown South Korean record store and performed their first US No. 1 single “Dynamite.” After that, they dipped into their archives for the remaining two songs: “Save Me” and “Spring Day,” from 2016 and 2017, respectively.

NPR noted, “We’ve been trying to make a BTS Tiny Desk concert happen for years now — even gaming out ways we might move Bob Boilen’s desk far enough forward to accommodate the superstar Korean boy band’s dance moves. In the end, it took a global pandemic — and the launch of Tiny Desk (home) concerts back in March — to make something happen.”

Watch BTS’ Tiny Desk performance above.

In 2019, Black Panther became the first comic-book movie to win an Oscar, and at this year’s Emmys, HBO’s Watchmen became the first comic-book TV show to win an Emmy in a major category. Comic book fans are starved for theater content this year, so this is a nice consolation prize and further confirmation that Alan Moore’s “unfilmable” graphic novel is getting it done. Thanks to Damon Lindelof’s ambitious and sweeping limited series and radical recontextualization of the source material, Watchmen pulled off an almost-sweep in the Limited Awards categories on TV’s biggest (virtual) night. This brought the show’s total Emmys take to 11 awards — the previously announced honors included Best Music Composition for Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross and Best Fantasy/Sci-Fi costumes for Sharen Davis and Valerie Zielonka.

On Sunday night, the show’s largest awards went down, which included Best Limited Series, Best Writing In A Limited Series or Movie (Damon Lindelof and Cord Jefferson), Best Lead Actress In A Limited Series (Regina King), and Best Supporting Actor in a Limited Series (Yahya Abdul-Mateen II). Regina King used her speech to urge people to vote, while Mateen and Lindelof both paid tribute to the victims of the 1921 Race Massacre, with the latter stating, “The fires that destroyed Black Wall Street still burn today… The only way to put them out is if we all fight them together.”

Abdul-Mateen, who portrayed Cal Abar/Doctor Manhattan, joined Lindelof’s sentiment while also dedicating his award to Black women:

“Watchmen was a story about trauma. It was a story about the lasting scars of white domestic violence and white domestic terrorism. It was a story about police corruption and brutality. But in the midst of all of that, it was also a story of a god who came down to Earth to reciprocate to a Black woman all the love that she deserved, for her sacrifices, passion and protection. And he did all of that in the body of a Black man, and I’m so proud that I was able to walk into those shoes. I dedicate this award to all of the Black women in my life.”

Weird factoid: Billy Crudup, who portrayed Doctor Manhattan in Zack Snyder’s far-too-literal 2009 Watchmen adaptation, also won an Emmy (Outstanding Supporting Actor in a Drama Series) for his work on The Morning Show. And Zack Snyder’s doing just fine, working on his Snyder Cut of Justice League for HBO Max.

This month, Billie Eilish has done all she can to get herself on the holiday wish lists of music fans everywhere this year. A couple weeks ago, she teamed up with Fender to introduce her own signature ukulele. Now, she’s back with perhaps the finest music merch 2020 has offered so far: Billie Eilish action figures.

A pair of new action figures (part of the “In Video” series) have found their way onto Eilish’s merch site, and one of them is based on her look in the “Bad Guy” video. The doll is 10.5 inches tall, “highly detailed,” and “fully articulated.” It features “a life-like head sculpt, rooted hair, real fabric signature yellow outfit, classic yellow tennis shoes and accessories,” and it comes in “a very eco-friendly, corrugated window box that transforms into a dioramic display.”

Then there’s the figure based on her “All The Good Girls Go To Hell” video. This one stands 6 inches in height, is “fully molded,” and features “18 points of articulation and comes with her 3 pivot point, back wings featured in the video.” Like the “Bad Guy” figure, this one also comes in a box that can be converted into a display.

Both dolls are expected to ship in ten weeks, so they should reach buyers in time to be the perfect holiday gift.

Get the “Bad Guy” figure here and the “All The Good Girls Go To Hell” figure here.

There wasn’t much going on with the box office this weekend with Tenet continuing to struggle in theaters domestically (release it to PVOD!), while Mulan continues to struggle in theaters internationally. Here in the United States, we can at least blame the pandemic for the failures of Tenet in theaters, but over in China — where a movie called Eight Hundred has earned $400 million since August 21st — Mulan has only managed to earn $36 million after two weeks. Meanwhile, estimates for how much Mulan has earned on VOD here in the states vary from $30 million to $260 million, although even the lowest number has surpassed Tenet in the states, which has earned $36 million after adding $4.7 million this weekend. Tenet, however, has done fairly well overseas, where it has surpassed $200 million after a solid debut in Japan.

Beyond that, there’s not much to talk about. Every other movie that mounted an effort in theaters struggled mightily: The Secrets We Keep, $90,000; The Nest, $62,000; and the widest new release of the weekend, Infidel, only earned $1.5 million in over 1700 theaters, which is less than the $1.6 million New Mutants earned in its fourth weekend, bringing its total to $17.7 million.

Indeed, it’s clear that most moviegoers stayed home to watch the Emmy Awards, to enjoy the NFL, and to catch up on Netflix. Speaking of the streamer, their big new release of the weekend was The Devil All the Time, starring Tom Holland and Robert Pattinson. Despite all that star power, the film didn’t do as well as an obscure 2016 English/French film called The Take.

The Take — known as Bastille Day internationally — stars Idris Elba and Game of Thrones‘ Richard Madden. The film actually did decent at the box office internationally, earning $14 million (on a $4 million budget), but almost no one saw it stateside, where it earned only $50,000 in 100 theaters. It didn’t earn much by way of critical raves, either, scoring 48 percent on the Tomatometer, as well as a dismal 41 percent from audiences.

And yet, it’s the top film on Netflix this weekend. Superficially, it’s easy to understand why: it’s a movie from Idris Elba and Richard Madden newly released to Netflix, and I’m sure that there was a heavy sampling of the movie. However, one thing we do know about Netflix’s metrics is that they count it as a view anytime someone watches more than two minutes of a movie. There were probably a lot of people who watched The Take without finishing it, if comments on Twitter are any indication.

And why is that? Because the film is half in English, and half in French, there weren’t English subtitles for all of the French-speaking parts. I checked, and can confirm these accounts:

So, let that be a warning to any of you who cannot speak French but love Idris and Richard Madden enough to give The Take a sampling. If you don’t mind not understanding half the movie, and are just tuning into to watch Idris in action, be prepared to take it in while not understanding what is happening.

Through Kanye West’s recent issues with his recording contracts, the rapper has realized that not only does he want to get himself into a more desirable situation, but that he wants to do the same for other artists. In recent days, Kanye has taken to Twitter to share his vision for a newly structured music industry, in which artists are treated more fairly. Over the weekend, he crystallized those thoughts into an outline of proposed “New Recording And Publishing Deal Guidelines.”

The overall theme of Kanye’s outline is that artists should have more power and ownership over their music. His outline insists that artists own copyright of their recordings, that artists make more money off their work than their labels do, that contracts be easier to understand, and that artists have a more transparent way to see how much they are earning from their music.

After making his points, Kanye concluded, “This is a call for all artist to unify … I will get my masters , I got the most powerful lawyer in music and I can afford them but every artist must be freed and treated fairly.”

Find Kanye’s full outline below.

“1. The artist owns the copyright in the recordings and songs and leases them to the record label / publisher for a limited term. 1 year deals

2. The record label / publisher is a service provider that receives a share of the income for a limited term. The split can be 80/20 in the artists favor.

3. DEPENDANTS

Artists must be dependent on no one but themselves to manage their catalog. You should need NO ONE else to understand the business you’re in.

4. LAWYERS

the first thing that changes about Record Deals is actually lawyers.

We need Plain English contracts. A Lawyers role is to IMPROVE deals…. not charge for contracts we cannot understand or track. Re-write deals to be understandable from FIRST READ.

5. EQUITY & BLANKET LICENSES ARE THE MAJORITY OF FUTURE NEW INCOME.

If you’re with a major you have invested your ‘songs’ as shares in their power to get equity and deals. Almost ALL new deals now are based on ALL songs going to a store or app. The equity is the Artists.

NO MORE blanket licenses. It should be clear from day one… what shares you get NOW and when you leave. If your song helps a deal over the line you invested in that store / app same as they did.

UMG now has a 2.2 billion share holding stake in Spotify. This is the artists. The system as to how we get share balances on our royalty statement needs to be created and a system on when Artists can cash in.

5. ADVANCES ARE JUST LOANS!!

On Artists re-signing these stop. Advances are Loans with 75% interest rates (or worse). NO other business in the world takes a look at the business, buys shares, starts to profit when it profits. Record Companies have to buy into you, not loan you.

6. ROYALTIES

Again back to dependents. You need a business manager to read how you did? So you pay to see your money!!! NO MORE.

Royalty portals need to show (and do not now)

Every song you delivered

Every store you are in

How many streams per song

Income per song

It sounds basic and logical but t does NOT exist. They focus on top earners and ZERO look at the 440 stores…. Only the top few. Artists are global. That’s why their contract territory says GLOBAL

Royalty department in EVERY label. No more separating finance teams from the music.

7. PORTALS

Are not just for royalties. They are for your entire business. Every audio file, every asset, every deal stored WITH the money. Money and Music must stay together. When your term ends, download it all. Leave.”

It was an Emmys to remember, not only for the guy standing outside Ramy Youssef’s door in a hazmat suit but also for Zendaya and the Schitt’s Creek cast, both of whom made history on Sunday. First, Zendaya: the 24-year-old Euphoria star became the youngest person ever to win the Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Drama Series, beating the previous record-holder, Killing Eve‘s Jodie Comer, by two years.

“I know that this feels like a really weird time to be celebrating, but I just want to say that there is hope in the young people out there,” Zendaya said during her acceptance speech. “I know that our TV show doesn’t always feel like a great example of that, but there is hope in the young people, and I just want to say to all my peers out there doing the work in the streets: I see you, I admire you, I thank you.” I believe HBO put it best:

The Schitt’s Creek also accomplished something that’s never been done before.

Pop TV’s Schitt’s Creek, with its sweep of seven Emmys on Sunday night on the heels of two at the Creative Arts Emmys last week, has established a new record for most wins in a single season for a comedy series. The show’s nine total wins for its sixth and final season breaks the record of eight that Amazon’s The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel in 2018 and matched in 2019.

Schitt’s is also the first comedy to ever sweep the major acting categories: Best Actor (Eugene Levy), Best Actress (Catherine O’Hara), Best Supporting Actor (Daniel Levy), and Best Supporting Actress (Annie Murphy). “This has been the greatest experience of my life,” the younger Levy said. “This is completely overwhelming.”

If Catherine O’Hara is happy, then I’m happy, too.

(Via the Hollywood Reporter)

Last week, Kanye West took on the music industry in an eventful fashion. He may not be an ideal messenger, but he had merit when he called out Universal, and the rest of the industry, for “unfair” business practices. It is only fair for major labels to be held accountable by powerful acts that have the means to challenge them in the court of law and public opinion. But more aspiring artists should realize that major labels aren’t the only road.

Independence is a challenging, yet rewarding path that gives artists ownership of their work and the chance to have full control over their operation, from the music to the marketing. One way that an indie act can set themselves apart from the vast pack of talent (and put good money in their pocket) is by garnering headlines with a unique music release. From the late Nipsey Hussle’s famous Crenshaw release to Roc Marciano’s self-releasing to the Wu’s legal entanglement with Martin Shkreli, there are plenty of innovative ideas for independent artists to examine and incorporate into future releases.

These projects might not show up on SoundScan, but don’t let that confuse you. Many of these artists ended up making good money and garnering invaluable notoriety with their releases. We’ve put together multiple independent music roundups and a Bandcamp Friday showcase. Here’s another resource. This is by no means a comprehensive list, so if you feel like we missed someone, feel free to comment below or let us know on social media:

De La Soul / Geto Boys

Legacy acts will always have hoards of (established, adult) fans ready to support them. In 2015, Geto Boys launched a Kickstarter campaign for their Habeas Corpus album, which raised $100K. The next year, De La Soul put together their own Kickstarter campaign for the album that became And The Anonymous Nobody. They also asked for $100K but raised over $600K on the platform. Artists boasting a hefty fanbase should tap into it if they need assistance with the production and marketing of an album. If nothing else, acts know that their supporters are virtually guaranteed to give them a listen. In the age of crowdfunding, “If you want new music, help us fund it” is a pretty simple ask.

Latashá

The LA-based Latashá is another artist exploring crowdfunding for her music, but she’s offering more than a project. Her current LyteWrk crowdfunding initiative is also seeking funding for a media outlet focused on women in rap and empowerment workshops pertaining to songs on her upcoming album. LyteWrk a genius way for an artist to use a project as a springboard for an entire movement.

Mach Hommy

There are few artists doing physicals better than enigmatic New Jersey rapper Mach Hommy. He piggybacked off of the Nipsey Hussle model with several releases, including his latest Mach’s Hard Lemonade album. The project is available on Tidal, but he also created a website where fans could purchase a limited supply of physicals at above-average prices: $77.77 for a cassette, $99.99 for a Digipak CD, $111.11 for a Jewel case CD, $222.22 for a standard vinyl, and $444.44 for a deluxe vinyl that comes with a wooden case as well as a Mach’s Hard Lemonade slipmat, stress ball, and air freshener.

For the past several years, artists have bundled low quality, mass-produced merch to their music in order to bolster their Billboard figures, But in Mach’s case, he added a limited supply of functional, well-done merch to his physicals in order to bolster the value of what his fans are receiving. The stress ball alone is worth the purchase these days.

Nostrum Grocers

When you’re independent, you can do what you want. That’s the logic R.A.P. Ferreira and Elucid put into their Nostrum Grocers collaboration project, which was released on cassette and sold for $1,000 on Feirreria’s Ruby Yacht website as “a thousand dollar tape cos i say so.” When you’re your own boss, and have fans who long to see their favorites be able to live off of their art, this is the kind of thing you can do.

Nipsey Hussle

Even in their heyday, CDs generally went for no more than $20. The late Nipsey Hussle sold his for $100 — twice. Observers scratched their head in 2013 when Nip announced that he was only pressing up 1,000 copies of his Crenshaw album, and they’d be going for $100 a pop. $100,000 later, Nip was laughing to the bank. The project sold out in 24 hours (with Jay-Z buying 100 copies), setting a standard that the people who love you will value your work as much as you do. The rollout was so successful that he did it again in 2014 for Mailbox Money.

Both mixtapes were marketed through his #Proud2Pay movement, stoking a sense of community (that received a free concert) and allowing buyers to feel like their purchase wasn’t just a transaction, but a statement on supporting independent artists. The most important takeaway from Nipsey’s releases is that you don’t need a million fans to make $100,000, just 1,000 that believe in you.

Roc Marciano

Roc Marciano is a godfather of today’s gritty, mostly-independent scene of spitters. He set a standard not just with avant-garde, drumless production, but by circumventing DSPs with his projects and getting back maximum value. Telling DJ Booth “if you’re not supporting me, then I can’t give you the art,” he sidestepped streaming providers “until (and if)” he felt otherwise and released 2015’s Rosebudd’s Revenge 2: The Bitter Dose directly on his website for $30. He told DJ Booth that the album was “printing money,” and tweeted that in 2018 that “this blueprint changed the game, If u build it they will come.” That lesson is as straightforward as it gets.

Run The Jewels

Most of the artists on this list sought to make a maximum profit off of their music releases. But in Run The Jewels’ case, they offer a free download of their Run The Jewels project, then run it up through merch. They’re among the best at using their music to lure supporters, then monetizing through vinyl, CDs, high-quality merch, and a (usually) busy tour schedule. It takes a particularly rabid fanbase (and creative merch) to pull off this model, but those looking to do the same should study them.

Wu-Tang Clan

This release is from the brilliant idea, shoddy execution files. In 2014, RZA sought to create the most exclusive music release of all time, pressing a single double-disc and putting it on auction in 2015. The Once Upon A Time In Shaolin album could be released for free and played during listening parties, but it couldn’t be commercially exploited until 2103. It was a bold idea that ended up not working out mostly because of its purchaser — reviled “pharma-Bro” Martin Shkreli.

RZA says Shkreli made his purchase before his controversial price hike of the Daraprim drug. Out of guilt, they ended up donating most of $2 million to charity. Shkreli immediately began leveraging the album to troll fans, streaming snippets online, and telling Vice he’d consider “installing it in some remote place so that people have to make a spiritual quest to listen.” Shkreli tried to break the deal by selling the project on eBay, but he was arrested for fraud before the transaction was completed. The Justice Department seized many of Shkreli’s assets, including the album.

This is a cool idea for a prolific artist to emulate, though not in the way RZA did. The most important thing is screening prospective buyers, and possibly lifting exclusivity after a reasonable timeframe. Fans were upset about the idea because Wu projects are rare these days. But an artist who’s still releasing music while an exclusive, myth-making project is also out can have their cake and eat it, too. It’s hard to get people to value digital media in the same manner that older generations valued a CD (who remembers only having enough to buy one CD but wanting multiple?). But having a project that most fans could only hear about for a period of time would leave them eager to savor when it’s released to the public.

Yasiin Bey

Late last year, Yaasiin Bey’s Negus album was played as part of a listening installation at the Brooklyn Museum. For ten weeks, fans could go to the museum, pay $25, and hear the first new music from the man also known as Mos Def since 2009. The project, according to NPR, was meant to “acknowledge the importance of hip-hop as a fundamental American art form” and also contained visual art from Ala Ebtekar, Julie Mehretu, and José Parlá. As of now, the album won’t be released in any other format, which riled fans of his in a manner similar to the Wu release.

Negus, like Once Upon A Time In Shaolin, is an innovative idea better exploited by an artist who already has new music out. An exclusive release is cool, but it will surely incur backlash from fans who aren’t able to access it.

Kal Penn has done his time in both Hollywood (House and the Harold and Kumar trilogy) and Washington, D.C. (as part of the Obama administration), which has led to plenty of jokes about him moving from White Castle to the White House, and he’s about to combine his talents for the greater good. On National Voter Registration Day, Freeform will launch Kal Penn Approves This Message, a six-part topical series that’s geared toward younger voters (the Gen Z and Millennial crowds) and the issues that matter most to them. Each episode will drop on a Tuesday and will be available the following day on Hulu in all of its unscripted, spirited, and non-partisan glory.

Penn plans to explore wide-ranging topics, from voter empowerment to healthcare, judges, education, and the environment. He’ll do so through comedic field-pieces and interviews, and he was cool enough to speak with us about how much he admires the passion of young voters and how they give him hope for the future. I also couldn’t resist challenging him to beat Tom Cruise into space after I learned about his suggestion for a fourth Harold and Kumar installment, and Penn fielded that issue with grace.

Obviously, we’ve got pandemic complications with this year’s election. Do you think that will hinder the vote or motivate people?

Well, one of the things that I’ve noticed is that I can’t really remember a time when we had this much awareness about the process of voting. The pandemic has resulted in a lot of discussion — about mail and early voting that exists in so many places, absentee ballots, and obviously voting the day-of. We can get younger people to be poll workers, since older people traditionally do it, and they may be less likely to do it because of their heightened risk of COVID. So if there was ever a silver lining, of our awareness on the different ways to vote and how, it’s now. That’s my take on our crazy world.

As a general rule during a regular year, though, why do you feel that so few people vote in the U.S.?

Well, that’s something that we’re hoping to tackle with our show. I don’t know, it is certainly something. I forget the stat, we have it in one of our documents, in an earlier episode. The U.S. is 120 out of all the countries? It’s something very surprising. I will say that one of the things that we found very promising is the uptick in the number of young voters. 2018 had some of the biggest youth-vote numbers in decades.

Yeah, they are really not sitting back and simply letting things happen.

And the reason that I think that’s so interesting is because all the data says that if you voted once, you’re more likely to vote again in the future. But it’s also that the voting block, the youth-vote as a block, is not the same humans, year-to-year. So, if you’re looking at the African-American vote, the Italian-American vote, South-Asian vote and all that, you look at that from a four-year period to a four-year period. And with the exception of expanding to new votes within that demographic, those are the same humans when you see when they’re voting or not. The thing with young voters is that they’re not young forever. You age into and out of the demographic very quickly, so you’re comparing totally different sets of people. So, it’s a more open question than otherwise, and one that, hopefully, with all the awareness of the election this time, I hope people turn out.

I’m close to a few college students, who are very concerned with how things are going. And while every generation tends to think that they’ve got the biggest mess to clean up, it’s fair to say that Gen Z can claim that title. Do you have any advice for them on how to stay positive?

Well, I think that it seems like they’re doing a great job without our advice to begin with.

[Laughs] Fair enough.

They’re being so involved and so engaged and being so innovative in so many of the things that they are doing and saying. And they’re forcing everyone to take notice. If there’s anything, I would just say that one of the things I understand their frustration on is the slow speed at which things happen. We now live in a world where you can get a news story 30 seconds after it happens, and there are literally apps that will tell you what happened around the corner, or Twitter, which is somewhat of an echo chamber. That’s not how our democracy works because we have three branches of government that are designed to move very slowly on purpose, and that can be incredibly frustrating. The positive side to that, obviously, is that we’re not a dictatorship, so we have three branches of government that move very slowly. But that’s something I’ve talked about with younger folks who are concerned, not just with the slow pace of things like that but with the lack of awareness around technology, like with the Zuckerberg hearings in Congress. It’s embarrassing how many people just don’t know how the internet works and what company runs what. So, I think that’s something that they can be very helpful with because they’re the ones who are going to be entering public policy and the workforce and running for office themselves, and that gives me a lot of hope.

You’re going to be addressing education in one episode. Do you plan to talk about student debt? That’s on just about every age group’s mind.

We don’t discuss student debt that explicitly, and I’ll tell you why. When we were putting that episode together, we looked at how a lot of shows have already done really fantastic episodes on student debt. And we couldn’t really find anybody who had done an episode on college and trade school in a specific context. And that context was, well, it’s always bothered me that there’s a fabricated beef between college and trade school advocates. It’s like, “Oh, you only get to go to university if you’re an elitist. And this person only went to trade school because they couldn’t go to college.” Could we just stop with all that, please? Who does that argument serve, this fabricated argument?

It’s super strange that people dwell on this.

Like this reminds me of Cardi B versus Nicki Minaj. Is this even a beef? Can’t I like both of them? Why are you saying that I’m not allowed to like both of them. So that got us thinking about “what is the actual issue here?” One is automation, and whether when you go to trade school or college, the risk of jobs and careers being automated is serious. Other countries like China and Brazil are investigating these things and investing in potential solutions. Are we? And if we’re not, shouldn’t we be focusing on that instead of creating this fake beef between each other about who went to college and who went to trade school, and what does that mean? So our episode looks at that and how it impacts the global economy and especially in our own economy when people who are 18 turn 40, and when they have kids, what happens to their jobs? That’s how we look at education, and it’s a pretty good example of our non-partisan take on these types of issues.

Do you still have hopes for a 4th Harold and Kumar movie in your back pocket?

Helllll yes!

Where would you like to see the guys go next?

Oh man, look, all my tattoos are astronomy-related, so I kinda like the idea of going to the space station.

You should try to beat Tom Cruise and Vin Diesel to space. I want to see it happen.

Oh no, Tom Cruise will beat us! It’s a little tricky with scheduling because they guys who created the franchise are created the Cobra Kai show, and John Cho is in New Zealand to do a movie, and I’m about to start Clarice, the Silence Of The Lambs remake, so I am hoping soon. We keep constantly talking about it, but we just have to find the right time.

Freeform’s ‘Kal Penn Approves This Message’ will premiere on Tuesday, September 22, at 10:30pm EST.