Is the absence of “community” a major problem in America today? Have college sports programs perverted the purpose of higher education? Is this truly the end of Phew’s aspirations for a career as a comedian? Listen in to find out!

Show Notes

Cancel Culture Run Amok

• Shane Gillis fired from SNL before he ever appeared on a single episode
• Reporter went back through Gillis’ entire social media history and found one instance in which he used a racial slur
• Phew: I’m so cancelled just because I am on this show
• Unc: I had one goal when we started this podcast back in 2016: to eliminate any possibility of Phew ever having a career in professional stand up comedy

Slow Suicide of the Old Gray Lady

• Meanwhile, the New York Times can hire someone who has openly Tweeted things like “White people should all die,” and there’s no problem with that
• We (liberals) can’t get our house in order
• Even liberal media sources are starting to state publicly that the bias has gone too far

New York Times Daily Podcast

• Ridiculous story on daily podcast
• Who is this story supposed to be for?
• Checking boxes of things to trigger liberals

Triggering for the Sake of Triggering

• How many angering, triggering things can they include in one paragraph?
• There are obvious biases in their reporting
• Liberal elites patting themselves in their ivory tower about how morally superior their position is

Unc: Phew is so thoughtful

• Unc: Phew is a very thoughtful person
• Only one who sent Unc flowers in the hospital after his motorcycle accident
• Crazy things seem normal because a narrative gets put forth, and so many people just go along with it

Happening in NYC

• What’s happening in NYC right now in terms of reopening
• Really challenging rent situation in NYC right now
• Guest on Sam Harris’ Making Sense podcast, Daniel Markovits, a law professor at Yale
• There should be a one-time wealth tax in America, right now

Absence of Community

• “We are all in this together”
• A sense of community that is missing or absent from right now
• Bill Beteet’s noted love for America
• We take the greatness of America for granted

On what should public policy be based?

• We should not be reshaping policy based on extraordinary events that may never happen again in our lifetimes
• Which is more extraordinary: the period of unprecedented economic expansion in America from 1945 to 2019, or that things will tend toward crisis?
• Stress-testing idealogical positions
• Not seeing the value in wanting to participate in that system of “college – debt – living with debt”
• Either you have capitalism, or you don’t

The crazy cost of higher education

• Colleges competing for students
• College debt is the most collectible debt there is
• Colleges can just keep spending, as long as students are willing to take on essentially any amount of debt to participate in the higher education process
• At University of Michigan, some of the dorms are like 5 star hotels
• Similar at University of Colorado

What is the purpose of higher education?

• The profit motive warps everything
• The amount of money paid to university officials
• Capitalism is so clearly the best option
• Grossly overpaid: professional athletes

Highest-paid public official? Head football coach

• Typically, the highest paid public official in a given state is the head coach of the most successful college football program in that state
• What do you do as a college football coach?
• You take a bunch of para-adolescents and teach them how to run into each other well

Why do universities exist?

• What is the purpose of a university?
• Maximizing income for the people at the top echelon of the school?
• Application of the Napoleonic code

How did we get here?

• Football is the cash cow
• How we got here
• Football just grew organically to become the monster that it is today
• Is a successful program a “cancerous growth”?

The brand value of a college

• Nothing but respect for University of Michigan as an institution
• What is the value of the brand that has been created around the University of Michigan
• The divisiveness that exists today
• How it keeps progress from happening

Guns at protests? Bad optics

• Carrying guns at protests
• There is no reason to do that
• What’s missing in all of this: the sense of community
• How the NRA has changed in recent years
• An ideological split within the IRA at some point, and the more aggressive faction won

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