155 Comments

“Kerfluffle” is endearing. The real problem is “cowwoborate.”

Expand full comment
founding

Yes. I'm happy he's here for some of these, but I should point out id never miss AND I can pronounce corroborate.

Expand full comment
founding

But do you have a really expensive telescope you can yammer on about, Spencer?

Expand full comment
founding

I can yammer on about sports, folk music, and travel.

Expand full comment

I was going to ask if there was any audio evidence to cowwoborate the kerfluffle issue

Expand full comment

Matt was so disconcerted that he said “EIGHT FLUCKING YEARS!”

Expand full comment
founding

...eight kerflucking years! Would've been a 10 had he sung it.

Expand full comment
founding

Yes! I came on these comments just to point this out. It drives me nuts when Kmele says it.

Expand full comment

THAT'S EXACTLY WHAT I SAID!!!

Expand full comment
founding
May 24Liked by Matt Welch

Happiness is waking up from a colonoscopy to a new TFC episode.

Expand full comment

I would think happiness would be not waking up during the colonoscopy.

Expand full comment

Don't kink shame

Expand full comment

They woke me up during, so I could look at the monitor.

That was weird.

On the plus side, "looks good, see you in 10 years" 👍

Expand full comment

I've never had one although I am at the age where I am probably overdue for one.

Expand full comment
founding

Do it asap. I regret every day not getting one done in 2018.

Expand full comment

Agreed, schedule it without delay. It's not a big deal but, should they find something, early detection is.

Expand full comment

I should. I have a history of GI problems. I'll ask my doctor.

Expand full comment

It's really not that bad; everyone complains about the prep, but, as a somewhat adventurous eater, I've done far worse to myself.

The worst part for me was getting up at 3:30 AM to do the second half of the prep for my 8 AM appointment.

Expand full comment
founding

Good catch, anesthesia, s/b "after a". If that is a kink, it should be shamed outside Germany.

Expand full comment
founding

Let's see those results first.

Expand full comment

In New Hampshire we fly that flag every year to celebrate the Pine Tree Riot. This whole episode has been so depressing, and such a reminder of how provincial and ignorant Americans can be about their own history.

http://www.wearehistoricalsociety.org/pineriot.php

Expand full comment

I’m going to choose not to read this article and learn from history so that I can continue to believe that New Hampshire once had pine trees uproot themselves to start a horrific riot.

Expand full comment

As dramatized by Peter Jackson in the scene "The Last March of the Ents"

Expand full comment

You assume that’s not what really happened.

Expand full comment
May 24Liked by Matt Welch

There are two magazines that I still subscribe to the print edition for. The first is Reason (in large part because Moynihan's ex does great graphic design).

And the other is Garden and Gun. It's a fun, charming, refreshing look at Southern life and culture. Glad it got a shoutout on the pod!

Expand full comment

Same. I love Garden and Gun. AND I get Reason, though I need to up my game to large print bcs I hate reading glasses.

Expand full comment

"Garden and Gun saw an unexplained uptick in subscriptions at the end of May"

Expand full comment

I was about to post Garden and Gun is still a thing

Expand full comment
May 24Liked by Matt Welch

I have good news for you, Matt - Garden & Gun is still in circulation. My mom checks it out of the library sometimes. (She is more on the garden side of things than the gun.)

Expand full comment

My mother, God rest her soul, subscribed to that magazine and loved it. She was a classy lady from Birmingham, Alabama, where I was born and raised until age 14, and she would get particularly excited when our hometown-hero chef, Frank Stitt, was featured in an article. Used to pick up her old copies and leaf through them sometimes; it was (and presumably still is) a nice magazine !

Expand full comment

I’ll forgive Matt for the Step on Snek snafu, but I cannot in good conscience let Matt say that Luka is a Croatian. The good people of Slovenia fought hard for the distinction so that Luka could be a god child of international basketball and more importantly that Melania could be our nations hot stepmother.

Expand full comment

And the child of a Slovenian mother and ethnically Serbian Kosovar father

Expand full comment

Thank you Matt. I am always happy when anybody brings up Emmanuel Cafferty. Not only was it the bellwether for the absurdity of peak-wokeness, but the bellwether for how MSM was going to handle these things. Years later we are still lionizing the Birdman of Central Park, but the Cafferty story has been completely buried and forgotten because it doesn't serve their narrative, and there is motive to revive this Kafka-esque story.

Expand full comment

The difference between Under Pressure and Ice Ice Baby:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TLo4Z_LWu4

Expand full comment

See totally different!

Expand full comment
May 24Liked by Matt Welch

Caitlin Clark is generally likeable and cute. But she dribbles like a toddler who has had tequila slipped into their juice box.

Expand full comment
founding

We Iowa girls have many talents.

Expand full comment

Her dribbling will prolly improve in the pros?

Expand full comment

Well, it has to, otherwise her career will be quite ignominious. Through her first four games, she had amassed the second most number of turnovers to start a career in the history of the WNBA.

Expand full comment

Her college career ended literally last month, they had a grand total of like 2 or 3 preseason games, 7 games in 12 days to start the regular season, and she is tasked with being the main ballhandler on a very bad team (hence the #1 draft pick). All more convincing factors than bad dribbling for her high turnover rate. She'll be fine.

Expand full comment
May 24Liked by Matt Welch

Holy cow. Tears. I’m less than 20 minutes in and already laughing SO HARD. 😂

Expand full comment
founding

INDIANA. INDIANA Fever. (Let’s all acknowledge that flyover state privilege is definitely not a thing.)

Expand full comment

Not only is Indiana flyover country, Women's Basketball is the sports equivalent of a flyover state which is unfortunately reinforced buy the boys complete lack of knowledge about Caitlin Clark and Indiana and Basketball. I mean come on Basketball and Indiana, even if it's women's basketball you'd think the association would somehow click.

Expand full comment

That’s an insult to flyover states. If living conditions get bad enough on the coasts, people may move to Idaho or Tennessee and may find they like it, but men’s basketball will never be bad enough that the fans move to the WNBA.

Expand full comment

I once attended a Maryland versus Purdue basketball game where the Maryland fans chanted "go back to flyover country"

Expand full comment
founding

I went to Indiana University for a couple years. When I moved back to the East Coast and mentioned it, people would ask, “Oh, in Pennsylvania?” (There is actually an IU in PA) 🙄

Expand full comment
founding

You should have said, “No, the one with five national championship banners”

Expand full comment
founding

I’m not allowed to say that because my brothers went to Purdue.

Expand full comment

There’s also a California University of Pennsylvania. It’s located in California, Pennsylvania which is possibly the most disappointing city name in this hemisphere.

Expand full comment
founding

Fascist, colonist Pennsylvanians, taking over names like that.

Expand full comment
founding

Miami (of Ohio) University just found its soul sister. You’ll never be alone, California University of Pennsylvania! 😍

Expand full comment
founding

I literally know that because of the (best) Key and Peele skit on East/West College Bowl. Hingle McKringleberry was my Starbucks name for quite some time.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gODZzSOelss

Expand full comment

That's insane! Was this pretty recent? I've been to a few UMD events, and there are usually pretty big contingents of opponent fans, not surprising considering how many transplants are in the D.C. region.

Expand full comment

Send Matt a Stalin shirt.

Expand full comment

"by the transitive pattern of im fucking restarted" is one I will be using in the future

Expand full comment

Is Moynihan's daughter gonna compete in the Olympics?

Expand full comment

I, too, am hoping she does!

Expand full comment

Too young for this go-round, I think?

Expand full comment

As the actual doctor here, I should point out that shelf exams don’t really count (some schools make them count, but UCLA clearly does not). What counts are board exams. The first-time pass rate for a good U.S. med school for these exams is >95%. Failure on any step of the USMLE is a career killer that will cause many residency programs to not even consider a candidate and will completely close off their access to many specialties, regardless of race or anything else (for now).

So one of two things must be true: either the UCLA students failed their shelf exams but picked it up for the board exams, or they are just about to go off a cliff on outcomes that actually matter. The USMLE is not curved, so if the UCLA students are really that bad, they should be getting crushed on it. This would be a disaster for the school, because pass rates and residency matching rates are outcomes that show where their graduates’ careers are actually going.

Expand full comment

I went to med school in the late 60's. We took the National Boards 3 times, after sophomore year, in senior year and in internship. You had to pass part 1 to go to your junior year and part 2 to graduate. While I was in school there was a big push to increase minority admissions. I went to Jefferson (in Philadelphia). Good school but not top tier. The top tier schools got the best qualified students, and they were fine. Jefferson brought up a bunch of students from a variety of small southern schools. Some of the students did fine, but several really struggled. They just didn't have the undergraduate prep for this kind of curriculum. They were tutored extensively but still had trouble with the national boards. The school provided extra spaces for the students, expanding the student body.

There was at that time a lot of prejudice among the faculty primarily towards female students, as opposed to racial prejudice. Many of them felt that women didn't belong in med school. My cousin's wife had applied to Penn Med in the late 50's and was told (even though she was highly qualified) to apply to Women's Medical School in Philly since there was no place for her at Penn. I'm sure that her being Jewish didn't help, but the primary factor was her gender.

Expand full comment

My husband and I graduated from Jefferson in 1989. Jefferson first began admitting women in 1961. There were plenty of women in our graduating class, but very few minorities. The push for minorities must have reached a lull in those years, but I imagine it's back in full force now.

Expand full comment

The head of CT surgery when I was there must have retired by then. He was absolutely vile towards women when I rotated through his service.

Expand full comment

I did my surgery rotation at an affiliate community hospital, so maybe I was lucky? The only person who viciously mistreated me (from day one!) was a female emergency physician at a different hospital in South Philly. I'm terrible with names, but I'll never forget hers. I went into Emergency Medicine anyway, for what it's worth.

Expand full comment
founding

I watched that interview with Vanilla Ice when it aired...he added a beat to it - I was in maybe 8th grade and that bullshit was the talk in the halls. Every 13 year old felt strongly that he was full of shit and Bowie was robbed. We felt it so strongly that four years later we selected a line from a Bowie song for our senior quote.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a-1_9-z9rbY

My question is, if Kmele were to steal Vanilla's song, would he say "Stop, cowwaborate and listen"?

Expand full comment

Vanilla Ice learned it by watching Young MC. Witness from 1:45 to 2:00 of the otherwise unremarkable "Found A Child" by Ballin' Jack below and wonder why we were all supposed to believe that Flea was playing that in the video.

https://youtu.be/me1JFWaB740

Expand full comment
founding

Deep dive into theft. God dammit. And how lame to be known only for having been burgled. (Sidenote: I love the word burgle and all its derivatives. So happy to be able to use it here.)

Expand full comment

Sorry but this this immediately came to mind when you said burgle.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByXQx_4TOKs

Again sorry ;)

Expand full comment
founding

First thing I watched when I woke up this morning. More evidence that burgle is one of the best words ever.

Also, never appologize for Beavis & Butthead.

Expand full comment

In the comment sections of one of the clips of that interview on youtube someone suggested that at one point in Under Pressure they add an extra beat as well, and that is the part that Vanilla Ice sampled. I have to say I did listen to the whole of Under Pressure to check this and couldn't hear it but, it sounds plausible.

Expand full comment