Transcript
Zain
0:01
This is a Strategist episode 923. My name is Zain Velji with me as always, Corey Hogan, Stephen Carter. Guys, what
Corey
0:08
what is going on?
Corey
0:10
Well, nothing but fastballs tonight, Zain. No bricks. We're going to go all 100 yards. It is the headline show.
Zain
0:18
Oh, yeah. I thought that was a quote from Dave. I was like, yeah, like pub. Yeah, it did sound
Zain
0:22
Dave would say that.
Zain
0:24
Dave did say that. Dave did say that. We should let people know we're working on Dave, too. In fact, we're the executive producers of Dave2. Yeah, 2Dave is what I've been trying to call it, but it's been called Dave2. Of course, our funding producers, really one of the more conventional naming structure. You know how it is. Of course, our funding producers, WestJet. Now, Corey, we
Zain
0:49
have got some new cover art for the podcast. Do you want to talk to the listeners about this? No.
Zain
0:56
Okay, Carter. Carter. Of course, as Corey has mentioned, every Ides of March in the year, following a leap year, we update our cover art. We've done that this year. Any comments from you?
Carter
1:07
I, as always, was big in the process. I had a lot to say. I had a lot of input. And I'm really grateful to you and Corey for hearing me, listening to me, and making the changes that I asked for. So thank you.
Zain
1:21
It's getting mixed reviews, which is perfect. That's exactly what we like. We don't we don't and in fact the more people who don't like it the more i like it which is uh which is what i have to say well
Corey
1:34
well it was your idea yeah
Corey
1:36
yeah yes it's true no
Corey
1:37
feel like you might not be the
Zain
1:40
it's my idea not my execution let's just say that let's
Zain
1:43
let's be totally clear it was not my idea to have multiple white heads playing chess although
Zain
1:49
although we've not gone with that version in the poll you know i i feel like there's
Corey
1:53
there's very little that carter and i can do about our hand colors at this point
Zain
1:58
Other than apologize, which I hope you do one day. Yeah, I am sorry.
Zain
2:03
Thank you, Carter. Carter, we should mention your mic quality. Much better. We've actually not started the fundraising campaign, but somehow you figured this out.
Carter
2:13
It's not the microphone. It's the static electricity. So I am currently grounded in my bedroom instead of downstairs in the basement where the static electricity seems to be off the charts. So I'm here. Everything is good. I can, it's very uncomfortable for me, but I suspect that's just going to make the listeners happier.
Corey
2:33
Did you do the wiring in your house just out of curiosity? Are we sure it's static electricity that you're getting?
Carter
2:40
You know what? You're making a good point. I'm going to check that out because that, it feels like static electricity, but you're very right. It could be something that I've done.
Zain
2:49
Okay. Thank you, Carter. That was better than talking about outside. side so thank you for that improvement static electricity home wiring always bringing the heat always bringing the good band up front cory
Zain
3:03
cory cory you go ahead carter please better
Carter
3:05
better than basketball right
Zain
3:06
right cory we've got something important to talk about space jam 2 and pepe lepew no longer being part of space jam 2 a big deal pepe
Corey
3:14
pepe lepew was canceled everybody and he was kind of overdue i mean that was the kind of thing that it's not like i can say in the 80s watching him i was particularly comfortable with his behavior always seemed a little offside um i don't know who mourns the the the
Corey
3:29
the social demise of peppy lepew i i wouldn't even you know mourn the demise of the character itself if they showed him murdered on screen but uh yeah apparently the internet the internet
Corey
3:40
internet is almost as keyed up about this as they are about the fact that lola bunnings no longer wearing a d cup so yeah
Carter
3:47
yeah oh that is upsetting for everybody i mean mostly the peppy the pew thing uh i'm not sure i understood the the lola bunny thing but um no this is uh peppy the pew um yeah i was watching him in the 70s it was still uncomfortable not as uncomfortable as it should have been because it was the 70s so you
Carter
4:06
you know we had a little bit of growing to do well
Zain
4:08
well that's good i
Zain
4:10
i just want to say that uh peppy the pew the new star of dave too i'm really really Really excited to bring Pepe Lefeu back as co-star of Dave 2. Very, very exciting. Let's move it on to the headlines. Okay, guys, it is a headline show. Corey has mentioned it up front. We do this every year, the annual headline show. Here's what happens. Instead of just the headlines being the first segment that tee us off, the entire show is headlines. I'm going to go through a bunch of headlines, some serious, some not so serious. In fact, to keep it interesting, I've only gotten one written here. And then as you guys speak, I'm going to look for the others. That's the level of professionalism we're bringing to the headline show. This
Zain
4:52
This is going to be a great show.
Carter
4:53
I think it's going to be a complete train wreck. Corey, what we need to do is we need to answer as quickly as possible and just make him just like absolutely sweat.
Zain
5:05
reading the first thing on National Views Watch if that's the case. And it's
Carter
5:09
it's going to be
Zain
5:11
vaccines, Corey. So there you
Carter
5:14
Corey's got an incentive to talk longer, like
Zain
5:16
like he needed it. Our
Zain
5:17
Our first headline comes to us from Reuters. Joe Biden's name will not appear on the memo line on stimulus checks, says the White House. Stephen
Zain
5:27
what do you think?
Carter
5:29
I mean, is this just a return to normalcy? Wasn't it only one president who actually had his name put onto the checks? And this is now just us returning to normalcy. So I'm pleased that Joe Biden is doing as well as Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, which isn't a particularly high bar to reach for. But that's where we are.
Zain
5:52
Oh, wonderful. Off to a good start. Corey, fill more time.
Corey
5:57
Yeah, I think it makes sense. Makes
Corey
5:59
Makes perfect sense. He's not a billionaire. He can't afford to write those checks. I assume maybe
Corey
6:04
Soros' name is on the line now.
Corey
6:07
it's going to people for left-wing machinations no i mean carter's exactly right it was always weird that the that the former president of the united states thought that he deserved to write his name on that line um it's the kind of thing that i think anybody who's worked with a politician who's been in the situation where they're handing out checks they've had to talk that politician off it it's an idea somebody always floats i'm sure it was floated with the ralph bucks here in alberta the four hundred dollars it definitely comes up whenever there's a check that's sent directly from the government, well, you
Corey
6:37
you know, maybe we should put it in with like a brochure and a picture of the minister or the premier is usually as far as they're willing to go. Actually putting your name on the signature line.
Zain
6:54
Nicely done, Corey. Nicely done for effect. Okay, I have found something. This comes to us from From CBC, New York Times' Nanaimo Bar Flub's golden ratio says expert. I don't even know where to start. Corey, give us the update as a perennial hater of how the New York Times fails to cover Canada. Does this take the cake?
Corey
7:21
Was that a pun? Was that an attempted pun? That was good. I
Carter
7:23
I really liked it. Take the square, you know, okay, I'm just, you know. No,
Zain
7:29
No, it's fine. It's not as good as Take the Cake, but it rhymes. I'm
Corey
7:33
The New York Times has an absolutely amazing streak defining Canada to Canadians, read by Canadians. I shudder when I think that this is actually what Americans think about us, this contemplation and this bar that they've created that us Canadians apparently like, I like this shitty-looking monstrosity that the New York Times tried to pass off as one of the great inventions of Canadian baking. Now, to be fair to them, they are not the only organization that has blown the ratio, which I think all good Canadians know is basically one-to-one with a layer of chocolate on top. One-to-one.
Corey
8:12
We can all agree.
Carter
8:12
agree. No, two-to-one. Two-to-one. That is all wrong. Get the fuck out of here.
Corey
8:16
Are you kidding me? it is
Carter
8:16
is two the bar is two the the custard is one no and then the the ice no one half
Zain
8:25
do you work for the new
Zain
8:27
section what's wrong with you
Carter
8:30
is wrong with are you guys like sugar addicts is that what you like it's two one a half that's nobody
Carter
8:37
believes in a bar
Carter
8:37
bar two one and a half what are you talking about out two for the for the the cakey part i have one for the for the for the for the custard and then a half is the uh is the icing that goes on top the chocolate layer on top
Carter
8:55
who have you guys ever made dynamo bars what is wrong with you people well
Zain
8:59
well i i don't understand what you're saying what
Carter
9:02
i'm saying is that a one-to-one with the custard in the and the the the brownie part of the cakey part is
Carter
9:08
is just ridiculous like
Corey
9:10
like what's What you're describing is
Corey
9:13
nothing. You are describing something new. Congratulations on inventing something. The
Zain
9:18
The people listening understand. You and the New York Times will
Zain
9:21
will be good partners in crime for inventing and bastardizing existing desserts, Carter. Please,
Corey
9:28
we interrupted Corey with your... Yeah, where I was going with that is that Canadian poster stamp had a picture of an Nanaimo bar that had like a three to one ratio of custard to bar. And that was wrong too, but it wasn't as wrong as Stephen was right there. Because, you know, the thing is, it's like when you, do you ever like paint a room and then you want to paint the next room something that's not quite that color, but you've got to make it different enough it doesn't look like you just failed at matching it? at
Corey
9:56
at least when canada post put their stamp on with that wild monstrosity that was all custard and at least when the new york times did the thing with no custard it was different enough we could all look at it and say that's just a fuck up but what steven's done is he's painted the room with the color that's so close that it just looks like he doesn't know what he's talking about like his incompetence reaches a new level when he starts talking about things like two to one ratios well
Carter
10:19
well first of all you you've never been so wrong to start a podcast i mean for you're holding the the New York Times as though they're the worst media in the United States when the Washington Post regularly runs columns by J.J. McCullough. So
Carter
10:34
So let us not pretend that the New York Times gets Canadian culture wrong when J.J. McCullough is supposed to be holding up Canadian culture for those who read the Washington Post, the true measure of politics in the United States. You're just wrong. wrong it's just it's unfortunate that you're wrong cory but uh i was gonna give you uh some nanaimo bars this week but i'm not going no it doesn't sound like you were gonna
Carter
11:01
get no no it doesn't it really doesn't no
Carter
11:04
gonna have fun you
Zain
11:05
we did a solid three minutes on buttergate and a quick five on nanaimo bars this podcast is really losing its soul okay i think i found something else here guys i like this a lot uh yahoo sports this one comes to us from yahoo sports carter so get your one fact ready michigan state announces basketball team will now be named msu spartans presented by rocket mortgage yes that is quite literally that
Zain
11:33
is quite literally their name i want to double source this so you give me your hot take while i uh double source what seems to be a headline that is too good to be uh too good to be true uh carter do you want want to jump in with your one fact or cory do you want to jump this does seem to be true yes it is it is posted across multiple media outlets this
Corey
11:52
this is an extension of what we've seen basketball has been doing a good job of pulling in these sponsorships uh in north america in a way like european you know football teams do um this is next level though like i don't think we've actually seen the team's name be rebranded before that's that's pretty wild but uh hey that's capitalism baby and if you ever needed any any additional evidence that ncaa sports are a business and they are not about school and they are not about education they are not about the betterment of the players how about the fact that it's now the msu spartans presented by rocket fucking mortgage as evidence of that so how about we pay these kids instead of just using them for free paying their coaches millions of dollars and abusing them and running them into the ground And whenever somebody says, yeah, but what about like the spirit, the esprit de corps about your school, the love of your school, talk about MSU Spartans presented by Rocket Fucking Mortgage.
Zain
12:48
I love that. Now, I don't think this applies to the school at large. Like is the mascot now Spartans by Rocket Mortgage or is it just Spartans? Who knows? Great take, Corey Carter. Any comments? I
Carter
13:02
I mean, I'm just in awe that they've got Rocket Mortgage and we've still just are stuck with WestJet. Like, where's our Rocket Mortgage? We are not
Corey
13:13
not stuck with WestJet. Like, how many times are you guys going to say this before we get a letter from WestJet?
Zain
13:22
Until we get a letter from WestJet. One more time. One more time. Who's with me? Yeah, no, I don't think you understand, Corey. The red line is now where we want to go. We want you to get a – you're the one that's going to get the letter. This is very exciting.
Carter
13:39
It's going to be so exciting. You know what he's going to do now? He's going to take his little computer and he's going to mock up a letter. And he's going to say, see, I got a letter. He's going to wave in front of our faces and we're going to have to behave ourselves. But my point is Rocket Mortgage should, in fact, sponsor the show.
Carter
13:54
Make some calls. Make some calls. Someone make some calls.
Zain
13:58
That's a Chester job. still with us for several of our fundraising and business operations needs. All righty, let's move it on to another headline. This one comes to us from Business Insider. Trump is sneaking back into Twitter using email. So I'm going to read a little bit of this for you. Donald Trump has found a new way to get through Twitter, and it's through email. His most recent statements from his new political action committee and his post-presidential office read exactly like tweets they're crafted to be under 280 characters uh and journalists and media organizations are either screenshotting them or directly posting them online as his back channel to twitter what do you guys think i
Corey
14:41
i you know we actually saw this um really quickly after he was banned a lot of his statements i remember one of the first statements he put out after that was 271 characters and i thought well that's not a coincidence um apparently they've just decided that this is the packaging they're going to do and and i'm sure it's not even just that they're going to 280 but it's like trump colon space quote marks is is how they're determining how long these things can be carter
Zain
15:05
carter any thoughts on trump uh side dooring into twitter i
Carter
15:10
mean are we sure that it's just not that 280 characters is the maximum number of characters that could contain a trump thought i mean like that any thought longer than that is just he's incapable of actually constructing like
Carter
15:26
it's good where's the line on this you know i mean i'm not entirely sure that they're tweets so much as that is the full and complete thought that is all that he has in his head so i'm not prepared to give him the uh the tweeting strategy award you
Zain
15:40
you know some headlines we have to find others we we we feel like we need to make because they don't exist so this one comes to us from strategist media uh this is a tweet side by side from a previous tweet made by the federal ndp and the tweet says the federal ndp is hiring for their digital team yes
Zain
16:01
yes indeed yes indeed uh it was more of a statement than anything to react to but i thought that was pretty funny the
Corey
16:08
the show's going yeah it's it was like one of those how it started how it's going things how it started was the tweet the ndp did how it's going was there hey we're hiring a digital specialist um yeah well good i guess it looks like they're i hope nobody lost their job that's always a miserable thing uh but maybe they've been shuffled to something that better suits their skill set and uh maybe they've just decided to get some of the uh the help they need some of the adult supervision that was clearly lacking from the uh digital war room at the ndp um
Corey
16:41
it's it's um it's a good opportunity for them to get a few more eyeballs hell this is probably a great Great way for them to get that message out there, because people will mirthfully retweet it, but it ultimately does mean this job ad goes a little bit further, and they could use the help, clearly.
Carter
17:02
Yeah, I mean, it
Carter
17:05
it just is unfortunate that the NDP had to do this so quickly. I mean, I'm not sure that getting it far and wide is going to get the best applicants. I'm not sure that, you know, if anybody watching the NDP's social media streams between the TikToks and the tweets and I'm just not sure that that's a job that anybody who's any good at it is going to want to try and turn that particular sinking ship around.
Zain
17:30
I'm going to move it on to our next headline, a little bit more of the serious variety, but I want to get your take on it. This one comes to us from the Globe and Mail former liberal cabinet minister Jody Wilson-Raybould to publish political memoir. memoir uh harper collins has published a new book coming out from the former minister of justice titled indian in the cabinet speaking truth to power obviously some wordplay there the publisher says the memoir will detail detail why uh jody wilson raybould got into federal politics her experience as an indigenous leader and why she left guys do these have any impact or ramifications especially now with her particular circumstance like i'm kind of curious this is not a coincidence the timing here. I'm really interested in your thoughts as to whether this will help her political brand and more specifically will help her in a sense to her political chances now running, assuming a second time as an independent whenever the next election is called.
Carter
18:26
Well, I mean, she ran as an independent last time and won. And she did so well telling her story of why she was kicked out of cabinet. I mean, this is, to me, it strikes me as a big question as as to whether or not this is an actual new story. I mean, is she going to tell us new salacious details that she held back in the first telling of the story when she used that story to get elected as an independent MP, which is a difficult thing to do and a very impressive thing to have done. She got elected as an independent MP at a time when we don't elect many independent MPs. So for me, this is the same story, the same trick being played twice in with the same goal, get her reelected again. And I expect that if it's a spring election book, excerpts will find
Carter
19:17
find their way into the Vancouver province. And those book ups excerpts will be traded around like playing cards by people who want to vote for her. And there's a significant number of people who do want to vote for her. I'm not sure this is the trick that she needs to play in order to remain an independent member of parliament. She's well-respected. She's well-known. She's got a tremendous amount of media attention. But I guess she feels that this is the trick that she needs to play again. And so she's playing it.
Zain
19:49
Corey, what do you think? Putting out a political memoir, talking about, you know, your political past with the government, assuming it's not coincidence in timing. Your thoughts?
Corey
19:59
I think that writing books in general by politicians is something that's more common in the United States. And the political tell-all is a tried,
Corey
20:08
tried, tested, and true tactic down there with cabinet ministers, particularly ones that don't see themselves having a next act in politics, just basically burying their souls, trying to rewrite their history, especially if they were removed ungraciously, to set the record straight insofar as they see it. And there are examples down there where they have been, you
Corey
20:29
you know, more significant. I think we actually had a conversation about how significant are these books. I think it was actually about not so much the tell-all, but more about, well, we've had many conversations. Do we think it will have an effect? And generally what we've said is no, no, not really in the American context. And I think that that is in part because they are so inoculated
Corey
20:47
inoculated to it. There have been so many instances of this that it just doesn't have the same punch. everybody realizes how self-serving they are because there's a history of them being very self-serving i
Corey
20:58
am intrigued by it in this context i can't think of an example of a cabinet tell-all in this country attacking a sitting prime minister i
Corey
21:07
i i would really have to rack my brain on it and i'm gonna i'm gonna maybe do some some light googling a bit later but this could be really damaging for trudeau it could be damaging for a couple of reasons one is that novelty factor where this really hasn't happened at least on a major stage here and the other is that it cuts against that his brand
Corey
21:25
brand the elements of his brand part of why the jody wilson raybould saga was so damaging to trudeau to begin with is it really showed
Corey
21:35
showed that this this nice guy going to get along work with everything was not not the reality so um and of course the the uh you know jody wilson and raybould's indigenous background just doubles down on that this this notion of of that trito carries that he's going to be a different kind of prime minister more focused on reconciliation it's not about tokenism it's out about actually being at the table so could be a real problem for him set for release in october i
Corey
22:01
i will be surprised october is pretty far away yeah june maybe by then there will be those excerpts if the election happens in june but i think this we can just add this to the pile of things that like i don't think an election is going to be called in june because of this book, but let's just say if the election is June or October and it's sitting on a fulcrum, this is another reason why it would be June instead of October, because you don't want to be dealing with this.
Zain
22:25
I like it. Carter, did you want to jump in? Yeah,
Carter
22:28
I think that there was a couple of points
Carter
22:31
points that Corey raised that I wanted to bring back discussion we had, I think, last week or the week before, where we were talking about Justin
Carter
22:37
Justin Trudeau's brand and how he is not going to be able to put the same emphasis on the same things any And this isn't because of Jodi Wilson-Raybould's book coming out now. It's because of all the gossip and all the challenges that she brought forward about how she was treated before her last election. This is an old story. And not only that, I mean, he had his sexual harassment allegations before the last election. He's not running as that bright, fresh face of a new age, you know, feminist who is able to simply win over the female vote just by simply appearing and saying words that they want to hear. This has to be a new brand emphasis because that brand's gone. That brand was destroyed in the last election, prior to the last election, with the sexual harassment allegations, Jody Wilson-Raybould's allegation, Jane's last name. Philpott.
Carter
23:31
Yeah, Jane Philpott's allegation. Oh, and let's
Corey
23:34
let's not forget the blackface and brownface saga. Yeah. Oh,
Carter
23:36
Oh, yeah. I mean, minor, minor inconveniences. And so it feels to me like this is a book. This is going to be a big thing. This could be salacious. It could be exciting. But it feels to me that he's carrying actually a lot less baggage into this coming election than the election that was that just was.
Zain
23:56
i'm going to talk more about trudeau and his brand in a second now that you're on that role carter but i'm going to skip that headline to go with the headline from fortune disney's bob chaperk and bob eiger to chair dual diversity councils oh this is so funny if you google these two gentlemen cory
Zain
24:16
yeah because if you you
Carter
24:18
bobs man like the diversity
Corey
24:20
diversity that disney is putting in the window here is two white guys guys both with different levels of receding hair one wearing a white shirt one wearing a blue shirt um end of diversity right like they couldn't even find a diversity of first names um
Corey
24:35
i i would say that we white men are by far our own worst enemy and when it is absolutely impossible to get any kind of role as a white dude i'm going to point to this moment and say yeah we kind of deserved it this is kind of on us because this is fucking ridiculous that you you would decide that two white guys named bob are your diversity panels like that's that's the most amazing thing to me they couldn't even have like the you know the put them both on the same diversity panel it's that they are doing dueling diversity panels led by white bobs yeah steven
Carter
25:06
mean i have nothing to add it just is uh it's disappointing i'm frustrated um i would i would think that disney would have to do better and now do they will they walk this back i guess You know, going back to that old question that you used to ask, Zane, about, you know, should they double down or should they, you know, reverse their course? I feel like maybe this is one that they should reverse course on. The doubling down and keeping the Bob and Bob diversity structure in place is probably not the smartest move for Disney. I'm sure that they can do better than this. And I'd recommend to them that they not double down, which is our traditional recommendation to anybody who's fucked up.
Zain
25:53
Corey, what do you think, actually, on the communication side of things? Do they have to change this or do they just, you know, fuck it, double down, power through?
Corey
26:01
I think this is one of those situations where you don't make a big show out of changing it. You just you bring in a new panel. You never mention it again. You've just you've embarrassed yourself here, Disney. And honestly,
Corey
26:13
like, this is one of those classic, I'm sure the intentions were just fine, but it's quite clear intentions are not enough. And somebody needs to be looking at these things with more of a critical eye at an organization the size of Disney's for sure.
Zain
26:28
I like this, the Corey communications best practices. So our next headline comes to us once again from Strategist Media. That's us. Canadian Energy Center issues tweet not to Corey Hogan's rules of communications best practices. Corey, do you want to contextualize and have a field day with the recent tweet that was put out by Alberta's – I
Zain
26:53
I shouldn't call it Alberta's because it's Canada's. We all own it, Canada. The Canadian Energy Center funded by the government of – no, it's Canada's, Corey. It's a gift. It's a gift we have given the country from our province. Corey, take it away. way
Corey
27:08
yeah so um first of all let me just say this this all headlines show this is a very liberal interpretation of headlines we're now i
Zain
27:16
i have i fucking don't care we've
Zain
27:19
we've lasted 27 minutes and it's better than i thought it would go honestly uh
Corey
27:24
uh okay so the canadian energy center well known for its stellar logos and even better communications tactics um put out a tweet uh that said this is like it's it had a picture attached to it there was a chart but the big bold text was perhaps you've heard that the oil and gas sector doesn't spend much on environmental protection you've heard wrong see see below and i don't know where to start with this let's start with the obvious um that's
Corey
27:53
that's pretty aggressive like who walks into a conversation trying to change someone's mind by being like yeah i somebody told me that bill came and told you this thing you
Corey
28:02
you heard fucking wrong it's not even like bill was wrong it's you're wrong like you've heard wrong it puts the onus on the listener being the person who was wrong are your ears fucking broken you heard wrong canadians so that's great that's not a great start uh there is also this adage in communications that you do not want to lead with your chin which is to say you don't want to put the negative up forward another version of this is don't repeat the charge when you're answering are in the charge it's
Corey
28:28
utterly baffling to me why if they wanted to do this message that you know and we haven't even gotten to the content yet we're still on stop but
Corey
28:35
but if they wanted to talk about uh oil and gas sector spending money on environmental protection maybe something a little more like did you know the oil and gas sector pays the most on or spends the most on environmental protection of any industry would have done the exact same thing without punching me in the effing face telling me i was you know hearing wrong and
Corey
28:55
and then you know just just because i'm a petty man i gotta say that if you have in your bold text in a simple graphic that can be seen on one screen the word see below fire
Corey
29:07
fire your fucking graphic designer like that's unnecessary just
Corey
29:11
see below i don't need those words i can see below it's all on one screen and so they have then below it a bar chart that shows uh environmental protection spending by industry partial 2006 to 2018 totals for top five industries and all others that's
Corey
29:28
that's a mouthful i got a couple of questions right away how about for starters so these are the partial totals doesn't that just sort of undercut the notion that i'm getting the full picture here like yes if you look at 100 of the if you
Corey
29:41
you if you look at 100 of the oil and gas stuff and only 10 of the rest oil and gas looks like i don't even know what it fucking means anymore like it's it's just become like the most
Corey
29:52
baffling piece and i i don't know i i have no idea what was going on in people's heads as they created this thing i had no idea why this was anybody's idea and like then there's just so many other small things in i don't even want to get into them but like it cites it at the top like their their citation is themselves from cec fact sheet 27 what the fuck are you doing what
Corey
30:14
fuck are you doing and
Corey
30:17
i'm done for a minute i'm sure i could do i could do a whole episode on this piece i'm
Corey
30:21
i'm gonna hand it over i'm
Corey
30:24
hand it over to carter i'm gonna calm down and then i'm gonna talk a bit about why this is probably a bad idea for other reasons how does that sound that's
Zain
30:31
that's really funny see below you are wrong for partial results on carter i'm
Carter
30:39
disappointed that he's not jumping out of the, you
Carter
30:42
you know, the follow up tweets were also spectacular. Right. So, you know, so here's the first one. You may have heard that the oil and gas sector doesn't spend much on environmental protection. You've heard wrong, obviously, making Corey crazy. But these ones are great, too. question
Carter
30:58
which province spends the most on the environment answer
Carter
31:01
answer alberta for the complete story click here um is
Carter
31:05
is that a good thing like we spend the most on the environment and then the next one or two two tweets later guess which industry spends almost 42 percent of all environment protection spending in canada and your first guess doesn't count i just just
Carter
31:20
what the fuck i didn't even see that did
Carter
31:25
we enter quiz show like is there 25 000 available what is happening this these are fucking horrible which
Carter
31:36
which industry spends the most money on environmental protection begs the question why i mean
Carter
31:43
mean it's just a gong show i mean these guys are are horrible and then On top of that, the next like the tweet, there's a tweet in the middle. It says of the sixty seven point seven billion in environmental spending between 2006 and 2018, the Canadian oil and gas sector spent twenty eight point one billion or forty one point five percent. All other industries combined spent thirty nine point six billion or fifty eight percent. What's the fucking point? What am I supposed to have learned there? Who am I supposed to be happy with? what is the outcome that you want me to feel what do you want me to and on top of that guys even making it better our incredible war room the this is these are messages that apparently we want to see the
Carter
32:29
latest one um the last one i read there was 12 hours ago it has 16 comments 15 retweets and 19 likes i mean we did better just putting up our new logo and by better i mean
Corey
32:50
2006 to 2018 what kind of date range is that why any of it why any of it it like it's just like everything about it is a red flag if you're looking at it from a data point of view everything about it it's just totally baffling to me and by the way steven what types of drivers spend the most money on automobile insurance is it the best drivers i
Corey
33:15
Well, what does this brag mean? It's just – it lacks context. It wasn't a concern people had. I didn't go around my life saying – people are saying, you know what? I don't think Albertans spend the most on environmental protection. Like that's not something I've ever heard. I've heard – I'll
Carter
33:28
I'll tell you something.
Corey
33:29
heard a lot of things about Alberta and the environment, but like nobody is sitting there saying like, do you think that they're spending the most on environmental protection though? if
Carter
33:37
if if jason kenney is listening to this or sonja savage or um you know uh doug schweitzer or jr jeremy nixon jason nixon one of the nixon brothers uh those are the directors of this if they want to put this out for competitive bid the strategists will do this work for
Carter
33:54
for the bargain basement price of 22 million dollars okay so we will do this for you we will do a 10 times better better job and we will do it for um 22 23 million dollars 23 million that way it doesn't divide yeah we yeah 23 million is what we need so
Zain
34:13
basically amongst the two of you seven
Carter
34:14
seven million dollars uh for cory and i each and then we spend eight million dollars on actually buying media and as always zane gets fucked cory
Zain
34:24
cory did you want to jump in and you and here you were complaining about my liberal interpretation of headlines. This has been the best segment thus far. Go ahead.
Corey
34:34
So I want to sort of slow my speed down a bit and talk about this in a different context.
Corey
34:40
There is a different problem here, too. And it's a little bit more of a subtle one. But I think it's one that really illustrates that there's not a ton of sophistication in this. Yeah, newsflash. There's not a ton of sophistication in this communication. But there's not a ton of sophistication in this communication. When you're communicating on a controversial issue, when you're in a landscape where it's very charged, that's very political, when there are all sorts of considerations of that ilk, you've got to treat your communications different. One of the ways that came up sort of in the Twitter replies when I was bringing this up online was, yeah, charts don't generally work when everybody's really charged and drawn lines lines and gotten to their corners. But let's step past that one. There's one that I think people don't think about enough, which is the kitchen sink approach to communications. When you rebut a charge that people did not necessarily have in their head before, you also risk in these charged environments reinforcing that original charge. So perhaps you've heard that the oil and gas sector doesn't spend much on environmental protection. You've heard wrong. In a politically charged environment, what happens is partisans on the other side of the issue will then go and find all of the facts they need to validate that, in fact, they have heard correct. So they will find the reasons that per capita or per CO2 ton or any of those things that actually Alberta
Corey
36:02
Alberta doesn't spend enough on environmental protection. And you have now created an entirely new front on this war fueled by this piece that is solving a problem that nobody really had, which is part of why when I started, I said, why wouldn't you just have said, did you know?
Corey
36:17
Why wouldn't you have started with a bit of a different communications framework here where you ultimately could have provided the exact same facts in a way that didn't seem like it was shady AF, right? Partial, this date range, the way it is, this chart that doesn't naturally kind of lend itself to interpretation, plus the footnote that is yourself. Like you could have done away with all of that. You could have provided these facts in a different way, and maybe you would have actually been helpful.
Corey
36:45
There is a charitable and a non-charitable way to read this communications activity, and I'm not actually sure which is worse, because the charitability is towards their skill as a communications professional. Either the Canadian Energy Center is not actually trying to change minds, and they are trying instead just to make people in Alberta who support oil and gas feel good, in which case we are basically wasting money on a partisan exercise, or they are trying to change minds, and they are doing absolutely everything wrong while doing it.
Corey
37:14
Which is worse, Alberta? I don't know, but this is getting to be more
Corey
37:18
more than a little bit embarrassing.
Corey
37:21
And it is our gift to the rest of the country. Yeah.
Zain
37:23
Yeah. Just to capstone it. You're welcome. You're welcome, Canada. Well, nicely done, guys. We should probably have another segment on our normal episodes where we have both of you just read your tweets. Corey and Stephen read their tweets. Usually Stephen's reading a lot of replies from haters. That would be fun. That would be a lot of fun. Let's move it on to our next headline here. This one comes to us from Live Science. SpaceX successfully lands its giant starship.
Zain
37:53
but it exploded a few minutes later i
Zain
37:55
love that headline just the way it's phrased what do you think is is this i'm kind of curious about this because do you feel like this is a blemish on on what's going to happen with spacex and and their and their uh you know pursuits or do you feel like they're going to get over this from a brand perspective carter well
Carter
38:11
well i mean i think i would have been uh more worried if they just made it work the exact the first time and didn't learn learn anything about what could go wrong and what you know what the various challenges are space exploration is is tricky what they're trying to do is extremely difficult and it's going to be filled with all kinds of failures um one of the challenges of one of the challenges one of the problems with the challenger disaster is that the failure happened during like because they didn't put all the things through their the various paces they ignored scientists input they they didn't have their catastrophic
Carter
38:45
catastrophic failures in advance they had their catastrophic failures on a crewed mission and that certainly isn't the uh the outcome that you want so the catastrophic failures that are happening now from spacex um keep in mind that they are happening at a time when they are about to finish their network of uh you know like a satellite uh internet distribution um they're They're about to, you know, they continue to be the workhorse that is shuttling satellites into space. They're doing a hell of a job. They just can't get this particular problem solved. And that's okay to me.
Carter
39:23
me. I mean, it just didn't work out the way that we would hope that it would have.
Corey
39:30
Yeah, you can learn a lot from failure. That's one of those axioms of business, but it's entirely true. true um and really i somewhat admire the fact that spacex takes this approach to all of their projects this worked for them in the past by the way this is how they did their falcon
Corey
39:45
falcon rockets this is how they did their falcon heavy if you know much about the story of of spacex one of the things that they did and one of the things that allowed them to reduce their costs early even before they were reusing rockets is they used many small engines and they essentially had to to synchronize them all to go on and off at the same time and not blow the fuck up and
Corey
40:05
and nobody thought they could do that well i don't want to say nobody but it was people looked at it very skeptically they said if you want reliability and rocket launches you need large engines but instead they just kept launching
Corey
40:17
launching and failing on other ones until they got it right and when they got it right they were all of a sudden in a position to undercut everybody like a spacex rocket trip is has forced uh united launch alliance which is kind of this big consortium that does it again to just really drive their prices way way way down even to stay in the same ballpark as these guys they've revolutionized space travel and i wouldn't bet against them revolutionizing it again and certainly i think people looking at them failing and this is like a soft failure right they they landed it and then it blew up and i mean that doesn't sound like a very praiseworthy landing It's like if I park my car and
Corey
40:54
and then my car blows up, right?
Corey
40:56
right? Did you park your car? Not a successful trip to the store, but I
Corey
41:03
I would probably learn an awful lot along the way too. Like, I don't know. I think it's really good and I think it's exciting that these things are happening. And the thing looks like it's from the fucking future. We live in the future. This is pretty cool.
Zain
41:17
We do indeed. Indeed, our next headline comes to us from Global News. Corey, you're going to love this. It's your favorite topic. Are you ready? Liberals widen lead over conservatives as new COVID-19 vaccine shipments arrive. Yes, sir. We've got Justin Trudeau up in the polls. No one could have predicted this would have happened. Carter, no one predicted this. No one predicted this. No one. The cake was baked.
Zain
41:41
Okay, the cake was baked. And he's unbaking the cake. That's what he's doing. And Justin Trudeau has a nationwide job approval rating of 55%. In Alberta, it's 48%. But here's perhaps the most interesting thing. That's still six points ahead of Jason Kenney. What does this mean for, let's just start with Kenney first. Is this worry time for Jason Kenney right now? Like he's polling 42% on this particular poll by Ipsos. We also had Angus Reid, I believe, this week. Not the lowest amongst all the premiers, but he was at 39% job approval. This is starting to get into perhaps unprecedented territory, close to it, I should say, for Jason Kenney. Thoughts on this, guys, on Kenney before we jump to Trudeau? Well,
Carter
42:23
Well, I'm going to do both of them at the same time because Kenney is probably concerned, but I wouldn't lose sleep over this because he doesn't face an election for another two years. And Trudeau should be pretty pleased, but I wouldn't be just kind of thinking this is going to be the easiest election in the history of mankind because both of them have faced the same problem.
Carter
42:44
And that is an election. Elections are weird. People engage differently in an election than they do in a poll. And big shifts happen. Now, we haven't seen really big, big shifts. Well, since Trudeau was elected. But, you know, realistically, when he went in 2015, when he was elected, there was a big shift. but this uh this
Carter
43:07
is worrying for for for kenny and it should be worrying for trudeau because they both still have to prove their points uh to the audience and get them they get the votes that they need it is more worrying for trudeau because he actually had he wants to head to an election sooner than later even though he's got the right numbers even though you've got the right numbers today does not mean you have the right numbers on election day elections matter people change the the way that they they they interact um i think that they may not on this particular election but it doesn't i wouldn't be thinking you know light off the sparklers this thing's all going to work out perfectly it's just not going to well
Corey
43:48
kenny's approval has never been the big selling point of the ucp or even frankly jason kenny's leadership he's often performed
Corey
43:57
lower than his party that was certainly the case in 2019 the other thing is steven's right we're two years from election this could very well be the nadir like it's it's not necessarily a given that this is irreversible um rachel
Corey
44:10
rachel notley at the two-year mark was a bit lower than like she started rocketing up another year she she may have actually who knows what the hell might have happened but you just sort of run out of runway at a certain point but
Corey
44:21
but um this is kind of the general arc of government you know we've got a kind of this is a tricky one because obviously we've got covid we've got all sorts of these mitigating factors. But the general arc of governing is the first two years you make hard decisions and then you pull out of it for the next couple. So it's not unusual to see
Corey
44:38
popularity dip at this particular moment. Now, there
Corey
44:41
there is a point of no return. And if I'm Jason Kenney, I'm very worried about that. And I'm worried about what this means in terms of my own survivability with my party. I've got a leadership review coming up. If I start to be seen as a real albatross around the neck of this organization, decisions
Corey
44:56
decisions may be made and I may not like the consequences of those decisions it's it's something that i wouldn't overreact to or overstate though um i
Corey
45:07
i don't know i'll wait another month but in some ways despite today not being a particularly great day for jason kenney i feel because of additional conversation about his former chief of staff i feel like he has somewhat stopped the bleeding at least you know it's not It's not looking as dreadful as it was in late January, early February, when there was all of the Aloha Gate, as we were calling it, all of his MLAs who were going out of the country during the Christmas break, when there was the strip mining of coal on the sides of the mountains that we all love here. That's sort of in the rearview mirror. The budget we've
Corey
45:47
we've talked about was a bit of a mess, but it wasn't the kind of mess that's creating huge problems for him down the road. It's just one of those things that it's hard to imagine what the next step is.
Corey
45:55
I wouldn't overstate it. I don't think that this is the end of the world for Jason Kenney.
Zain
46:00
I have a question for you guys. You know, with the
Zain
46:04
the polling numbers that we've seen here and being so dramatically, not dramatically different, but quite volatile for Trudeau, you know, a couple weeks ago, a month ago, you know, down in the polls quite a bit, now up better than he was in a long time with his approval rating. Is it directly related to the vaccines, or do you feel like it speaks to the elasticity and the fickleness of the voters? Like, it's a genuine question, Corey.
Corey
46:30
No, I'm just shaking my head because it's like we're just back where we were, you know? Like, ultimately, we rode a roller coaster of vaccines, and I kind of take that point. This is part of why timing and all of this matters a fair bit, but it's
Corey
46:42
it's not a materially different landscape than it was in December.
Zain
46:45
No, and I guess the question is, when he went down in the polls all that significantly a couple of months ago, was it directly related to vaccines? Or do you feel like this is a sign that we might have a more fickle electorate heading into the election? Carter, any thoughts on that?
Carter
46:58
I think we have a very fickle electorate. We always have. The electorate is not tied to brand. They are not tied to rational voting decisions. They move around. You know, I love the writings that shift from conservatives to New Democrats, like that's a rational shift. You know, they skip right over the middle. Like they are, this idea that the voter is rational and is some way predictable. It's just kind of, it's masked because in many ways, they don't care that much. much. The difference was we are caring a lot more because we're seeing the government in our lives a lot more. We're seeing that when the government is failing us on vaccines or they're failing us on the economy, we tend to move towards volatility. When they are succeeding, we tend to move towards stability because our lives are the ultimate barometer of the success of the government. Do I feel the change? Do I feel the upset? And there's a lot of issues that we've gone through. And
Carter
48:03
And you've asked us about, you know, on a scale of 1 to 10, over, under, on 5, plus or minus 7, B plus or minus, whatever. Do all of them.
Zain
48:14
Keep going. Do the whole scales. All
Carter
48:15
All of those questions are interesting in the moment. But the
Carter
48:20
thing that we have the hardest time understanding, because we are not the general public. Let us just be clear on that. We are geeks. we are lunatics we our audience are is filled with geeks and lunatics who want to talk politics want to understand politics want to understand what it means most people want to you know their commute to be shorter most people want you know an
Carter
48:43
an extra hundred bucks in their paycheck like those are things that people want uh that make them different and they care about different things when the pandemic was at its at its height it made us feel a certain way and we took that feeling out out on the government and now you know vaccination is coming and the the the light is appearing at the end of the tunnel and that's lifting a weight off of us and we we give that back to the government because now we've got a positive feeling and will that positive feeling still be there when an election is held in june or october or whenever it's held um i don't know it might shift because we are mercurial we might tomorrow start worrying more about the economy than the pandemic that That could happen, and I think that Trudeau and Kenney are aware of that because they're mature politicians who've been through these cycles many, many times.
Corey
49:37
Yeah, I think that this is kind of like the conversation between climate and weather, right? The
Corey
49:43
The climate that Justin Trudeau faces is not different than it was in December. We've had a lot of weather in the meantime. There's been ups, there's been downs,
Corey
49:51
But I think we have to acknowledge at a certain point that the climate is
Corey
49:56
is one where weather is different day by day. It's like living out here in the prairies. It might be plus 30 one day and minus 20 the next. And that has got to alarm Justin Trudeau. I think your point that perhaps the electorate is in no moods and that perhaps that this thing is more in play than perhaps you may otherwise think is a good one. And it's good – it's something that should give the liberals pause, that people are moving around and that the events of the day can move them so easily off of the liberal party. because if we want to go back and we have talked about this for a while and this has been a common theme for at least since the fall of us here people are very fixated on covid right now they are living covid they are dying covid quite literally in some cases unfortunately but we are going to be getting to a point where say there's a june election say most of us have had at least our first dose people are going to start turning their attention to other issues they're going to to start looking at politicians again for the first time in a long time. You've got to keep in mind, Parliament isn't even really meeting, right? They're doing this remote thing. A lot of the theatre we're used to, the scrums, all of that, that's not occurring. We've just had this transfer of power in the United States that is capital F fucked. It was just totally bizarre. We have so many things that are distracting our attention. And when an election comes, problems, that's
Corey
51:18
that's not really going to be the case, almost by definition. And that's a little dangerous for the liberals, because we haven't thought about the world in normal terms for a while. And if the first time we think about the world in normal terms, is the first time, you know, is when the liberals are then going to be taking us all to the polls, who the hell knows what's going to happen? There is there's not a lot of data for them to go back on that is remotely relevant. Because as we've seen the situation two weeks ago may not be reflective of the situation two weeks from now that
Corey
51:47
is actually quite an alarming situation for the libs and
Corey
51:51
and and who knows what's going to happen in this election you
Zain
51:54
you guys have brought up such an interesting point i almost want to do a deep dive at one point talking about how people have become more tribal but they're less sort of brand aligned than they have before i think there's an interesting tension between those two things as as carter you've outlined here so we'll make a note of that to talk about later okay let's move it on to uh the cbc so many things going on but the cbc especially here in calgary covers this story calgarians hunt for last boxes of kellogg's just right after cereal discontinued that's right that this is a headline the cereal that is a canadian classic which launched in 1985 has been discontinued which has now led to a mad scramble of calgarians trying to find the remaining boxes of this particular cereal stephen carter you seem like a cereal type of guy cereal seems like an outdoorsy person's sort of hearty morning um but you're shaking your head but i'm not gonna i'm not gonna stop keep keep keep going it's never stopped you before not knowing what it is or not knowing any context behind it let
Carter
52:57
let me tell you it's a sad day when we lose cereal off the canadian cereal landscape and i am shocked i tell you shocked that we don't have some sort of a canadian cereal content fund that could be set up and paid paid for by netflix uh so i am going to advocate for a canadian cereal content fund paid for by netflix uh in your netflix subscriptions because uh kellogg's just right wasn't just a great cereal it
Carter
53:24
it was just right for canada oh
Zain
53:27
oh beautiful eulogy steven carter we didn't even ask for one cory should we ask you for a eulogy for a cereal have you ever had just right
Corey
53:37
no but it's it's so sad that it would be taken off the shelf so shortly after um the general mills staple never going to be discontinued was discontinued
Zain
53:47
a little brash i think that was uh stephen carter's branding exercise for that cereal
Zain
53:54
right let's move it on to our next headline i want to spend a few minutes on this by the way i never thought we'd make in 54 minutes i don't know if you guys did i this is this is kind of I was
Corey
54:03
was sure it would be a 15-minute episode. Yeah,
Zain
54:05
Yeah, I thought we'd burn out. But some light Googling and some very flexible interpretation of headlines has allowed us to come here. But I do want to cover this story in a more serious manner, perhaps on Sunday, but we'll tease it a little bit today, which is from the CBC as well. Alberta MLA was monitored by five different police officers, documents show. I'll add some context. I know you guys know this story, but perhaps our listeners across the country do not. Over the last four years, Lethbridge NDP MLA Shannon Phillips, who was a former environment minister here in our province with the NDP government, has had suspicions that some members of her Lethbridge police force have been monitoring her. In a new cache of newly released documents, she was right. She found out that multiple police officers were looking at her records, had taken pictures of her in a restaurant with some friends, had accessed her account without a justification or accessed her files without a justification. Corey, this story goes on and on, and I'm only just reading the tip of this story. Like, there is so much depth here that I can't even contextualize. But your initial thoughts when you read this story here in our home province of Alberta, but certainly has reverberations across the country for public servants and elected officials.
Corey
55:21
Oh, I mean, my first thoughts were, holy fuck. And the chill that this would just put on anybody interested in public service or considering it, you've got to keep in mind that Shannon Phillips, she did nothing wrong. The reason why these totally out-of-control police officers decided they were going to start monitoring her is because she was trying to remove ATV off-road activity in some provincial land. It's fucking nuts that somebody would start – like police officers began stalking a minister of the crown because of this thing. Like this is just the most out-of-control situation I could possibly consider, and it's scary as hell. And there are so many other details you didn't get into. I didn't, no. You know, we can get into them on Sunday. And the follow on it from this has been pretty crazy, too. Now, to the UCP government's credit, the justice minister came out very hard on the Lethbridge police immediately after basically said, you've
Corey
56:18
you've got to clean up your act or I'm going to come in there and clean up your act. But that's not enough. Like, there need to be serious consequences for this. To have the kind of power that police officers do, that
Corey
56:28
that means your abuses are so much worse, right? So much worse. like there has to be zero tolerance for this this can't be uh you get suspended that you can't be demoted this is you're fired and you're charged in my opinion because there's just no other way like this is just so when you're a police officer not to get too philosophical about this you are you have a monopoly on the use of force for the state right you get to carry a gun you get to use violence when things go awry and
Corey
56:56
and when you begin to stalk elected officials you disagree with
Corey
57:01
I do not know what to say about that to make it clear how serious or severe this is and how serious this should be treated by everybody. I'm beside myself that this would be happening in the province of Alberta. Carter,
Zain
57:12
Carter, we'll dig deeper into this on Sunday. Corey did make an interesting point. Maybe I'll comment on before I throw it to you, Carter, around the justice minister, Casey Maddow, coming out very strongly against Lethbridge police. I would note that this has been a justice minister who has been pretty strong on indicating specific issues, but has, you know, thus far not really been very bold on the systemic side of things. And I think that's going to be perhaps the tension here is, is he going to just isolate this as five bad apples? Or is he going to, you know, perhaps go further than he has before historically in our province to talk about systemic issues in policing? Because this is one proof point in a very specific, horrible story to a minister. But the systemic issues here also need to be perhaps addressed at some point. Carter, your thoughts from what you saw initially, and we'll get into it on Sunday even more.
Carter
57:59
Well, I'm very interested that ACERT has been brought in to investigate the Alberta Serious Incident Response Team. Too late, in my mind. The fact that, I mean, we've known this for quite a while that this had happened. What has changed is that there's been a story put forward by the CBC and it's brought more attention to it. It's not a new story. It's not a new story to us. Not a new story to the Minister of Justice. It's not a new story within the circles of politics.
Carter
58:31
Now they've been brought in. Now the investigation starts. I'm very concerned about where we are in the state of investigations. You know, Jason Kenney is still being investigated for his leadership, you
Carter
58:42
you know, potential misdeeds. We don't have those charges. We need to know what the hell is going on in our police services. We need to know what the hell's going on in our political system, because this isn't good enough anymore. And we can't stand behind process any longer. This is something that is demanding action. And the Lethbridge police response from the chief of police was wholly inadequate. And it was laughable, except it's not a laughable subject. subject we've all been subject to harassment just for being in politics it is fair to say that the abuse that shannon phillips faces is amongst the strongest abuse in in our province and we've seen shit that is not right and and the fact that the police not only didn't stand to protect her but were the perpetrators this demands action it demands action at the highest highest possible levels. And for the police chief to basically stand up and say, it's not for us to judge. It's for God to judge. Let me play God. I am judging you, sir. Step the fuck down. Get out of the way. You're not a leader. It's time to move on.
Zain
59:57
More on Sunday. Corey, please, you were about to jump in. The
Corey
1:00:01
The comment Carter did, he's not exaggerating. This is what the chief of police and lethbridge said that's fucking nuts he works for the justice system actual judges are part of his life on a regular basis i just i'm uh it's unbelievable the contortions people can throw themselves into to avoid doing the right thing our
Zain
1:00:20
our final headline fuck it i'll do it i wasn't i wasn't even going to include this one comes to us from cnn prince williams says royals are quote very much not a racist family unquote carter did you watch the interview let's start here
Zain
1:00:37
Corey, did you watch the interview? Let's start here. No.
Zain
1:00:40
Any comments on that, what you just heard? Very much not a racist
Carter
1:00:43
racist family? I have a suspicion that that's not a completely accurate statement. Cool. Not
Zain
1:00:48
a bad take. Corey?
Corey
1:00:50
Yeah, I would second that. I think that, in general, I hate the monarchy. I think we should abolish the monarchy. What? It just raises my ire, and we
Corey
1:01:05
we could detour on this. We could make this a whole thing, Carter.
Zain
1:01:09
We will save it for the
Zain
1:01:10
Monarchist podcast, which we haven't recorded in three years because of Corey's inability to make it on time. He's canceled three years in a row, which is fine. You and I still do it. Carter, I have my official title. We still make it work. Okay, that's great. Great. Let's move on to our over, under, and our lightning round. Stephen Carter, are you ready? I
Carter
1:01:34
I am, and I'd like to point out that my microphone is still working after an hour. It's amazing. It's a minor miracle.
Zain
1:01:41
Carter, I only have one question for you. Overrated or underrated this episode?
Carter
1:01:45
This rated is underrated. The headline episode is, I think, amongst the best ever. And, of course, your leadership that you've brought to this episode is appreciated. appreciated. People don't understand that you are, in fact, the little engine that could of the strategists. So thank you, Zane.
Zain
1:02:02
You're welcome, Carter. My preparation, my enthusiasm, my commitment to the show is what makes this thing work. Corey, overrated, underrated this episode?
Corey
1:02:13
Well, it's absolutely overrated. The amount of spectacle that goes in, the amount of pre-production, the fact that we advertise it for so many months before? How could it be anything but overrated given all of the effort we put into promoting it before it happens? It's true.
Zain
1:02:28
We set ourselves up to fail.
Zain
1:02:32
Every year. And this year is no exception. That's a wrap on episode 923 of The Strategist. My name is Zane Belgey. With me, as always, Stephen Carter, Corey Hogan, and we'll see you next time.