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Chapter 1: What are high expectations stealing from us?
What have you had it with? Okay. What I've had it with is high expectations. I've decided, you know, that the saying, the cliche is comparison is the thief of joy. I think high expectations are the thief of joy. And I look back at my life. Anybody I had really high expectations for? disappointed. 10 out of 10. So my new, I'm going to start my new year's resolution right now before the new year.
And it's going to be expect the worst from all people in every situation always. So I can't be disappointed. So I'm, I'm done with high expectations. I'm It will soften my disappointment in the human race. And I really think I'm going to be good at it because I borderline am super cynical. That's just the next step I need to take it over to a complete cynical bitch. So I'm close.
So this is a goal I think I can absolutely handle.
You know what mystifies me so much about this? What? Is that you just now figured this out.
Jennifer, I'm slow to the party in a lot of things. You would have thought after my marriage. That's what I'm thinking. High expectations would have been a thing of the past. That it wouldn't even be something that I even considered ever. Yeah. But during COVID, I watched Hallmark movies because I wanted a happy ending. Something is wrong with me. I'm the problem.
I stopped having expectations a long, long time ago. And it's completely liberating. It's just I just now I just assume when I start the day that nobody is going to exceed my expectations. The only person who ever did was Javi. He used to work for us. I mean, he exceeded expectations. He was like a smartphone. He was intuitive. He figured out what needed to be done.
He absolutely did. You say exceed expectations. I'm taking it another notch. Whatever my expectations are, they're not even going to be met. They're going to be so low.
That's where I've been for quite some time. So you're saying start at the bottom of the barrel. After the rehab stints that Josh went through, five listener... I just removed expectations and I realized this is the way to go. To just have zero expectations because human beings are breathtakingly disappointing. Yeah, they are. They will disappoint you. Every time.
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Chapter 2: Why is spelling important in online communication?
Just look at the most recent election results. The most disappointing group of human beings on the planet. They saw the same shit that we saw yesterday. And then they went and voted for it. Triple down. Breathtaking.
Yeah. Yeah. So that's my new thing. We'll see if I can do it. It's going to be my end of year resolution instead of my new year resolution. I like it. All right. Let me tell you what I've had it with.
I've had it with people that don't know how to spell chick. Like, hey, chick, what's going on? You're a cool chick because I see this often on the Internet and people have confused it and they spell it C-H-I-C. Chic. Which is chic. Right. And I see it all the time. And I'm like, you're saying, hey, chic, chic girl. And I mean, hey, thanks, chick. You're a hot chick.
And they're saying you're a hot chic. And I just want to go in and just put a little asterisk. And spell it for them correctly, but this has been going on for a long time, the misspelling of chick.
Yes, it has. But I was going to say, do you think it is related to Chick-fil-A?
Do I think what is related to Chick-fil-A?
The misspelling of chick, because isn't Chick-fil-A C-H-I-C? Because every time I spell it, like what I'm like, if I'm texting my kids, what do you want from Chick-fil-A? I always have to, it always auto-corrects me.
All right, listen, first and foremost, Gayatriots.
pumps you cannot eat hate chicken number two it is spelled c-h-i-c-k is it short for chicken okay well it's a popular mandela effect that people think it's spelled differently than c-h-i-c-k but you're correct it's c-h-i-c-k short for chicken okay see i'm wrong this whole time another disappointment i have not even met my own expectations
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Chapter 3: How does American Airlines plan to improve boarding?
all of my jealous friends but i'm just kidding but but they were texting me especially the women in my life and i'm a gay man i have a lot of girlfriends i'm very close to they were they were saying oh my god like this gave me hope this gave me allowed me to feel a little bit of joy and excitement and not just the panic that they were feeling and rightfully so to feel that panic and
So in a weird way, it gave me a false sense of hope right before the election. But I'm proud of it.
I think I had a lot of hope going in, but I also had the reality of 2016. Plus, I went and deep dived on you before the election because I started watching the collab with you and Will Ferrell. And I heard you say in one of your videos to the camera, I've been out on the street and I'm not liking what I'm hearing.
And there was this underbelly of Trumpism that had kind of emerged during the Biden presidency that I think we all were kind of in touch with. But it's too much to take your brain there to think that tens of millions of people are seeing what we're seeing. And they're going to go triple down. They're tripling down on that motherfucker.
And it's painful as a fellow human being to face that reality that people are able to do that.
Yes, that's the reality. And I remember going out in 2016, the summer before the election, when it was Hillary versus Trump, and shooting a similar type of video or trying to shoot a similar type of video. And this is 2016. So at this point, it's completely unfathomable to any rational person that Donald Trump could actually win the election. And we're still in that headspace, which
If you were in that headspace in 2024, then you're kind of delusional, right? You had to know. The polls, it was always very close. He was up in the polls even towards the end, depending on which poll you're looking at. So I don't know. People who say they were as shocked this time, that to me is a little confusing.
But when we went out to the streets of New York City, by the way, and we shoot in Chelsea downtown, which is a very diverse area, Even in 2016, a few months before the election, there were I mean, most people were pro Hillary, but there were a surprising amount of people saying they were going to vote for Trump or that they simply couldn't vote for Hillary.
And, you know, there is just an enormous amount of misogyny in this country. Yeah. Sadly, even among women. And we're seeing that play out again and again. And I'm not saying that's the full explanation for Trump winning, because it's not. It's complicated. 70 million plus people aren't all voting for the same reason. But we have to acknowledge it. It's not just a Hillary Clinton issue.
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Chapter 4: What does Billy Eichner think about the election?
Yes, absolutely. I was born to middle-class parents. You know, I wasn't born rich. My family wasn't, has nothing to do with entertainment. I mean, I worked my way up and I'm very lucky, but you know, I wasn't always this way. So I remember my father like constantly worried about money and paying the bills and yelling at me that I was spending too much money.
You know, all of these things are still very present in my head. And you're absolutely right. It's all linked. The thing that we need to do
is and i thought kamala ran a great campaign under nearly impossible circumstances um and i am happy to see that more or less people are agreed on that um even though she lost but you know we have to find the right communicator that's it so much of this is about being able to sound authentic and really hit people in a visceral place You know, that's what Bill Clinton was able to do in the 90s.
That's what Obama was able to do in 2008. So much of it is about it's not just about being on the right side of history. Unfortunately, it's not just about being the most intelligent, competent, qualified person. It is about knowing how to viscerally connect with people. Performance is part of the game for better or worse. It just is right. And so whoever that person is going to be next time,
They need to feel new, they need to feel fresh, and they need to be able to communicate in a way that doesn't feel like the messaging has been crafted in the halls of some lobbyist's office somewhere. It needs to feel raw and real and passionate and authentic. That's what we need. That's why Trump, as demented as he is, connects with his people.
I'm not saying anything we don't know, but it's worth reiterating having had such a crushing defeat.
No. And they, I mean, for the last 10 years, every time he's up on a ballot, he wins and he wins resoundingly and he has built a base. But I mean, we can talk around it or we can go right at it. This is the white supremacist Klingon and the patriarchal Klingon, because now you see women with their own podcasts and microphones and CEOs and
you know, fashion designers, business leaders, prime ministers of other countries. You see successful gay comedians on the street. They see these things and it's very threatening to that world order. And, you know, James Carville famously said when he campaigned for Bill Clinton, it's the economy's stupid. And I think for all of us, it is the racism's stupid. That's what it is.
You have to like that level of recreational cruelty.
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Chapter 5: How do working-class issues relate to LGBTQ rights?
I hear you. I'm with you, too. And I'm a New Yorker. I'm gay. My instinct is always to say, fuck you, even to think who agrees with me. I mean, I made a career out of saying, fuck you and storming off when someone didn't agree with me. And so I don't know. I think we need to take a deep breath and take it a day at a time, I guess. I don't know. I sound like some, like, two-bit therapist.
But, like... Yeah, it's a tricky one. We're in this country together, for better or worse. It's not changing. I don't know. We can either all choose to live in our little bubble. But what starts to panic me a little bit...
or it's not even panic, it's really sadness, is that when you see Trump's numbers ticking up in New York City, which happened this time, I don't want to see things moving in that direction. That I know. So at the very least, we need to keep our bubbles secure. Because that's all I have. And I know you guys don't live in the bubble, which makes me admire you so much. I could never do it.
I could never do it. I can barely go to Milwaukee.
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They even have gifts that are far enough in advance to send a card. We're in 2025. The fact that there are still envelopes and stamps is ridiculous. Um, but I do love Christmas. I love the holidays. I was a Jewish kid in New York City. My parents let me and we were not religious at all. They had to beg me to get bar mitzvahed.
You know, I didn't even I told them I didn't believe in God when I was 11 years old. But like... I only got bar mitzvahed for the party, which had a Madonna slash Broadway theme. I love it. Because I couldn't decide, which I like more. That's a true story. But the one thing they wouldn't let me do because we were technically Jewish is have a Christmas tree and kind of do Christmas.
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Chapter 6: What is the connection between misogyny and politics?
I can't think of a better segue from the AIDS crisis. Hey, you know what?
That's why that's why podcasters like us are the big stars now. You just saw those transitions. You can't coach that. You can't teach that.
No, Tom Snyder is rolling over in his grave right now. But yes, I do the voice of Timon in the new Disney holiday spectacular called Mufasa the Lion King. I did the voice of Timon with Seth Rogen as Pumbaa in the 2019. Lion King that Jon Favreau directed. And now this is really exciting because this is not a remake. It's an entirely new story and it tells the origin story of Mufasa.
And I'm thrilled to be a part of it. I just saw the movie for the first time. I honestly had no idea what to expect. Now it is directed by Barry Jenkins, who won the Oscar for Moonlight and is obviously a brilliant filmmaker, but this is a very different type of movie. The scale of this movie is very different than what he's done before. I didn't know what to expect.
And with these movies, you record them so far in advance that I literally forget what the movie is by the time I see it because these animated films take such a long time to make. And I sat down in a screening room. They had me watch it with a security guard alone on the Disney lot, right? Because they don't want me to film any of it or whatever. And it... Is so good for real.
And I was blown away. I had forgotten all my own lines and Seth Rogen and I, we improvise a lot. And so who even remembers what we did in the studio or, and we certainly don't know what's going to make it into the movie. And I was just talking with Seth a couple of days ago doing press for the movie. And he was saying the same thing. Like, yeah, he had no idea what to expect.
And we were both blown away. It is truly a great adventure. flip over it. There are so many amazing action adventure sequences that honestly, I was on the edge of my seat. They're in waterfalls and they're in the snow and they're underwater. It's amazing, truly.
Oh, I'm excited. Yeah, I've been seeing that coming out and I was like, I definitely want to see that because I loved The Lion King. I loved it on Broadway. I loved the movie. I love everything about it. So I'm excited.
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Chapter 7: Can young men be swayed back to progressive values?
I can't wait to see it. Billy, I feel like I want to be best friends. I know. I went through a lot in this hour. And I just I feel like with the exception of my morning person and you being a night person, I feel like we could be a great throuple.
Yeah, I would absolutely love that. I would love that. You know, you guys can strap it on, do what you need to do. We'll figure it out. I love that. And again, I love you guys. You guys are fucking ballsy. And I mean that in the gender neutral way. And I so appreciate you. You know, it was I'll be honest. It was only like a few months ago when someone said, do you listen to these ladies on?
I've had it. And, you know, there's so much out there.
Yeah. Yeah.
And I hadn't, right? And they said, oh, you would love them. And I said, oh, the last thing I need is another fucking podcast, right? And so I started listening and I could not believe it. And I was literally like the stepmaster at the gym listening to you guys. Like instead of the usual like dance mute, like Mariah Carey remixes, I usually listen to to like pump me up.
And you guys were pumping me up. You were like, fuck all these Republican bitches in our comments who think we're gonna be their friends. I was snapping my fingers on the step master, like like the biggest cliche of like the wacky gay neighbor on a sitcom. You don't want to watch it. It was. I love it. Thank you so much for doing what you do.
Oh, thank you so much for coming on. And we're going to keep fighting the good fight. And we want to have you on again for sure. Yes, for sure. Billy Eichner, thank you so much for coming on.
Thank you so much.
OK, thanks, Billy. Bye.
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