2020 Holiday Special, Act II
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What does the episode’s opening monologue set up for the holiday special?
Hello? Welcome back. It looks like they're ready to go again. Take a seat. Here we go.
That which brings me joy just imagine a bell like tinkling over there into the next century with its echoes. Uh not a lot has brought me joy this year. Especially working in a job where I was focused on a lot of numbers and a lot of papers related to the COVID nineteen response. I'll leave it at that. But the one thing that always brought me joy is Pretty much every night i in a way that's a little bit obsessive. I I started reading uh books about the New Deal and about the the arc of where American government could go to nationalise health care and help the people views my own, views my own, views my own. And I really enjoyed the views my own inimitable, irrepressible persona of the historian Thomas Frank who wrote uh the two thousand four book What's the Matter with Kansas?
So anyway, I started reading obsessively a lot of work by him And Tom Gagan and Thomas Frank have the most joyful, like hell of a toboggan ride to quote the Simpsons approach to. The collapse of the New Deal and the need to reorganize the labor movement's just completely charming. I watch videos of them every night. Where he just starts reading from political memoirs and about how people feel optimistic about technology running the government. He would go on for an hour just expounding without a single like run um in his voice, like a high school debate champion about just whatever the hell he wanted to complain about. He would sit in a sweatshirt with very unruly graying hair and talk about biking like he was depressed for hours.
I felt like he was becoming like the surrogate for everything I couldn't say at work. So I'll do a clip of of him and imagine me listening to this like at two AM with the rosary in my hand. That's how like bad the situation was. And I was doing this like three nights a week. Here is him talking to Matt Taibi and Katie Halper of Rolling Stone magazine on their podcast Useful Idiots in a segment ostensibly on his book list and liberal on the Obama administration, but here talking about comparison between Obama and Harry Truman. And you just gotta imagine him like bouncing around with with a headset in front of a bunch of uh books written uh about Um intellectual and cultural history in postwar America.
Truman retired as Harry Truman's the last president that didn't go to college. When Harry Truman r finished being president, he you know, he went back home to uh independence, Missouri, which is a suburb of Kansas City. And he uh uh He didn't have a pension, he didn't have a source of income and he wasn't he you know, he wasn't rich. And uh you know, he just he moved back in with his mother in law. Uh the reporters, you know, followed him and they said to him, So mister Mr. President, you know, what's the first thing you did when you got home? He's like, Well I you know, I carried the suitcases up to the attic. It it's the only f thing that could reliably make me laugh and think. So to him and uh Tom Gagan, who's much more press shy and tends to like put it to the pen and so audio
Thank you guys for saving my medical career. Not even joking.
My name is Rafi. I'm a medical student. Something that's brought me a lot of joy this pandemic and in my life in general has been crafting. I have spent so much time knitting as I watch lectures. And I find that knitting really just creates this muscle memory. Where I am able to link what I'm learning into my physical body. But what's really brought me joy is sewing. I feel like I've been able to create things that I can send to those I love and Even if I can't see them or hug them right now, I'm able to to share that I care about them. I've been sewing a lot of masks. I've made actually almost five hundred masks now. And at this point It's really just a way to keep a little bit of joy as we move into the next phase of this pandemic.
I love walking around my school when we were in person and seeing all of the people that I cared about wearing different colorful representations of their personality but that I had touched with my own hands.
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Chapters
5 chapters
1
What does the episode’s opening monologue set up for the holiday special?
0:08–13:23
2
How does the discussion of Harry Truman’s post‑presidential life illustrate historical perspective?
13:23–16:59
3
Why does the medical student talk about knitting and sewing masks during the pandemic?
16:59–24:08
4
How does crochet become a source of stability and connection for a healthcare worker?
24:08–33:54
5
What is the significance of the Thanksgiving CSA box and its community impact?
33:54–42:23