Will Bunch (on college in America)

[0] Welcome, welcome to armchair, expert, experts on expert.

[1] I'm Dan Shepard.

[2] I'm joined by Mrs. Mouse.

[3] This mouse needs a nap.

[4] Yes, you, I can't say that.

[5] No one wants to hear you look drowsy.

[6] I wanted to confirm your story and also got scared.

[7] I am drowsy.

[8] I am drowsy.

[9] Well, you can't tell.

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[11] I would never.

[12] Good job.

[13] When you rub your eyes every five minutes, like a, like, like, a six -month -old baby rubbing their eyes, that is not a giveaway.

[14] Like Vinnie.

[15] Will Bunch is here today.

[16] Will Bunch is a pulled surprise -winning journalist and is currently a columnist for the Philadelphia Inquirer.

[17] He has a new book out now called After the Ivory Tower Falls, how college broke the American dream and blew up our politics and how to fix it.

[18] I love this topic.

[19] We've never really tackled colleges.

[20] We talk about colleges so much.

[21] Love.

[22] But we don't never really get into how fucking hard it is to afford to go to one.

[23] how it's changed.

[24] I didn't know the history of this proliferation of college.

[25] Really interesting.

[26] And Will Bunch is a sweet, sweet man. So please enjoy Will Bunch.

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[30] Hi, Dad.

[31] Hi, Micah.

[32] How you doing?

[33] Hi.

[34] Thanks so much for your flexibility.

[35] I really appreciate it.

[36] Yeah.

[37] I'm sort of half taking a weird day off from work.

[38] I had to take my wife and daughter to the airport at 5 .30 in the morning, so that was fun.

[39] Oh.

[40] That's a good deed.

[41] They're flying your way out to LAX, actually.

[42] Do you need me to pick them up?

[43] Do they have transportation already sorted?

[44] Well, where are you originally from?

[45] I was born in New York, and I grew up in the upscale suburbs, Westchester County.

[46] What did mom and dad do?

[47] My dad actually was in school textbook publishing.

[48] Thank God he's not doing that now because that's a pretty fraught industry.

[49] He had a few kind of hippie tendencies, you know, in the 60s when I was a little kid.

[50] So he worked for Gene McCarthy and grew a mustache.

[51] But anyway, one day I came down to breakfast and the mustache was gone.

[52] And it's like, what happened?

[53] He goes, I have to go to Texas.

[54] We're trying to sell textbooks in Texas.

[55] So I shaved my mustache off.

[56] Weird choice.

[57] I feel like a mustache plays in Texas, no?

[58] I guess not in 1970 or whatever this was.

[59] He didn't want people to think he was even.

[60] even remotely hippie -ish.

[61] I got you.

[62] And then, obviously, you've taken aim with after the Ivory Tower Falls at college.

[63] So where did you go to college?

[64] How much did you want to go?

[65] Did you fetishize it?

[66] I went to a private school.

[67] You might call it a prep school in which 100 % of the graduates pretty much went to college.

[68] You know, my junior and senior year in high school, that was the hobby.

[69] We would try and sneak into bars at age 17 and a half.

[70] The drinking age was 18, but we'd go into bars and we'd nurse a beer because we had to drive home.

[71] And the whole time talking about colleges, which college we were going to go to.

[72] to and it was just the most exciting thing.

[73] This was our future and we were hopefully going to have good choices.

[74] Where did you go?

[75] I went to Brown.

[76] Uh -huh.

[77] We like that.

[78] I was one of those weird kids who did his homework in high school and stuff.

[79] I had pretty good grades.

[80] The whole thing about every generation you want to do a little bit better than the one before.

[81] My grandparents were from the time when people generally didn't go to college.

[82] And I did this introductory essay in the book about my grandma who founded a small college even though she never spent a day on a college campus.

[83] So in the 50s, she really wanted her kids to go to college.

[84] And my dad got a scholarship.

[85] He went to a pretty good school, Trinity College, and Hartford, Connecticut.

[86] Now that we've established that bar, I want to be the first person in my family to go to an Ivy League school.

[87] It is an untenable trajectory we've all accepted that you're going to do better than your parents, but it's like until what point?

[88] There's nothing beyond Harvard.

[89] You know, you can only make so much money.

[90] Yeah.

[91] And then my kids, by the time they were ready for college, the acceptance rate at Brown and Harvard was like 6%.

[92] Even as a legacy at Brown, coming from an affluent, suburban district here outside of Philadelphia.

[93] They were smart kids, but there was nothing really special about them.

[94] And so they went to good private schools.

[95] My daughter went to Drexel University here in Philly.

[96] And my son went to Ithaca College up in Ithaca, the small liberal arts school that's near Cornell.

[97] They both have master's degrees now.

[98] Oh, wow.

[99] That's how they exceeded me because I only have a bachelor's degree.

[100] Okay, so to catch you up with Monica and I, we've coined a phrase called Unifiles because we're both inordinately obsessed with all these elite schools, impressed.

[101] When we interview someone and they've gone to this, it has an effect on us.

[102] We're aware of it.

[103] Now, mind you, we've always been a little in on the joke.

[104] Most importantly, neither of us went to one of these schools that we idolize.

[105] Although I am always pushing for UCLA.

[106] I argue UCLA is one of those schools.

[107] I would consider that an elite school at this point, even though I know it's a public university.

[108] Well, we're in the same position.

[109] My kids aren't going to go there.

[110] I don't even want them to.

[111] I don't want my kids on a trajectory to have a 4 .6 when they graduate.

[112] That's not the childhood I really want for them.

[113] I'd love for my kids to go to UCLA.

[114] I loved it, but I don't want them to do what you would now have to do to get into UCLA.

[115] So that's a bizarre new twist in the story.

[116] Do you feel like you're an outlier in feeling that way?

[117] Or do you find that parents of your kids' friends, a lot of them feel the same way you do, that they're not caught up in the college rat race as much as our parents or our generation was?

[118] A, I think L .A. is probably a standard deviation above because there's so many artists here that didn't succeed through that route.

[119] So I think I'm already probably one standard above Michigan where I grew up.

[120] And then, yes, I would say I'm probably even two beyond that, which is, for many reasons, I just don't know that that's the move.

[121] I much prefer they take road trips and have adventures and go on spring break and have an actual life to draw from when the hopefully they eventually becomes writers or whatever my long -term fantasy is.

[122] But we recently both listened to a two -parter revisionist history.

[123] I don't know if you've listened to Malcolm Gladwell.

[124] Last season, he does this great takedown of the ranking system of colleges.

[125] Have you heard that?

[126] Yeah, he had the food thing about Vassar and Bowden, which I mentioned in the book.

[127] You learn how they're ranked and you learn what is weighted and you learned how arbitrary the deans are giving these scores.

[128] We both left it.

[129] Again, we were already in on the joke.

[130] But now it's not just that we thought it was cute.

[131] Now we're like, oh, there's actually something nefarious happening.

[132] It's not even that.

[133] It's incredibly unfair.

[134] Did you guys happen to catch that the former dean of, the business school here at Temple University in Philadelphia is going off to prison right now for 14 months for faking data to improve the ranking of the Temple Business School.

[135] How long is he going to jail?

[136] 14 months, I think.

[137] Oh, my gosh.

[138] That's why I laughed when you said nefarious because it's felonious, too, apparently, in some cases.

[139] So this is a topic, by the way, we're just really interesting.

[140] We've been talking about it a lot lately.

[141] And then also, I'm excited by learning of the book because I think we have a parallel concern.

[142] and it's interesting, I think your book takes our mutual concern of income inequality.

[143] Did you ever read Broken Ladder by Keith Payne?

[144] I've heard of it.

[145] I have not had a chance to read it.

[146] It's tremendous.

[147] He distills nearly all of our societal problems down to income inequality.

[148] Your book goes further upstream of income inequality.

[149] It really looks like, why is there all this income inequality?

[150] And so I think what would be fun is for you to just tell us the timeline of the American University.

[151] Post -war boom, till now.

[152] A lot of us wouldn't even know what the history is of the proliferation of colleges and whatnot?

[153] What were they and what have they become?

[154] The reason I chose World War II in the mid -1940s is a jumping -off point is that's when you really saw an exponential growth of colleges and you really saw a sea change in attitudes about college.

[155] Obviously, the history of colleges in America goes all the way back to the 18th century and Harvard and colonial times.

[156] And for the first hundred years of this country, these schools were to train, you know, ministers and people who were from the, we'd call them now the one -percenters, of early American society, the very lawyers, families.

[157] Yeah, you did see growth in college from the late 19th century up through World War II because you had more professions.

[158] There was a more need for lawyers, more engineers.

[159] I guess I think of Harvard and John Adams and all these lawyer graduates from that era.

[160] And I just read George Washington biography by Chernow and to know that George Washington was insecure that he hadn't gone to college.

[161] It's as old as the country.

[162] Yeah, some of these ideas about elitism and resentment and those things go back centuries, right?

[163] But we really finesse them and hone them in our time, I think.

[164] Just a couple of stats to give you a sense of where we were right around the start of World War II.

[165] The number of people who had a four -year college degree in the U .S. was about 5%, which was higher than it had been a few decades earlier today, but it's about 37%.

[166] Wow, sevenfold.

[167] But that's lower than I thought.

[168] I think a lot of people who are college -educated tend to guess the number today is higher.

[169] But the other thing about World War II is the majority of Americans did not.

[170] even graduate high school.

[171] We had just come off the era of child labor, right, where people had been going to work in factories when they were adolescents.

[172] It was a little bit better, obviously, by the 1940s.

[173] But going to school until you were in your mid to late teens and then going straight to either working in the fields or working in a factory, that was the American way of life.

[174] And the people who ran these schools like Harvard or the University of Chicago, they really felt that most Americans weren't college material.

[175] So the GI Bill in 1944, I think everybody agrees this was the big turning point.

[176] It was kind of a fluke in some ways.

[177] America had learned after World War I that when you have millions of veterans returning from a war overseas, you need to do something special.

[178] There were a lot of problems reintegrating veterans after World War I. And so you had this debate in Congress over what could be done.

[179] The GI Bill, you might remember, also has mortgage benefits to make it easier for people to buy a house.

[180] But the thing that was really unusual and novel about the GI Bill was it offered a free college benefit.

[181] If you were returning veteran, not only would the government pay your tuition, you actually got a stipend that was enough to live on to rent an apartment to buy your books.

[182] I mean, now we look at that, like, oh, my God, what an incredible perk.

[183] But at the time, the members of Congress who passed this bill didn't really think the numbers who would take advantage of this would be as high as they proved to be.

[184] You know, it turned out there was this great untapped desire to get higher education.

[185] And you had all these warnings that the president of the University of Chicago at that time was the kind of leader and saying this bill was a terrible idea because these veterans weren't going to be able to cut it on a college campus.

[186] He said that they're going to fill up our dormitories and they're going to become, quote, hobo jungles, unquote.

[187] That was the classist, elitist mindset at that time.

[188] And what happened was the exact opposite.

[189] These veterans showed up on campus and they were great students.

[190] It makes sense when you think about it in hindsight, they were more mature.

[191] They had discipline, yeah.

[192] Right.

[193] They picked up disciplined in military.

[194] And they understood what an opportunity this was and they didn't want to blow it.

[195] By 1946, 47, a couple years into this program, these same college presidents were admitting they were wrong, and they were saying that these were basically the best students they'd ever had, that they were outperforming the, quote, civilians, which they were now calling the students who hadn't served in the military.

[196] And the thing is, this started a virtuous cycle, right?

[197] Because coincidentally or not, perhaps, the GI Bill and the success of these returning veterans flowed almost directly into the baby boom that was starting.

[198] All of a sudden, you had this idea that more and more people could benefit from college.

[199] right at the time where you were going to see this massive increase in young people who could go to college.

[200] And it started this cycle.

[201] States, which were primarily responsible for public universities, started spending more tax dollars on building new campuses.

[202] If you go to an older state university, now you'd see these high -rise dorms that they built in the 50s or early 60s, hiring professors, which again was a cycle.

[203] People were going to college and studying philosophy or studying sociology or these subjects that hadn't been particularly popular before.

[204] And then they were getting jobs to sociology professors or philosophy professors because these growing universities couldn't hire them fast enough.

[205] Yeah, they created their own need.

[206] Exactly.

[207] And the real fuel that drove this whole engine was that they were able to keep tuition incredibly low.

[208] California in particular had a decades -long tradition of free tuition.

[209] It was basically written into the Constitution and the state codes that tuition at the University of California, public universities, was to be free.

[210] City University of New York, also free.

[211] But other big schools, you know, Michigan and Ohio State, these flagship universities, tuition might be $2 ,300 a semester or less.

[212] And obviously, it cost a lot less to live.

[213] There were lots of opportunities for 18 or 19 -year -olds to take a part -time job if they needed extra money to live off campus.

[214] People could get into college easily.

[215] You didn't have these insane 6 % admission rates that you see at these schools now.

[216] I mean, the majority of people who applied to colleges got admitted, accepted, right?

[217] You didn't have this whole anxiety every spring about getting accepted.

[218] letters.

[219] So would we say this is the golden era of it?

[220] This is the time when it probably worked the best, or no?

[221] Yeah, to me, this was basically the golden era.

[222] And I think what defines it is the paradigm shifts in how we view what college is and what it's for and who is responsible for paying for it.

[223] The question always hanging over higher education is, should it be a public good?

[224] It's a fascinating case because it bumps right up against K -12 education, which Americans have accepted for 150 years is a public good.

[225] Even if your kids don't go to school, your town benefits from having good schools.

[226] And so your property taxes in your town or however they funded in your community pay for education, even if your kids have graduated or if you're never going to have kids as a taxpayer, you're still contributing to the framework of your community by having a good school system.

[227] When more and more people started to go to college after the GI Bill in 1940s, the question is, should we extend that to college and higher education and can we extend it?

[228] Harry Truman named a high -level commission to study what should the country's higher education policy be.

[229] They recommended that education should be free through, I find this interesting, the 14th grade, they called it.

[230] Nowadays, we'd say free through community college or maybe the first couple years of college.

[231] The thing is, this wasn't really enacted.

[232] The federal government has never said that paying for higher education is a federal budget responsibility the way that something like Medicare or Medicaid is or Social Security, all programs that come from that same time period.

[233] And you can imagine an alternate universe where higher education was viewed like Medicare, that we're going to come up with a system where it's a public good and everybody pays for it.

[234] Even when you go back to the 50s, though, I mean, you had conservative members of Congress.

[235] He said that would be socialism.

[236] I mean, this was the Joe McCarthy era.

[237] And you had politicians on the right back then using the red scare and fears of socialism.

[238] Anything that hinted at the smell of communism was unappealing to everyone.

[239] Right.

[240] But there was almost universal agreement that more people going to college.

[241] and getting an education was good for America.

[242] And this really accelerated, I think, in the late 50s when the space race with the USSR took off.

[243] Sputnik was the trigger for the federal government to start spending more money to try and get kids into college.

[244] But because of these socialism, economic concerns by some lawmakers, they tended to steer the money more towards loans than grants.

[245] We haven't yet recognized in the late 40s, early 50s that we're going to pivot and be a test.

[246] industry and a finance industry, we still very much are an industrial industry, right?

[247] So when do we start deciding we're going to augment our immigration policy to attract great students?

[248] When does that process start?

[249] By the early 60s, you had this growing awareness that there was something now that they didn't exactly call it the knowledge economy, but we would call it the knowledge economy today.

[250] In fact, Clark Kerr, who was the famous chancellor at the University of California in the 60s was the first person to really talk about this.

[251] We now know what was going to happen, which was the knowledge economy, was going to basically replace the industrial economy.

[252] So if your training and skill and education level was for you to function as a cog in the industrial revolution, you were going to be shut out now of the knowledge economy.

[253] But that wasn't the thinking back then.

[254] It was, sure, we're going to keep having factory jobs and people are still going to get good jobs on the assembly line.

[255] But if you want to take it to the next level, we have this new knowledge economy of science and engineering.

[256] Yeah, they weren't nurturing it out of fear that the industrial base was eroding.

[257] They just knew it was something that was going to grow and we needed to be dominant in.

[258] Exactly.

[259] One reason the federal government did spend money on universities in the 1960s was to fund research, and most of that was geared towards the Pentagon.

[260] If we make universities the hub of science research and knowledge in this country, and if we invest in that, we can take this science and we can use it to build better weapons, basically.

[261] There's so many angles to view this.

[262] from, but had our competitor at that time not been the USSR, there is something specific about our fear of the USSR, which was they were inventing stuff.

[263] They had beat us to outer space for a second.

[264] Then we go and we land on the moon and then they do this.

[265] So it did look like this was going to be an intellectual arm race.

[266] And I don't know if there's kind of national stereotypes, the fact that they were chess champions.

[267] I think we took that threat uniquely serious because who our adversary was at that time.

[268] It's not like I think we had a fear of being out -manufactured by them.

[269] We had some slight fear that we had to stay ahead of them tactically and intellectually and technologically for warfare.

[270] I think that's right.

[271] And I remember the 70s very well.

[272] And all of a sudden, in the 70s was when people started to realize that these other countries like Japan that we hadn't been paying attention to had gone a different direction, right?

[273] That they had focused heavily on certain types of engineering, that they had learned how to make cars in particular or steroids.

[274] better and more cheaply than we had because that hadn't been our focus.

[275] Our focus had been how do we make better napalm, right?

[276] Or how do we make missile systems?

[277] Yeah, tanks faster.

[278] And the space race, jet propulsion and all those things.

[279] So you've always had this interplay between politics and college.

[280] In that case, the politics at that time was really influencing what the government would give folks money to research or study.

[281] In the 60s, when they started student loans, the real focus was on people who would study science and math.

[282] The initial fear was that was where we were falling behind the Russians because how did the Russians design Sputnik when we didn't?

[283] Yeah, yeah.

[284] We need to have more mathematicians and scientists.

[285] When does it transition from 5 % now a GI Bill?

[286] Now we're going to bolster the infrastructure.

[287] State universities are building up.

[288] When does it go from this kind of still small percentage opportunity for some to an expectation slash you're going to never ascend the ladder unless you obtain this.

[289] Is this in the 80s or does it happen earlier than that?

[290] Yeah, the term credentialism, which is basically the idea of education really being the purpose, ultimately being to establish this credential, this token, basically, that you can then go into the jar marker two, which is a diploma, basically.

[291] A sociologist wrote a book in 1978 called The Credential Society, and this was seen as the first recognition that this is what we were becoming.

[292] So really as early as the late 1970s, you saw this.

[293] The era of exponential growth was the 40s, 50s, 60s.

[294] By the early 70s, you didn't have quite as many people as today going to college, but it was close.

[295] It had gone from like 5 % to 30 % and little more than a generation.

[296] I grew up in the 80s and the paradigm was very clearly detailed to me by my mother, which is if you don't go get a college education, you're going to do manual labor.

[297] These are like the two options.

[298] options you have.

[299] And if you do manual labor, you're never going to make more than 60 grand a year.

[300] So this is the landscape of life.

[301] Choose.

[302] There was just a massive sea change around the 70s, and it was really a perfect storm of events.

[303] The market for manufacturing in America just collapsed, basically starting in the 1970s at the time of the oil embargo and other economic shocks.

[304] So this idea that kind of animated young people growing up in an earlier time that I want to go to college to be a better person to learn critical thinking, to learn things like philosophy.

[305] So UCLA, and you probably did this when you were a freshman there, students filled out a survey every year about their attitudes.

[306] It's a great project because it gave researchers this database over decades of how young people, college students, felt about certain issues.

[307] To me, the most fascinating finding is in 1969, 82 % of the freshmen entering UCLA said the reason that go to college was, quote, to develop a meaningful philosophy of life.

[308] Oh, wow.

[309] That's beautiful.

[310] Yeah.

[311] And by 85, I think that had dropped to like 43%.

[312] So it basically had fallen in half.

[313] What replaced it basically was, I'm going to college to get to skills to be able to make enough money.

[314] You saw this play out in multiple ways.

[315] You know, you saw what people studied when they went to college changed dramatically.

[316] You saw business majors take off, obviously, and these majors, that had been so popular in the 50s and 60s, like philosophy, English literature, sociology, numbers of people majoring in those started the plummet around the same time and never really recovered.

[317] Yeah, I never was in an impacted anthropology class.

[318] I'll tell you that.

[319] I had friends that were like, they'd go to their Com 101 class and there's like, well, line out the hallway of people hoping to get in.

[320] This might just be because I have immigrant parents, so they came for education.

[321] I don't know.

[322] There's a part of me that's like, is it wrong?

[323] America incentivized people to come to help the country.

[324] Right now, I kind of feel like a lot of people are getting liberal arts degrees and we don't have enough people.

[325] Like my dad's an engineer and he's like, we can't get anyone.

[326] We have so many jobs open and there just aren't the people.

[327] And for him, he's like, that's scary.

[328] I look at this topic right out of the gates.

[329] And obviously this book is shining a light on a lot of the failings of it.

[330] But I think it's like all topics in that there's some great things and some bad things.

[331] So I just want to say what's fucking amazing about this country is I didn't start as a freshman there.

[332] I went to Santa Monica Community College because I barely graduated high school.

[333] And then I did well there and they have a great transfer partnership with UCLA.

[334] And I got into UCLA and then when I was there, I actually did great.

[335] Now that trajectory doesn't exist in almost any other country because I'd like to parallel ours with Germany.

[336] There's some fascinating differences and then they have different outcomes.

[337] If I had been in Germany, I would have, at best case, been funneled into a vocational school, and probably not even that.

[338] I wouldn't have had a road into university.

[339] So that's something we have, I think, above.

[340] As flawed as our system is, A, we have more universities per capita that are publishing more and finding out more things.

[341] We have the best university system in the world.

[342] And also, everyone comes from around the world that come here.

[343] So there's some awesome aspects to it.

[344] What did that usher in?

[345] I think there's a ton of terrible shit, which is rightly exposed in this book.

[346] I don't know what your global thought is, but I can't imagine you're like, throw the baby out with the bathwater.

[347] I think you make a great point because right around the start of the 21st century, things opened up a little bit for more international students to come here.

[348] Whatever you think about the competition between the United States and China, Chinese students have clamored to come here, right?

[349] And also students from India and other countries that maybe have strong economic growth engines.

[350] But when it comes to education, they see things in our system that are better than what they have in their own countries.

[351] So absolutely.

[352] I think everybody agrees that international students at American universities is a good thing.

[353] In fact, if you go back to the Truman Commission in the 40s, they were talking about the need for more international understanding and cooperation and what fosters that better than a diverse student body.

[354] But let's talk about the economic realities.

[355] What happened at a lot of state universities starting around that same time, especially in states that are very conservative, is this whole public good idea.

[356] that we were just talking about, the idea of taxpayers contributing to keep tuition low like they were back in the year when kids could go to these public universities for a couple hundred dollars a semester.

[357] That came to an end, and every year state legislatures put more and more in the burden on the individual students.

[358] I'll use my home state at Pennsylvania as an example.

[359] If you go back to the late 20th century, like at the early 90s, our state university system here was 75 % funded by taxpayers.

[360] And today, just a little more than a generation later, That number is 25%.

[361] So it totally flip -flopped.

[362] Who makes up the difference?

[363] It's students.

[364] And the difference is so large that the average family doesn't have that amount of money on hand.

[365] And so the money is borrowed, which is why we're talking so much today about the student loan crisis.

[366] But to your point about international students, a lot of universities realized is it got harder and harder for the middle class kids in their own state to go to these top state public universities.

[367] This is where they made the difference up.

[368] So you saw because so many wealthy Chinese families were willing to pay 100 % full tuition.

[369] And at a public university, as you know, out of country or out of state tuition is much higher than in -state tuition.

[370] So you saw a couple things.

[371] You saw this huge push to recruit international students.

[372] And you also saw a lot of state schools around the country really increased the number of wealthy, in a lot of cases, to be honest, kind of mediocre students, students who we talk about as being on the party track.

[373] They know they need the credential of the college diploma at some point.

[374] The George Bush is?

[375] Let's put a face to it.

[376] Yeah, absolutely.

[377] They want the college experience, but by the college experience, they don't mean studying for their philosophy exam.

[378] They mean the experience of going to football games and doing their frat initiation.

[379] That's the college experience, right?

[380] Say you're from Ohio and you're kind of a mediocre student.

[381] And in fact, Ohio State, which is actually a pretty selective school for a public university, doesn't want you.

[382] But Arizona State might say, well, if you're willing to.

[383] to pay $50 ,000 a year will take you and you'll have a prestigious enough diploma from Arizona State.

[384] By the way, we have a lazy river where you can like float around in the afternoons.

[385] When I was researching the book, I loved reading these articles.

[386] These luxury perks at these 10 schools are so great.

[387] You'll want to go back to college because these schools are balancing their budget by trying to recruit the kids who will pay full tuition.

[388] And to do that, they have to offer this kind of luxury experience.

[389] The problem is pretty obvious is you're getting away from the original purpose.

[390] All these states that have constitutions that say our universities are here to provide a low -cost education for our own states, young people, to move into the middle class or to have a better life.

[391] And they're the ones who really get squeezed out.

[392] Malcolm Gladwell did this episode in his podcast about the food at Bowden versus the food at his alma mater, Vassar.

[393] The idea being that Bowden was offering these incredible gourmet meals and Vassar was offering everyday regular fare because they were putting the money they were saving into scholarships.

[394] And that's good.

[395] Vassar should be applauded for doing that.

[396] But I think what the average American doesn't realize is when you go to a state university, like Kutztown State in central Pennsylvania, which I visited doing the book, hundreds of students have to go to food pantries every week in order just to get by.

[397] I went to one of these food pantries.

[398] So I saw these care packages of macaroni and cheese and low -fat popcorn.

[399] If you go to the student life center today at Kutztown University, it's kind of like a thrift store.

[400] They had racks of a couple of coats for kids who didn't have coats to get through the harsh winters up there.

[401] They said people come in every day to get food.

[402] They started clipping coupons for these kids so they could save a few dollars when they go to the store.

[403] And for the average and middle class kid, they know that if they don't get this diploma, they're going to have a harder life.

[404] You know, they're going to be locked out.

[405] But they know they can't do it without borrowing money and taking this gamble, basically, that it's going to pay off in a job that they can make enough money back.

[406] And like any gambling, some people win and some people lose.

[407] Yeah.

[408] If I had to, like, list for myself the three main things that are hugely broken is the expense.

[409] I'd love to know how it seems to have grown exponentially.

[410] When I graduated in 2000 from UCLA, it was $3 ,800 a year.

[411] It wasn't even technically tuition.

[412] It was you had to pay, like, fees.

[413] I don't know where it's at now.

[414] I don't know how much that's grown or not grow.

[415] Yeah, in -state tuition at UCLA, it was $3 ,800 a year.

[416] And, yeah, people are going to school at USC down the street.

[417] for like 55 grand a year and I was like what are you guys talking about whatever one you're rooting for you're not talking about anything that's a standard deviation above so the expense the other thing I feel like I don't know that the degree says what it used to say I think it's now yet another metric for class distinction no one's saying what great knowledge did you acquire it's like are you in my group or that group because it's just a strata of classism so I can see the pushback of what people must feel like.

[418] It is elitism in a bizarre way.

[419] It's really has nothing to do with the education.

[420] It's just, okay, you're in my group.

[421] Today, the biggest part of somebody's college experience is what happens the April before they go to college when they get those acceptance letters.

[422] Because where you go, the name of the school that's going to be on that diploma, unfortunately, I think this is terrible.

[423] But it's probably going to matter more than all the courses that you take during those four years.

[424] what grades even got there?

[425] What did your master?

[426] Right, because what happens four and a half years after you get that acceptance letter is you go out into the job market and you meet these recruiters and they're looking at your resume in like 30 seconds.

[427] And what's the number one judgment they make on you is where you went to schools?

[428] If it says Harvard on your resume, they're going to look at you differently than if it says Custown University.

[429] But the tuition and the elitism work in concert because I got to say, even though I'm kind of a pronounce liberal, I don't know that I believe in debt forgiveness for the single reason of, well, who pays for the debt forgiveness?

[430] Well, the working class who doesn't have any opportunities really going to be asked to pay for these people to have gotten on a higher rung of the ladder and make more money than them.

[431] It's something tricky about debt forgiveness.

[432] On the surface, it's like, yes, all Americans should be able to go to college if they'd like to.

[433] I agree with that.

[434] That's wonderful.

[435] But who pays for it?

[436] Well, the working class who doesn't have any of the opportunities, they're supposed to pay for you to go to college.

[437] So it's a very tricky debate.

[438] My twist on that debate is this, because I do actually support loan forgiveness, one or two generations now of young Americans who, so many of them on one level or another, were sold a bill of goods.

[439] We haven't talked at all about how many of these kids got sucked into these for -profit universities that turned out to be scams.

[440] I mean, that's not the biggest component, but that's a significant component.

[441] To me, that's the heartbreaking one.

[442] That was like predatory collagen, praying on people's fear that they'd get left behind, and then the degree means nothing.

[443] These schools, you know, they ran boiler rooms, they had financial plans that knew exactly the tuition was based on the maximum amount of loans that they could get for each kid, not on what the actual cost of the education was, but how much can we get the government to chip in for guaranteed loans for these kids?

[444] It was just horrible.

[445] But I think even kids who went to universities that weren't scams, you know, went to public universities, they made decisions that they should have been better told what the risks were.

[446] So I would like to see forgiveness, apparently we're days away from President Biden making a decision on this.

[447] I don't see how he could just go out there and forgive everybody's loan and do nothing else about what's going on with college today.

[448] First of all, when you think about it, I mean, number one, what about this year's freshman class?

[449] They're still going to need loans to pay for it under the current system if you don't change the system.

[450] And so what are you going to start this whole cycle all over again from scratch?

[451] I mean, that makes no sense.

[452] Yeah, it's a Band -Aid.

[453] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

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[471] How did it get so expensive?

[472] Why did that happen?

[473] Just competition, supply, and demand.

[474] Now everyone wants to go to college, so they're in the driver's seat.

[475] why did it happen be?

[476] Are these places now crazy profitable?

[477] They are not crazy profitable.

[478] It's expensive to get good professors when we say that we want schools to do better about addressing issues like sexual harassment, for example, then the school's got to go out and hire administrators to deal with sexual harassment, right?

[479] I mean, it is expensive to operate at college.

[480] I do think the salaries that some top administrators get are kind of obscene, but cutting those wouldn't solve the whole problem.

[481] One thing I learned in my research was kind of fascinating is you look to the late 70s, early 80s when a lot of things started to change.

[482] And one thing is that some of these upscale schools, you know, they saw the projections that the younger demographic was going to decrease now that the baby boom was over.

[483] And it's like, well, how do we keep attracting the same number of students?

[484] And they learn that prestige marketing is more successful than marketing price when it comes to college.

[485] If they work on selling the prestige of a degree from this university, you're going to get more people than saying, hey, come here because it's $2 ,000 cheaper than the school nearby.

[486] They went like the luxury brand route.

[487] Yeah.

[488] And so it's the thing we were just talking about, the luxury arms race with the lazy rivers.

[489] Of all the universities, you won't be surprised to know that Harvard is the one that really often drives the marketplace.

[490] In the late 70s, right, when the economy was really tanking and you had stagflation and people were saying, well, how are people going to pay tuition now because the economy's gotten so bad?

[491] Harvard said, well, we're going to go out and we're going to raise tuition 5%.

[492] We're going to try this new model because we know that a lot of parents are dying to send their kids to Harvard and they'll pay anything.

[493] So, So we'll raise tuition and some of the extra money that we make from this will use to go to some of the disadvantaged kids and offer higher scholarships.

[494] So this was called the high tuition, high aid model.

[495] So it's like we're charging higher tuition to the kids who can pay and giving the aid to the kids who can't.

[496] At Harvard, it doesn't work badly.

[497] The thing is, you know, most universities don't have the endowment or the resources that Harvard has.

[498] It starts this whole cycle of competition among these schools.

[499] And state universities, you know, like a Penn State or Ohio State.

[500] They don't want to lose kids to these schools.

[501] So it's like, well, we need to start building, you know, rock walls or really fancy high -rise dorms because if not, these kids are going to go to Harvard.

[502] But they don't have the same economics of how to pay for it.

[503] So the cornerstone of my gratitude, I have two things that make me feel great about having made money.

[504] I can fill up my tank and I don't panic as I used to.

[505] And then the next one is really, oh my God, I don't have to be in fear for the next 10 years of how I'm sending my kids to college.

[506] That's like the greatest probably gift.

[507] that I have.

[508] I think about it all the time.

[509] Like, what a stressful looming date that's coming your way as a parent.

[510] So let's just say for a second, we're not going to publicly fund it.

[511] There's nothing we can do on the price side of it.

[512] Not the way things are set up.

[513] And so much of college in the way that we treat it is just our mindset about it, the mindset of valuing prestige over making more rational economic decisions, that my kid has to go to a certain school.

[514] It's not even necessarily Ivy League schools.

[515] I mean, in my book, I profiled this kid who is a really smart kid, but was a very unmotivated high school student had kind of mediocre grades.

[516] And one day, by happenstance, he visited Temple University in Philly.

[517] He just saw the campus and he said, oh, my God, I have to do this.

[518] This is my life.

[519] I want to go to Temple University in the worst way.

[520] And he kind of did because he's a brilliant kid.

[521] He got his degree.

[522] But at the end of it all, he and his mom, who signed under this thing called the Plus Loan that they have for parents.

[523] Between him and his mom, they owe $180 ,000.

[524] For going to a state -supported school, it's kind of like a public universities.

[525] And these stories are not uncommon.

[526] There are some schools like NYU.

[527] So many kids are dying for that experience of going to college in Manhattan and they want to be the next Spike Lee or something like that.

[528] Kristen Bell.

[529] Perfect example.

[530] I was not aware that's where she attended.

[531] Yeah.

[532] Well, she didn't make it all the way to the end, but she was there for a while.

[533] Yeah, but I'm sure if you ask her about it, she'll wrap out the reasons she wanted to go there, the experience.

[534] Absolutely.

[535] And they market that.

[536] And I've heard more debt horror stories from people who go to NYU or George Washington University in downtown DC, people who just are dying for this certain experience and they'll pay anything for it.

[537] And they're not thinking rationally.

[538] One of the things that I argue for in the book is to make it universal for 18 -year -old kids to take this gap year where they're not dashing off to college right away, where the government has these programs like, you know, the one that's being proposed now, the civilian climate corps, you know, where they go out and do these projects.

[539] like, I hate to sound like Donald Trump for a second, but sweeping the forest to minimize wildfires or these types of projects, do that for a year.

[540] And to me, the advantages of doing something like that are multiple.

[541] I think we put so much pressure on 18 -year -olds that if we hit the pause button, and I'm talking about an opportunity, not just for kids who are going off to fancy elite colleges, but I'm talking about kids from West Philadelphia or kids from rural Montana.

[542] And it's kind of funny when you think about it, if you've ever seen a World War II movie, Maybe you know this trope about the unit in D -Day or whatever, and it's the Jewish kid from Brooklyn and the farm kid from Alabama and all these different Americans who would never meet otherwise, and somehow they come together and form a unit.

[543] And that was a real thing.

[544] And we want to see people get together, but we don't want wars.

[545] Wars are terrible.

[546] Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

[547] And they're expensive.

[548] What a frivolous expense that would be.

[549] It was like, well, it's a lot cheaper than Afghanistan.

[550] Ultimately, the thing I think that people are losing sleep at night over is the division in this country.

[551] way that we're coming apart.

[552] And the phrase civil war has been probably used more in the last year than any time since 1865.

[553] And I don't know if we're going to have one, but the fact that we're even talking about it.

[554] Your book, you basically tie together this college issue with these really significant social movements that have come out of it.

[555] You mentioned Bernie Sanders, the modern GOP, Occupy Wall Street, even the George Floyd protests.

[556] Tell us how this college issue is the seed that has grown into these other, I guess I would call them pretty extreme ends of response to it.

[557] First of all, the great divide, the great fault line in American politics right now is educational attainment.

[558] So if you're a college graduate today, you're much more likely to join the Democratic Party.

[559] If you're a non -college graduate and in the working class, certainly if you're white, you're much more likely to join the Republican Party.

[560] And we're seeing this divide to the point where now groups like Latino Americans who used to be majority Democratic voters are drifting more and more to the Republican Party because Latinos without college degrees are wondering if there's a place for them in this highly educated Democratic Party.

[561] It's become this kind of snowballing trend, right?

[562] With the more that people who went to college feel that the Democrats and liberalism is our tribe, the more the trend accelerates.

[563] And like I say in the book, the biggest driver of Occupy Wall Street, which really flowed into the Bernie Sanders presidential campaign.

[564] Or QAnon, if you wanted.

[565] Well, we'll talk about that in a second.

[566] But on the left, the college debt crisis, it was really the thing that caused so many young people to say, the American dream isn't what I was told it was going to be.

[567] I was told the American dream was going to college.

[568] And if I had to borrow a few dollars to pay for it, it would be okay.

[569] We'd be able to pay it back.

[570] Instead, I got this college degree and I'm working as a barista.

[571] I owe $70 ,000.

[572] I'm living in my mom's basement.

[573] I know it's a cliche, but we all know people who are living in their mom's basement, who were 28, 29, 31 are still not able to live on their own and college debt is the thing that's really weighing them down.

[574] And so this really drove those movements on the left.

[575] And the George Floyd protests are fascinating because this woman, Dana Fisher, a sociologist from the University of Maryland who is really a leading expert in studying protest movements.

[576] She went out at the height of the George Floyd marches and went to some of the big marches in D .C. and New York with students to interview the people who were there and why they were there and also about their background.

[577] And, I mean, to me, the most startling finding was that 82 % of the people who took part in these marches had bachelor's degrees.

[578] Yeah, if I feel left out and I feel like elitism is maybe the biggest issue in America.

[579] And I noticed that everyone that's supporting this cause is these elites.

[580] It really taints my ability to evaluate the cause.

[581] It's just, oh, it's those elites doing this thing.

[582] I already hate the elites.

[583] How can I even give this thing an open ear?

[584] And they're trying to ram this thing down my throat because they think I'm not good enough.

[585] Or when they're out there marching about racism, they're really calling me a racist.

[586] Uh -huh.

[587] I'm a good American, and I go to church.

[588] Why do these people look down on me?

[589] And so this is what fuels the other side, right?

[590] You've probably seen the clip a million times of Donald Trump saying, I love the poorly educated.

[591] That was maybe an extreme example.

[592] That's not an abstract notion to me. I grew up in a lower middle class, working class, tons of people on welfare.

[593] I remember making the decision, which is like, oh, fuck you, you think we're so shitty.

[594] I'm going to own it.

[595] Who are you to judge that we're not living this way and we're divorced and we're all these things?

[596] Like, I know how I can decide to be prideful about it simply to further irritate you and let you know I'm not going to let you judge me. Like, I know that feeling.

[597] I can relate.

[598] Why do you think political correctness is such a big deal?

[599] When they say they love Donald Trump because he tells it like it is, it's really, he says the things that those people, people say we're not allowed to say he comes out and says them and also you know what he's giving me permission to say those things too because i want to be able to say what i think and not worry about who i'm offending yeah and by the way not even if i feel that way just simply i'm not going to allow you to judge me i'm not going to allow you to come up with yet another tool to shit on me you might not even care about the language as much as you care that these people are telling you you can't use it i'm not defending any of it but i understand the emotional underpinning of that right To be an American nowadays, even if you're a member of the working class or you live in a rural community, you know, in your day -to -day life, you've got to deal with government bureaucrats, you've got to deal with your doctors or educated people, and you pick up the newspaper was written by these college -educating people, saying what's wrong with your town or whatever.

[600] It's like, who are these people?

[601] The countervailing idea, it's like, these people aren't even that smart.

[602] I can change the oil in my car, and these people don't know how to screw in a light bulb.

[603] They can't grow food.

[604] They'd starve without me. Yeah, I get it.

[605] In the book, I profiled some of the main personality types in America today.

[606] Yeah, you do the four people you meet in today's America, right?

[607] Yeah, the left behind, the guy who lost his factory job and became a Trump fanatic from up around Scranton, Pennsylvania.

[608] He told me this story about how he didn't like the college -bound kids even back when he was in high school.

[609] And he said, yeah, you know, we had a shop teacher.

[610] And he said, you know those kids across the hall?

[611] And he pointed at the math and science class.

[612] And he goes, if we had a field trip to New York City, I could drop you guys off at 6 o 'clock.

[613] And I could come back at 6 the next morning.

[614] And I know you guys would be fine.

[615] It's because if we drop those kids off in New York at 6 o 'clock, they'd be dead by 7.

[616] And that's the attitude that these people, they look down on us and they think they're so smart.

[617] They couldn't survive an hour on the streets.

[618] These are the things that define our politics right now.

[619] What we're talking about right now is why somebody votes for Donald Trump or it's why somebody votes for Joe Biden.

[620] I'm a lifelong journalist who's mostly covered politics.

[621] When I went to Brown, I got my degree in political science.

[622] And you're taught the famous thing from Bill Clinton's campaign.

[623] It's the economy stupid.

[624] And people care about bread and butter issues.

[625] And I'm not saying they don't care about that.

[626] But the thing that really gets people in their guts is the level of respect they think they deserve or get or don't get in this society.

[627] Yeah.

[628] It's very simple.

[629] And we have landed in a place where, as you say, 37 % in the country is educated.

[630] So before you couldn't say it was us and them or half this, half that, but now it kind of is.

[631] But think about that.

[632] The 37 % who have these degrees, they run practically everything, right?

[633] I mean, they run all the major corporations.

[634] They run the universities.

[635] They run the newspapers and TV.

[636] They run everything.

[637] And the one thing that having a college degree doesn't do is it doesn't put you in the majority.

[638] You're still a minority of the people.

[639] And as long as we have free and fair elections, the 63 % without a degree have the ability to exercise that ultimate power over to 37%.

[640] And that's essentially what they did with Donald Trump.

[641] And, you know, as somebody who is a car carrying member of the PMC, the professional managerial class, for most of my life, people in our class talked about flyover country, right?

[642] those people out there in the heartland.

[643] What a term.

[644] You know, we fly over them.

[645] We ignore them.

[646] We don't really have to deal with them.

[647] We're literally above them.

[648] Right.

[649] Until that night in 2016, when Donald Trump was elected president.

[650] And it's like, oh my God, these people are lording it over me. You know, these people who are uneducated.

[651] Hillary Clinton called them deplorables.

[652] And in the book, one of the other personality types I write about is the people who became the resistance.

[653] I'm talking about college educated people from like my generation of baby boomers who, again, just like for all these other groups, the world didn't turn out the way, or America didn't turn out the way they were promised.

[654] They didn't bargain on somebody like Donald Trump being their president.

[655] And to this group, they couldn't abide by it.

[656] They're out in the streets protesting for the first time in their life because this person who is the king of saying, I love the uneducated, is now lording it over me. And I can't tolerate this.

[657] That's the flip side.

[658] Yeah, from their point of view, it kind of harkens back to the Pol Pot proletariat revolution, the agrarian, like, okay, now all people who know something are the enemy.

[659] That can't be the country we want.

[660] those are the two personality types, I would say, on the shoulders.

[661] Who are the other two in that four?

[662] My argument in the book is that basically, you know, we talk a lot about how the country is divided in half between liberals and conservatives.

[663] And I would take the pizza cutter and I'd rotate it by 90 degrees and cut again because people's attitudes are also influenced by when they grew up, by their age.

[664] Certainly when you look at the left or the Democratic coalition or whatever you want to call it, there are huge differences in attitude between older Democrats.

[665] I mean, you saw this play out in 2016 with Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders.

[666] There's a huge attitudinal difference between older people who are kind of bewildered and saying, why are even these young people who went to college and we gave them everything?

[667] And now they say they support socialism and they're so dissatisfied and I don't understand it.

[668] And these young people feel that they've been let down by their elders, that they were saddled with this debt, that boomers took everything for themselves and dumped these problems like debt or unaffordable housing costs and all these other problems on them.

[669] On the other side of the dial, when you look at people who are more inclined to be conservative or people who live in these areas that we call for better or worse Trump country, it's a little bit more subtle, but I do talk about it.

[670] I think in that case, young people aren't as politicized, but they're kind of falling off the grid.

[671] That's where I talk about how many young people are being lost to things like opioid addiction, the shockingly rapid increase in the rate of suicide among young adults.

[672] There's a term deaths of despair that these two Princeton economists, Kays and Deaton, came up with.

[673] They've written a couple books.

[674] Their latest book that came out in 2020, they found that these deaths of despair from suicide or drug overdoses are increasing among younger and younger people.

[675] And they said the biggest factor that's causing it is the lack of a college degree.

[676] Wow.

[677] I would say that more and more people in that group are actually prone to radicalization.

[678] It's been a lot the last couple of years about people falling down these YouTube rabbit holes.

[679] It's like where you go from being a video gamer to watching influencers on YouTube, and next thing you know, you're watching these right -wing people on their YouTube videos.

[680] Yeah, there's the great New York Times Rabbit Hold podcast.

[681] Yeah, we talk about all the time.

[682] That's why I use that phrase, yeah, Rabbit Hold, that kid in West Virginia.

[683] He's a classic example of this left -out generation of young people who seems like a smart kid, but between economics and other factors couldn't get it together to get a college diploma.

[684] He's working in his local fast food restaurant, and he's spending eight hours a day.

[685] on the computer, he starts watching YouTube videos and becomes a right -wing conspiracy theorist, and he snapped out of it, which gave us the podcast.

[686] Is one of the four, though, I could be totally wrong.

[687] I don't have the data to support it, but I do think that the actual majority is what we'd really call centrist.

[688] There's so many more people that don't make headlines that are actually kind of rational, recognize that the debate's healthy, that the left and right has, both has great points.

[689] Is there not a significant chunk that is that, that's still centrist?

[690] You're calling them, I guess, older Democrats or maybe they're older Republicans, but is there not any young centrist?

[691] Am I too optimistic?

[692] I think young centrists tend to be more, you know, apolitical or apathetic.

[693] I think to be involved in politics, to be engaged in this climate, I think you tend to be drawn more to the extremes.

[694] You know, if you're a young Democrat, you're going to be drawn more to AOC and Bernie Sanders than to a Hillary Clinton type person.

[695] Same thing on the right.

[696] You know, this whole Charlie Kirk turning point movement.

[697] and people like that, again, very extreme.

[698] Centrists often overlap in the Venn diagram with less engaged or less informed voters, people who just don't follow politics as much.

[699] I just don't think they can get a click.

[700] To be dead honest, I think there's an economic imperative that prevents any centrist's voice from being heard.

[701] Right.

[702] Yeah, what is the incentive to be a centrist?

[703] Political movements kind of work on a magnetic principle, right?

[704] The more power they get, the more people are drawn to them.

[705] And in the current environment we have now, what's going to really draw you to a centrist.

[706] Yeah, what's sexy about like this person heard both sides of it and acknowledged both sides had some valid points and came up with a compromise.

[707] It's just never going to be on CNN or Fox News.

[708] Centrism is kind of unnatural to me, but I think maybe that's because I'm a sports fan.

[709] I think of it in sports terms all the times.

[710] It's like you're not going to watch a baseball game and say, well, the Phillies played a good game, but you know, the Mets did pretty well too.

[711] I can really see why maybe they deserve to win.

[712] You know, it's like, of course not.

[713] I think if you are a fan, a partisan of any, activity, you're going to be drawing more to the edge.

[714] Right.

[715] Okay.

[716] So among the solutions that are out there for us, because you do have a prescriptive angle, back to the thing I think Germany does great.

[717] And here's an anecdote.

[718] I worked for General Motors for, I don't know, 14 years from 14 to 28, and we would do a big event.

[719] And at the events, you'd have the executives, the engineers, and then the technicians who actually made the cars work on the press day.

[720] So the journalist drove a functioning car.

[721] Now, occasionally, we would have show.

[722] shows with the German wing of General Motors, which was Vauxhall and Opal, when they would come what was very interesting as a young kid as I realized, oh, the American engineers and executives stay at the Nice Hotel and the technicians stay at the Motel 6.

[723] When the Germans would come to town, the technicians stayed with the engineers at the Nice Hotel.

[724] They had the same per diem.

[725] It was really stark, and you recognized immediately like, oh, the Germans value their technicians like their engineers, and that's representative in their educational system, which is there's a huge funnel for vocational training, and it's respected and honored, and it does give you, like we're talking about here, is it's become so classes, you go to college or not.

[726] There's no, like, did you go to Motek?

[727] That's awesome.

[728] Your artisan with machinery is a vocational investment worth exploring and even marketing.

[729] I think you're hitting on something huge.

[730] Most European countries have inexpensive, if not in some cases like Germany -free college.

[731] And yet, like you said, you also have these large number of people who go into trades.

[732] And I think the big difference is here in America, we've embraced this idea of a winner -take -all meritocracy.

[733] You go to college and you get to a degree and you're a winner or you don't go to college and you're a loser.

[734] The system works.

[735] You just didn't work it.

[736] Yeah.

[737] And so in America, it's like, well, if I don't go to college and if I just go to vocational school for a year and I end up being a machinist, it's not just that people won't respect me, but I'll materially have a worse life.

[738] I think that's not quite as true in a country in Germany for a couple reasons.

[739] I mean, the machinist is getting six weeks of vacation.

[740] You know, the machinist is getting childcare, right?

[741] And things like that.

[742] And in Germany, the workers in those plants have structures where they have more of a say in the way the workplace operates.

[743] They're not in the kind of indentured servitude school of working that you might find in a more aggressively capitalist and meritocratic system like we have in the United States.

[744] But don't you think we're at a point where the paradigm could shift because of the pandemic?

[745] Like, we're finding we don't have the people we need.

[746] They might get to price up through supply and demand where it would be a career people would want to because the lifestyle would be good.

[747] It would be like the unionized auto worker when I grew up.

[748] People are talking now about like, hey, this guy I went to high school with, you know, he went to trade school for a couple years and he's making $70 ,000 a year.

[749] And I went to college and I'm making $65 ,000 a year.

[750] And I have all this debt.

[751] maybe there was a different way to do this.

[752] And in the year, since I finished doing the writing and research on this book, you're just seeing more and more signs of another sea change and attitude about college that's starting to take effect.

[753] And you're seeing this in the statistics.

[754] It's come out now that since the start of the pandemic, college enrollment has fallen by about 9 % in this country.

[755] Everybody knew it was going to drop some because of the pandemic.

[756] But I mean, the pandemic in most people's minds is over now and everybody expected that things would hop back to normal.

[757] And instead, the trend of people deciding the college isn't for them is continuing.

[758] In fact, it may be accelerating.

[759] But I guess if I'm a voter and 63 % of the country didn't go to college, I'm not going to vote for debt forgiveness.

[760] It doesn't affect me. I'm just going to pay for it.

[761] But if it's in concert with, we're also going to start this great program where we're going to make certified tradespersons, okay, well, now this is something I can get behind.

[762] It's not just for them.

[763] It's for us.

[764] It's got to be a grand bargain.

[765] That's the way I see it.

[766] If I'm president Biden, first of all, I would elevate this issue to the top because I think this issue of education, it's still the determinant of the American dream for most people.

[767] And it just matters so much to families.

[768] And it's probably the foundation, as you point out in your book, of all the other problems.

[769] Yeah.

[770] I would put this on the front burner, but I would say I wouldn't just come out and do a loan forgiveness and that's it.

[771] Because like you said, it would absolutely trigger that reaction among the 63%.

[772] We shouldn't define it as the college problem.

[773] We should define it as the helping our young people become successful adults problem.

[774] Right.

[775] Or our middle class problem that encompasses everybody.

[776] We do great when more people go to college and we probably can do better than 37%.

[777] So let's increase college opportunities, but we're obviously not going to 100%.

[778] So what are we going to do for all those other people?

[779] And there's a demand for people with certain skills that aren't skills that require college degrees, whether it's specific trades or other types of technology jobs.

[780] There's a lot of necessary work in technology that you can do with a year or two of training and not a four -year degree.

[781] How do we get people into training programs for those?

[782] and with government support.

[783] In terms of the money, yeah, you're probably going to need something radical to pay for it.

[784] You know, Elizabeth Warren, who I'm a fan of.

[785] She's advocated a wealth tax.

[786] We've got to figure out what's workable in that area.

[787] Our faux meritocracy system has created incredible wealth for some people and just created struggle and debt for so many others.

[788] So I think it's absolutely fair to try and figure out a way to recalibrate that and rebalance.

[789] If there's some way for the Elon Musk of the world to help pay for this on some degree, maybe that's not enough, but I think this country can find the money.

[790] Every year I'm seeing that Congress just finds another $70 billion in a closet somewhere for the Pentagon.

[791] I know.

[792] That one's complicated too, you know, because I have for years been saying, well, look, we know where all the money is, 34 cents on a dollar is going to the DOJ in some form or another.

[793] It's 1 .4 trillion all in.

[794] And then Ukraine happens.

[795] And I'm like, oh, I guess I'm really glad we have this formidable military.

[796] It's like until the world is somewhat safe.

[797] But we can recalibrate.

[798] I mean, Putin and what's happening in Ukraine, is that a threat or is what could happen in Taiwan?

[799] Is that a threat?

[800] Absolutely.

[801] Of course it is.

[802] But you know what else is a threat to national security?

[803] Something like January 6th.

[804] Yeah, yeah.

[805] Something when people who haven't had a chance to really learn critical thinking, who didn't get any education in civics, don't really understand the basics of what makes for functioning democracy.

[806] A Pied Piper comes along and they go for these conspiracy theories.

[807] Next thing you know, they're marching on the Capitol.

[808] So that's a matter of national security, too.

[809] To me, education, both actual education, people learning more, but also these problems that we've been talking about in terms of resentment over education, how we determine who has worth.

[810] That's what it comes down to.

[811] Who has worth in society?

[812] Well, we should all have worth.

[813] And if people feel that they're looked upon as worthless, then they're going to act out.

[814] Why wouldn't they burn it down?

[815] There's a scratch in their head.

[816] Why would someone want to burn it down?

[817] Well, if the system excludes me, I'm delighted.

[818] to burn it down.

[819] Absolutely.

[820] Yeah, I think it's just having the opportunity to make money.

[821] Within Hollywood, this doesn't exist because so many people don't have degrees, but you have the capacity to be making so much money that that's where the status lies.

[822] You know, Dyson has a school, basically, that they've made.

[823] The vacuum company.

[824] Yeah, because they're building all these products and doing all this stuff, and they are bringing people in to work on their products and teach them about technology and stuff.

[825] How realistic is this?

[826] I don't know.

[827] But if more corporations could get on board with training programs, people who don't have college degrees but can learn this step.

[828] And I mean, you don't need a degree to be good at your, a lot of jobs.

[829] Well, Zuckerberg, did he graduate?

[830] I don't know.

[831] I don't think so.

[832] Exactly.

[833] No, I don't think so either.

[834] But you make a great point.

[835] You know, corporations are benefiting from the system, right?

[836] They're not the ones guaranteeing the student loans.

[837] They're demanding this credential, this college degree from people who they didn't pay for it.

[838] the person had to pay for it, and they had to pay for it by taking out loans.

[839] And so, yeah, I think a system where corporations realize that if they really want trained workers, they're going to have to pony up and pay for more of it.

[840] The one thing I would caution against is because this is a hot topic right now, companies paying for people to get certificates.

[841] Absolutely, that should be part of the solution.

[842] But again, I think some of our problems are about making higher education just all about career training and not about the thing that people were talking about in 1969, which is, how do I develop a better philosophy of life?

[843] If we make it all career and just totally cut out the critical thinking, philosophy of life, learning about other cultures, I think if we cut that part out of the system, we're going to lose something in the long run.

[844] That's a great point.

[845] You can go to trade school and learn to be a carpenter and still be required to take civics class.

[846] Yeah.

[847] And in fact, the trade school that I went to for the book, the Williamson School of Trade, they teach these kids morals and civics and all those things.

[848] I mean, you don't have to know civics to be able to hammer a building together, but you do become a better citizen if you know civics.

[849] When I think back on my college experience, I guess studying political science prepared me a little bit for a career covering politics.

[850] But to me, the fact that I was able to take art history, because I knew nothing about art and painting when I set foot on that campus.

[851] And now I can go to a museum and I can really appreciate great art because I took that class.

[852] That should be a part of the experience.

[853] I mean, it shouldn't necessarily be the whole experience.

[854] We don't want a nation of 20 million puppeteering graduates necessarily.

[855] Art appreciators?

[856] Yeah.

[857] Yeah.

[858] For me, it was Western Siv.

[859] Something as simple is, wow, all these things you take for granted, do you know, your architecture, at some point someone decided ceiling should be eight feet tall.

[860] If you were in the Middle East, that's not the height of buildings, you'd get nauseous inside because it's built to the height of a person.

[861] Wait, it's that arbitrary?

[862] None of these things I should take as absolutes are for granted.

[863] That's, that happened a short minute ago?

[864] To me, it was just like, that's the gateway of like, oh, everything I take for granted had a beginning and also is worth questioning.

[865] That to me is like the excitement of life.

[866] Yeah, which is something that we give this $20 term critical thinking, right?

[867] And maybe that phrase puts some people off.

[868] But what you just described, I mean, that's basically critical thinking, right?

[869] What are the things that drive people to make good decisions?

[870] Because if I study that, then I'll start making better decisions.

[871] Right.

[872] I'm in a position to question them in a way that's actually productive, maybe.

[873] Right.

[874] Is it really possible for somebody to be hiding little kids in the basin of a piece of parlor and it's like no you know now that i think about it that's probably not possible if bill gates is taking this adrenal chrome why is he still aging so dramatically exactly it's not working even if it were true why is he doing it yeah i'm really starting to question everything now well well it's been a pleasure talking to you i hope everyone checks out after the ivory tower falls how college broke the american dream and blew up our politics and how to fix it again The political divide is such an overwhelming feeling for all of us.

[875] And it seems like something no one can get their arms around and you can't prevent.

[876] But I actually think you're on to something really, really crucial about how we dig our way out of it.

[877] It's been a great pleasure to talk to you.

[878] It was great talking to both you guys.

[879] Thank you so much for having me on.

[880] I appreciate it.

[881] And just text your wife, I'm going to be a hair late getting to LAX because this went long.

[882] But we're going to blame you for it.

[883] If she's got to wait in that Uber line, she's going to be mad.

[884] I got to warn you right now, Dax.

[885] All right.

[886] Well, Will, thanks so much for your time.

[887] and great luck with after the ivory tower falls.

[888] I hope we get to talk to you again.

[889] I really appreciate you guys having me. Be good.

[890] Yeah, take care.

[891] Stay tuned for more armchair expert, if you dare.

[892] And now my favorite part of the show, the fact check with my soulmate Monica Padman.

[893] I'm going to have some M &Ms.

[894] Get that cavity going?

[895] Yeah.

[896] So you do the next level?

[897] Yeah.

[898] I'm going to be a little winded at the top of this.

[899] And I'm going to be hungry.

[900] You're munchy non -sum, as aforementioned peanut M &Ms, which you love.

[901] Yeah.

[902] And Robbie brought a bucket in here.

[903] I know.

[904] What is that?

[905] Three pounds?

[906] Does it say on the side?

[907] I think in the front label.

[908] It has milk chocolate.

[909] No, everyone knows the ingredients.

[910] Sugar chocolate.

[911] I'm looking for a weight.

[912] There you go.

[913] At the bottom.

[914] Three pounds.

[915] Is it three pounds?

[916] Yeah.

[917] Wow.

[918] Rob was really sweet because one of our last episodes, we talked about our favorite Halloween candies and what we were hoping to achieve.

[919] from Halloween.

[920] He bought for the attic, snow caps.

[921] Your favorite?

[922] Swedish fish.

[923] His favorite?

[924] No, another one I love.

[925] And three pound peanut Eminem's.

[926] No, Rob's the most thoughtful boy I've ever met.

[927] And then he brought me and he handed to me on the sly like he had brought me drugs.

[928] He handed me three individual Cadbury fruit nuts.

[929] There's like a dozen of them by the coffee shop.

[930] Oh, there is?

[931] Yeah.

[932] But anyway, I'm going to be a little wind of because I knew we were starting at 12.

[933] and I kept taking on menial task after menial test, delaying my arrival at Blackmole Paradise, but still committed to do the full work that I was going to do in an hour, but it in a half hour.

[934] Whoa.

[935] So I'm now, can't catch my breath, sweating profusely.

[936] That's just an editor's note, if that's something you say.

[937] I'm going to start saying that.

[938] Hey, you know what, Monica?

[939] A lot of beautiful feedback from the robot.

[940] Robots Welcome at This Party Song.

[941] They love that.

[942] I love that, so I get it.

[943] Yeah.

[944] And even a call to Bob Murvac to somehow get that into some music.

[945] Can't we just like live in a world where we just like what it is, and we don't have to make it better, and we don't have to matter.

[946] Just satisfies and not maximized for once.

[947] No, maximizers to the max.

[948] This is, you take something good and you try to make it great.

[949] And then you break it and then you try again.

[950] No, exactly.

[951] Then you ruin it because it was perfect as it was.

[952] It doesn't disappear.

[953] It'll still always exist and it's.

[954] natural and pure form be him be a satisfier no be him be the robot oh right now yeah i got a i don't know if i can never do it again what yeah wait hold on our robots welcome at this party yes they are just wipe your feet on the mat okay one thing i forgot i've been wanting to poke a hole but i love it Is that they have the same voice?

[955] Yes.

[956] Why is the robot greeting another robot?

[957] So you're a maximizer now.

[958] So here we go.

[959] Our robots walk out at this party.

[960] Yes, you know we love robots at parties.

[961] There you go.

[962] It's not better.

[963] It's just different.

[964] No, I like that actually is a robot that's greeting another robot.

[965] Yep.

[966] Yeah.

[967] But he feels better than like he gets to decide.

[968] Oh, wow.

[969] classist.

[970] Well, even worse, that robot answering the door may be a slave because maybe he's owned by a human that's throwing the party and the robot's in charge of opening the door.

[971] And so the other robots like, are robots welcome or you, you know, you just work in.

[972] I not only work here, I also attend the parties at our throne.

[973] Wait, what does he say?

[974] I missed it.

[975] Not only do I work here.

[976] I also want to.

[977] the parties at her throne.

[978] A tent, got it.

[979] Oh, wow.

[980] Okay.

[981] So it sounds like robots are welcome.

[982] Yes, and I'll be the only one required to work.

[983] So don't stress about the chores.

[984] Just have some fun and stay away from the tub.

[985] Would you mind if I help you?

[986] That's a nice offer, but I've gotten it on my own.

[987] We could split up your duties.

[988] Oh, my God.

[989] Oh, my God.

[990] My stomach hurt.

[991] So, recap of Halloween.

[992] Yes.

[993] It was so great.

[994] Rob.

[995] Yes.

[996] Okay.

[997] It was great.

[998] Calvin had a blast.

[999] Vinny?

[1000] Did he know where he was at?

[1001] He was here for like a half hour.

[1002] Okay.

[1003] Vinny was so cute.

[1004] He had a little hat on.

[1005] I know.

[1006] I thought he looked like.

[1007] Kerman.

[1008] I thought he was Kermit.

[1009] But what was he?

[1010] Over the Garden Wall character.

[1011] See, Rob, everything's too pedestrian for Rob.

[1012] Nothing's indie enough for Rob.

[1013] Like, he came looking like a lead singer for an emo band.

[1014] I know, like, in theory, it was a nod to some other thing, but you look like an emo bad lead singer.

[1015] I'll take both.

[1016] Calvin had an upside -down teapot.

[1017] Yeah, but in a, like, ironic way.

[1018] No, the character wears.

[1019] Yeah, the character wears.

[1020] Well, the character in the show is an elephant.

[1021] Okay.

[1022] Wearing a teapot on his head.

[1023] Oh, so cute.

[1024] But he was that.

[1025] Elephant if he were the lead singer of an indie band.

[1026] And Natalie looked like a sexy indie lead singer too.

[1027] The whole family looked sexy.

[1028] No, not the baby.

[1029] Oh, particularly, Calvin looked sexy as fuck.

[1030] It was really, it was beautifully decorated.

[1031] The whole house was.

[1032] Oh, Kristen did an insane job of preparing the house.

[1033] The house was spooky as hell.

[1034] Yes, Carly too.

[1035] Shout out to Carly.

[1036] Carly and Kristen.

[1037] Yeah.

[1038] I think Anna just watched.

[1039] No, she didn't.

[1040] I'm teasing.

[1041] I have no idea.

[1042] Because I was outside the whole day in the yard, getting more hay bales, doing that whole thing.

[1043] But it was just a blast.

[1044] And unfortunately for Perfect 10 Charlie, this is going to come as a big shocker to people.

[1045] I know.

[1046] This is sad news.

[1047] He's indomitable.

[1048] He's a beast.

[1049] He's the immovable object.

[1050] Well, no, he's a human.

[1051] Well, as it turns out, he was a human.

[1052] He was celebrating winning the championship of his eight -year -old son's football game and ripped his Achilles.

[1053] Yeah.

[1054] So he's down in Achilles.

[1055] He couldn't really participate.

[1056] But great news for me. He had to ride shotgun in Eric's Tesla to pull the hay ride.

[1057] White Tesla.

[1058] Oh, you're right.

[1059] Is that why you didn't ride on the hay ride?

[1060] Yeah, I didn't like it.

[1061] Well, that's true.

[1062] If they're coming for you, they would try to lure you onto the back.

[1063] And then all of a sudden, inexplicably, the car would just take over because they can drive themselves.

[1064] And then floor off and through the gate out into traffic.

[1065] Exactly.

[1066] That was a good call because I was in control of it when you weren't in back, but who's to say, what would have happened?

[1067] Yeah, and I'm smarter than that.

[1068] But Perfect End Charlie was in the passenger seat.

[1069] So we got to chit -chat the whole time during the hay ride.

[1070] And the hay ride is, it's two straight hours of circling the neighborhood.

[1071] Yeah.

[1072] There's a couple really tight turns.

[1073] We've gone over this in the past.

[1074] I've bragged about it in the past.

[1075] I'm going to brag about it again.

[1076] Do it.

[1077] There were some new obstacles this year.

[1078] The turnaround at the top, there was a lot of cars up there.

[1079] Made it a little bit more challenging.

[1080] Loved it.

[1081] it's really that turn into the alley.

[1082] Yeah.

[1083] Got a couple of real hearty rounds of applause.

[1084] You know how much I love that.

[1085] You love it.

[1086] Oh, my God.

[1087] People actively cheering.

[1088] What a good driver!

[1089] I mean, this is...

[1090] She's like the worst thing ever for you.

[1091] But yeah.

[1092] Best thing for me, worst thing for me. Yeah.

[1093] Yeah.

[1094] It is incredibly impressive.

[1095] And some jackal parked his fucking Yukon directly in front of the left turn.

[1096] So that made it even...

[1097] There was a point when I pull up and was like, I'm not sure we're going to be able to make it with that.

[1098] that car there.

[1099] Anyways, as I was doing lap after lap after lap, I'm kind of increasing my speeds.

[1100] Not unlike practice one, practice two, practice three, you see the times drop.

[1101] And then qualifying finally, they really come down.

[1102] By lap 10, I'm really boogeing.

[1103] And it occurred to me, if you do 15 laps, you're going to hit that wall.

[1104] So just getting increasingly more confident and coming in a little hotter and hotter each time.

[1105] And then it became kind of a thing Charlie was laughing about because he kind of concluded he's going to hit that wall.

[1106] Like, you know, he's begging for it.

[1107] Luckily, it shut down right before I think I was getting a little too big for my bridges.

[1108] Good.

[1109] And I'm also glad because you had lots of kids in the back.

[1110] And the sides were not that high.

[1111] That's secondary to the time.

[1112] You know, you got to get the fast time.

[1113] No, there were a ton of kids.

[1114] It's a very gentle ride.

[1115] The only thing hair raising is that turn, which I know when it back really knows, you know, it's not like the speed is high.

[1116] It's so cute.

[1117] It was really decorated beautifully.

[1118] You did a great job with the lights.

[1119] That's an update from last time.

[1120] A lot of exterior illumination.

[1121] That didn't exist last year.

[1122] I loved that part.

[1123] I'm learning each year.

[1124] So this year's improvements were the lights.

[1125] And then also last year I kept getting distracted with trying to get the right song playing out of the speaker and back.

[1126] This year I made a playlist.

[1127] And I even refined it throughout the week.

[1128] I'd listen to it while I was driving around.

[1129] Although that's on theme, it's not a good enough song.

[1130] Wow.

[1131] It's constantly trimming.

[1132] What was your favorite?

[1133] What was the song you were looking forward to the most?

[1134] It's never going to get better than Thriller.

[1135] That's the APEC.

[1136] Halloween dance song.

[1137] Exactly.

[1138] It's just, but that's so stant.

[1139] Was there any, like, pop out songs?

[1140] Ghostbusters, everyone was singing along.

[1141] Yeah, Ghostbusters worked better this year than it has in the past.

[1142] Like, somehow it's having a resurgence.

[1143] It just sounded a little better this year.

[1144] Okay.

[1145] Yeah.

[1146] What I end up doing is I end up just wanting to go back to the Michael Jackson well, but they're not even on theme.

[1147] So I pepper them in, which I like, you know, Michael Jackson, spooky spooky, P -Y -T pretty young thing.

[1148] That has nothing to do with Halloween.

[1149] It's pretty creepy because it's, The pedophile.

[1150] If you read into it, yeah, it's probably the scariest song out of all of them.

[1151] I know.

[1152] So anyways, it was a great time.

[1153] Girls are not old enough that, like, they did a lap, and then they were just out on their own.

[1154] They were cruising the neighborhood.

[1155] Trick or knock, knock, knock, smell my fucking feet.

[1156] Give me them treats.

[1157] All that stuff.

[1158] She was being bossy, but in an inclusive way.

[1159] Who?

[1160] Like, she was feeling the pride of, like, I'm hosting all these people in my neighborhood.

[1161] Let me show you what house we go to.

[1162] But in a very inclusive.

[1163] so I was keeping my eye on it.

[1164] Great.

[1165] Some maturity.

[1166] Used to just be bossy.

[1167] I love that.

[1168] She even, when Calvin came, like, grabbed Wilder and introduced them.

[1169] And I was like, you guys are the same age?

[1170] Oh, she did.

[1171] That's sweet.

[1172] Good.

[1173] I had to talk with her pre -party.

[1174] I was like, listen, it's your job to introduce people and help them feel included.

[1175] Wow.

[1176] Hey, she did it.

[1177] You always say shit to your kids.

[1178] They don't do it.

[1179] So this is a big delight.

[1180] Even Natalie was like, that was really nice of Lincoln.

[1181] Oh, my God.

[1182] That's great.

[1183] Did she introduce Vinny to, The dogs, because they're on the same level right now.

[1184] Well, he and whiskey.

[1185] Yeah.

[1186] They're both absolutely miniature.

[1187] And then parties over, well, trick -or -treating is over.

[1188] Then there's still at the house.

[1189] There's fire going.

[1190] There's all that fun stuff.

[1191] Then Eric and I hop in the sauna.

[1192] And you joined in your clothing, your full wardrobe.

[1193] Yeah.

[1194] I came in for a second to finish a conversation.

[1195] Then I was in there for 10 minutes.

[1196] Yeah, you did virtually the full stint.

[1197] but in your full outfit.

[1198] What I was afraid of is that you were a little buzz and didn't realize you were overheating.

[1199] Then I had this terrifying image of you now driving home, dehydrated, and losing consciousness.

[1200] Because sometimes when I get out of the sauna, I feel lightheaded like I'm going to fall down.

[1201] Yeah, me too, in saunas.

[1202] Yeah.

[1203] And if you add like a little bit of wine, I just got.

[1204] But I only had one glass of wine.

[1205] Oh.

[1206] So I wasn't buzzed enough for that.

[1207] But I am really tired today.

[1208] So I think maybe I didn't replen.

[1209] It took it out.

[1210] Yeah.

[1211] You probably didn't rehydrate.

[1212] I drank water, but I didn't drink electrolytes.

[1213] Yeah.

[1214] My thing.

[1215] Let's be honest.

[1216] You came in there kind of to see if we could get Eric a sampling of your sweat.

[1217] Exactly.

[1218] That's what I was assuming, too.

[1219] It was for a lick.

[1220] Yeah.

[1221] That is why.

[1222] But I didn't produce enough sweat.

[1223] Well.

[1224] I mean, I did, but it was in my boobs and he said that.

[1225] Or he said, that's fine.

[1226] And I said, no. Listen.

[1227] Okay.

[1228] Ding, ding, ding.

[1229] That's part of this episode.

[1230] Oh, great.

[1231] I don't remember why, but we bring it up because I love them.

[1232] Oh, no, next week's.

[1233] Fuck.

[1234] Anyway, for next week.

[1235] Easter egg.

[1236] Next week we talk about electrolytes for a second.

[1237] Oh, people are going to be counting down the days to find out this hot electric light.

[1238] It's obvious the guest, too.

[1239] No, it's not.

[1240] I know.

[1241] Rob is both a catalyst and out to sea.

[1242] You're like making nonsense.

[1243] And it's a good catalyst sometimes.

[1244] And then other times it's just completely unraveled.

[1245] Like, now we got a spent, what are we talking about now?

[1246] I know.

[1247] Okay.

[1248] So I think people saw my post, but update, I did not go as Apple Pay.

[1249] Ironically, we both win as cats.

[1250] Yeah.

[1251] Well, because cat is like the easiest thing to do.

[1252] Or if your daughter's and your wife just hand it to you and they say, you're this.

[1253] Right.

[1254] Well, that's even the easiest thing.

[1255] Yeah.

[1256] Apex season.

[1257] But if you have a last -minute situation like I did, like I was trying Apple Pay.

[1258] I printed out the stuff.

[1259] I printed out double -click to pay.

[1260] I printed out an Apple.

[1261] I had on all -black and I was taping it on.

[1262] It just wasn't going to work.

[1263] It just wasn't going to work.

[1264] It was too provocative.

[1265] Okay.

[1266] It was.

[1267] It was.

[1268] There was no way to put where to put the sign.

[1269] More provocative than the outfit you ended up in?

[1270] Well, that one.

[1271] That's not provocative.

[1272] Rob, did you get it?

[1273] It's just a tight black outfit, right?

[1274] Well, like a spandex onesie.

[1275] Yeah.

[1276] I don't know how much more provocative you can get than a spandex one.

[1277] I was wearing one myself.

[1278] I'm guilty of it myself.

[1279] Well, I think it's more provocative to have a sign that says double click on your boobs.

[1280] Right.

[1281] That's provocative.

[1282] Do you think people would convince that it means like click on each, like do a double click?

[1283] I don't know what they would think.

[1284] But this is why I couldn't do it.

[1285] Okay.

[1286] Anyway, so I wore a cat suit.

[1287] from Wolford shout out.

[1288] Do they specialize in cat suits or do they make all kinds of stuff?

[1289] And then I wore blazer.

[1290] I felt pretty good in my cat suit.

[1291] I wish that was a look I could pull like that was a fine look for people.

[1292] It can be.

[1293] Spring 2023, the runways, fashion next spring is going to be no pants.

[1294] A lot of the shows, some of the shows, no pants, like just underwear.

[1295] No way.

[1296] That's coming towards us as a new style.

[1297] Yeah.

[1298] Like long shirts or like underwear out?

[1299] Depends.

[1300] Like I'll show you this picture.

[1301] Tucked into your underwear?

[1302] This is an important picture.

[1303] Tuck in your shirt.

[1304] You look like a slob.

[1305] I want to do some while you're looking for that, some honorable mentions.

[1306] First and foremost, Matt and Laura.

[1307] Matt looked incredible as Rip.

[1308] That picture of he and Laura on the truck leaning on my truck as Beth and Rip is about as good as I've seen as a costume.

[1309] I mean, he really looks like rip.

[1310] It was really good, yeah.

[1311] Wow.

[1312] Okay, here's the picture.

[1313] This is a picture from, I want to say, could you send it to me?

[1314] Maybe Balenciaga.

[1315] So I don't have to see it from across the room.

[1316] Sure.

[1317] It's a sweater and a long sleeve tea underneath and tights and underwear.

[1318] Oh, so there's tights.

[1319] There's tights, but they're see -through.

[1320] Here I'll send you to you to wrap.

[1321] Oh, yeah, I think it just came up here.

[1322] Well, I would welcome the style, of course.

[1323] It is like half tucked in too Yeah that part's night That's a French tuck She's doing a French tuck into her tights Yeah kind of yeah Okay Any other honorable mentions you want to throw out No I mean I mean everyone looked great You know your family looked minus you But the hocus pocus girls Yes And Kristen They looked amazing I didn't want to call out my own family So thanks for doing that But yeah I think we crushed Well they did the cat is very random oh is the cat is thackeray which i learned the name of it last night and i don't know why i was like wait his name's zachary but he has a list he's a human that gets turned into a cat right okay now it makes sense i didn't understand why you were a cat i haven't seen the movie but this is what i imagine because his name's thackeray this is what i imagine his character's like right Are they missing their cat, Thackeray?

[1324] Oh, God.

[1325] So in my mind, that's who I was playing, simply because the name was Thackeray, which is a really disturbing name.

[1326] It's too close to Zachary.

[1327] It's odd.

[1328] It's an odd choice.

[1329] But I don't think he's like that.

[1330] You thought I just randomly went as a fucking cat?

[1331] Yeah.

[1332] Oh, come on.

[1333] Well, not random.

[1334] That they gave you that.

[1335] You said it a million times.

[1336] They just handed you a costume.

[1337] Yeah, but you think they would just be like, well, fuck it.

[1338] Let's just make him a cat, even though we're witches.

[1339] No, he's a parent.

[1340] I'm told an integral part of the story.

[1341] He was like the old -timey boy from like the 1600.

[1342] They kill his sister and turn him into a cat for eternity.

[1343] Right.

[1344] Oh, my God.

[1345] I forgot about all of this.

[1346] I'm here to get revenge for my fifth.

[1347] My name is Thackeray.

[1348] Oh, my God.

[1349] Dax.

[1350] I cover my...

[1351] Fax.

[1352] Fax.

[1353] Spandax.

[1354] I figured that out, and I loved it.

[1355] Spandax.

[1356] It's been there forever.

[1357] Hocus, Pocus, ding, ding.

[1358] Shout out.

[1359] My friend.

[1360] who I did UCB with, Jen DeAngelo.

[1361] She wrote Hocus Pocus 2.

[1362] Oh, hot dog.

[1363] Congratulations.

[1364] Big congratulations because that movie's huge.

[1365] Shout out, Jen.

[1366] Good job, Jen.

[1367] Good job, Jen.

[1368] Maybe she can explain to you on the side how he ended up the name.

[1369] About Thackeray.

[1370] I think that's in Hocus Pocus 1, right?

[1371] Okay.

[1372] But she'll still know.

[1373] She's done her research.

[1374] I would imagine she's at least seen it.

[1375] Yeah, he wants her avenger his sister.

[1376] And he's training to be able to do a fact flip.

[1377] So I don't even know what is main.

[1378] It was, but.

[1379] Did you get on, for the picture, did you get down like a cat and curl your back up?

[1380] Oh, I should have.

[1381] I didn't arch my back at all.

[1382] I would have been out of frame, I fear.

[1383] I was making clawing gestures.

[1384] Because I was going, kitty likes a scratch.

[1385] This is before I figured out Thackeray's character.

[1386] Well, boys are kitties, too, no?

[1387] Well, I just mean he's an actual boy.

[1388] He's, he's not a boy cat.

[1389] He's a boy.

[1390] Right.

[1391] That's right.

[1392] He's welcome to get in the tub.

[1393] Is he even though right now he's in cat form?

[1394] No, because you get too much cat hair in the tub.

[1395] Wow.

[1396] Well, that's Halloween.

[1397] Well, I did learn that you were pretty disappointed with my costume.

[1398] I think I picked up, I read between the lines.

[1399] I was not.

[1400] Until you just found out that same costume too.

[1401] I know.

[1402] And in your defense, that's why, because you're like, fuck it.

[1403] I'm just going as a cat.

[1404] I'm going to phone it in.

[1405] Then you got there and you saw that.

[1406] I was in it.

[1407] So you thought it was equally phoned in.

[1408] Of course.

[1409] It was really intentional, mine.

[1410] By your family.

[1411] That's right.

[1412] I'm defending them, not me. Oh, oh, I see.

[1413] Well, they didn't need defending because I thought, oh, they're doing like girls hocus pocus.

[1414] Like, that's so cute.

[1415] And dad needs a costume, so let's just give him this cat thing.

[1416] Right.

[1417] You know?

[1418] Okay.

[1419] That made sense to me in my head.

[1420] Anyway, oh, my God, let's talk about this.

[1421] Okay.

[1422] I realize something really important.

[1423] Okay.

[1424] What I got?

[1425] Oh, my God.

[1426] You got to pace yourself.

[1427] The best part is you've just come from the dentist.

[1428] The first thing you told me when you walked down, I said, how was your disappointment?

[1429] You said, I've got a cavity brewing.

[1430] Next stop, three -pound jug of M &Ms.

[1431] That'll fix that.

[1432] I didn't plan ahead and I'm hungry.

[1433] I know what's happening.

[1434] What?

[1435] You want to get a big rotten cavity so that your tooth will fallout so you can justify getting veneers.

[1436] Oh, I didn't think of that, but I like it.

[1437] Shout out to my awesome dentist.

[1438] We do not need to shout out your dentist anymore.

[1439] No, we don't.

[1440] Yes, we do.

[1441] I'm just saying you can say you love your dentist and you don't have to plug them every time.

[1442] Okay.

[1443] So I went to the dentist.

[1444] I love him.

[1445] Love the dentist.

[1446] Go there.

[1447] Have a dentistry.

[1448] Oh, my God.

[1449] And, um, anywho.

[1450] So, so I do have a cavity.

[1451] I was in a hurry because I also had to get my eyebrows done.

[1452] Okay.

[1453] So it was a quick in and out.

[1454] So that's why we didn't do anything with the cavity.

[1455] Right.

[1456] I have to go back.

[1457] But you, do you love how your eyebrows are done?

[1458] Yeah.

[1459] But you never shout that person out.

[1460] Yes, I do.

[1461] Strike.

[1462] I've literally talked about it on here.

[1463] I love it.

[1464] Strike with three eyes, right?

[1465] Yeah.

[1466] You should hear my, you should hear my.

[1467] Is it really?

[1468] Yeah.

[1469] No. Yeah.

[1470] What's that mean?

[1471] Her last name is Stryker.

[1472] K -E.

[1473] That's how it's spelled.

[1474] The Stryker sisters.

[1475] Yeah.

[1476] Ooh, that sounds like a cool 80s metal band.

[1477] She's a big dog in the...

[1478] In the eyebrow game?

[1479] I brought game, yeah.

[1480] Beverly Hills, but you should hear my mapple, my Apple, my Apple maps when it says like, you've arrived.

[1481] Oh, it's a robot.

[1482] It's an Apple robot and it says, you've arrived at strike.

[1483] You've arrived at your party.

[1484] Would you mind if I came along with you?

[1485] Our robots will come at that party.

[1486] Yeah, we like him.

[1487] I go home tomorrow.

[1488] You go home, I go to Texas.

[1489] to pick up big brown.

[1490] Can't wait.

[1491] Big reveal.

[1492] I'm going to save it, but I've done a big upgrade.

[1493] Oh.

[1494] And I will unveil it on Instagram, my big upgrade.

[1495] Oh, cool.

[1496] Yeah, it's not going to mean much to nearly anybody, but for the people, it's going to mean something to.

[1497] It's going to give them boners.

[1498] It's a T -Rex school.

[1499] Close.

[1500] You're in the right zone.

[1501] Cool.

[1502] Airbrush picture of Monica, baby Monica on the side.

[1503] Oh, my God.

[1504] On the ceiling.

[1505] Big brown baby.

[1506] Because it's going to be an enormous picture of you.

[1507] Big brown baby.

[1508] Big brown little baby.

[1509] Oh, that's so fun.

[1510] I'm excited.

[1511] Oh, yeah.

[1512] I am too.

[1513] I am too.

[1514] What is it?

[1515] Well, you'll see.

[1516] Tell me. Surprises are hard.

[1517] You won't care.

[1518] You'll be in the group that doesn't really care all that much unfortunate.

[1519] Like Aaron's going to have a heart attack.

[1520] What is it then?

[1521] I'll cut it.

[1522] Wouldn't you rather see?

[1523] No. Come on.

[1524] I want to know.

[1525] You said I won't care.

[1526] I know, but I still want you to see.

[1527] Fine.

[1528] Okay, thank you.

[1529] Okay.

[1530] It means a lot to me. Hopefully you'll be happy for me. I will.

[1531] Yeah.

[1532] I still will if you tell me now.

[1533] Like if you got a mural of Matt Damon airbrushed on the hood of your Mercedes and you sent a picture, I would be so happy for you.

[1534] I personally would be like, well, you ruined a nice AMG.

[1535] You'd be so mad if I did that.

[1536] I'd step over that feeling and embrace how happy you'd be to be able to just glance at your hood as you're driving and always check in with Matt.

[1537] Okay.

[1538] Would you go Circa Goodwill hunting or would you become more mature?

[1539] No, I'd go old school.

[1540] Will hunting.

[1541] But listen, is it a mural?

[1542] It's not.

[1543] I wish it was a mural.

[1544] Wow.

[1545] I'm not really now a major mural in the future.

[1546] Really?

[1547] Yeah, but I got to get the bus back.

[1548] Like, I don't know how long that would take.

[1549] I can't imagine how much that would cost.

[1550] You know, we're not there yet.

[1551] All right, we'll get there.

[1552] I'll hoping to get a million miles out of this bus, so we have time.

[1553] Ding, ding, ding.

[1554] I was at the gas station today, the place I frequent.

[1555] Funny misunderstanding on the way in.

[1556] After I learned of your dentistry.

[1557] Your almost cavity.

[1558] Yeah.

[1559] I said, oh, did you get gas?

[1560] Yeah.

[1561] And you go, yeah, how did you know?

[1562] And you got that really suspicious.

[1563] How did you know, like, when I knew the Xanthum gum?

[1564] It flashed in front of your eyes.

[1565] I'm monitoring you somehow.

[1566] I saw it.

[1567] I saw it.

[1568] It was a millisecond, but I saw it pass over your face.

[1569] You still think there's a 5 % chance I'm monitoring you, don't you?

[1570] I don't care if you are.

[1571] I know, but you do think there's still like a 5 % chance I'm somehow monitoring.

[1572] I don't because I think you would have rescued me out of some bad situation.

[1573] if that were true.

[1574] But I'd be blowing my cover.

[1575] Oh, fuck.

[1576] So then what's the point?

[1577] Like, it'd have to be life or death for me to blow my cover.

[1578] Okay, then yeah, I do think there's a chance.

[1579] Anyways, classic mix -up.

[1580] I meant where you were on laughing gas because you were a little drowsy.

[1581] Yeah.

[1582] And you had gotten fuel in your AMG that doesn't yet have a mural.

[1583] Now, would that be a fun surprise for you?

[1584] No, please don't do that.

[1585] I like it the way it is.

[1586] beautiful and it does not need help.

[1587] Okay.

[1588] Why, why does it not work sometimes?

[1589] Like when it just like keeps clicking, what is that?

[1590] Well, generally that's because the nozzles auto shutoff is pressure sensitive.

[1591] Uh -huh.

[1592] So it can detect, right, that the gas coming out is now going instead of into air, it's going into fuel.

[1593] and there's some back pressure and it's got a little clicker in there that shuts off the valve when it gets back pressure.

[1594] There can be enough buildup of fumes in your tank while you're driving.

[1595] This happens particularly on hot days.

[1596] Like there were times on car shows, one in particular I can think of.

[1597] We had a Corvette launch show in Palm Springs in July and we had an auto cross track.

[1598] So these cars were going on this racetrack over and over and over again all day long in 115 degree heat.

[1599] When we would get to the gas station and crack the gas cap, it would go like you thought it was going to blow up.

[1600] And then when you finally got it off and you'd put the nozzle in there, it would take forever for the pressure to go down enough for it to start filling.

[1601] So quite often there's like a lot of back pressure in your tank.

[1602] But why would that for mine?

[1603] It wasn't even driving far from my apartment.

[1604] I don't know.

[1605] So that's number one explanation is that you had a lot of gas fumes and pressure in your tank.

[1606] tank.

[1607] Okay.

[1608] Number two would be the nozzle itself was faulty, that that valve in there was way too sensitive and was detecting that back pressure when it, there wasn't any.

[1609] Okay.

[1610] So those are my two guesses.

[1611] Could it be that I was holding it wrong?

[1612] I feel like it's the way I'm holding it.

[1613] Okay, so now that's the second item.

[1614] Yeah.

[1615] Thank you for bringing that up.

[1616] I think it's this.

[1617] So in California, there's also a rubber gasket around the nozzle that has to be pushed in hard enough to trigger the nozzle to work as well.

[1618] And the intent of that is that little rubber gasket's supposed to be capturing all the fumes emanating from the tank.

[1619] So like when I fill up my motorcycle, I have to physically hold that rubber gasket and pull it towards the nozzle to get enough pressure on it to activate it.

[1620] So it could have been that you weren't pushing hard enough on it to get that seal and make the trigger work.

[1621] I think that's why it felt like it was something I was doing.

[1622] It can't be loosey -goosey on there.

[1623] It has to be pushed in.

[1624] I was shoving it in, but it was not.

[1625] I don't think it was, it wasn't working.

[1626] I was getting so frustrated because it was every half a second.

[1627] I ended up leaving $5 on the table.

[1628] Oh, wow.

[1629] Yeah, I had to go.

[1630] Yeah.

[1631] What does that mean you left $5 on the table?

[1632] The other thing is, you had to go in and prepay?

[1633] Yes.

[1634] That just gets refunded back to your card.

[1635] Oh, cool.

[1636] Yeah, you should be happy to know that.

[1637] Okay, this is for Will Bunch.

[1638] Oh, wonderful.

[1639] I really liked Will Bunch.

[1640] She was a very sweet man. Yeah, he was.

[1641] Okay.

[1642] How many people in Texas have mustaches?

[1643] Oh.

[1644] I didn't.

[1645] So we got to add to what was a little misleading about that is he was referring to his dad in the 70s.

[1646] So it's like you actually need to find out in the 70s how many Texans had mustache.

[1647] I pivoted, though, because it didn't seem that interesting to find that out.

[1648] But instead, I looked up the states that have the most.

[1649] Oh.

[1650] the most mustachioed men per capita i don't know yeah i mean that's what's going to be just to stop add this is like when you say global and you know it's like just we have to be careful okay most mustachioed men 45 % oregon 45 % of men have mustaches in war that sounds impossible yes 43 % Nevada.

[1651] No, no, no, no. And 42 % North Carolina.

[1652] No. Yeah.

[1653] If you Google North Carolina mustache, two things come up.

[1654] The beard and mustache club of North Carolina.

[1655] And an urban dictionary definition of the Carolina mustache.

[1656] It says don't click the latter.

[1657] Uh -oh.

[1658] Wait, why?

[1659] Is the Carolina mustache a sex act?

[1660] Probably, yeah.

[1661] Will you tap on Carolina mustache and see what kind of sex act it is?

[1662] I'm on a GP article.

[1663] Rob, we find out what a Carolina mustache is.

[1664] It says don't click it.

[1665] Yeah, I know.

[1666] That's why we must click it.

[1667] Oh, my God.

[1668] You want it?

[1669] Yeah.

[1670] Looking deep into someone's bung.

[1671] Oh, wow.

[1672] As though you are digging for gold in the great smoky mountains of North Carolina while sporting a wispy yet gentlemanly mustache.

[1673] Wow.

[1674] Sauce is optional.

[1675] Oh.

[1676] Oh, I don't know what that means.

[1677] Poop.

[1678] No. No. What do you mean?

[1679] I think that's what it means.

[1680] No one wants to introduce pooping into that scenario.

[1681] Some people.

[1682] Well, someone's bong.

[1683] I think he's referring to someone's poop.

[1684] Okay.

[1685] Most bearded men.

[1686] 58 % Virginia.

[1687] These are not right.

[1688] What's the source of?

[1689] GQ.

[1690] Our beards.

[1691] Really a trend.

[1692] Does anyone still rock a mustache?

[1693] We want to answer.

[1694] So we pulled 500 barbers and hair stylists across America to find out what types of facial hair is trending where.

[1695] Here's what they reported.

[1696] Okay.

[1697] Yeah.

[1698] So most beard of men, 58 % Virginia.

[1699] 55 % Montana.

[1700] 53 % Kansas.

[1701] Okay.

[1702] Okay.

[1703] Also, it says averaging everything our barbers told us 35 % of guys in America are rocking a beard.

[1704] But in these three states, it's closer to 50.

[1705] Wow.

[1706] Wow.

[1707] Wow.

[1708] So Texas obviously wasn't on there.

[1709] Didn't make the cut.

[1710] It didn't.

[1711] But then there's most clean shaven.

[1712] Oh, I'm going to guess.

[1713] Okay.

[1714] But this doesn't have percentages.

[1715] It just has some states.

[1716] Okay.

[1717] So Utah, Salt Lake City.

[1718] No. Okay.

[1719] Connecticut.

[1720] Okay.

[1721] Florida.

[1722] Florida?

[1723] Nope.

[1724] No. That's got to be a heavy mustache state.

[1725] Well, those are my two guesses.

[1726] Massachusetts.

[1727] No. Okay.

[1728] What are we got?

[1729] Michigan.

[1730] They're saying low on the fucking mustache.

[1731] They're saying most clean -shaven men.

[1732] Michigan, Idaho, South Dakota, West Virginia, Delaware.

[1733] They're trying to tell us that West Virginia has the lowest and Virginia has the highest.

[1734] What a bifuricated.

[1735] This says Maryland sits between Delaware our most clean -shaven state and Virginia are most bearded.

[1736] Talk about a battleground state.

[1737] Now, do you have a preference, a clean -shaven man or a bearded man?

[1738] Depends on the face.

[1739] Yeah, okay.

[1740] Depends on the face.

[1741] Sure.

[1742] I like facial hair.

[1743] Okay, great.

[1744] When people go from facial hair to zero, it's startling.

[1745] It is.

[1746] When I've done it, I'm shook.

[1747] Yeah.

[1748] And my kids are shook.

[1749] But I was thinking, because I was watching some clip of something last night, and the people were so clean shaven.

[1750] And, A, I'm, like, jealous.

[1751] I think if you've got a face that looks great, bear, that's great.

[1752] Yeah.

[1753] I don't think mine.

[1754] looks better with facial hair.

[1755] And then I was just thinking, what a bizarre fad for humans.

[1756] Men are designed to have, we don't like, it didn't just fall out on its own on anyone throughout, told all of history.

[1757] Yeah.

[1758] Who broke that?

[1759] I mean, what a thing to break.

[1760] Men have had fully covered faces with hair for 150 ,000 years and someone just shaved it all off one day?

[1761] Yeah.

[1762] That'd be crazy.

[1763] Well, it's like women in genital hair.

[1764] What's it called?

[1765] Pubic hair?

[1766] Pubic hair.

[1767] Your secondary hair?

[1768] The auxiliary hair.

[1769] The auxiliary hairs that grow around the Mons pubis?

[1770] Yes.

[1771] Pubic hair.

[1772] Same thing.

[1773] It was like, let's shave this off and make it more baby -like.

[1774] Although it's completely unknown.

[1775] Like, you don't know walking down the street who's cleanly shorn and who has a big 70s bush.

[1776] Yeah.

[1777] No one knows.

[1778] You're walking around with this clean -shaven face.

[1779] It must have been alarming to people who had never seen a man without a beard.

[1780] Right, no, for sure.

[1781] It's so much more private decision.

[1782] Yeah, it is, but I guess it's like, but why?

[1783] Like, who decided to do that one day and how did that become coveted?

[1784] I'm going to have, this is a theory.

[1785] I'm going to have to imagine it was completely driven originally by an evolution of swimsuit style.

[1786] Like, I think it started as like, I'm going to clean up my inner thighs.

[1787] Right.

[1788] And in a bikini, I'm going to clean up the top.

[1789] And then as bikinis got smaller, then you have a landing strip.

[1790] And I think a lot of people are just like, what are we doing here?

[1791] Let's just fucking get rid of the whole thing.

[1792] Yeah, a lot of people still do landing strips.

[1793] Yeah, that's great.

[1794] By the way, I like your bearded thing.

[1795] I just want to be on record saying, I'm pro whatever you got.

[1796] I think both look great.

[1797] Whatever you want.

[1798] Whatever you want.

[1799] Anyway, I'm clean.

[1800] Oh.

[1801] Okay.

[1802] Okay, so I think from now on people, when they're announcing whether they have a bush or not, should either say, I'm West Virginia.

[1803] Virginia or I'm Virginia.

[1804] That'd be a cool way to do it.

[1805] Oh, I see.

[1806] Most bearded or most shaved.

[1807] Well, Delaware's most shaved.

[1808] So we should, can we say Virginia and Delaware?

[1809] We could, but I like that both have Virginia.

[1810] Oh my God, ding, ding, ding, vagina.

[1811] Wow.

[1812] Okay.

[1813] Does the U .S. have more universities per capita?

[1814] All right.

[1815] Here we go.

[1816] Here we go.

[1817] The 2016 ranking of the world top of.

[1818] 100 university places, unsurprisingly, the United States at the top with 50 universities.

[1819] Out of 100?

[1820] World top, yes, 100 universities.

[1821] So half of the world's best universities are in the U .S. United Kingdom, number two, comes far behind with eight universities.

[1822] Eight.

[1823] Number three is Australia with six, followed by Japan, Switzerland, and Canada, all with four universities.

[1824] This is in the top 100, though.

[1825] The hierarchy is reversed when considering the number of institutions.

[1826] per capita.

[1827] Under this criteria, the smaller countries put forward a proud performance placing Switzerland, Denmark, Sweden, and Israel in this order at the top.

[1828] Not the point I was making.

[1829] Sorry, I got to push back.

[1830] I said two things.

[1831] One, we have the best college system in the world.

[1832] That's why everyone comes here.

[1833] So that we have half of all the top colleges.

[1834] And we do not amount for half of the world population.

[1835] You said that.

[1836] You said both things.

[1837] So that.

[1838] And then I said, we have the most amount per capita, not top at all.

[1839] My argument was I got to go to Santa Monica College from having done terrible in high school.

[1840] That's what makes our system great.

[1841] So just the most amount of colleges per capita is the question, not top per capita.

[1842] Right.

[1843] So that was answering the part about how good is the system.

[1844] Do we have the best?

[1845] Yes, we have 50 of the top 100.

[1846] Also, India has the most universities, but they have so many more people.

[1847] Yeah, 4X, the people.

[1848] So my guess is it's still America.

[1849] Now I've lost a tab.

[1850] Rob's even if you can find out most colleges per capita.

[1851] Yeah, most of this is top -ranked universities.

[1852] I don't want that.

[1853] Yeah, that's the step.

[1854] How about how many colleges in America?

[1855] I'm saying $5 ,300 out of another site.

[1856] $300 million divided by.

[1857] How many colleges?

[1858] 5300, let's say.

[1859] 5300.

[1860] Okay, equals one college per every 56 ,000 people.

[1861] Okay.

[1862] How many did you say?

[1863] 5300.

[1864] Oh, this says India has most universities worldwide.

[1865] According to data from July 2021, there were an estimated 5 ,288.

[1866] This is universities versus college, also, a difference.

[1867] Yeah, I don't know the difference.

[1868] I guess you can get a four -year degree from a university.

[1869] Okay.

[1870] So there were an estimated 5 ,288 universities in India.

[1871] The United States has the second most universities, counting 3 ,216.

[1872] So definitely we have more per capita.

[1873] Yeah.

[1874] Good job, India, though.

[1875] I don't want to steal any sunshine.

[1876] Oh, someone was lucky enough to say the thing I was trying to think of about having a big star on your rap album.

[1877] It's called Blessing Another Artist.

[1878] So like DMX plus so -and -so Oh, got it Oh, another big one, sorry, just house cleaning Yeah I'm so embarrassed I said that Dr. Seuss wrote boy name Sue It's Shel Silverstein Oh, you said Dr. Seuss I did not mean that, I knew that It's more embarrassing for me to get something wrong On the show that I actually did know Versus I just was wrong Right double embarrassment I get that.

[1879] So I was double embarrassed when I saw that I had fucked that up Okay, we talked that up.

[1880] Okay, we talked to about how people, you know, people from India and China coming here for school, but it is going, that number is going down.

[1881] It is.

[1882] Mm -hmm.

[1883] Some people are blaming COVID.

[1884] Some people are blaming the tensions between the two countries.

[1885] This one is specifically about China.

[1886] And then I think just because those countries are getting rich, like if you're rich, there is opportunity there.

[1887] I'm sure the universities there are going up and getting better and better.

[1888] My dad even said that last time he was in India, like, oh, a lot of people are staying.

[1889] Anyway, okay, in -state tuition at UCLA currently is 13 ,258.

[1890] Whoa.

[1891] Okay.

[1892] Did Zuckerberg graduate?

[1893] No. Okay.

[1894] We talked a little bit about Biden and debt forgiveness.

[1895] So that has changed.

[1896] It happened.

[1897] And then it got blocked by the federal courts.

[1898] But they're still, they're still saying to apply and they're working on.

[1899] Does that work around?

[1900] Yeah.

[1901] think so but that was cool yeah that happened since then yeah i brought up my reservation about it i guess i had to succumb to the he compared it to having elementary school and high school how it benefits your community whether you have kids or not you have to pay for it because it does benefit your overall community your crime rate goes down your overall you know local GDP goes up all those things that got me over the hump but it does feel crazy that laborers would have to pay for people to go to college who are going to then make a lot more than them.

[1902] Right.

[1903] But then the hope is your kids then go to college and then their kids go to college.

[1904] So eventually that gets changed.

[1905] It's an investment in the future.

[1906] But it feels crazy to ask your plumber to relieve the debt of the lawyer, just on the surface.

[1907] Right.

[1908] But I guess it's not like relieving the debt.

[1909] It's not having any in the first place.

[1910] Well, this was specifically debt relief.

[1911] So they're asking us Americans to chip in and pay off the loans that the lawyer took out to become a lawyer and make 5x what the plumber makes feels a little tricky yeah yeah but i think it's in it's a smart investment into the overall health wealth and whatever happiness yeah pursuit of happiness um that's all oh thank you for william love you love you love you Follow Armchair Expert on the Wondry app, Amazon Music, or wherever you get your podcasts.

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