Trump Wrecks White House & New GOP Nazi Group Chat Drops | Catherine Bracy

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You're listening to Comedy Central.

From the most trusted journalists at Comedy Central.

It's America's only source for news.

This is the Daily Show with your host, Michael Costa.

We've got so much to talk about tonight.

The White House shows whole, communism's running wild, and texting about how you're a Nazi, good idea or bad idea.

I investigate.

So let's get into the headlines.

Come on.

The government shutdown is now in its third week.

Countless federal employees aren't being paid.

Food stamps will run out soon, and there's no end in sight.

But not to worry, President Trump is working day and night to build a ballroom.

It's exactly what you voted for, coal miners in Pennsylvania.

90,000 gilded square feet for Trump to do the jerk-off dance in.

Got it.

But if you're worried such a renovation might damage the people's house, let Donald Trump put your fears to rest.

It won't interfere with the current building.

I won't be.

It'll be

near it, but not touching it.

And pays total respect to the existing building, which I'm the biggest fan of.

It's my favorite.

Yeah, it's my favorite.

I never want to leave, and I'm never going to.

I believe it's his favorite building, though.

He loves the history, the decor, the immunity from criminal convictions that it provides.

But great!

The White House itself is gonna be fine.

They're not gonna touch it.

They're not even gonna touch it.

This morning, Demolition Day at the White House.

Crews tearing down walls as construction for President Trump's 90,000 square foot ballroom ramps up.

It looks like they touched it?

I mean, holy shit, who's his general contractor?

Bin Laden and sons?

Apparently, not touching the White House turned into demolishing the White House.

And for what?

Does he really need a ballroom attached to his home?

I mean, it would be good to have one room where Barron didn't have to crouch, but still.

I mean, they're tearing apart the entire East Wing.

I hope there's nothing important going on there.

Constructed in 1902, the East Wing houses the office of the First Lady.

That's harsh.

That's harsh.

Do you think Trump warned Milan in advance, or did a crane just scoop her up mid-bubble bath?

Let's move on.

You might remember that last week there was a little bit of a scandal where members of the Young Republicans group had a bunch of their text leak where they reportedly made jokes about sending people to gas chambers and how much they loved Hitler.

But it was a one-time thing.

And now hopefully the Republican Party can move on from this isolated incident of Nazi text messages, right?

Right?

Right?

President Trump's nominee to lead the Office of Special Counsels in jeopardy after the publication of a group chat.

The nominee, Paul and Gracia, saying, I do have a Nazi streak in me from time to time, quote, I will admit it.

First of all, why do these guys who think they're the master race always look like this?

It's never a a Hemsworth.

It's always a big toe with eyes.

But yes, we have yet another Republican apparently sending Nazi texts.

And I've never heard someone say they have a Nazi streak before.

That's by far the worst streak you can have.

Even worse than the streaks I got freshman year in high school.

Look at that.

And when you see his other reported texts, you know it wasn't a streak.

It was more like a lifestyle.

And Gracia allegedly wrote, Never trust a Chinaman or Indian, never.

Ingracia uses an Italian-American equivalent of the N-word saying, quote, no blank holidays from Kwanzaa to MLK Jr.

Day to Black History Month to Juneteenth, adding, Every single one needs to be eviscerated.

In one exchange, he wrote, MLK Jr.

was the 1960s George Floyd, and his holidays should be ended and tossed into the seventh circle of hell where it belongs.

That prompted another participant to respond, Jesus Christ.

Wow.

Wow.

You know you're racist when even the guys in your racist group chat

are like, Jesus Christ, that was racist.

Look,

in general, I try not to judge people on what they say in private.

Our group chats should be a safe space to express ourselves, where someone can say, I don't know, that they can't shake these feelings about their hot cousin Stephanie.

By the way, Stephanie, you never replied to that.

But the point is,

I don't love people getting scrutinized for their private thoughts.

But on the other hand, what I don't love even more is Nazis getting nominated to our government because I, Michael Costa, believe Nazis are bad,

And that's my brave political stance of the day.

I'm a hero.

I'm a hero.

Now, to be fair, having a paper trail of offensive comments isn't just a Republican phenomenon.

Up in Maine, there's a Democrat named Graham Plattner running for Senate.

He was getting a lot of momentum until this happened.

CNN Review's social media posts, mostly made under Plattner's Reddit handle five years ago, that were deleted deleted ahead of his campaign launch.

In them, he once called himself a communist, dismissed all police as bastards, and said rural white Americans actually are racist and stupid.

Ooh, oh boy, a communist who hates police and thinks rural white people are stupid.

Mr.

Plattner, you must step down from Maine Senate race and move to Brooklyn to be their anointed king.

I'm kidding.

I think Plattner still has a chance.

Sure, his posts are offensive to rural white Americans, but keep in mind, most of them can't read.

But hey,

it's at least refreshing that we found someone's old posts.

And for once, they weren't saying racist things about black people.

In another controversial comment, Plattner referenced his time bartending, asking why black customers, quote, don't tip.

Okay, so now I'm having a hard time figuring out this guy's politics.

He's like, we got to stop the police from abusing these cheap black people.

Keep in mind, he's from Maine, so the stereotype he's relying on is based on the one black guy from Maine.

And that black guy is actually just a white guy who likes hip-hop.

And this is why I never post on Reddit.

Well, that and I'm banned, okay?

Apparently, Ask Me Anything doesn't include asking for butthole picks.

And

again, my apologies to historian Doris Kearns Goodwin.

There's a lot of strange jokes here and you guys are doing a great job with it.

Just lighting it around.

But look.

But look.

I'm not going to pretend that these two guys are the same or that what they said is even on the same level.

And one of the ways you can differentiate them is how they respond to their leaks.

Graham Platiner, let's start with you.

You asked why black people don't tip.

Please report to the nearest podcast and explain what you meant.

What's your response to people who hear that and think that is like textbook racism and it's offensive?

I remember this time when I had first started bartending and then I had a conversation with a friend of mine who was black, who was a bartender, who did a great job of walking me through structural injustice and the fact of feelings of lack of agency.

There were a whole bunch of reasons and after that I was like, oh yeah, that makes absolutely perfect sense.

Okay, there you go.

Plattner says, I thought black people didn't tip, but then I talked to a black person, and now I still think black people don't tip.

But it's because of structural injustice.

I give that apology a solid B minus.

And I will say, they should add that as an option to the iPad screen, 20%, 10%,

or making up for structural injustice.

I would do that.

But okay, Platiner acknowledged his mistake and learned from it, which is great to see.

Plus, love the hair.

Now, what about Mr.

Nazi streak, Mr.

Let's Send MLK Jr.

Day to hell?

Let's see how he responded to his scandal.

Now, reach for comment by Politico, and Grasky's attorney said, in this age of AI, authentication of allegedly leaked messages is extremely difficult.

Okay, first off, if your apology starts with in this age of AI, that's not a great apology.

Babe, did you forget to flush the toilet?

Listen, honey, in this age of AI.

He didn't even say AI doctored his messages.

He just said AI exists.

Deal with it.

I'm sorry, sir, but that apology is not going to cut it.

If you think the administration of Donald J.

Trump will tolerate Nazi rhetoric and ideas, the White House doors are closed to you.

Okay?

But you can enter through the hole in the East Wing because it's wide open.

Now, for more,

for more on the response to both scandals, we go to Maine with our very own Ronnie Chang.

Ronnie, what's the latest on these leaked messages?

Well, they make me sick, Michael.

Nobody should be writing racist shit online.

Thank you.

Thank you.

I totally agree, Ronnie.

They should be saying racist shit in person, all right?

That way there's no paper trail, so they can keep saying racist things.

I thought you were gonna say people just shouldn't be racist at all.

Don't be such a stupid white moron, all right?

People.

People are always gonna be racist, but before technology, you just quietly be whispering it to your friends, all right?

For example, you walk by me, and then I I say to my Asian friend, like, wow, can you believe he wears those shoes from the subway into his bed?

What a gross race of people.

And then I walk by you, and then you turn to your white friend, and then you'd say racist things about Asians.

Like,

like, what would you say about Asian?

And you say racist things about Asian people.

Come on, man.

I already said my racist thing, all right?

This is a safe space.

Just go, you round-eyed giraffe.

You're asking me to.

So I guess if I said anything, if I have to, it would be, stop taking so many pictures, you know?

Like.

You asked me.

The internet exists.

How many photos of the Empire State Building do you need?

Wow.

Wow, that was so racist.

Okay, we need those pictures because of structural injustice.

you made me say it you made me no no no no no no it's okay it's okay because we didn't write it down

so no no one's ever gonna know how racist you are okay okay can we just get back on track do you think this is gonna derail any of these men's political careers uh no no probably not i mean uh the nazi guy's republican so his approval rating went up and uh the guy from maine is in maine where everyone's on heroin so they got they got they got bigger problems all right

also racial curiosity is not a bad thing I mean he's got questions about black people just like I've got questions about white people for example I've always wanted to ask why don't white people wash their legs

okay

I'll answer you in good faith Ronnie it's because our maids do it for us

Okay, see?

See, this is great.

We are healing the nation with this dialogue.

And now you get to ask me a question.

This feels like a trap.

No, no, no, no, no, okay.

Okay, all right.

Okay, all right.

I guess I've always wondered why we see Asian people driving so poorly.

I mean...

Oh,

oh, oh, yeah.

No, no, no, it's fine.

No, no.

I'll tell you why.

It's because you're a racist f ⁇ .

God damn it, body!

F ⁇ you!

Set me up again!

Yeah, well,

yeah, and you set me up.

Yeah, yeah, but you fell for it because Asians are smarter than you.

Oh.

That's true.

That's true.

You people are smart.

Whoa, whoa, what do you mean, you people?

You know what?

Look, you're right.

I'm sorry.

I'm growing, and I will try to do better.

Thank you.

Michael, I appreciate your apology to Asian people.

And maybe you want to apologize for what you said about white people?

Well, I didn't say anything.

That was AI.

Ronnie Chang, everyone.

I got trapped!

When we come back, we have a list of all the communists in the U.S.

government.

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Welcome back to Danny Show.

Did you know that the way politicians describe their political opponents isn't always accurate?

Desi Lydek discovered one such example.

There's an election happening in New York City, and one candidate is making people see red.

Self-proclaimed New York City communist Zoron Momdani, who is a socialist communist.

Well, Mandami the communist.

An avowed communist.

I call him a little communist.

Well, love him or hate him, everyone seems to agree.

This guy's a communist.

You're saying Mondami's...

A communist?

I'm not saying that.

People are saying that.

Really?

How come nobody told me?

I'm a co-chair of the Communist Party.

Co-chair?

Co-chair.

Wow, they really make you share everything, don't they?

Well, it's better.

Cooperation is the name of the game.

According to Joe Sims, co-chair of the Communist Party, we're using the C-word all wrong.

So you're saying he's not a communist?

Not at all, no.

He's a Democratic Socialist.

Okay, so explain the difference to me between the Communist Party and the Democratic Socialists.

Well, the Communist Party believes that capitalism needs to be replaced fundamentally.

Joe, what's so distasteful about capitalism anyway?

Everything.

Really?

I disagree.

Ooh, my package is here.

I'm leading to this.

It's the wrong color.

What were you saying?

Anyway, socialists in this country generally believe that capitalism can be reformed.

But also, socialists believe that

they can function within the framework of the Democratic Party.

But we don't believe that the Democratic Party can be reformed.

Well, I agree with you there.

Oh, God, does that make me a communist?

All my life, I thought communism was about military parades, dictatorships, and using the full apparatus of the state to train one single boxer.

I must create people.

Oh, mama.

We've gotten a bad name over the years.

A bad reputation, I should say.

People believe

that communism and socialism means government control, but that's not true.

No?

No, not at all.

Socialism, communism, and democracy are not opposites.

And one of the great things is that you should be able to choose what you do.

Perhaps you'd like to run a food co-op.

And if you don't want to run a food co-op, maybe you'd like to run a farm.

And if you don't want to run a farm, maybe you'd like to run a theater company.

I don't think so.

Maybe you'd like to be a fisher person.

Nope.

A park ranger.

No park ranger.

How about an astronaut?

I'm terrified of starving.

Tell me what you'd like to do.

You can spend more time with your family.

Ugh, that's the worst.

So, communism isn't for me, but why do people think that Momdani supports it?

Momdani.

He's a communist.

What is it exactly that you think people see Momdani doing

that would cause them to call him a commie?

He champions affordability.

Any effort to put forward an idea of a more equitable distribution of wealth is labeled socialist or communist in an effort to just dismiss it out of hand.

It's called redbaiting.

Redbaiting.

Redbaiting, anti-communism.

Goal is to just divide people.

That's what happened to us during the McCarthy period, you know.

Okay, but McCarthyism was 70 years ago.

Surely we've learned our lesson by now.

Members of Congress and even former presidents have been openly embracing vile creeds such as socialism, Marxism, and straight-up communism.

AOC, the little communist from New York City.

Comrade, Kamala Harris, a radical left Marxist communist fascist.

Can the commie cavalry save the day?

Okay, that sounds a lot like red baiting.

But how do we know for sure that the Democratic Party isn't full of communists?

Joe, it was time to name names.

Not a communist.

No, no, no, no, no.

AOC is what she says she is.

Not a communist.

That's a no.

All right.

Please, no.

No?

No, not a communist.

Not a communist.

So none of these Democrats are communists.

You know, if people really need to stop throwing around the C-word, it's insulting to actual commies, like my friend Joe.

It's up to me to set the record straight and remind people that words matter.

What do you feel about Montani?

I think he's extremely dangerous.

I would categorize him as a communist.

But he's not a communist.

I think that he may be a communist.

You are going to be so relieved to hear this.

I just learned he is not a communist.

He is a democratic socialist.

Well, he can call himself that.

I spoke to the co-chair of the Communist Party, and there's actually a pretty significant difference.

See, communists believe that the capitalist system cannot be referred to democratic socialists.

They believe that they can finally make changes within the framework of the democratic party has been captured by the billionaire class

but i'm sure you already know all that i disagree with you okay apologize so even though people weren't convinced if we're going to be divided at least the red baiting will be word perfect

thank you design we recognize captain gracefully for joining me don't go away

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Welcome back to the Dale Show.

My guest tonight is the founder and CEO of Tech Equity and the author of World Eaters, How Venture Capital is Cannibalizing the Economy.

Please welcome Catherine Bracey.

Come on.

This audience loves venture capital.

Yeah, it sounds like it.

Sounds like it.

Thank you for writing this book.

Great book, World Eaters.

You opened the book talking about your experience of living in Oakland when Uber moves in.

Yes.

Share that story with us and why it inspired you to write World Eaters.

Yeah, well, so I moved to the Bay Area in 2012.

Oh, yeah.

Yeah, big time.

The Warriors, I think.

Yeah, that's good.

Yeah.

I moved to the Bay Area in 2012 from Chicago.

I was working on the Obama campaign.

They sent me to San Francisco.

What else can I throw out on that?

Yeah, okay.

All right.

I moved there to open our technology office, and 2012 was like the peak of the internet.

Those were the good old days, when the gig economy was still the sharing economy.

Right.

The don't be evil era.

And

I

decided to stay because it was a really exciting place to be after the campaign was over.

But I wanted to live in Oakland.

I preferred Oakland.

It was a little bit more, let's just say, colorful than maybe San Francisco was.

Fair enough.

And we kind of had the best of both worlds over there.

Like we could see, we benefit from all the stuff that was going on with tech, but a little bit sheltered and still had, you know, just normal people.

And then one day,

Uber announced that they were moving in across the street from my apartment building, and the community totally revolted.

And I had kind of been in a little bit of like a fairy tale, like not really seeing how, you know, the tech industry was evolving and it turned out to be not great for a lot of people.

And, you know, it occurred to me then that like their reaction, my neighbor's reaction to Uber coming to town was actually a rational reaction and that struck me as something that had gone wrong in the economy.

And you know, grew up in Michigan in the 80s, if a company had announced they were bringing 2,500 good jobs to downtown Detroit, you know, there would have been parades, right?

So like what went wrong?

Yeah.

And so I started tech equity to answer that question and really think about how we could redirect the energy of the internet, which felt like it was going towards not the future we were promised, to better things for better people so that as tech was growing, it was benefiting everybody.

And long story short, I came to understand that there was this force that was directing the industry towards these really negative outcomes, and that force was the economic structure that surrounds the tech industry, and that's, of course, venture capital.

Okay, and I know, but there's some dumb idiot in this audience

that doesn't know what venture capital even means.

Well, I didn't really know it.

So actually, you know, I kind of wrote this book for myself.

So it's super accessible in that way.

But, you know, essentially, so maybe some history is helpful here.

Venture capital was pioneered in the middle of the 20th century to solve a real problem, which was that there wasn't enough, what they call risk capital in the economy to support breakthrough technologies that were going to not just create financial benefit, but also really like change the world in a positive way.

People investing in risky ideas.

Yeah, startups that were bringing new, you know, the idea was new technologies to market, and it wasn't clear whether they could even be commercialized.

And traditional financial investors were not really willing to take those kinds of risks.

So, some civic and business leaders

developed this hypothesis that if they created what they call a portfolio approach, if they pooled their money and then spread it out across a bunch of different companies instead of just going one by one, they could see these big returners that would more than make up for the failures.

And that worked.

And it turned out to be the best, you know, the natural result of when when you invest in high-risk startups,

what happens in the portfolio.

And what that's called is the power law.

And that's now like the law that governs Silicon Valley.

And you talk about the power law here, and

it's essentially that the driving force behind why venture capital wants risky ideas and companies.

Well, basically, can I just crush that?

I'm going to use.

No, I mean

how about can I use a sports metaphor?

Please, thank you.

Lady for a sports metaphor.

Well, venture capitalists like to say that what they do is hit grand slams.

It's not even a home run game, it's a grand slam game.

So, you know, if you're like, you know, Mark Maguire and Sammy Sosa, your strategy is every time you go out to bat or whatever, is that

you're doing this right?

Okay.

You're trying to hit a grand slam.

Right.

And that ends up really distorting how you approach baseball.

And like for those of us who remember the Bash brothers, you know, what it usually means is you end up cheating and taking drugs,

doing all these things to ensure that you get grand slam outcomes.

It's not enough to just hit doubles and triples, even though that's a totally perfectly fine way to win a baseball game.

Yeah, why, you know, you describe it in the book, but why don't

venture capital investing in a company that hits singles and doubles?

Well, what they will tell you is you have to achieve the power law.

And we don't know which of these companies in the portfolio are going to be the grand slams.

So we force every company in the portfolio to try to be that outcome.

And by forcing all of these companies, there's like 10 or 15 companies a year that really naturally have that potential.

And thousands of startups get venture capital.

For all of those companies that are not actually built for that kind of growth, it creates a whole bunch of harms that we usually, society ends up paying the price for.

Meaning these companies are forced to grow too fast or not create a better product for us?

Move fast and break things.

It's basically what it is.

There's a

sort of playbook for VCs called Blitz Scaling.

And that's pretty much what they try to do.

And I mean, I think they may be regretting naming it after a Nazi military strategy, but not exactly great branding.

But you're trying to move as fast as possible to get as big as possible, take as much market share as possible, as quickly as possible, and you steamroll everything in your wake to get there.

One of the things I loved in the book was when you start talking about software and why VC loves software, because they can scale it up faster.

And I am furious.

Everywhere I go, I have to fill out an online form.

I take my family skiing and it's like you can't even talk to a human.

It's fill this thing out.

My home insurance, it's fill out all this stuff.

And after I read your book, I'm going, holy shit, is that because of venture capital?

Well, I mean...

I know you don't maybe know the exact specifics of where I go skiing with my family.

I do think, I mean, it is a question.

The reason I called the book World Eaters is because, you know,

what really did actually work for certain types of companies that were building deep technology or software companies where this model of moving fast,

trying to get as big as possible as quickly as possible did actually make sense.

Now you're applying it to every corner of the economy.

Everything from like fast, casual restaurants.

Do you know Kava is VC backed?

Like, why does a fast, casual restaurant need venture capital, right?

Everything from that to like the housing market.

And housing is one of the issues I write about in the book.

It's not built to scale like software.

Talk more about that.

That was really fascinating and blew me away because there's a part of me that thinks, okay, VC shouldn't be in fast, casual restaurants, but I don't really give a shit about that restaurant, whatever.

But housing,

this is, I mean, housing is one of the fundamental purposes of our life and who we are as people.

The cornerstone of the real economy.

That's how you say it.

Yeah, and

that's why she wrote the book, and I'm asking your questions.

Why is VC in housing?

Yeah, well, they're in housing because they're trying to make a lot of money and everything is now a financial asset and that's what they do.

But what they would tell you is like this is an industry that's ripe for disruption and we need to bring this new mindset to this industry to make it work better.

But what works for software does not work for brick and mortar building houses.

And it definitely doesn't work for the kinds of financial vehicles that they're developing in order to like get more people on the ladder to homeownership, which is one of the things I write about in the book.

Some of these really predatory financial models that are now juiced

by VCs to exploit and extract, when there are other models that do actually help people get on the home ownership ladder that can't find the capital they need to build out those models because

they're not going to hit the grand slam.

They'll maybe only be a triple.

So let's say you are and you talk about and you share some of these stories in the book.

And one thing that I took away from it was I was happy there are good people out there, there are good companies out there that aren't just going for these huge returns.

But what do you do if you're trying to start a good business that's going to be of service to people and your community?

Yeah, and you need money?

Are you just, do you have to work for these ghouls and VC, or can you do it differently?

I mean, you can, it is very hard.

And actually,

one of the stories that really brought home to me how hard it actually is is the story of OpenAI.

And I interviewed Sam Altman for the book before he got fired.

And he told me, you know, OpenAI, I don't know if many people know this, is a nonprofit.

The same way, you know, a local soup kitchen is a nonprofit.

Strange.

Yeah, very strange.

A $500 billion nonprofit.

But he told me he very explicitly set up OpenAI as a nonprofit because he did not want to be held to the same standards that a normal tech company would be held to and have to raise venture capital because he understood very clearly how investors would

manipulate the incentives around the technology.

And he said this technology is too dangerous to be at the whims of investors.

Right.

And even he, who was already had like this great reputation in Silicon Valley and this company was the darling, they are now rolling back their nonprofit structure and opening it up to investors.

And investors run the show there now and are in charge of how of the way the direction this technology is going to take.

We were promised cures for cancer and robots that were going to fold our laundry and we're getting, you know, sex bots for eight-year-olds and, you know, all of our jobs automated.

I mean, that's a true, you know.

So, you know.

So the investors start to take over the idea.

And that's where everything gets all f ⁇ ed.

And if Sam Altman can't do it, it's really hard for just any old entrepreneur off the street to come in and say, I'm going to do this without venture capital.

So it's really like the solution set has to be more structural.

And I do talk about people who are really creating the template that we can follow, but it's going to require bigger systemic change in order to make those the norm.

What are some other solutions you think we can do or that we should be aware of or supportive of?

Yeah, well, first of all,

you know, there are some sticks like getting closing the carried interest loophole.

I don't know if that's too wonky for

I won't get into it.

I mean, you're talking a little bit about NDVC, which I thought was really compelling.

Yeah, and then there are carrots.

So there are ways that the government can

sort of catalyze money to flow to these other types of funds like NDVC, which is basically doing, to extend the sports metaphor, they're playing moneyball.

They're trying to make money off of the vast majority of startups that are actually doubles and triples.

There should be an opportunity there.

And it's unclear why Silicon Valley isn't necessarily pursuing that.

So, you know, there are ways that the government can sort of shape financial markets so that money will flow to funds like that.

And I, you know, outline some of that in the book as well.

It's a refreshing voice in the tech world right now to read this book because it just feels like we're all victims of what is about to happen to us.

And you explain kind of how we got here.

Talk a little bit about your CEO and founder of Tech Equity.

I don't hear tech and equity together too often.

Talk a little bit about that and what that means.

Yeah, so we mean like the DEI type of equity and not the, you know, equity like I own a share of the company equity.

In Silicon Valley, that's something you have to, that's a distinction you have to make.

So, you know, we're trying to bend that arc of the tech industry towards better, you know, making sure that the industry is creating opportunity for everybody and not just sucking all the wealth up to the top.

You know,

we're not making as much progress as I would like, but

we see California as a place where it's really possible now that the federal government is no longer a place where you can really make policy for people anymore.

Trying to regulate AI in the backyard of where the companies are building it and put some guardrails around this technology and the investment that's going into it.

So, we've had some wins.

We passed a bill that

makes it illegal for tech companies to use algorithms to set prices artificially high.

That's good this year, yeah.

More work to be done,

A lot more work to be done.

Thank you for writing the book.

Thank you for being here.

World Eaters is available now.

Catherine Bracey, everybody.

Give a quick break.

We'll be right back after this.

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