Maybe you thought HOT PODCAST SUMMER was over. Maybe you thought CIB had burned too hot and too bright through the first few weeks of HPS, and we wouldn’t be back until the fall, after things had cooled down a bit. Not so! We’re back after fighting back a vicious summer cold that robbed one-third of us of our voice and our joie de bloviate, and we’re yapping on about NPR’s insistence that the United States is somehow uniquely terrible in the world and in history, COVID REDUX: DELTA STRIKE FORCE, re-reading Stephen King’s The Stand, and other well-worn topics we’ve discussed into the ground a thousand times before. Has something we said, or failed to say, made you FEEL something? You can tell us all about it on Facebook or Twitter, leave a comment on the show’s page on our website, or you can send us an email here. Enjoy!

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Show Rundown
00:31 — American Exceptionalism, as understood by the NPR class
23:27 — Summer vacation blues
29:30 — Revisiting The Stand twenty something years later
43:20 — A breakthrough COVID case in Abe’s orbit, the DELTA VARIANT, and vaccine hesitancy
53:00 — A brief cat story aside
1:00:20 — Fighting misinformation on social media, and how to limit the influence of social media companies
1:33:43 — Abe reviews F9, and we discuss the franchise problem again

Links mentioned in today’s episode:

https://www.npr.org/2021/07/02/1011754245/an-npr-tradition-heres-the-reading-of-the-declaration-of-independence

https://www.thedailybeast.com/trans-incident-that-sparked-violent-protests-at-los-angeles-spa-may-have-been-fake

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2021/07/19/biden-facebook-misinformation/

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/19/technology/facebook-misinformation-blind-spot.html

The financial markets FREAKED OUT about the Delta variant on Monday, according to all the experts:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/20/business/dealbook/delta-variant-stocks.html

https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2021/07/19/markets-stocks-today-delta-variant/

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/07/19/business/stock-market-today.html

https://www.usnews.com/news/economy/articles/2021-07-19/stocks-plunge-on-delta-variant-fears

The markets rebounded on Tuesday, despite no less concern about the Delta variant, by the way:

https://www.wsj.com/articles/global-stock-markets-dow-update-07-20-2021-11626768165