Men's Hockey Goes From Hero to Zero

State of the Union bingo card; US Mens Hockey squanders the good vibes; RFK Jr’s HHS gets sued yet again for illegally messing with vaccination; Punch updates; Angry Quilters; Gen Z slang

Men’s Hockey Squanders Good Will

• Some of the US men’s hockey team reactions to the response to their “locker room talk”
• Ellen Hughes’s comments
• Hilary Knight’s reaction to the US men’s hockey team
• Arghavan’s post about the US men’s hockey team cavorting with the president
• Hockey mom Sara Wiles
• Andy Murray knows how to stand up for women

Another Lawsuit Against Antivax HHS:

• AGs Kris Mayes (AZ)and Rob Bonta (CA) announce lawsuit against HHS
• FDA’s refusal to evaluate Moderna flu vaccine (and later reversal of this decision)
• Moderna no longer investing in new late-stage vaccine trials

💊Take Two and Call Me in the Morning

• Arghavan’s post summarizing the story of Punch, the little monkey abandoned by his mother
• QuiltCon: The Quilters are angry
• Gen Z writes the Pasco Library script
• 77 year old art curator Alison Luchs uses Gen Z slang to teach

Thanks for listening to The Present Illness with Drs. Arghavan Salles and Alyssa Burgart!

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Credits

• Production by Arghavan Salles and Alyssa Burgart
• Editing by Alyssa Burgart
• Theme Music by Joseph Uphoff
• Social Media by Arghavan Salles

Transcript

Arghavan (00:00)
Hey there, fellow nerds. Welcome back to another episode of The Present Illness, the podcast where two physicians try to make sense of a world that is a little febrile and definitely underdiagnosed. I'm Arghavan Salles a surgeon scientist in your friendly neighborhood, doom scroller in residence.

Alyssa Burgart (00:15)
And I'm Alyssa Burgart an anesthesiologist and bioethicist who tracks news and health law like they're EKGs full of spikes and surprises. The present illness is where we dig into public health, politics, culture, and ethics with a scalpel in one hand and a meme in the other.

Arghavan (00:30)
Big shout out to everyone who's listening and extra love to our subscribers and our followers and a warm welcome to anyone who just stumbled in from the State of the Union. I didn't watch it actually, did you?

Alyssa Burgart (00:42)
⁓ no, I did the self preserving work of not watching it. I was working in the OR kind of late last night and I actually hadn't really processed that it was State of the Union night except that some girlfriends of mine sent me a text that was, the group chat, that was a bingo game of what you, a drinking game you could play during the State of the Union. ⁓ I did not partake because I refused to watch, but I thought maybe I could just.

tell you a couple of the things that are in the bingo card. Would you be interested? All right, let's see. It says, 2026 State of the Union Trump crash out bingo card.

Arghavan (01:15)
Yeah, sure. I'd love to hear it.

Alyssa Burgart (01:27)
Some of these are terrible. ⁓ Off script tangent. I don't even need to watch it to know that that square was filled. ⁓ Trump mentions the stock market. Trump mocks affordability. Trump slurs his words.

Arghavan (01:34)
Definitely.

These are like his greatest hits.

Alyssa Burgart (01:47)
I know, know. ⁓

Epstein mentioned, which I think I heard some commentary afterwards and I don't think he did mention. I mean.

Arghavan (01:54)
I mean, I would have been shocked if he mentioned

it, but the survivors, some of the survivors were there.

Alyssa Burgart (01:59)
that's cool. mean, must what an act of valor to attend that ⁓ Trump speaks for 90 plus minutes. I did hear it was one of the longest state of the unions ever. ⁓ Anyway. Anyway, there's a bunch of also ridiculous things in here, but yeah, no, I didn't watch it.

Arghavan (02:04)
Yes.

Shocking, shocking, you mean he wants to hear his own voice?

No, I didn't either, but what I, mean, I knew there was gonna be nothing that we didn't already know, ⁓ but he did, of course, from what I've seen and read about it, ⁓ pull out some more racist tropes and some more attacks against Somali Americans. ⁓ The clip that I've seen multiple times is Ilhan Omar yelling, you killed Americans, you killed Americans, so good for her.

Alyssa Burgart (02:45)
Mm-hmm.

Arghavan (02:46)
Al Green was escorted out, I believe even before the comments started, because he was holding up a sign that said, black people aren't apes. And apparently that was so offensive that they felt they needed to remove him from the floor. So those are kind of a couple of things that stood out to me from what I've read and I have not done.

In any way, a deep dive into the ramblings of a likely demented elderly gentleman who has way too much power in his hands.

Alyssa Burgart (03:18)
Well, and also like I don't like listening to him uncensored and unfact-checked. Like I prefer to just wait, let him get it out of his system, and then let some journalists be like, hey, this was true and these long list of things were not true. ⁓ So I...

Arghavan (03:27)
Mm-hmm Yeah, because he said

you know that the price of eggs was down the price of gas was down Stock market at record highs. I mean that one maybe there have been some some pretty high highs but a lot of the other things that he said about the prices of

of food and the booming economy, which is not really being felt by the majority of Americans.

Alyssa Burgart (04:00)
I did see a clip where he was like, I've made drug prices the lowest ever. And he was talking about Trump Rx, which is like 43 drugs, some of which are not even on the market anymore. And several of them where generics are already significantly cheaper than what Trump Rx is offering. And Trump Rx is just a I mean, we talked about this before on the show. It's just like a clone of of another drug anyway, just is so silly. ⁓

Arghavan (04:16)
Yeah.

Yeah, yes. Yes. Oh, I heard he also

said that he didn't name, I don't know if this is part of the State of the Union, but in recent comments, may have been part of the of Union, that he said that he did not come up with the name TrumpRx and then whatever his Bitcoin is. He's saying he didn't need his name to be in it. The man who's putting his name on absolutely everything, including the Kennedy Center, us to believe that he didn't need his name to be on it. Anyway.

The lies never stop. It's just incredible.

Alyssa Burgart (04:57)
for sure. listen, folks, we're glad you are here. And if you watch the, ⁓ you know, State of the Union, I'm sorry, condolences. And if you didn't watch it, also I'm happy for you. If you have things that you want us to know about about it, let us know. Reach out to us on the socials. ⁓ As a note to new listeners, we often talk about topics here that can be intense. They could be a lot. ⁓ So if you are in the car with little ones, you might want to pop in your headphones.

And if you need to this one out, we totally get it.

Arghavan (05:29)
Absolutely. Well, let's get into it. Before we get into the first of our main topics today, I did want to give two brief updates to our audience. ⁓ One is folks may recall we had some discussions about a man named Larry Summers, who's the former president of Harvard University and a ⁓ very well-known economist who served on on multiple under multiple administrations. He was in the Epstein files at multiple, well, many, many times actually, and we had talked about that.

in depth in another episode. The last update I had given was that he had been removed from teaching the class that he was teaching last term as Harvard launched an investigation and as of the day that we're recording, which is February 25th, ⁓ he has now fully resigned from Harvard.

Alyssa Burgart (06:17)
⁓

Arghavan (06:19)
Isn't that interesting?

Alyssa Burgart (06:21)
That is interesting. I'm also very curious. We'll have to follow what comes from this because sometimes people resign because they're like, well then this investigation will go away. And I hope it doesn't.

Arghavan (06:35)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, it will be very interesting to see what comes of that investigation. And as we talked about in one of our previous episodes, they are including Les Wexner in their investigation because they do have a building on the Harvard campus that buries his name. Les Wexner, course, is the man we talked about who is much more strongly affiliated with Ohio State. And there's all that controversy there around also his relationship with Mark Landon, the chair of such a con...

obstetrics and gynecology there. Ohio State is also doing an investigation now apparently into Mark Landon and what his relationship with Epstein and Wexner was. ⁓ Anyway, so that was just a quick little update I wanted to give. And then the other update I wanted to give was a brief update is about Iran, just because there's a lot in the news about whether the United States is going to get into a war with Iran and Trump's efforts to maybe negotiate or not negotiate with the regime and

I just wanted to share that there is still active protests going on in Iran. In the last week or so, we've seen a lot of activity on college campuses in particular, with students engaging in the same types of chants that we had seen in those massive protests in early January. And I'm saying that to show that, or to share that that movement has not gone away, the push of the Iranian people to get rid of this regime.

Alyssa Burgart (07:56)
Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Arghavan (08:00)
remains very strong and they are doing this at great risk. We know tens of thousands were murdered, another 40,000 ish at least have been detained and there continue to be executions. We've had, I think almost 500 executions just this year so far in Iran. So all of that is still going on. We have obviously no idea what the US will do. What Trump has said is that

If the negotiations don't you know succeed whatever that means that he would consider targeted strikes and if not broader strikes, so ⁓ we kind of remain suspended here in this ⁓ Unclear space of you know, what is going to happen and on what timeline some of his top advisors apparently have told him You know, this is not a good idea ⁓ to carry out military strikes against iran, but it's unclear to what extent he listens and

For what it's worth I think opinion among Iranians in and outside of Iran. It is like the gamut of things with some Feeling that they would want Some sort of military aid because they feel they can't get rid of this evil regime without some help So and understanding by the way, should be clear like they understand what that means they understand that's not good that you don't want to have another country intervening but

when they've gone out into the streets time and time again in the hundreds of thousands and this is what happens is just these massive ⁓ attempts to kill and detain in prison ⁓ and assault the people is the outcome. don't feel, I think a lot of them don't feel they're making forward progress. So anyway, we'll keep an eye on that situation. Okay, getting back to the State of the Union.

So do you know who else was in attendance at the State of the Union?

Alyssa Burgart (09:58)
Cool.

Arghavan (10:00)
the US men's hockey team because why not?

Alyssa Burgart (10:02)
Oh, I heard

that they accepted the invitation and I heard the ladies said, no thank you, sir.

Arghavan (10:11)
Yeah, they were very gracious, the US women's hockey team. They were like, you know, we just have a lot of other obligations. We're so sorry we won't be able to make it. Yeah, maybe I have a manicure at that time. That's not what they said, that's me. So, you know, if we go back a few days, the US men's final for hockey happened early Sunday morning, our time in California.

Alyssa Burgart (10:19)
We're gonna be washing our hair.

Arghavan (10:39)
and it was Canada versus the US and the US won. Amazing. Fantastic.

Alyssa Burgart (10:44)
Let me tell

you, and I watched it, and I'm not into hockey, but it was an incredible win. won in overtime, it was sudden death, it was an incredible finish.

Beautiful win. There was a bunch of heartwarming stuff afterwards about one of the players who had died and you know, and so I was really, I would have been fine if Canada won. US is a little sucky right now. I would have been fine with Canada winning. Like that would have been okay. ⁓ And then they had this like, but they had this like, they won and then they had this very heartwarming thing with like the kids of the player that had, he'd been killed by a drunk driver. It was terrible. His parents were there.

Arghavan (11:28)
Yep. Johnny Goodrow, I believe that's his name.

Alyssa Burgart (11:28)
And I was like, well, this is, yes, Johnny Goodrow. And I

said, that's lovely. Good for them. And then they had to go off and be dum-dums.

Arghavan (11:39)
because as somebody else said, ⁓ you know, they went from big winners to the biggest losers in record time. I said in one of my videos from hero to zero in record time because a couple things, right? So they invited Cash Patel to join them in the locker room and that was

Alyssa Burgart (11:59)
Also, mean, I'm

sorry, can we just, Cash Patel doesn't look like a real person, just to be like, every time I see him, his eyes are so big. just, like, what is happening? Why are you in charge?

Arghavan (12:11)
do wonder if he has some hyperthyroid going on to cause that like almost exophthalmos. Anyway, I don't know.

Alyssa Burgart (12:16)
And that

really intense podcasting. Cash Patel, by the way, is the person who made the FBI have a list of people who provide gender affirming care to minors so that we could all have our data collected on us. So yeah, not a fan.

Arghavan (12:19)
haha

Yes. So, crash the bell.

I'm of here.

Well, also he's the one who testified in front of Congress that like Epstein, what was it exactly that he said? I'm gonna forget, but like basically denied that there had been this large sex trafficking ring and implied that it was just Epstein and Gielan Maxwell, which is obviously as we know a lie. right, so well also why was he there? ⁓ Why is he using our taxpayer money to go to the Olympics? But anyway, yes.

Alyssa Burgart (12:53)
Okay. So they let him in the locker room. Bastard.

Arghavan (13:03)
So they invite him into the locker room. And those are the first clips I saw actually were of Kash Patel really partying with the US men's hockey team. One of the players put a gold medal around his neck and he's jumping up and down with like either beer or champagne, something in his hand, like alcoholic beverage in his hand. And it's giving very much frat boy. That's what the whole vibe was. And I think.

Alyssa Burgart (13:27)
Was

it giving locker room talk?

Arghavan (13:30)
we're gonna get to the locker room talk. But at that part of it, I think was notable and upsetting for some people is again, because Cash Patel is really part of this cover up of the whole Epstein files, like everything we just found out this week that some file that a woman had gone to the FBI with accusations that Trump had raped her when she was 13. And many of those files were left out.

of this release that again mandated by Congress that all these files are supposed to be released to the public and I think it was about 50 pages or so were intentionally left out by the DOJ, right? So Cash Patel is part of this coverup and he has consistently been using FBI resources for himself and his girlfriend like he used the jet to go see her perform at some event. They also just released this week that

when Charlie Kirk was murdered, the FBI was delayed in getting to the scene because Cash Patel had one of the two, apparently you'll have two planes, had one of the two planes with him in Florida doing whatever he was doing. So he delayed the investigation into Charlie Kirk's murder because of his own personal whatever he was doing with the jet. So I think there's, I'm saying all this to say there's a lot of reasons that people were uncomfortable.

with Cash Patel being there. ⁓ And also he acted like he was, like he had played in the game, that he was like instrumental in the way he was celebrating. was like he was part of the team. Anyway, so that was already off-putting. But then I think because Cash Patel had been there, there was this phone call from Trump. And I think most people would agree like, hey, president wants to congratulate a team that's won? Great, no problem. But what happened on that call is what led to quite a lot of

consternation among a lot of people, actually. So let me just play that clip. OK.

through my thought.

When you pick us up in Miami on Tuesday morning, we'll get the cash and we'll get the military to get you guys over. I'm gonna go. Boys, we gotta stay together.

The nice thing about being president is I can tell you, you don't have to worry about the weather or land.

Thank you, Mr. President. We'll do the White House. The next thing we'll just have some fun. have medals for you guys. And we have to, I must tell you, we're have to bring the woman's safety to an end.

So I, lovely for a president to call and congratulate a sports team that has won, especially if it's a tough game, especially given the men's hockey team has not won the Olympic gold since 1980. You know, it's a big accomplishment.

Alyssa Burgart (16:54)
It was a huge win.

Arghavan (16:56)
And then the way, I think there's a few things here that are disconcerting to a lot of people. One is, you know, some of these players are from Minnesota and we've talked many times about what ICE has been doing all over the country, but especially in Minnesota. And so I think for some people, it's been hard to see this team be so jubilant with the people who have

carried out these actions to harm their neighbors, all of our neighbors. So I think that's hard. I think the Epstein of it all is also really hard, especially for women watching, because we know that at the bare minimum, the president was very close friends with Epstein. We know that there are multiple accusations that he raped children. Even putting those aside,

Prior to all of this, there were numerous credible accusations of him raping women. He is an adjudicated rapist. So for them to be so joyously interacting with that man, I think is hard for a lot of people to watch. But then I think the moment, right, that most people have seen that went viral is when the president says, you know, I guess we do have to invite the women, the women who had won the gold several days prior.

The women who have won a medal in every, our team, the US women's hockey team has won a medal in every Olympics since US, sorry, since women's hockey was included in the Olympics. And they've won the gold, I believe it's three times already. Their goalie allowed two goals the entire Olympics. Two goals the entire Olympics. Did he shout her out? No, no, he did not. Anyway, so there's that.

Alyssa Burgart (18:47)
Also, he said, if we don't invite the women's team, they'll impeach me or something like that. And it's like, sir, there are many things that you should be impeached for.

Arghavan (18:58)
Yeah, that's probably not the top of the list for-

Alyssa Burgart (18:59)
We

don't need to worry about inviting the women's hockey team. You should have been impeached multiple times already in this term, in addition to the times in the last term.

Arghavan (19:07)
you

Yes. And the idea that like that's the reason he would be inviting the women to avoid impeachment, not because that would be the appropriate thing to do, right? As the president, you invite the winning teams. That's, you know, that's typical. That's what's traditionally done. But the way he said it, as though the only reason he would do it was to avoid impeachment. And the way he said it, making this kind of

I mean, people have called it a joke. It's not funny. don't understand the humor in it, but if you want to call it a joke, whatever. But to say that at the expense of the women's team is really hurtful. And then for the room...

Alyssa Burgart (19:48)
Because he could

have just said nothing about the women's team.

Arghavan (19:51)
Correct.

They did not need to be part of the conversation. Nobody brought them up. And then the room erupted in laughter. And there was some voice, I don't know whose voice it was, saying absolutely when he said, we need to invite the women's team. Meaning like, yes, you do need to invite the women's team, but the rest of the room erupted in laughter. And I think there had been, you know, displays of

Alyssa Burgart (19:58)
Mm-hmm.

Arghavan (20:19)
camaraderie between the men's and women's team throughout the Olympics and the women had shown up, they had come to the game to cheer on the men. So it really felt, even from the outside, it felt like a betrayal of those specific women, not just women in general, although it's that too, but these specific women who had really showed up for these men and I'm guessing up until that moment thought they had a genuine friendship with at least some of these men.

Alyssa Burgart (20:39)
Mm-hmm.

Arghavan (20:48)
Then, okay, so that happens. A lot of people are upset. A lot of people, a lot of women, but there's also, I've seen a lot of men calling out this behavior because as we've talked about before and as comes up frequently, there's this idea, right, like not all men. Okay, but who are the men in that room who said, hey, why are we laughing at the women?

You know, who stood up in that moment? Because if you have a room, let's say you've got 10 men, one man makes a, and just take the present out of it, just random group of men, one man makes a bad joke at the expense of women. Couple of them laugh, maybe the rest of them are silent, but none of them says, hey, that was not an appropriate joke to make. Then they've all participated in the normalization of that language and the normalization of the degradation of women. And that's what we saw in that moment.

that everyone there participated in laughing at women and women who had accomplished the most incredible thing, right? And the exact same thing, right? The parallel to what they had. They had also won Olympic gold against the same country, also in overtime, but they're a joke. The men's team is, you know, to be celebrated, but the women are a joke and they're, we have to tolerate them or else we'll be impeached.

Alyssa Burgart (21:45)
Mm-hmm.

Arghavan (22:10)
That's the message that came across.

Alyssa Burgart (22:12)
I mean, what that tells

me is that US hockey, the US hockey team is just full of Trump supporters. That's, that's what that tells me. ⁓ Now there are plenty of people who are obviously misogynistic, who are not Trump supporters. And I think it is with you, if you're a fan of the president and you get that phone call, why wouldn't you laugh at everything he has to say? You already like him. I, I, ⁓

Arghavan (22:21)
Correct. ⁓

That's right. Yes. So.

That's the thing.

They were laughing at like, the plane is going to be like, it's not funny. I don't know. I didn't find any of it funny. To be honest, I don't in general find him to be a funny man. find him vile and revolting. But anyway, OK, so that all happens. And then people, there's this uproar among many people about how inappropriate this is. You know, even in this Olympics, even take out like previous Olympics, women won eight of the 12 US gold medals in this Olympics.

Okay?

Alyssa Burgart (23:08)
They crushed it. We talked about it last week.

Arghavan (23:10)
Yes, and what are we doing making fun of the people, the very people who have made our trip to the Olympics as a country so successful? Why is that being accepted and normalized? I believe it was 64 % of the total team USA medals at the Winter Olympics were won by women. In the last six Olympics,

U.S. women have earned more gold medals than U.S. men, and they've earned more total medals than U.S. men. And that's including the Summer Olympics. It's all the winter and the Summer Olympics last six games. Women athletes from this country are incredibly talented and powerful and outperforming the men pretty much at every turn. Yet they are still the butt of the joke. Okay, so there's all this outrage and people are, some people are quick to make excuses. Well, you know, they were caught up in the moment.

they were drunk. ⁓ you know, it was the president. How could they not laugh? You know, all these things. And so now here we sit again, we're recording this on Wednesday. The game was on Sunday. So there's been ample opportunity now for any of these men to say, ⁓ actually, I see now that that was really hurtful to my colleagues. I apologize for having laughed at that. That was in poor taste. I really value these women and I'm so proud of what they've accomplished.

Alyssa Burgart (24:38)
I haven't seen those videos.

Arghavan (24:38)
Well,

I was just going to ask, have you seen any of that? Yeah, me neither.

Alyssa Burgart (24:42)
Nope. I did see some response

from two of the brothers that are on the hockey team basically being like, people just love to be upset. I don't know. Whatever.

Arghavan (24:49)
Yeah, okay. I'm going

to play it for you. Don't worry. I'm going play for you two short clips of the Hughes brothers. And it's important to note that their mom, Ellen Hughes, was herself a US or was herself a women's hockey player. She is the player development coach for the US Women's Olympic hockey team. So she contributed to and is part of the success of the women's team that is being mocked in that clip.

And so her two sons, Jack and Quinn, are both part of the men's Olympic hockey team that just won. So here is one of them answering a question from a reporter.

you excited to be going to the White House and meeting Trump? Yeah, we're excited. ⁓

How do you feel about the women not going?

So

says everything's so political

Okay, this is the team that invited the FBI director. They invited the FBI director into their locker room. They accepted an invitation to go to the state of the union. Like what is more political than the state of the union? And then they say, why has it gotta be political?

Alyssa Burgart (26:30)
I mean, is it the stuff that's so political?

Well, so I don't know, did you see, did you see their, ⁓ like immediately after the win, you know, they interviewed, the journalists interviewed a bunch of the players and one of these guys was the one who got his teeth knocked out. I can't remember which, his name is, Jack. ⁓ He got interviewed and he was talking about, you know, how proud he was to be an American. And I, I sat there watching and I just thought, I don't know how anyone is saying it that

Arghavan (27:06)
I think it's Jack.

Alyssa Burgart (27:19)
way right now. And I and I don't mean that in any way to take away from their incredible victory. Yes, they're athletes, they're young people. But like, if I just find it hard to believe, because we know that a lot of athletes are very aware of what has been happening in the United States. So it's either a willful choice to not give two shits about the people who are suffering in this country. And I just it's ⁓

Arghavan (27:37)
Yep. Yep.

Alyssa Burgart (27:49)
It's so...

It's hard to hold both of those things at the same time. Yes, you can be entirely proud of your performance as an athlete. You can be proud that you ⁓ performed for your country and to be proud of being a member of your country, even if you are in opposition to the things that are happening. But what I'm hearing from the guys who are talking the loudest in US hockey is that they just think that none of that matters. Whatever else is happening off of the ice, it just doesn't matter.

Arghavan (28:10)
Right. Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Mm hmm.

Alyssa Burgart (28:25)
important.

Arghavan (28:26)
Yeah.

Alyssa Burgart (28:26)
And as you said, you know, having so many people ⁓ from Minnesota, from other areas that are also being ravaged by ice agents.

The willful ignorance to think that those excuses are sufficient is, it's pretty embarrassing.

Arghavan (28:47)
Yeah, well, it's embarrassing and I don't know if you caught so he talks about the social media backlash as though that's like Mmm, not real right like people are there's this backlash on social media. Yeah, because you did something

Alyssa Burgart (29:01)
because that's where

people see exactly what you did and exactly what you said and exactly how you acted. Because it's a video.

Arghavan (29:04)
Yes,

correct. And then he says, after that, he's talking about like their friends with the woman as though that changes anything. And then he says,

Alyssa Burgart (29:16)
We're friends with

the women, so it's fine if we insult them to the press. It's fine.

Arghavan (29:20)
Right, right. And he goes on to say that people just want to be negative about almost nothing. So that's an interesting phrase, isn't it? Almost nothing. It's like, there was something, but I don't think it's important. And that's why I'm going to say it's almost nothing. So basically minimizing the harm that was done and also negating the numerous voices of people who have been like, hey, this is really upsetting. And also,

How could you do this to your mother who was part of this team? You're laughing at your own mother? Like it's really been upsetting. Okay, I need to play the next clip for you. So this is not yet. I got one more clip of the, and this is both of the brothers on TV this week. So. One second.

Alyssa Burgart (30:00)
Is this the mom? Okay.

Arghavan (30:13)
I mentioned the celebration you had with the women's hockey team. They said they're not gonna be able to go to the state of the union.

Tonight, will you guys be going?

much allowed to say, yes, and yeah, we're excited to go. mean, it's you don't get to do. I don't know what day it every Tuesday, but yeah, it's gonna be ⁓ stuff across, but I'm glad you mentioned the Women's Team again. We're extremely happy for that. They're not going on. It's gonna be here right now surrounding.

our team and their team, but you know, in the last couple of summers, we did a lot of training with them

he says, basically, we get along really well with them. We've trained with them a couple of summers. We really like them. There's another clip that I'm not going to play for you where one of them is talking about having met up with one of the women after their game, being so proud of her. Anyway, there's a lot of...

Alyssa Burgart (31:16)
I can't

be a misogynist, I have friends that are girls.

Arghavan (31:19)
Exactly.

It's giving I have a black friend, you know, and it's so gross. And I think, you know, we all have had, or at least why should I speak for myself? I have definitely had so many experiences in my life where someone treats me a specific way or a certain way to my face, right? And I might think that we're friends only to find out that they've said something totally different when I am not there. And that

Alyssa Burgart (31:22)
Yeah, yeah. So gross.

Arghavan (31:47)
Someone who treats you differently when you're in front of them versus when you're not there, that is not a friend. So all these protestations about how much we like the women, we like the women's teams, we're so proud of them, they're blah, blah, they fall super flat for me because if that were the case, then you should have been upset when the president was making fun of those same women. If those are your friends, you should be feeling defensive. Why is he poking fun at my friends or my colleagues, however you're looking at it, but they didn't.

have that reaction, right? They just laugh, ha ha ha, so funny.

Alyssa Burgart (32:20)
And even if you're caught up in the moment, which like, you know, I don't know what it's like to win a giant game. Like maybe let's be okay, fine. You're caught up in the moment. You thought it would be fun to have the FBI guy. He turns out he knows how to party like whatever. I don't know. But like you had an opportunity to be like, we really missed a shot to stand up for the women's team. Like we should have said something differently. We are very proud of them. They are incredible athletes. Whatever. mean, but what's funny is like playing that clip that you just played.

I mean, it's not like they didn't have time to think about an answer. Like, they chose to not address that. They chose to just be like, no, but we're friends with girls, so it's fine.

Arghavan (32:51)
Exactly.

Let's live on Tuesday.

Yeah, well, and people have noticed that there have been clips posted online of various members of the men's US hockey team with their daughters, like playing up this girl dad thing. And some of them have since been removed because there was a lot of backlash. Like you cannot launder your misogyny through your daughters. That is a totally inappropriate thing to do. And we see through it because you had an opportunity to not behave in this way and you didn't take it. You've since had ample opportunity to apologize and you have

not taken that opportunity. So I do want to play now the clip of their mother. So Jack and Quinn's mother, Ellen Hughes, who again She's a development player, development coach for the U.S. women's hockey team and has been part of that win.

he was inviting them to the State of the Union and all that. And then he said a comment that gained attention. He said, I must tell you, we're going to have to bring the women's team. You know that in the room kind of laughs. And he added

do believe I probably would be impeached. He sort of joking through this, but you're cheering on both teams. How did that comment land for you? I think at the end of the day, it's just about the country and the moment that these players, both the men and women, can bring so much unity to a group and to a country. People that cheered on that don't watch hockey, people that have politics on one side or on the other side.

And that's all both the men's team and the women's team care about. If you could see what we see from the

and the men and women sharing dorm rooms and halls and flex floors and the camaraderie and the synergy and the way the women cheered on the men and the way the men cheered on the women. That's what it's all about. And the other things they cannot control. ⁓ They care about humanity, they care about unity, and they care about the country. Totally. I love that. ⁓

Alyssa Burgart (34:49)
Could they have cared

about it more actively though, like when they were talking to the president? Could they have cared more actively about humanity? I just, I'm not seeing it. I'm just not, I was listening for it, but I didn't hear it.

Arghavan (34:55)
I don't understand.

I know my ears were burnt. ⁓ It was interesting to me she said that other things they cannot control. was really, I mean I remain curious since I saw that clip I've been like what is she talking about? Does she think that they can't control their own reaction? They can't control their own.

comments they can't control, whether they apologize or not. Like what is it that they cannot control? I don't know the answer, but seeing that did help me understand why Jack and Quinn did not make apologies because if that's the approach that she was taking, right, and she's their mother, ⁓ yeah, you wouldn't expect them to do something radically different.

Alyssa Burgart (35:43)
Well, it's, I mean, and

just to make it a little more meta, like it's not lost on you or I that like white women are constantly laundering the bad behavior of white men of power.

Arghavan (35:56)
I hope that all the people who've been making excuses for the team have seen that none of those excuses really hold water because that's not what any of them are saying and they've had now plenty of opportunity to say things. I also wanna point out that there are five members of the men's hockey team who did not go to the White House and did not go to the State of the Union. Their names are Jake, I hope I pronounced this right.

Odinger, Kyle Conner, Brock Nelson, Jake Dunsel, Jackson Lacombe. So I don't believe we've seen any, you know, big statements from any of them as to why they didn't go. But I do believe at least a couple of them are from Minnesota. And so maybe that's part of it. But just to show that, know, they're not all the same, right? There's no one group that's a monolith. And five folks, for whatever reason, decided not to join the rest of the team and go to the White House.

And I do want to add again back to these comments about like not being political that they took photos, those who did go took photos in Trump's merchandise, know, caps and so on. And then they want to be on social media saying, well, let's not make politics, not bring politics into it or, know.

Alyssa Burgart (37:07)
Also,

if you're a MAGA Trump-er, just come out and say it. Stop pretending that you're apolitical. It's okay. If that's who you are, just be who you are. Go ahead and just be open and honest about what you believe in and what your values are and stop pretending that there's nothing political about it. I just don't understand. You can't have your cake and eat it too, gentlemen. It's not really how it works.

Arghavan (37:11)
you.

and accept the consequences.

I don't know.

Well, you know who you never see talking about it's not political you never hear people on the left Saying that that is an exclusively right-side conservative thing to say because they know that their Political position is unpopular So they want to just say whatever they want to say but say that it's not political or that they're not political, right? We see this a lot in the content creator space and influencers ⁓ who want to say things but don't want to

They just want to say it's not political, but it's never the people on the left who are doing that.

Alyssa Burgart (38:10)
Well, this is

like when people try to tell people like us, ⁓ health care, stop, you you doctors, stop being political. And I'm like, health care is political. it's a huge part of society. And, you know, it wouldn't have to be so partisan if we didn't treat it this way in this country. I didn't make it this way.

Arghavan (38:27)
Mm-hmm. That's right. absolutely. to

that point, actually, that reminds me of one of the other things that he said in the State of the Union, Trump said in the State of the Union, he said that they had gotten, I think it was almost 2.5 million people off of food stamps is what he said, which is what happens when you take away funding for SNAP and people can no longer.

Alyssa Burgart (38:42)
⁓ yeah. Kick. Yeah, he, well, you know,

I believe, and I heard, I did hear a clip of this. I believe the words he used were lifted people up off of food stamps. And I was like, that is a real way to spin, took away food nutrition support from families and children. So instead of having food stamps, they just don't have food.

Arghavan (39:11)
That's how we're making America healthy again, Alyssa.

Alyssa Burgart (39:13)
⁓

Well, you know, if you starve people, they'll lose weight. that will be how the that's how Maha is going to fix the obesity, you know, obesity that everyone's also worried about. Just don't feed people. That's it. Which, of course, doesn't work because then you're just your body goes into starvation mode and then you don't lose weight, which you know, because you're an obesity talk.

Arghavan (39:20)
Thank

You have to people, yeah.

Anyway, all right.

Alyssa Burgart (39:36)
Well,

so there was I I did not I wasn't gonna play the clip because it's kind of long but there is a hockey mom named Sarah Wiles who did a really good sort of summary as a hockey mom and she's raising kids who are hockey players her husband's a very serious hockey player and she does a whole breakdown of why it's a big problem that both that the US men teams behavior but also the way that their mom really tried to launder ⁓

this behavior. So I'll put that in the show notes. The other thing that I don't know if it came across your feed, but when I was scrolling and I was seeing some of the backlash about the hockey team, ⁓ my algorithm must have been like, girl, you need a break. Let me show you something uplifting. And so I ended up seeing a video from that's been ⁓ re-popularized. It's from 2017 and it's of a tennis player, ⁓ Andy Murphy, where the reporters

Arghavan (40:30)
Yes, Murray, Andy Murray.

Alyssa Burgart (40:33)
Murray, I'm sorry, Andy Murray. So tennis player Andy Murray from 2017 saying, a journalist was saying, you how does it feel to be this, you know, the first tennis player to do blah, blah, blah. And he was like the first male player. And the journalist was like, what? He was like the first male player. And then he was like, you know, Venus and Serena have won four each. You know, they've done this many times before I did. And

Arghavan (40:59)
Yes.

Alyssa Burgart (41:00)
He was so just very clear, very decisive. He was like, I didn't do this first. There's actually two really incredible women who did it first. And I'm really proud of what I did. that's a, I don't need to be, I don't need, we don't need to erase their accomplishments.

Arghavan (41:17)
Yeah,

that's actually one of my first videos that ever went viral on TikTok was a clip of Andy Murray, that exact clip of Andy Murray. He's an amazing and consistent feminist. Yeah.

Alyssa Burgart (41:25)
yeah.

I love that. Love it when

a man can realize that being a feminist is a wonderful thing.

Arghavan (41:35)
Absolutely. Okay. Last thing I want to say, and then we'll move on to our next topic. Last thing I want to say is, you know, when you bring up moms, for a lot of these athletes, it was their mom who took them to practice, who got their coach, who drove them back and forth all those years, right? Through their childhood, their adolescence, through their teenage years. That's usually who's doing the bulk of that work. I don't know about every one of these families, obviously, but

Alyssa Burgart (41:49)
Yeah, no shit.

the bulk

of that unpaid labor.

Arghavan (42:05)
And they wouldn't be, many of them, where they are now without their mothers having sacrificed for all those years. And it just makes it extra hurtful for them to then laugh at women once they have won this game.

Alyssa Burgart (42:26)
And yet it comes as no surprise when you look at the tradwife movement, you look at the rise of the bros and the man-fluencers and the manosphere and all these things where there are plenty of people in the conservative movement would be like, yeah, that's what women should be doing. They should be home cooking, making babies, driving kids back and forth to sports practices. That is a woman's ⁓ role.

Arghavan (42:51)
Yeah, I mean, what else would we do with our little brains?

Alyssa Burgart (42:51)
And you know, what else would we do? I don't know. I don't know.

I really like being a doctor. Huge fan. I mean, being a doctor has its downsides, but I really like it.

Arghavan (42:59)
Imagine?

Anything else on ⁓ hockey gate?

Alyssa Burgart (43:06)
No, I certainly did not predict on Sunday that you and I were going to need to talk about US men's hockey, let alone talk about it for 30 minutes. So I think we crushed it. Thanks for pulling together those clips. ⁓ So I thought what I would share with folks ⁓ this week is, you know, I love a lawsuit. Big fan. Love a public health lawsuit. That's my jam. And that's my love language is I like to read what's happening in the law.

Arghavan (43:17)
Yeah.

That's your love language.

Alyssa Burgart (43:37)
from a health perspective. So there is a new lawsuit that came out on February 24th, which was the day of the State of the Union. And there are 15 states, it's led by California and Arizona, 15 states that are suing the Department of Health and Human Services over Robert F. Kennedy Jr.'s actions by getting rid of 17 voting expert members of the ACIP, the groups that

makes recommendations about what vaccines we should have ⁓ and what are recommended. And he had sworn he would not do that. And then he did it. And then he replaced those with a smaller number of people who are all anti-vaccine activists. Now, there have been other lawsuits that we've talked about on the show. So like, for example, the lawsuit that the American Academy of Pediatrics and other organizations have also made against HHS over the same issue. This is 15 attorneys general. So it's

15 states who were saying, hey, you are really messing up our ability to take care of people in our states. You're going to cost us a lot more money if you think about the amount of. So vaccination does so many good things because it's incredibly low risk. It provides immense benefit to people by preventing serious illnesses and not only by preventing illnesses in small children who are vaccinated, that also helps prevent.

illnesses from being passed to people who cannot be vaccinated or people who have immune compromise, older people who are taking care of children, giving them additional protection as well. And the other thing that that does is so many, you talked about moms taking kids back and forth to hockey games. A lot of moms are both working and are trying to get their kids to school. You have parents who are trying to take care of kids. Oftentimes it's a mom who ends up having to stay home. So when you have kids who get sick, it really impacts the workforce.

So it impacts who's able to actually go to work. So a parent is gonna have to stay home with that child because that child cannot be left home alone. And so these are ways that vaccination additionally helps ⁓ to insulate the economy in a bunch of interesting ways. And additionally, the illnesses that kids can get, we've been talking about the measles because we're still in the middle of this ginormous preventable measles outbreak, diseases like RSV, rotavirus,

where they cause a lot of illness that leads kids to need to go to the hospital. And some kids are gonna be seriously ill, some kids are even going to die from some of these diseases. And so all of those things additionally overburden our healthcare system. And so vaccination is another way that we ensure that there are more resources available for diseases that we can't prevent and tragedies that we can't prevent. And so...

There are so many reasons why states that are trying to make sure that people in their communities are able to get care are prevented from getting terrible illnesses. We don't want it to be confusing for people. And the state has a lot of ⁓ financial reasons that are really important, especially as so many resources are being cut for patients to have access to things like Medicaid and Medicare dollars. And so these states are getting together and they're saying, listen,

You this decision to stack the ACIP with a bunch of jamokes is totally unacceptable and it's really dangerous and it's illegal. So you didn't follow the law in maintaining who needed to be on it. There's a part of the ⁓ laws that govern the ACIP demand that it have a balanced representation. Now that doesn't mean balanced with anti-vax and anti anti-vaxxers and

Arghavan (47:21)
You

Alyssa Burgart (47:21)
scientists, it means

having people with actual expertise balanced on the committee. so clearly, the current group is in total violation of that.

Arghavan (47:25)
and

Alyssa Burgart (47:31)
I'm going to read you a quote from Attorney General Rob Bonta from the press release, sorry, the press announcement that he and the Attorney General from Arizona did. And I'll put a link to the full statement ⁓ in our show notes. The Trump administration's attacks on science are irresponsible and dangerous. Undermining confidence in vaccines will lead to lower vaccination rates and more infectious disease.

It will also drive up costs for states, including increased Medicaid spending and new expenses to combat misinformation and revise public health guidance. Public health decisions must remain grounded in truth and facts. That's why for the 59th time, I'm taking the Trump administration to court. My fellow attorneys general and I cannot sit on the sidelines while lives are put at risk and our laws are broken."

So look forward to that. I'm very curious to see what judge that's going to end up in front of. Obviously, the courts have been packed with a lot of judges that are sympathetic, shall we say, to the Trump administration. You know, in the meantime, it's 2026. We've already had almost 1,000 cases of measles this year. We had 2,281 last year. It's brutal.

Arghavan (48:23)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Yeah, we already have almost three and half times as many cases as we had in all of 2024. So each year is just getting worse, not surprisingly. Did they have anything, because I haven't seen that lawsuit yet, did they have anything about the actual vaccine schedule that's been made by ACIP or was it only about ACIP?

Alyssa Burgart (49:05)
Well, it's basically that because the ACIP in its current iteration is illegal, that all of the changes that have been made by that group are also not appropriate and cannot be maintained. ⁓

Arghavan (49:13)
Hmm.

So if they were successful,

the vaccine, the CDC's vaccine schedule would revert to what it was before.

Alyssa Burgart (49:28)
It would have to go

back and they would have to change the current membership of the ACIP to actually include experts. And so by going after this legal mechanism by which these folks were inappropriately appointed, they're trying to reverse these negative effects. And so, you know, of these 15 states, you know, we've talked before, there's this West Coast Vaccine Alliance that includes all of the states on the West Coast.

Arghavan (49:37)
That would be great.

Alyssa Burgart (49:58)
⁓ it doesn't have every state in it, but that, I the amount of additional labor that every hospital is having to do in order to decide how to respond to these is, is intense. I I'm having to look through all sorts of documents to look and understand like, what do we need to say? What is the message you need to be? We've had to form these whole task forces to go over like every single thing and making sure that we're not.

Arghavan (50:10)
Mm-hmm.

Alyssa Burgart (50:26)
inadvertently referring to inaccurate information that's now on the CDC website. We're not referring to, you know, it's just, I've said it before and I'll say it again, every day is a new shitty homework assignment from this administration.

Arghavan (50:31)
Mm-hmm.

Mm-hmm that no one asked for and in a class that no one signed up for either I Was just looking up and I don't know if you know the answer You know Moderna so just in this realm of vaccines so Moderna had applied they've created a ⁓ mRNA based flu vaccine that they had applied for FDA approval for and the FDA the our bestie Vinay Prasad That's sarcasm just to be clear ⁓

Alyssa Burgart (50:45)
Uhhhh, it's so terrible.

yes, yes.

Arghavan (51:08)
had said no, they weren't even going to review the application for this vaccine. And then there was a lot of backlash. And then I don't know what else happened behind the scenes. But then they said, OK, actually, we will review the data. But somewhere in there, and I was just looking for it I can't find it again, but somewhere in there, I thought I had seen an announcement that Moderna was going to stop. yeah, this might be it. Moderna is scaling down its investments in vaccine development as the US market.

goes increasingly hostile to immunizations. So, you know, I mentioned that because there are vaccines that have been in development for things like, I don't, I'm not saying specifically Moderna, but in general, like for things like EBV, which we now know is linked to MS, multiple sclerosis, and other conditions that we don't currently have vaccines for. And this openly,

this open hostility to vaccines not only affects what children have access to today, but it's also going to affect what is able to be developed because these companies, they're looking at obviously the market, where are they going to be able to sell different things? And if they're a US based company or if the US is one of their largest customer bases and the US is not going to approve these things or actively talk against them all the time, even if they do approve them.

Alyssa Burgart (52:06)
Mm-hmm.

Arghavan (52:32)
then it's not going to make financial sense for these companies to develop these vaccines. And that means all of us are going to lose out on vaccines that could be developed that could have significant protective benefits for people of all or various ages because of Trump empowering an anti-vaxxer as the head of HHS.

Alyssa Burgart (52:56)
Yeah, and you know, it's so, just makes me so mad because, ⁓ you and you and I've said before, we're not huge fans of the pharmaceutical company, but we are in this, there's dynamic tension between if you want to be able to prevent illnesses and you want to be able to effectively treat illnesses, we need pharmaceutical interventions in addition to other forms of preventative medication or preventative measures.

Vaccination is one of the most effective preventative measures. And you were talking about EBV, Epstein-Barr, and I take care of transplant patients, and Epstein-Barr virus is like a huge contributor to PTLD, this like terrible lymphoproliferative disease that people develop after transplant when they get an organ from somebody who has had EBV or they themselves have had EBV, and it's just...

It's so depressing to see, to think about the patients that we're trying to care for, these incredibly complex patients who deserve access to care that is effective and to see how.

The maha movement loves to frame itself as like, we're against big pharma because big pharma is the main problem when the wellness industry is billions and billions of times more profitable and revenue generating than the pharmaceutical industry. And know you've, you've put up the numbers before for our, for our listeners and, it's just such a false dichotomy. And like you said, it's, it's, ⁓ it's Americans that are losing out.

Arghavan (54:33)
Absolutely.

And the rest of the world too, right? Because if the market here disappears and that's what the company was depending on, then those benefits are also not going to reach people in other countries. ⁓ So it's just, we continue to see the various ripple effects from this one terrible, terrible decision of appointing RFK Jr., which was a political decision, right? They made a political deal based on RFK Jr. withdrawing from the presidential election and then throwing his support to Trump.

Alyssa Burgart (54:42)
Mm-hmm.

Arghavan (55:09)
⁓ And we will be recovering from this for generations. ⁓ Anyway, thank you for the update on that lawsuit. I'm always glad to hear people are continuing to fight the fights. And for folks who haven't followed, mean, the Trump administration is losing the majority of the lawsuits that are being brought against them. So it's far from futile to take on these lawsuits. They're resulting in genuine ⁓ policy changes that are helpful for Americans.

And one last thing I'm going to say about this on the legal front, only I think five of the nine Supreme Court justices went to the State of the Union, which is interesting. I didn't know if that's like normal for them. I didn't have a chance to do a deep dive into attendance at the State of the Union.

Alyssa Burgart (55:52)
I mean,

that's not the party line separation in SCOTUS, so hmm.

Arghavan (55:56)
Correct.

Yeah, that's interesting, right? And we just had the decision last week on the tariffs that the Supreme Court said that Trump's tariffs were illegal, which is also very interesting given that they have, while lower courts have pretty consistently ⁓ called out the policies as illegal, many, many policies as illegal, the Supreme Court, when things have reached them and they've accepted the case has...

Often aligned with the president and so it was interesting to see them say no actually On this one on this one. You're wrong, sir And then he had a major as you mentioned crash I had a major crash out after that and announced new tariffs new global tariffs in response to being told It's like a child, right? You're told you can't do it. So you're like i'm gonna do it more See how you like me now ⁓ anyway That's that's what ⁓ that's what that reminded me of

shall we go on to take two and call me in the morning?

Alyssa Burgart (56:53)
Absolutely. ⁓ What do you prescribe for me this week?

Arghavan (56:57)
Okay, so the thing that I have been enjoying that I mentioned to you but not on the pod last week is this monkey punch in Japan.

Alyssa Burgart (57:05)
Yes,

tell me more because you told me about the monkey and then I started to see things and I want to hear more.

Arghavan (57:12)
Yeah, so ⁓ the basic story is that this poor little monkey who I believe his actual name is Ponchi-kun with a hyphen, but we a lot of people all over the world just calling him punch. A macaque monkey who was abandoned for unknown reasons by his mother. And so they have been trying to kind of help. He was raised for part of the time by ⁓ by humans and then has been introduced into this zoo in Japan where

He's gone viral for lots of reasons, but many of them have been, he's been getting bullied by the adult monkeys in the zoo because they're like, who are you and what are you doing here? Right? Like you're strange monkey. You don't have anyone protecting you, defending you. Where's your family? Like you seem weird. Right? I mean, I'm not, just to be clear, I'm not any sort of expert on these dynamics. This is just what I've seen in the videos. Like he's been getting bullied. So the zoo ⁓ had bought him a stuffed orangutan.

that he could have as like a motherly figure. Basically, it's so sad. You got a stuffed animal and he carries the stuffed animal all over this little area that they're in. And there's one photo of him where he's walking away on this concrete and he's dragging the stuffed orangutan behind him. And it's very like forlorn, but also brave at the same time. It's like, I'm going to keep on going with my stuffed animal mama.

⁓ And so he really like won a lot of people's hearts over because it's such a such a sad story. Like who would abandon this little monkey and then he's getting bullied by these bigger stronger obviously monkeys. so.

Alyssa Burgart (58:50)
And his mom should

be carrying him around. That's the typical mom-baby behavior. so watching him drag this toy mama monkey is real sad.

Arghavan (59:03)
It's really sad. But the reason I'm mentioning it in this context is that it seems like he's made a lot of progress over the last couple of weeks. Like multiple of the older monkeys are now grooming him and they're hugging him and he's still getting rejected. Sometimes like there's a clip I saw this week where he's trying to hug one of the older monkeys and they push him away twice and then he just goes back. It's very sad. Then he goes crawls back to his stuffed animal.

And then, you know, he tries to like wrap the arms of the stuffed animal around him, like it's gonna hug him. But anyway, so on the whole though, like what I'm seeing is it seems like maybe, again, I'm not an animal expert, but just from what I'm seeing, it seems like he's maybe making some progress and getting accepted and certainly getting more hugs. And so it's just nice to see that it looks like things are headed in a positive direction for Punch and that brighter days are ahead.

Alyssa Burgart (59:51)
Mm.

Well, because you told me about the monkey, of course the algorithm is showing me more content about Little Punch. And there was a one, there was a really good video from William Sprect, who ends up in my feed a lot. And I usually see him doing the Jesus videos or like the Saint, like he's checking people into heaven or hell or whatever. But this one he was talking about, he knows what bullying looks like and he's very worried about what's going to happen to this stuffed animal and what's going to happen to the monkey. I could.

Arghavan (1:00:09)
Yeah.

Alyssa Burgart (1:00:32)
I could put that on the show notes. The other one that I saw was a woman is watching videos of punch and and the the screen says everyone's talking about the monkey, but no one's talking about this guy. And she's very interested in the hot zookeeper that is like giving who's like feeding these animals in the zoo. And I thought that was like it was funny. ⁓

Arghavan (1:00:39)
Mm-hmm.

Yes.

that is, well,

because every time that guy comes in to feed them, Punch grabs onto either his leg or his arm and just stays basically clung onto him until he, yeah, yeah, because he was, spent time with humans, I think when earlier on, I think he's now about seven months old. ⁓ But yeah, there's no shortage, I will say this, there's no shortage of Punch content out there if anybody's looking for it. There's tons of people posting that and people being like,

Alyssa Burgart (1:01:05)
yes!

Be my friend.

This

Arghavan (1:01:26)
I'm getting on a plane. I'm going to go save that monkey.

Alyssa Burgart (1:01:32)
And of course this monkey needs to be accepted by monkeys, not by humans, but we'll enjoy the content while it lasts. This reminds me of, wasn't it Modang? There was the hippo, was it hippo that was like very popular a couple years ago? Anyway.

Arghavan (1:01:47)
There was a hippo

who was very popular. Well, there's also a penguin. ⁓ I don't know where this is actually, but I saw there's a penguin that was born early basically. And so all the other eggs have not hatched yet. So this poor penguin is by itself and they got a little stuffed penguin for this penguin to have as their companion. And I've seen a lot of people being like, I cannot take two of these creatures meeting a stuffed animal.

Alyssa Burgart (1:02:00)
it's like a neonatal penguin.

at

the same time. It's too much. It's too much.

Arghavan (1:02:17)
Yeah, at least that one isn't

being bullied. That one's just waiting for the other animals to hatch, ⁓ but still pretty lonely, I'm sure. Anyway, ⁓ enough about the animal kingdom for today. What's your recommendation for folks?

Alyssa Burgart (1:02:27)
my gosh.

Okay, so ⁓ I think it was last week was like this big quilting competition where like people display like really beautiful expert quilts that they've made. ⁓ every year there's like incredible people can make things that look like paintings by using like scraps of fabric and the way they do the stitching. And let me tell you, the quilters are mad this year. Quilters in America are pissed and.

Arghavan (1:02:56)
⁓ What about?

Alyssa Burgart (1:02:58)
Well, America's government. And so there are these, I will put in some really fabulous carousels of them. And so like there's one that says, ⁓ it's a beautifully made geometric quilt. And then on top of it, they've appliqued ⁓ very precise font. And it says, our government abducted hundreds of people based on race while I made this. ⁓ There's another one that just says,

Arghavan (1:03:01)
Yeah, yeah.

Alyssa Burgart (1:03:27)
Fuck you, make me.

There's one that's, you know the no kings protest, how it's got the crown. It's all crowns and then it says no embroidered and applique over the top of it. So anyway, there's a bunch of really good ones. There's one that's like, it's like a quilt painting of a tattered American flag. ⁓ They're just, it's incredible American craft artistry and ⁓ people are mad, the ladies are mad. I mean, they may not all, don't know if all of these

quilters are ladies, but ⁓ the people who made these are not happy. That's for sure. The other one that is just hilarious is there is a it's from Pasco libraries and it says Gen Z writes the library marketing script and it's just like guy who's, you know, our age who works for the library and making like a library marketing advertisement for social media, but he's using all.

Gen Z language and it's really funny. So I'll put that in the show notes.

Arghavan (1:04:33)
Have

you seen the lady there's an older lady like she looks like she's maybe in her 70s or something who is a? The one who's in the museum and she I've seen videos of her showing different things in the museum and then she's using Gen Z Lego very dry

Alyssa Burgart (1:04:39)
The art, the artist or she she takes people. Yes, yes. Have you seen her?

I'm trying to look and see, cause I was going to talk about that a previous week and I did not have a chance. I'll find it. here it is. ⁓ my gosh. I found it. I have a system and it works. ⁓ it's love it when that happens. ⁓ so this is a video and it says meet 77 year old Alison Luke's, the art museum curator going viral for using Gen Z slang at work. ⁓ and she's, she's chat. I'm about to.

Arghavan (1:05:05)
Great. Love it when that happens.

Yes!

That's the one.

Alyssa Burgart (1:05:23)
Buss it Roman Empire style. Haters are going to hate this. It's fantastic. So we will put those in the show notes. I'm so glad you brought her up. She's incredible. And yeah, she's like in her 77. Amazing. Love it. All right.

Arghavan (1:05:35)
Well, there you go. Yeah. All right.

Well, that's it for this week's episode. If you didn't like what you heard, this has been the Jordan B. Peterson podcast. If you liked it, don't forget to subscribe to The Present Illness. Leave us a review if you can or a rating and tell everyone you know to tune in.

Alyssa Burgart (1:05:53)
And we know you like us because you stayed on this long. So follow us on TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube. We are at the present illness and you can stay on top of our, all of our TPI related news.

Arghavan (1:06:02)
We will of course be back again next week with more headlines, hot takes, and doom scrolling, hopefully wrapped in some laughs.

Alyssa Burgart (1:06:09)
Until then, agitate, hydrate, and take a nap. We'll see you next time on The Present Illness. Production by Arghavan Salles and Alyssa Burgart. Editing by Alyssa Burgart. Social media by Arghavan Salles. Original music by Joseph Uphoff. Don't take medical advice from random people on a podcast. This shows for informational purposes. It's meant to be fun and certainly not medical advice. So take your medical questions to a qualified professional.