Weekly Recap — 1/22/21
Stitcher has a plethora of podcasts worth listening to. Each week, we’re giving you new episode recommendations from some of our top shows to help keep you up to speed and ease the pain of the pod discovery process.
Full Release with Samantha Bee: “Mailbag: Final Trump Thoughts”
For all four years of Donald Trump’s presidency, Samantha Bee has stood out as one of his most intelligent and funniest critics. And her podcast, Full Release, allows Bee to extend her talents from her TBS show, Full Frontal , to the audio space, giving fans a much needed catharsis from world events.
Now, in the final week of Trump’s term, Bee kicks off Full Release with a message she wants to send to the outgoing president. “We’re on the eve of the last day of the Trump presidency,” Bee says. “I just couldn’t let him live without giving him my fondest of goodbyes.” She then proceeds to say: “Get the fuck out!”
Joined by her producers, Bee goes over one final mailbag of listener questions about Trump. What was her personal worst day of the Trump presidency? one listener asks. “It’s been so terrible and there have been so many times where I’ve just cried and just felt so distraught.” She lists the travel ban, the coronavirus, the time he tweeted for her to be fired, and child separation at the border. “For me, that defines the Trump presidency.”
Then the fantasy question comes: If Bee could interview Trump and he had to answer one question honestly, what would she ask him? Her answer: “How many abortions have you actually paid for?”
Listen to the episode to hear if Bee thinks Trump will stay in touch with his kids after the presidency, reluctantly imagining what Trump wearing a T-Shirt would look like, and giving superlatives for Trump’s exiting cabinet. Here’s one Stephen Miller: “Most likely to shrivel from the inside out.”
Fake The Nation — “Now That It’s Over, How Do You Feel? (w/ Cameron Esposito, Farnoosh Torabi)”
Inauguration day has finally arrived and Fake The Nation host Negin Farsad and her guests this week, Cameron Esposito and Farnoosh Torab, are ready to dissect and reflect.
Joe Biden had just been inaugurated as the new U.S. president prior the show’s recording and the team had a lot to say, first reflecting not only on the chaotic term of Donald Trump’s presidency, but wondering when in their lives Trump first came on their radar.
“Our reference point for him in our childhoods is like, the fact that he was on Pizza Hut commercials and that he was in Home Alone 2 and that his name was on buildings,” Esposito says. She and Torabi agree they didn’t start paying attention to Trump in a political way until 2011 when he stoked the false conspiracy claims that President Obama wasn’t born in the United States.
And echoing the episode title, the guests are both asked: “Now that it’s over, how do you feel?”
Torabi says “inauguration day is the start of the new year” and that she has cautious optimism now. “We’re moving in the right direction but there’s still a lot of work to do.”
And what do they think of the inauguration? Esposito praises the outfits worn by the female performers, but not so much the men. “How awesome to see that female performers have the right outfit for everything,” she says. Like Garth Brooks was wearing somebody else’s hair and I love Garth Brooks. But he didn’t have the right outfit. He didn’t have his own hair to bring to the occasion.” Farsad feels Brooks, along with fellow performers Jennifer Lopez and Lady Gaga each gave a flavor of America, Brooks bringing a “red state realness.”
Overall the panel is just happy to once again have a leader who can speak coherently again. “We’re like literally exploring the alphabet now because we’ve been deprived of it,” Farsad says. “We have not been able to luxuriate in these basics for four years.”
Though Biden isn’t the most electrifying president, Torabi has one of the best quotes of the episode, emphasizing that Biden’s basicness is necessary. “Joe Biden is basic. He’s bringing basic back. Obama brought sexy. Biden is bringing basic and at this point in our history that is what we need.”
Listen to the episode to hear the group’s thoughts on the departure of Mike Pence, how the Trump presidency affected comedy, and the importance of remaining politically vigilant going forward.
— Ian Goldstein
