109 - Thanksgiving 2021, Part I: Fever Dream with Will Leitch

TEASER: Thanksgiving, 2031: A Reckoning Everyone's not murdered, and nothing is magnetic ... THEME: "Dead Man's Party," by Oingo Boingo PART ONE: All Our Troubles Are Gone Welcome back to Will Leitch ... No plugs ... Vaccinated child blood ... Mask affinity ... Can there be a pandemic off-ramp? ... Torn pandemic bicep ... You just have a bad body now ... Without shared struggle, there is no shared victory ... We can't personally police anybody ... A segregated society ... Disproportionate political minority-opinion representation ... But vaccination won! ... Residual Covid resentment ... Unvaccinated, disconnected cousin ... Most people are disengaged and normal for it ...  Original music by Chris Collingwood PART TWO: Scoreboard! Normalcy's inertia over Covid ... Bret Stephens, noted herb ... Trump and the Power of Positive Thinking ... Placebo effect ... Road Runner mentality vs. Coyote mentality ... Everyone's just tryin', man ... Fighting the monoculture vs. creating the multiculture ... Eight people talking in Slack ... Labor Day, the film ... Thanksgiving pandemic antagonism ... Sibling to blame ... A more severable externalized slight ... Polio ... Nobody's magnetic or sterile! ... Family division feeding grievance politics ...  Original music by Chris Collingwood PART THREE: Hot Vaxgiving What are we doing for Thanksgiving? ... Died before every Thanksgiving ... We are here, and it is enough ... Bringing back all the old favorites ... The dead optimism of June ... False hope for a V-E Day ... Next years pandemic conversation percentage ... Growing stunted by the pandemic ... I'm not your boyfriend ... All other music by Chris Collingwood of Look Park and Fountains of Wayne, except: "Orchestral Sports Theme" by Chris Collingwood and Rick Murnane. Read Will's newsletter here.