Normally Podcast: School’s Out, Scandals Are In: Politics, Power, and Pete

Summary

Podcast Summary: The Clay Travis and Buck Sexton Show Episode: Normally Podcast: School’s Out, Scandals Are In: Politics, Power, and Pete
Release Date: May 29, 2025

In this episode of the Normally Podcast, hosts Mary Katharine Ham and Carol Markowitz delve into a range of pressing political and social issues, intertwining current events with sharp analysis and insightful commentary. The discussion navigates through the complexities of recent legislative actions, internal party conflicts, and notable controversies within academic institutions. Below is a detailed breakdown of the key topics covered, enriched with notable quotes and timestamps for reference.

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1. The "Big Beautiful Bill" and Discretionary Spending Cuts

[05:10 – 08:29]

Mary and Carol kick off the conversation by examining the recently proposed "Big Beautiful Bill," a substantial spending package that has garnered both support and criticism from various quarters.

• Elon Musk's Critique: Elon Musk voices his disappointment with the bill, stating, "...the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it and undermines the work that the Doge team is doing" ([05:10]).

• Discretionary vs. Mandatory Spending: Carol highlights Stephen Miller's clarification on discretionary spending cuts, noting, "Doge cuts are to discretionary spending, eg, the federal bureaucracy. Under spend a budget rules, you cannot discretion. You cannot cut discretionary spending. Only mandatory in a reconciliation bill" ([06:14]).

• Presidential Role in Rescissions: The hosts discuss the necessity of a presidential rescission letter for discretionary cuts, emphasizing the president's pivotal role: "As of this recording, no letter has been sent. So if anybody wants to be mad at spending, I'm afraid the buck stops with the President on this one" ([07:23]).

• Potential Passage Timeline: They ponder the bill's progress, suggesting it might be expedited through the Senate by July or extended to the August recess, aiming to manage constituent dissatisfaction while advancing the bill's agenda ([08:15]).

2. Pete Buttigieg's COVID-19 Policies and Internal Democratic Rift

[19:05 – 28:30]

The discussion shifts focus to former Transportation Secretary and current political figure, Pete Buttigieg, particularly his reflections on the COVID-19 pandemic response.

• COVID-19 School Policies: Buttigieg, in an interview, expresses regret over the delayed reopening of schools, stating, "For the love of God, figure out a way to get the schools open sooner... the costs were not just politically, but in a profound way" ([19:30]).

• Economic Misconceptions: He also critiques the narrow focus on jobs as the sole indicator of economic health, "Remember that prices is just as big a part of the economy..." ([20:11]).

• Internal Party Conflicts: Mary and Carol explore how Buttigieg's stance has sparked tensions within the Democratic Party, leading to a potential "civil war" as more moderate voices clash with progressive factions. Carol remarks, "We're really glad to have you here, and we'll accept you on normally as one of our own" ([21:26]).

• Critique of Progressive Responses: The hosts criticize the handling of school reopenings, highlighting instances where public schools remained closed while private institutions operated, leading to perceptions of elitism and neglect. Mary states, "Buttigieg is good at talking. Newsom's good at talking..." ([25:12]).

• Future Implications: They speculate on the future trajectory of the Democratic Party, questioning whether figures like Buttigieg can maintain their positions amid growing internal dissent. Carol muses, "And they're going to have to find smart people who understand that people outside of Harvard can be smart" ([27:40]).

3. Harvard Professor Fired for Ethical Violations in Research

[35:33 – 38:55]

Transitioning to academia, Mary and Carol discuss a significant scandal involving a Harvard Business School professor, Francesca Gino.

• The Scandal: Francesca Gino, a prominent behavioral scientist, was fired from Harvard for manipulating data to support her conclusions in a study on honesty. Mary summarizes, "Harvard revoked the tenure. This move concluded Gino's two-year battle to keep her position at the school and marked a historic penalty for a faculty member at Harvard" ([35:45]).

• Implications for Trust in Institutions: The hosts argue that such incidents erode public trust in academic institutions, with Mary stating, "This is what the lack of trust in institutions comes from. And it is deserved. It is deserved" ([37:19]).

• Simplified Explanation by AI: Highlighting the confusion surrounding the case, they present an AI-generated simplification: "Ooga booga smart woman. Francesca make number stories at big school Harvard school say she cheat..." ([37:19]).

• Potential Legal Outcomes: They briefly touch upon the ongoing legal battles, with Carol expressing skepticism about Francesca's chances in court: "I hope she does not win the 25 million that she's trying to win..." ([38:42]).

4. Additional Highlights

EV Mandate Repeal and California Policies
[11:57 – 14:35]

• Congressional Action on EV Mandate: The hosts applaud Congress's move to strike down California's electric vehicle mandate via the Congressional Review Act, emphasizing the importance of state autonomy: "Let Californians keep their Californian policies in California. No thank you" ([12:16]).

• Critique of California's Housing Permits: They critique Los Angeles Mayor Karen Bass's low housing permit approvals, contrasting it with Florida Governor Ron DeSantis's infrastructure achievements: "Meanwhile, like Ron DeSantis has probably built like 10 bridges during that time of that one house" ([12:59]).

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Conclusion

In this episode, Mary Katharine Ham and Carol Markowitz provide a thought-provoking analysis of current political dynamics, legislative developments, and ethical breaches within academia. Their discussions shed light on the intricate interplay between policy decisions, party politics, and institutional integrity, offering listeners a comprehensive understanding of the evolving landscape.

Notable Quotes:

• "People who criticize Elon will lump the tax cuts in as a cost, as spending, which is ridiculous. Maintaining the tax codes for people as they are is preventing a giant tax hike on them and must be done. The government has a spending problem. It does not have a collect money from us problem" — Mary Katharine Ham ([05:53]).

• "This was a California invention, which, you know, why not nationalize all of those?" — Carol Markowitz ([11:58]).

• "Harvard revoked the tenure. This is what the lack of trust in institutions comes from. And it is deserved. It is deserved" — Mary Katharine Ham ([37:19]).

---

Disclaimer: This summary is based on a transcript of the podcast episode and aims to encapsulate the primary discussions and viewpoints expressed by the hosts. For a comprehensive understanding, listening to the full episode is recommended.

Transcript

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[Mary Katharine Ham]

Hey, guys. We are back on. Normally the show is normalish takes, but when the news gets weird. I'm Mary Kathleen Ham.

[Carol Markowitz]

And I am Carol Markowitz. Hi, Mary Kathryn. How are you?

[Mary Katharine Ham]

I'm all right. It's the end of the school year and you know that like just everything stacks up, stacks up, stacks up. So running around, but good things are good.

[Carol Markowitz]

All right. Yeah. Do you have a lot of like, they have all those days, like you dress up like this today and like.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Yeah. And they have like end of the year parties and end of the year ceremonies and end of the year performances.

[Carol Markowitz]

And yes, yes, yes to all that. I had to buy napkins for my youngest son's class party. I always choose napkins. Yes, I am that mom. But I was very pleased to learn that grownups were not invited to that party. Something I only learned this morning.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

So, yeah, we love a drop off.

[Carol Markowitz]

That's great.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

We love a drop off when they get old enough for the drop off. I'm like, go forth, children.

[Carol Markowitz]

Enjoy, have so much fun. So Elon Musk, we haven't talked about him in a while. Ever since our number one fan, my husband, said that we were talking about him too much.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

See, we respond.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah, we're very responsive to listener needs. Especially if I sleep with you.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

There you go.

[Carol Markowitz]

Well, yeah, he thought we were doing too much Doge and then Doge itself stopped being in the news so much, so we stopped talking about it as much. But it's still happening. They're still dozing away. And Elon Musk is on. He's going to be on, I believe a Sunday show this weekend. And he is not thrilled with the big beautiful bill. We have this clip for our listeners.

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I was like disappointed to see the massive spending bill, frankly, which increases the budget deficit, not just decreases it and undermines the work that the Doge team is doing.

[Carol Markowitz]

I actually thought that when this big.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Beautiful Bill came along.

[Carol Markowitz]

I mean, like, everything he's done on.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Doge gets wiped out in the first year.

[Financial Literacy Advertiser]

I think a bill can be.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Can be.

[Financial Literacy Advertiser]

Can be big or it can be beautiful, but I don't know if it could be both. My personal opinion.

[Carol Markowitz]

Same, same. Agree. I like some things in the big, beautiful bill, like the tax cuts. I feel like there's also this sense online that if you criticize the bill, then you don't like the tax cuts. No, I like the tax cuts. I just don't like a lot of the other stuff.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Well, and people. People who criticize Elon will lump the tax cuts in as a cost, as spending, which is ridiculous. Maintaining the tax codes for people as they are is preventing a giant tax hike on them and must be done. The government has a spending problem. It does not have a collect money from us problem.

[Carol Markowitz]

Exactly. So, Ste. Stephen Miller, who is an advisor to Trump, he had this. I'm gonna read. It's kind of a long tweet, but I feel like it does a good job explaining some stuff that I don't think is clear to some people. Doge cuts are to discretionary spending, eg, the federal bureaucracy. Under send a budget rules, you cannot discretion. You cannot cut discretionary spending. Only mandatory in a reconciliation bill. So DOGE cuts would have to be done through what is known as rescissions package or an appropriations bill. Okay. I'm not gonna read you the. You get that, right?

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Yeah. Reconciliation is a very specific process, and basically no one, except for the parliamentarian understands what can go in this bill.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

I'm. I'm willing to give some leeway. I understand that in order to maintain the tax package from 2017 and not give everybody a giant tax hike, that this bill was probably going to get big and obnoxious. I understood.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah. The fact that Doge cuts have to happen through the rescission package, though, and apparently that requires a letter from the President with instructions to what rescissions he wants.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Right.

[Carol Markowitz]

As of this recording, no letter has been sent. So if anybody wants to be mad at spending, I'm afraid the buck stops with the President on this one.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Well, and Speaker Johnson has also signaled today, given that people are upset about this, that he would move to consider this quickly. I do think that. So the president is welcome to write it, and I think it sounds like he would be on that. But I do worry that, like, how much do they actually have time for and actually complete during this basically first year that you have to do things? I think they're looking at possibly getting this big, beautiful bill through the Senate. Probably biglier by the time it will be bigly.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

By maybe July or like keeping people until the August recess and trying to do it by then. So you got to have steam to get the other stuff done and not have ticked off everybody while doing the big bill.

[Carol Markowitz]

It's quite a tough process. Eric Erickson clarified a little bit about the rescission letter. He tweeted, if Congress does it without a rescission letter from the President, it follows the normal process and is subject to the filibuster. If the president sends a letter, it follows the Impoundment control Act of 1974 and bypasses a Senate filibuster. It's so confusing to the average person. Like rescission letters and filibusters. It's really not a process that we should be proud of.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

No, it's on one hand it's supposed to be tough to get stuff through the Congress. So I like that. Right. When Democrats were blithely like, let's just get rid of, of the filibuster, a move which they would definitely be regretting had they done it right now when they wanted to get rid of it. Dum dums. I was like, no, because the bar is supposed to be high for passing things, but it does sometimes end up looking like in order to pass the things, you got to make the things big.

[Carol Markowitz]

I do like that Elon is speaking out on this because I think that they will listen to Elon in a way that they won't listen to a lot of other people. I don't know that they would even be trying to minimize spending if it wasn't for Elon. I think. And again, you and I have talked about it on here before. Trump is a spender. This is his impulse. Take care of everyone, make sure everyone is taken care of is part of his message. And that is not a conservative philosophy. So here we are with this big, not that beautiful spending bill. As Elon said, it can be big or beautiful, it cannot be both. Although just to add a little bit more to what Stephen Miller was saying, he says it includes the single largest welfare reform in American history, along with the largest tax cut and reform in American history, the most aggressive energy exploration in American history, and the strongest border bill in American history. But then he adds, all while reducing the deficit. And yeah, we'll see about that one.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Yeah. I also would say the Medicaid reforms, which the Democrats are going to call cuts, is simply asking able bodied, like totally normal aged People with no dependents to try to work part time. That's the requirement.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right? That's pretty normal.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Talk about an 80, 20 issue. There's one right there. So Republicans should be sure to characterize it the proper way as a reform because that's quite popular. I also wanted to note that sort of under covered was that the Congress did accomplish something last week which is that they struck down a key aspect of the administration's nationwide electric vehicle mandate under the Congressional Review Act. We love to see it, love to see it. This was a California invention, which, you know, why not nationalize all of those? Because they're doing so great. A California innovation that was to put all like 30% of new cars would have had to be electric cars in like 11 or 12 states and then would expand to the rest of us by like next year. And then at some point it was supposed to phase out to zero. Gas powered cars could be sold new in all these states.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

People don't want this. Let the market do what the market does. Let people have gas powered cars if they want them, let them have choice. And to have this be top down from the federal government as guided by the leading lights of California. No, thank you.

[Carol Markowitz]

Most importantly, let Californians keep their Californian policies in California.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Yes.

[Carol Markowitz]

No thank you.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Have at them, guys. I wish you the best. Did you see the picture the other day where Karen Bass, who's the mayor of Los Angeles, she, she tweeted a picture overhead view of one house built in the Palisades and was like, look at all the work we're doing to build houses and cut red tape. And I was like, you're building house.

[Carol Markowitz]

It's amazing. Yeah, you built a house.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

A house, that house. The number of permits is scandalously low that they have managed to give. And it's just yet another example of why exporting their way of doing things is not a good idea.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right. Meanwhile, like Ron DeSantis has probably built like 10 bridges during that time of that one house.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

So it's someday they'll learn.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah, no they won't. They won't learn. I, I don't know. Will they learn? Do you think they'll learn? I, I don't think so. I, I think they'll just continue down this path. I, I don't think abundance Democrats are going to win this.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Well, he, this is the thing, it's causing this pretty big rift in the Democratic Party. Jonathan Chait was writing in the Atlantic quite sensibly that like, hey, if liberal cities and liberal governance headed by Progressives in places like Chicago or LA does not give the people we were supposed to give people better jobs, more housing, cheaper options and more prosperity. Like, what are we doing? And I would say, yeah, I'm asking for quite a long time, what are you doing? Yeah, but that's causing the progressives in the party to be, be like, oh my gosh, they're trying to purge us and our government for the sake of government. What are we going to do now? So that's going to be the fight waging into 2028 and I think I'll enjoy it.

[Carol Markowitz]

I agree with you that that will be their internal fight. But I just wonder like places like California or New York, they have an appeal to people and so they will continue to draw in, you know, the 20 somethings who are trying to make it even as it's just a true, you know, dumpster fire all around. And so that's why the lesson's so tough for them to learn because they're like to love us. Look at this. You know, so I don't know, I.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Don'T know if, well, how did Democrats ever pivot from more government to less government? Like that's not their brand. That's the brand of the other guys. So even though they don't do it half the time, I would love if they did it more. Yeah, but how do you become Democrats for less government?

[Carol Markowitz]

That's like, or any sane policies. Actually this, this segs very nicely into our second topic. We'll be right back on. Normally.

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[Carol Markowitz]

Pete Buttigieg went on the Bulwark podcast and was asked. He's been doing a media tour, I think in preparation of running in 28. He comes off as rather sane in an insane party for sure. But you know, he was asked this question, what he would have done differently five years ago, and this was his response.

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1. For the love of God, figure out a way to get the schools open sooner. We got very knee jerk about this and the costs were not just politically, but in a profound way. I think for the generation, the costs were profound. And I think anybody who's involved, who was, by the way, obviously doing their best to deal with a crisis that killed a million Americans, but I think most people involved would like to be able to have found a way to safely get more schools open more quickly.

[Carol Markowitz]

That was a great first answer.

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I had no idea where. I mean, there's so many ways you could have gone with that. Obviously pay more attention to the border. That's real and that's going to be something that you can't just like take your time to deal with.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

3.

[Financial Literacy Advertiser]

Even though you spent your entire political lifetime believing that the economy and jobs are the same thing, and if you have lots of jobs, it's a good economy and if you have a problem with jobs, it's a bad economy. Remember that prices is just as big a part of the economy. It just hasn't come up much in the last 40 years. So what would you have done? What would you have done differently on prices then? No country was able to save their economy from COVID without getting into some inflation, some serious and painful inflation. But I do think that there were a lot of moments where people kind of waved it away in the first year or two, even just like the conversation about it, the focus. It is true that we had no choice but to bring back the economy by any means necessary. I mean, we forget how grave the threat of a depression was in 2020 or 2021. I mean, when I came in, you know, I spent a big part of my time as secretary dealing with getting airlines to treat their passengers better. You could Almost forget that. The entire first year, our biggest focus was making sure airlines didn't go out of business. And that's just to use the airline sector as an example. Right. So, again, well, by definition, you set up this exercise. It's easy to say now, but, like, since it is, those are the things I'd be whispering into my 2020 year if I had the chance.

[Carol Markowitz]

If I had to specify the three topics that I wrote about the most from 2020 to 2025, that would be opening the schools, the border, and how people were suffering with the economy, even though we, quote, unquote, were not in a recession, and things know technically going well. So welcome, Pete Buttigieg, to the Carol Markowitz brand of conservativism. We're really glad to have you here, and we'll accept you on normally as one of our own.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Right? Not so fast, Carol. I think part of what he misses here in this discussion, particularly actually with all three of them, is they done it deliberate. The opening schools was not some like, oh, yeah. Oh, goodness. We, oops, we tried our best. Because he, you know, he uses those weasel words to say, these are people trying their best, and they needed a way to safely open schools. Perhaps that's more forgivable than the inflationary spending and the border, both of which were definitely on purpose. They were just like, these are our values. Open the border, spend $4 trillion. Those are our values. Yeah, but their values also were. And the design of their party was made to give Randy Weingarten and all of her teachers union buddies a giant ransom in order to open the schools. And he still says, safely open. The answer was open, open, just open. That was it.

[Carol Markowitz]

That was safe.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

That was the whole answer. It was safe. It was right in front of your eyes. And two things happened is we demonized rational risk analysis. So you couldn't have anyone else pop their head up and say, hey, by the way, perhaps you're getting this wrong. Because they were all like, why do you want to kill all the teachers? Right, Right.

[Carol Markowitz]

Only the public school teachers.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Yeah, I know. And then we incentivized Weingarten by giving part of the giant inflationary handouts to her for keeping schools closed. Congratulations, everyone. So, like, if you. If you miss the part where a lot of this was just known what they were doing and it was on purpose and it was aligned with their values, you don't get to just be like, oops, right. You kind of have to deal with that part. By the way, someone noted that Buttigieg's husband said at the time something along the lines of, like, all these teachers are going to be in the grave if this happens. And it's like, okay, well, the rhetoric was coming from inside the house.

[Carol Markowitz]

Literally inside your house.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

There's already a flight risk of teachers fleeing the profession. I don't want to see teachers leaving the profession on gurneys. That was a totally normal thing to say.

[Carol Markowitz]

Do you have a date on that?

[Mary Katharine Ham]

I don't know what the date was. Yeah, that was July 2020. But that was a normal thing to say until 2021.

[Carol Markowitz]

Oh, yeah, for sure. No, the thing is, you know, we say July 2020, and it sounds. It was early because America kept schools closed for so long. Schools were open in Europe by July 2020. There were schools open in various places in Europe. And the idea, like, oh, Europe was just doing it differently than us. No, they weren't. No, they weren't. And you know how I know that? Because private schools opened in blue areas while public schools stayed closed. The private school teachers did not die in mass.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

They did not.

[Carol Markowitz]

You know, Governor Newsom sent his kids to an open private school while public schools stayed closed in California. And I swear I will never forget that as long as I live.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

No, nor should you. He was eating at the French Laundry and sending his kids to private school. No, it was just obvious, the kids, that. The school that my children currently go to is 0.5 miles from the public school that wasn't open for two years, and it was open virtually the whole time. It closed during the spring and went virtual. And then its parents were like, no, we needed. And its leadership was like, no, we actually need to have these kids in school. And so they did what was necessary to make that happen, because they were not run by Wendy Weingarten. They were not answerable to teachers unions. They were answerable to students and parents. And it turned out that, like, that was a much better solution and that those kids didn't fall back, fall behind, and didn't get hurt nearly as much. There's a thing about. Look, Buttigieg is good at talking. Newsom's good at talking. Anyone who's good at talking Republicans should be wary of. Because they're pretty good at talking themselves around these issues and sounding normal, Right? And many people are so starved for normal, they're like, okay, I'll listen to that guy.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right?

[Mary Katharine Ham]

But they're skipping the part in all of this where you actually take accountability for the thing that went wrong. I hear you. That you would do things differently. How would you do things differently. Who would you listen to? List to me three people who were correct about schools who you would bring into your circle.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right. No longer welcome on normally Buttigieg.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

But like I would.

[Carol Markowitz]

Kay convinced me.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

But I would like to. I don't want to disincentivize people admitting this because it's important. But I would like to know, moving forward, how would you change your little bubble so that you get more information so that you don't make this mistake in the future?

[Carol Markowitz]

Right. And it's hard. Yeah.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

If your bubble's Randy, it ain't gonna. It ain't gonna go well.

[Carol Markowitz]

Totally. And it is randy. It's still randy. But you know, it is interesting how we're giving credit and I count myself in this to. To Buttigieg and to Newsom and to the abundance Democrats for sounding like Republicans. That's all they're doing is saying Republican things. And I'm in for them moving to the right and I'm in for them being more sane. But is this really where they're going to end up when they're running in the primary in a few years? Are they going to stay this person?

[Mary Katharine Ham]

I mean, I think it's going to be very hard. Taylor Lorenz's response to Buttigieg shows that.

[Carol Markowitz]

What did she say? I didn't see.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Oh, she says he's participating in right wing eugenics to even suggest that they should have opened schools. I mean, it's wild.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right? Well, he's raw dogging that air, so.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

He is definitely. I mean, it's wild. There are some pretty amazing dead enders on that side on this issue. But look, the left flank of the party will be yelling at you in those terms on blue sky as soon as you start expressing those things in public. And God forbid on blue sky, where I hear people just get abused in amazing ways over there for stepping out of line. Yeah. They're going to get freaked out as soon as that starts happening in mass.

[Carol Markowitz]

That's it. That's the problem. They're going to have to get those people on board and stay sane. And I just don't see it. It's not about education. But one of the things that I point out is that in 2020, all of the candidates raised their hands when they were asked if their health care plan would cover illegal immigrants.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

And like obviously.

[Carol Markowitz]

Right. All of them. 100% of them. And that is such a bananas crazy thing to say because if you're an illegal immigrant to the country, you could have just got here today on a plane, right? So why wouldn't everybody come to America for the free health care that you all raised your hands to offer them? Once you've gotten to that place, I think it's very hard to retreat. And so we'll see. We'll see in a few years whether they're able to walk a more normal line or if they'll be pressured into making insane statements like that on a debate stage. We're going to take a short break and come right back with Normale.

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[Mary Katharine Ham]

I wanted to run over this little contretemps on Twitter today where Bhatia was talking to Mark Halprin and Bridget Fedisi and she's Batya Angar Sargon, and she was noting the dripping contempt for the uncredentialed at elite universities like Harvard and Connor Friedersdorf, who's an Atlantic writer who's moderate centrist ish used to be a little bit right. He demanded proof that elite university alum and attendees were dripping with contempt for.

[Carol Markowitz]

The uncredentialed so up by your alley.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

And it's like it's one of those things like masks for two year olds where it's like, do we even need to make a case for this? Like, it's just, it's just out there for everyone to see. Nonetheless, I thought the school argument was a good place to point out to Connor that like everyone who was non credentialed, non scientists, non educators, Amateur statisticians were 100% right about this vital issue that allegedly was very important to Democrats. You know, public schools, they're very into that.

[Carol Markowitz]

They care a lot.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

They care so much about the people who are economically disadvantaged and behind academically to begin with. Right. So they want to really important issue to them. Nonetheless, the rhetoric the entire time was outrageous, I would say dripping with contempt for sure. In Alexandria, nearby here, the school board, a school board member just said like, well, you can choose. Do you want your kids educated or dead? Like that was the kind of.

[Carol Markowitz]

The only two options.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

That was the.

[Carol Markowitz]

Unless you went to private school. Right.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

This is the way they talk to parents. The results were bad. People still haven't reckoned with it. Many of those people have been promoted and are working in academia now, still having contempt for all of us who were correct. And I can barely read David Zweig's book because it makes me so angry all over again. But this kind of credentialism will plague them throughout their civil war that they're going to have to have and they're going to have to find smart people who understand that people outside of Harvard can be smart.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah. It's going to be a tough sell.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

How are we going to find those? And speaking of Harvard. Yeah.

[Carol Markowitz]

What's going on at Harvard?

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Oh, my gosh. Our friends at not the Bee said like, this is the reason that not the Bee exists for this headline, which is Harvard professor fired for being Dishonest in study about Honesty.

[Carol Markowitz]

Oh, it's amazing.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

So she was. This lady was paid a million dollars a year.

[Carol Markowitz]

Don't you think we're in the wrong field? A million dollars for a study?

[Mary Katharine Ham]

It's crazy. A million dollars a year to study ethics and honesty. Harvard revoked the tenure. This is the Harvard Crimson reporting from Francesca Gino, the Harvard Business School professor who had been fighting data fraud allegations for nearly four years and ended her employment at the university. Last week, a Harvard spokesman said. Spokesperson said, as you can imagine, having seen the behavior of tenured professors at Harvard up until now, this is pretty hard to get fired there.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

The move concluded Gino's two year battle to keep her position at the school and Marked a historic penalty for a faculty member at Harvard. No professor has been known to lose their tenure since the 1940s. She was a behavioral scientist who became famous for studying honesty and ethical behavior. But she was accused of manipulating observations to better support her conclusions. She was, you might imagine. You won't be surprised, Carol, to find out, despite all of this, she was a prominent researcher in her field and the fifth highest paid employee at Harvard in 2018 and 19. Because the credentials don't actually matter. Like, this is what is.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

This is what the lack of trust in institutions comes from. And it is deserved. It is deserved.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah. People in that article, not the Bee, they were. People were asking Grok to explain it in simple terms. And Grok would explain in simple terms. But there was one really good explain this to me in caveman ooga booga speak. And Grok said, ooga booga smart woman. Francesca make number stories at big school Harvard school say she cheat. Change number to lie, they kick her out. Say no more. Teach Francesca mad say me no cheat. She fights school with big law talk. Say they mean to women number checkers outside school also say her story's fake. But Francesca keeps saying she true want court to fix big fights still go. Nobody's sure who right. Ooga booga truth hard find.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

You know what? All news updates should be in that. Can we just do that from now on?

[Carol Markowitz]

Fully agree. And I think we should have an ooga booga section on normally.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Perhaps we could just feed it into the old AI and read it to you guys. Look, I'm glad that she's actually paying a price. That seems to rarely happen and is actually the path toward regaining trust. Yeah, but this one's a real doozy. Lying about your ethics research quite is.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah. I hope she does not win the 25 million that she's trying to win for saying that Harvard is sexist. But you just never know with these court cases.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

Usually the bad people are rewarded. So I'm guessing she's probably gonna win.

[Carol Markowitz]

A nice chunk of change again. What are we doing here, Mary Catherine?

[Mary Katharine Ham]

I don't know, man. Different feel.

[Carol Markowitz]

Yeah.

[Mary Katharine Ham]

If you want to send in ideas, feel free. Free.

[Carol Markowitz]

Well, thanks for joining us on Normally. Normally airs Tuesdays and Thursdays, and you can subscribe anywhere. You get your podcasts. Get in touch with us@ normallythepodmail.com thanks for listening. And when things get weird, act normally.

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[Mary Katharine Ham]

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[Carol Markowitz]

And feels like yay.

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[Mary Katharine Ham]

This is an I Heart podcast.