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- [00:00]
Mike Pesca
Foreign. It's Friday, May 22, 2026, from Peach Fish Productions. It's the gist. I'm Mike Pesca. Are you excited for the Enhanced Games? The Enhanced Games occurring this weekend. Dope Olympics was taken. I guess we're supposed to get a little upset. The marketers were trying to sell some supplements. The marketers thought we'd get upset. And I got to say, I'm really not that upset. I don't think. However, while the Enhanced Games are not an affront to anything I hold dear, I don't think they're destined to be quite popular. So how they started was that James the Missile Magnuson, one of Australia's swimming legends, was on a podcast, and he says, you know, if they allowed all of us retired swimmers few years out of the sport, take drugs, we. We'd beat the guy who aren't on drugs. And then a guy named Aaron D' Souza heard it and said, yeah, here's $1 million if you compete in the Enhanced Games, the Sterillympics Steroid Olympics, the PE Decathlon. More than a decathlon. There's swimming, there's track, there's weightlifting. No team handball, quite sadly. So some of the rules are there are no rules, but the organizers say, you know, 36 of the 42 enhanced Games athletes are participating in rigorous clinical trials, and they'll be monitor by health professionals. That's fine, but they don't have to adhere to any rules. So it'll be, I guess, interesting to find what data or what chemicals were coursing through the veins of these athletes. But it's not like any of those chemicals will get them disqualified unless, you know, their hearts explode or something. Along with d', Souza, some of the organizers of the Enhanced Games include Christian Angermeyer and Maximilian Martin. Also, Claudius X. Furymeister. Made that last one up. Couldn't help myself. It was an enhanced name for the Enhanced Game. Listen, if you want to go faster than you could go while running, you could hop on a scooter, right? If you want to lift more weight, you can use a forklift. We know that. We know you can enhance yourself. If you want to seem to go faster in a race, use a clock that's slightly off. There are tools that could give the impression or the actuality that you're doing more than the guy who's not using the tools. So what if the tools are. Are a steroid or a ped versus a mechanical device? It's all enhancement. And so my point is that there is nothing in sports that's inherently needed to human beings. I mean, team sports where they don't care that much about enhancement, except maybe baseball, which has a huge individual component. But they don't care so much in basketball, hockey or football because those have more of an appeal as a narrative. But when you talk about the individual sports, it's, oh, let's try to gauge this athlete against the potential of human achievement. And we all know that if you pour a lot of steroids and PEDs onto it, human achievement will go up. There's nothing just inherent about even markers like the four minute mile. I mean, if I took tape of Roger Bannister's four minute mile, the grainy black and white footage, and somehow was able to put Hisham El Garou in there, who holds the 4 minute mile at 3:43 or holds the mile mark, it wouldn't seem even faster to you over that amount of time. There is nothing inherent about the achievement. So if you can make someone go 17 seconds under four minutes, that doesn't really appeal to us as a species as especially notable or important. I mean, you could see a miler running and they look swifter than some guy who's chugging along the side of the road trying to lose ten pounds. But like I said, the inherent nature of it, or even with lifts, a bunch of heavyweight versus a bunch of slightly heavier weight doesn't mean anything to us. It's the context of the greats, the great athletes competing against each other in the moment and against each other in time. And that's why we care about steroids, to try to keep that competition more or less consistent. Now, equipment changes, that's an, that's an argument. In fact, it's always an argument with steroids, right? People will say, well, this guy's taking performance enhancing drugs, but look at the bad shoes that Roger Bannister ran on. True, but the shoes don't change the man. And there is some pieces of equipment that can be disqualified. The steroids do. And so I have no truck with these enhanced games. I'm not upset that some people want to do them. I know they're mostly a means to try to peddle some enhancements and some vitamins. I just think the whole thing comes across as kind of a satire of sport. Doesn't make me angry, doesn't make me sad. The satire, like so much satire these days, is kind of weak. Again, not against it. I don't think it'll capture the public imaginations. I do think it might sell a supplement or two. The show today is a spiel about all the stunning news out of Washington D.C. this was not quite Washington, D.C. i'll read you a headline, Judge dismisses criminal case against Abrego Garcia because the case was very weak. The judge, Waverly Crenshaw. Here's the quote from the New York Times. I'll be quoting a lot from the New York Times in my spiel issued a stinging rebuke of both the Justice Department and Todd Blanche. Is it, Is it stinging? Is it audacious? Is it extraordinary? We'll find out. But first, he's a Nobel Prize winning economist and he is a premier expert in markets, not in studying them, in setting them up. Alvin Roth is by to talk about his new book. Alvin Roth is here to talk about his new book, Moral Economics From Prostitution to Organ Sales. What Controversial Transactions Reveal about how Markets Work. Alvin Roth, up next. I'm here to tell you once more about True Work because it's springtime and it means going outside, dealing with chilly mornings and hot afternoons and everything in between. Plus of course, mud, rain, whatever else the weather weather decides. Don't worry, True Work has you covered. Most work wear is made from cotton blends which have downsides, right? They get soaked, they get soaked with rain, they get soaked with whatever perspiration you're putting out. You're putting out a lot because you're working hard. Not True Work. They have the advanced technologies, the wicking technologies. I'll tell you about the T2 work pant which keeps you comfortable over a wide range of conditions. Four way stretch for bending, kneeling and climbing and is important to water resistant finish to shed rain. And lots of pockets. Nine intelligent pockets. They tell you, I wear these out. You know, I wear these to do the work in the front yard and the backyard, but I also wear them out and they're really fashionable. And I have nine pockets to help me. Before I found out about True Work, I'd wear the cheap gear and you don't really even realize it, but when your gear is working against you, it just makes the job so much harder. You just basically need pockets in the right places. You don't want to get all soaked by your gear. The T2 work pant is different. It's built for people who hold themselves to a higher standard. Four way stretch, water resistance. Do I have to mention the nine pockets again? The work doesn't stop just because the weather changes. Upgrade to the T2 work pant and stay comfortable no matter what the day brings. Get 15% off your first first order at True Work.com with code the gist that's T R U E W E R K.com code the gist True work, built like it matters because it does.
- [08:17]
KFC Advertiser
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- [08:45]
Alvin E. Roth
Prices and participation vary.
- [08:47]
Mike Pesca
One great podcast that talks about everything we're going through in our democracy through a constitutional lens is the Oath in the Office. I've been on it. I listened to it. It's hosted by bonafide constitutional scholar Corey Brettschneider, past Just Guest and SiriusXM host John Fugal saying here's a tip. Future Just guest and the show, which always ranks in Apple's top five in government, has featured guests like Senator Sheldon Whitehouse and journalist Dahlia Lithwick and Justice Stephen Breyer and me, Mike Pesca in that company. Smart, accessible, focused on power. Listen to the Oath in the Office, wherever you get your podcasts. Also on YouTube with full video episodes every the Nobel Prize winning economist Alvin Roth. Alvin E. Roth is here. His new book is Moral Economics From Prostitution to Organ Sales. What Controversial Transactions Reveal about How Markets Work. Welcome to the Gist.
- [09:46]
Alvin E. Roth
Thank you.
- [09:47]
Mike Pesca
So repugnance is a key concept in the book. Repugnance as opposed to what?
- [09:54]
Alvin E. Roth
Well, so markets need social support to work well, and some markets have a lot of social support and some have none. But some involve transactions that some people want to engage in, but other people think they shouldn't be allowed to. Mostly I'm concentrating on those where the objections are for moral or religious reasons and where there's no obvious harm to the people who object personally. So I say that maybe they don't even know that the transactions have taken place unless someone tells them so. So a repugnant transaction is a morally contested transaction.
- [10:27]
Mike Pesca
Right. But not discussed was what I was getting at, because disgust is discussed with a G, not to converse or discuss. That's a little difference. Why do you say disgust is, I
- [10:38]
Alvin E. Roth
think, more universal, at least the way I use the term. You know, evolutionary psychologists talk about disgust as an adaptive tool that you use to avoid infection. So you avoid human body fluids, for instance. So there's a law in California that makes it a crime to sell horse meat for human consumption. That's because some people think you shouldn't eat horses, but other people find them delicious. But there's no law that says you can't have a drink made of other people's spit. Right. That's something that no one would buy. And we don't have a law against it. But you also can't buy it at restaurants.
- [11:14]
Mike Pesca
Right. Disgust is one of those inside out emotions. We wouldn't have repugnance recommend represented there played by Mindy Kaling or someone. So I get that it is to me a little bit of a not false distinction, but there is a gray area there in that so many of the things that once were banned or still are banned are banned in the name of disgust. We would have said, many people would have said that homosexual acts are not just repugnant to me, they're disgusting. And I don't know that there is a empirical way to settle which is which.
- [11:53]
Alvin E. Roth
Well, homosexual acts are. Maybe some people find them disgusting, but other people find them desirable. So I think that distinguishes them from things that everyone finds disgusting. And that's why not only do markets and other kinds of transactions need social support to work well, but so do bans on markets. And so a lot of what I discuss in the book is how when you try to prevent things that people want to do, you might have difficulty doing that effectively, but there's no difficulty with disgusting things. Right. No one, no one wants to sell you disgusting things that you wouldn't want to eat because you wouldn't want to buy them.
- [12:31]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, I actually can think of things and I don't want to be disgusting. But there are, you know, certain youth mentioned bodily fluids and there are sexual practices with bodily fluids on the one hand, where you might say, someone might say two consenting adults, so neither of them are disgusted or maybe they kind of are disgusted, discussed it and that's part of the reason why they want to do it. And in fact, I don't know if there are laws against those acts or the transaction of those acts. So I do think it's a little bit more of a gray area. And I think that for instance, if we could all decide this is merely repugnant and not disgusting, we'd have a firm basis, at least people who understand in a deep way what you're writing about. We'd have a firm basis to say, therefore some version of legality should be pursued.
- [13:23]
Alvin E. Roth
Well, there were laws against what, what people regarded as unnatural kinds of sex. They tend to talk about unnatural acts. And those were the supreme court by and large found those unconstitutional in the 1960s. So there were laws against sodomy, for example. And one of the things that happened in California when the law against sodomy was repealed was overturned was that they immediately made a law immediately in the next year or two passed a law against same sex marriage. In other words, there were people who didn't like same sex marriage, knew that other people did and they had felt protected from same sex marriage by the laws against sodomy. And when those were repealed, they felt that marriage needed further protection from same sex marriage. Now.
- [14:09]
Mike Pesca
Right.
- [14:09]
Alvin E. Roth
That all got overturned in the, you know, in the 20th century, 21st century. And, and it's a, you know, I talk about it in the book. I think of same sex marriage as a prototypical, repugnant transaction of the sort that some people want to do and other people who aren't obviously harmed by it personally don't want to allow them to do it. And so we've changed our mind about that as a society. Although of course there are still bakers who, you know, have the right not to make wedding cakes for same sex marriage and things like that. So it's still controversial, but it's not illegal anymore.
- [14:43]
Mike Pesca
I wonder if they have the right not to make pro sodomy wedding cakes even if they're not same sex. I mean there are all these bakers who make penis cakes. I wonder if they're protected. I guess they are. It's free expression.
- [14:53]
Alvin E. Roth
Bakers. It's a speech when they make a cake.
- [14:57]
Mike Pesca
Sure it is. They're the vanguard. Right. It used to be the students and the protesters, but now it's the baker and possibly the candlestick maker. I hear there are dirty ones of those.
- [15:06]
Alvin E. Roth
So butcher baker in the.
- [15:08]
Mike Pesca
That's right. So interestingly, that's interesting that you mentioned that there used to be the sodomy laws. Maybe they were mott and the. And the laws against same sex marriage were the bailey you take away the sodomy laws. Oh, there's nothing to stop us from. What we really want to stop people from doing is engaging in same sex marriage. That's interesting. It reminds me of a period that I didn't know about until I read it in the book. The brief period in wrote not too brief in Rhode island history where prostitution was legal in indoors and they had to interestingly change the laws to go from the euphemistic to the literal in a way. Can you tell me about that?
- [15:50]
Alvin E. Roth
So prostitution is one of these markets that's widely banned around the world, although not everywhere. It's. It's legal in a number of countries, but no one has developed bans that abolish prostitution. So prostitution runs through black markets in most places. And in Rhode island, when they were amending their law to make it more efficient to enforce, they inadvertently apparently defined prostitution to be street walking, to be solicitation out of doors. And that went pretty much unremarked for a while. And the police continued to close massage parlors that were really brothels. But then one. One of those massage collars hired a lawyer who went to court and said, we don't dispute that an undercover agent asked for sexual services and was given a price list, but it's legal. Look at the law. And the law says outdoor solicitation is prostitution. So it took six years before they amended the law once again to say that paying for or receiving pay for sex is prostitution. But in those six years, prostitution was legal indoors in Rhode Island. And two intrepid economists, Scott Cunningham and Manesha Shah, studied the effects. And you can study the effects better because it was an accidental legalization. That is, when you look at Germany, where prostitution is legal, naturally the effects of prostitution in Germany might be different than in Massachusetts, say, because of the differences that caused them to make different laws. Right here you had Rhode island, like
- [17:34]
Mike Pesca
the Germans have evolved to a point where they say, now we could make it legal. We put this apparatus in with all this forethought. But in the Massachusetts, there, in Fall river, right, Right on the border of Massachusetts and Rhode island, you have an excellent natural experiment.
- [17:49]
Alvin E. Roth
Yeah, so they had a natural experiment, and what they found was that in Rhode island, while prostitution was legal, sexually transmitted diseases dropped and sexual assaults dropped. But. But don't worry, the Rhode island legislature has fixed that. And now prostitution is once again illegal in Rhode Island.
- [18:08]
Mike Pesca
Why did it take him six years?
- [18:11]
Alvin E. Roth
Apparently, things are slow. And of course, who knows, maybe the. Maybe the brothels had their own candidates.
- [18:18]
Mike Pesca
Yeah, but the thing that I asked, the original question was so interesting to me is that when prostitution. And yes, I know sex work is the current term, but prostitution is actually more specific here, since sex works a capacious category. When prostitution was illegal, these brothels or massage parlors or quasi combinations of both, would advertise their services in a way that suggested the veneer of legality. They would say, we're giving a massage. And then they could argue, no, it wasn't a sex act, it was a massage. But once they were legal, what the police tried to do is crack down on the massage itself. And so then they changed the branding of massage to no, this is a sex act which is now legal. It's a sexual massage. It's a fascinating case of de euphemism.
- [19:13]
Alvin E. Roth
Well, there's a funny aspect to that story, which is apparently they prosecuted one of these massage parlors for giving massages without a license. You have to be a licensed masseur, apparently in Rhode Island. But the judge threw it out because she said they hadn't presented any evidence that massages were taking place.
- [19:33]
Mike Pesca
There are no massages here, sir. This is a gambling den. So good. Um, are we sure, by the way, I buy the veneer here. We are using ancient terms, the sexually transmitted disease argument. Are we sure the robust findings on sexual assault? That to me is just surprising. And were they very robust? Was the correlation very high? It's just surprising for a couple of reasons why we think sexual assault occurs and just to like plan out the kind of person who would use a brothel in lieu of sexual assault. It seems a little bit far fetched. And the third thing is I wouldn't think there'd be so many instances of sexual assault that you could really compare a before and after and get a good data set. So do you know about that part of the finding?
- [20:29]
Alvin E. Roth
Well, they had a six year window, so that gives them some data. The statistical tools they use are called difference in differences. They look at many states, not just Massachusetts, and they look at the trends before the change in the Rhode island law everywhere. And then they look at the trends in Rhode island and elsewhere and they see an inflection. But you're right that it was controversial. I think on a podcast I heard one of the economists who did this, Manisha Shah, who's a feminist, say that some of her feminist colleagues like to characterize sexual assault not as sex, but as violence against women, as misogyny. And they were a little disturbed to hear that maybe people who were able to get sex stopped having sexual assaults. But that seemed to be what was going on in the data. And a lot of what we talk about, when we talk about what laws we should have, are whether things are substitutes or complements. So loosely speaking, things are substitutes if when you have more of one, you want less of the other. And it looks like being able to purchase commercial sex and sexual assaults were to some extent substitutes in Rhode island. Whereas things are complements if having more of one makes you want to have more of the other. Americans sometimes think of peanut butter and jelly as compliments. If there were more peanut butter available, you might want to buy more Jelly. But it looks like, contrary to some views of sexual assault, at least some of them come from an unfilled demand for sex.
- [22:05]
Mike Pesca
Yeah. And so, so much of the book is about tradeoffs. What are some other of the other areas you study, from clinical trials to legalized drugs? What are some surprising substitutes that maybe we thought were compliments before actually getting the data?
- [22:23]
Alvin E. Roth
Well, so substitutes and compliments. So same sex marriage has given rise to more demand for surrogacy because a same sex couple, two men, don't have a womb between them. So one of the controversial markets I talk about is surrogacy, which arises technologically from another controversial market, which is in vitro fertilization. And in vitro fertilization, in the circles in which I move, is mostly regarded as a great benefit to people who want to start families. And millions, millions of people have been born through in vitro fertilization. So when Robert Edwards won the Nobel Prize in 2010 for his work in developing in vitro fertilization, there were already millions of families whose children had been born through ivf and millions of adults, mostly young adults at that point, who had themselves been born. But his getting the Nobel Prize for IVF was criticized by people who thought that he was a murderer. And the reason they thought he was a murderer is that when IVF is done, often more embryos are created than are brought to terms. And the feeling was that those other embryos that might be discarded were murderers. Right. If you think that the embryo itself, a small mass of cells, is a human being, then you worry that that embryo has been harmed by ivf. So it shows the intensity of disagreement that people can have. Some people think IVF is life giving, and some people think it's life ending.
- [24:07]
Mike Pesca
Right. So this gets back to repugnance in an interesting way. The people who are against it, the Catholic Church, by and large, they would find it repugnant. But you can't call it disgusting, right?
- [24:20]
Alvin E. Roth
Well, they find. They may find it disgusting, but. But the fact that some people like it means it's not universally discussing. And so I use the word repugnant to talk about those kinds of transactions.
- [24:31]
Mike Pesca
The book is based on talking about these acts that some find repugnant. But you make the distinction between disgusting and. I understand your horrib, horse meat and spit analogy. But to take in vitro fertilization or another one of the parts of the book that deals with what the Catholic Church would deal with, life or life in the womb, the Church would say that it's no different from infanticide. So they don't have. And if we say infanticides disgusting, they would not acknowledge that there is a disgusting or repugnant difference. And then doesn't the whole thing, maybe not with every one of these examples, but it hinges on that distinction. And if there really is no distinction, then, you know, how far can we go with the insight? Like the church would just say, stop, it's disgusting, it's infanticide. And then what do you do with that? Just try to argue categories.
- [25:32]
Alvin E. Roth
So. So one thing I did with it in the book, in the working title of the book, I had repugnance in the title. And people would say to me, what are some repugnant markets? And I'd say, well, you know, how about same sex marriage? And they'd say, you don't like same sex marriage? I'd say, no, no, no, that's not what I mean by repugnance. What I mean is some people don't like it, while other people like it a lot. So I. And then I wasn't going to talk about abortion when I started to write the book, but then the Dobbs decision came down and reopened abortion and all the controversies. So now I talk about controversial Marx markets. So sometimes the controversy is whether there's harm to third parties. Right. So the church believes that the embryo is a human being and that abortion or IVF is murder, and other people don't believe it. And so what we see is different laws in different jurisdictions. And we can explore how the social support for the, for the act itself or for the ban on the act, how they play out. So surrogacy, for instance, is illegal in much of Europe, but you can come to the United States and have a surrogate. And so a ban on surrogacy, that doesn't work perfectly. When a ban on surrogacy fails, it means there are going to be babies. And often the objection to surrogacy is not the objection to IVF that we've been talking about, but rather the worry that the surrogate herself, the woman who bears the baby, is somehow being exploited.
- [27:05]
Mike Pesca
That's similar to the prostitution argument. Yeah, yeah.
- [27:08]
Alvin E. Roth
So in Western Europe they have these laws that are designed to protect vulnerable women. But of course, there's no one more vulnerable than a newborn baby. So if you ban surrogacy and then have babies, you have to think, with whom should this baby go home? And the family courts often think, well, the baby should go home with her parents. And to make them legally her parents, they allow the parents of a child born In California, say by surrogacy, they allow the parents to adopt their child. So you have all these downstream things that you also have to take into account. And by and large, I think most of the European countries, maybe with the exception of Italy, which tries to criminalize coming to the United States and having surrogate child, they've sort of come to terms with the fact that they're going to be babies and those babies are going to be citizens of their country and are going to go to their schools and halfway legal rights. So I think when we think about bans, you also have to think about how the bans might be circumvented and what we'll do then. And a particularly troublesome one, one that I really don't know what to recommend about is of course heroin and addictive drugs. It is much easier to buy drugs than to hire a hitman. So we should keep it up. What we're doing now with hitman, we're squelching the market. Everyone is glad to see that be a very, very limited market, that we should follow our current procedures. But heroin, we would all, many of us anyway would like there to be no heroin. Just as during Prohibition, people wanted there to be no alcohol. But we repealed prohibition when we found that there was still plenty of alcohol and it gave rise to violent crime and all sorts of other problems. So that's the situation we're in with heroin today. It's banned and that means we've taken this, this complex transaction and we've transferred the authority for it to criminals. And that's not always the best way to deal with some difficult commodity like heroin.
- [29:11]
Mike Pesca
Moral Economics is the name of the book from prostitution Organ Sales. What controversial transactions reveal about how markets worth. Alvin E. Roth. Thank you so much.
- [29:22]
Alvin E. Roth
Well, thank
- [29:25]
Mike Pesca
you foreign. I'm here to tell you once more about true work because it's springtime and it means going outside, dealing with chilly mornings and hot afternoons and everything in between. Plus of course, mud, rain, whatever else the weather decides. Don't worry, True work has you covered. Most workwear is made from cotton blends which have downsides, right? They get soaked, they get soaked with rain, they get soaked with whatever perspiration you're putting out. And you're putting out a lot because you're working hard. Not true work. They have the advanced technologies, the wicking technologies. I'll tell you about the T2 work pant which keeps you comfortable over a wide range of conditions. Four way stretch for bending, kneeling and climbing and is important a water resistant finish to shed rain and lots of population. Pockets 9 intelligent pockets they tell you I wear these out. You know, I wear these to do the work in the front yard and the backyard, but I also wear them out and they're really fashionable and I have nine pockets to help me. Before I found out about True Work, I'd wear the cheap gear and you don't really even realize it. But when your gear is working against you, it just makes the job so much harder. You just basically need pockets in the right places. You don't want to get all soaked by your gear. The T2 work pant is different. It's built for people who hold themselves to a higher standard four way stretch water resistance. Do I have to mention the nine pockets again? The work doesn't stop just because the weather changes. Upgrade to the T2 work pant and stay comfortable no matter what the day brings. Get 15% off your first order at true work.com with code the gif that's T R U E W E R K.com code the gist true Work Built like it matters, because it does we all need advice, but it's not always clear who to ask. Even in 2026. Enter how to the long standing advice show and Ambie Award nominated Best Personal Growth Podcast. That's back with new episodes and a new host. And that host. Here's the reveal. It's me, Mike Pesca. Each week I tackle a listener question ranging from travel to finance to relationships and beyond, with help from world class experts who actually know what they're talking about. Think of it as eavesdropping on someone else's therapy session without the copay or awkward silence. No question is too big or too specific. Some topics how to protect the elderly from scammers, how to take psychedelics therapeutically, and of course, how to emigrate to the Netherlands as a throuple. You've got questions. We'll find the answers, so follow how to with Mike Pesca on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. And now the spiel. Donald Trump publicly announced he's not going to his son Don Jr. S wedding this weekend. His schedule had him playing golf instead, so he changed his plans. Oh no, not to make the wedding. Axios reported after Trump's announcement that he wouldn't be going, he will now spend the holiday weekend in Washington, not at the golf course in New Jersey. While I very much wanted to be with my son, Don Jr. And the newest member of the Trump family both capitalized, he truthed his soon to be wife, Bettina. Circumstances pertaining to government and my love for the United States of America will not allow me to do so. I feel it is important to remain in Washington D.C. at the White House during this important period of time where I don't care about the economy. No, he didn't say that. He did say congratulations to Don and Bettina. I assume it is audacious, the New York Times reminds us on the front page here it is. Wasn't real. Front page wouldn't do this. Okay. What's audacious is Trump's once unthinkable move on his taxes, which is part of a once unthinkable move on giving himself and his friends $1.8 billion. It is hard to imagine, the article starts, that any previous president would have thought he could engage in such an audacious act of self dealing. Indeed, it is hard, that is true. But as Mr. Trump, the only convicted felon ever elected president, heads deeper into his second term, he seems even less inhibited by the rules. He does seem way. He does seem that way, doesn't he? He is increasingly, there's the phrase with Donald Trump, increasingly embattled, increasingly at odds with his cabinet. He is increasingly rules averse. Ah, yes. Remember back in 2018, 2019, that period of Trump compliance with the rules? I do not either. But he does seem increasingly rules averse. Remember when he denied the election? Was it an increase from that? I don't know. He's definitely into stealing money or taking it where it doesn't belong. So I don't know if that is increased. I think maybe it's more that we kept impeaching him for things that got less normal. But he was doing all the things all along. The impeachments didn't work. It didn't rein him in. Now, all but one of the senators who voted for his impeachment or actually his conviction are certain to remain in the Senate. Lisa Murkowski. She'll be there. We'll see what happens with Susan Collins versus Nazi tattoo guy. Sorry, sorry, sorry. For fans of his gruff talking Graham Platner. Quite an agenda that Graham Platner and his oysters. Also on the front of the New York Times, helping us with designations that even go beyond audacious. We have stunning, as in balking at Trump fund. GOP hits the brakes on the budget. A stunning turn demonstrating that members of his own party were not willing to risk politically toxic votes to advance the president's agenda. Stunning. The Washington Post reporting that Senate Republicans didn't feel they could move forward with their funding bill without a plan on how or whether they would address the new anti government weaponization fund in the legislation. It is true. It is also stunning. Except I will note, will this vote, this blockage of what Trump wants stand, that might be stunning. Temporarily dickering around with it and then more or less caving, that's less stunning. I have found that Trump tends to get his way, especially when the only thing standing in between him and his way are congressional Republicans. And then from the audacious and the stunning, here's another article, the other one on US Domestic policy. We have extraordinary, which is about the autopsy that the Democrats have finally partly let slip. The release was an extraordinary turn of events for the party. Was it? What was redacted was also probably obvious, just more embarrassing maybe, or at least poorly sourced. Not just to embarrassing, but poorly sourced. Didn't seem to put a lot of attention into this autopsy, which is maybe, you know, the campaign died and was dissected as it lived. Some of the extraordinary claims that got through that Kamala Harris was too easily identified with Biden. Extraordinary. That she didn't break with the Biden administration. Extraordinary. She's for they them. He's for you. Bill Clinton called and said, you know, the ads a problem, might want to address it. Nah. Extraordinary Dems delaying the release so long that that becomes a distraction. Extraordinary. It's all very ordinary for them, but look and stack up. I do have to be fair to the relative merits and stances of each political party. For the Democrats, it's bungling. For Trump, it's breaking every single norm out there. And you know what? None of that is none of that's extraordinary. All of that is normal in that it is a reversion to the nor what usually happens the median outcome in politics in America. The last eight or so years, this has all been an ordinary day in D.C. which can actually correctly be described as audacious, stunning and extraordinary. But also like Donald Trump, very much par for the course. That's it for today's show. The Gist is produced by Cory Wara. Jeff Craig does How to Ben Astaire is our booking coordinator. Kathleen Sykes does the Gist list. And Michelle Pesca is extraordinary in her role as COO Improve. Thanks for listening.