The Best of Michael Kosta as Guest Host

You're listening to Comedy Central. We welcome to The Daily Show. I'm Michael Costa. We are back on the air. Holy shit, it's been five months. Man.

I love my family, but not for five months. This is my first night, and I'm very excited to be here. I've always wanted to host a late night show. I was hoping that it would be on a major network, but I'll take whatever channel this has gone. Now we have a great show for you tonight, So let's get into the headlines. Obviously, there's one big story in the world right now that we have to cover, the Taylor.

Swift movie, and we'll get to that later.

But first I want to talk about something that stirs up almost as much passion, the Middle East. That's right, it's my big week as guest host, and I get

And that sounds harsh, but.

At least I'm aware of it because I read a lot of your posts online, and sometimes it's better not to pretend you know what you're talking about. I have friends on Facebook who have the whole Middle East figured out, when I know for a fact they can't even get car insurance.

Hey, Joe, interesting points. Don't you have three? Do you eyes? Maybe you should focus on you thankfully.

This is why later tonight I will bring on an actual expert, political scientist, Ian Bremer will be here to help us make sense of all. But here's what I'll say for now. There's a cycle of violence here that feels like it's never ending. It's been going on my whole life, and apparently even longer than that. And I'm sure I'm not the only one who wishes that this cycle would end. And everyone has an opinion for who's responsible for it. It's Israel, It's Palestine, it's Netan Yahoo,

The British.

Okay, you Britain and you're nursing home King. They're the ones who barred into the Middle East one hundred years ago and drew the borders that caused all this mess. And they did it all around the world, by the way, like, how much of modern civilization is just undoing all of Britain's bad decisions. You want to know how bad they picked up maps they made Ireland to Ireland's It's an island.

Seriously, this news is shocking to me.

Are you telling me it's a bad business model to have one employee for every six stores?

I mean, maybe they'd have more profit.

If their deodorant wasn't locked up in a maximum security prison. Of course, these guys are gonna go out of business. I mean, just look at their logo. They were mashing their medicines the old fashioned way. That's how I make guacamole. It's tragic, though, because as a part of this move, they sadly had to lay off their entire custodial staff ten years ago. My point is right, aid sucks, and I'm glad this happened to them. I am going to

Wid the news.

Chaos on Capitol Hill, the Republican House dysfunction continues as the fight for a new Speaker of the House continues to sputter.

Congressman Jim Jordan of Ohio did not even come close to lunching the speakership.

He failed rather ignominiously to win the gabble on the first pallet.

Jim Jordan has twenty Republicans who decided to vote for someone other than him.

In a few cases they voted for a guy who isn't even in Congress anymore.

Jordan.

That's right, a big loss today for Jim Jordan, Ohio Representative. And what you get when you photocopy your grandfather's toe too many times. So, as of now, it's been two weeks of Republicans arguing with each other and they still haven't been able to agree on a new speaker, which is a big deal. The Speaker of the House is the person responsible for speaking in.

The House, so if they don't have one.

Then nobody is speaking, and it's just so quiet in there. And Congress can't do anything until they figure this out. They can't pass laws, they can't send four an eight to Ukraine, and I can't impeach Hunter Biden's penis. Right now, Congress is basically Mitch McConnell totally frozen, and no one knows how to fix it. It's okay to show that because he said he's fine. Let's talk about water. It's the thing you hope you just sat in on the subway.

It's bottled water.

We Americans buy fifty billion disposable water bottles a year. And I know what you're thinking, Oh shit, another depressing environment story. So can I not even drink water without ruining my children's future?

But that's the thing.

This is one environment story that actually has a really easy solution. And I'm gonna tell you what it is. Another installment of long story short. For most of human history, people got by fine without bottled water. People got water from their well or the local stream, or by throwing a virgin into a volcano so it would rain. It was a perfect system for water. Bottles started to become

Keep your body and its peak.

Drink a pure avion spring water from a French house.

It's refreshing, it's natural, and it doesn't have one single calorie.

Important. It goes with good food. That's what I drink instead of a cantail. It's what I drink instead of a cooktail. Sure, but you can just.

Say you've got DUI's all right, we've all got du eyes. Look props to these water companies. They turned water into something sexy as opposed to something you just need to survive.

These ads were basically.

Like oxygen, it really helps me lay pipe.

So fast forward to today. Thank you great perform.

So fast forward to today, and the average American drinks upwards to one hundred and sixty seven bottles a year, usually right before a long haul flight when I'm in the aisle seat, Hey, just be an adult and.

Wear a diaper like the rest of us.

Now you might be asking, where does all that water come from the ocean? No, I tried that once I got so sick. In reality, in order to get bottled water to the masses, water companies like Nestley often suck up water from public lands for little to no cost.

It's not awesome, right.

We love it when multinational conglomerates find success. The problem is this creates a massive environmental impact. When these companies are called out for it, they come up with explanations like this.

Nelson Switzer is Neslie Water's chief sustainability officer.

Some people say, this is the people's water. Is it fair that you guys make so much money off of it?

Neslie has water rights, of course in this area. From a legal standpoint of course, it's from a perception standpoint I understand why people are asking that question.

But water belongs to no one.

Oh, really, really nicely, water belongs to no one. That's the dumbest thing anyone has ever said about water. And keep in mind Gwyneth Paltrow once said that you can hurt water's feelings by.

Yelling at it.

If water really belongs to no one, then why can't I go swimming in my neighbor Eric's coy pond?

Why did it scare his kids? Per the police report?

But sucking up all the fresh water is just the beginning of our problems. Making the bottles and shipping them to you uses seventeen million barrels of oil a year. That's enough oil to fill one million cars for a whole year, or grease up Don Junior for one week af plus. Most bottles just get thrown in the trash. Oh but I recycle it, okay, thanks for putting it in the green bin before they send it to Malaysia where they put it in the trash there. And the

Boom problem solved.

Using a refillable water bottle cuts down on fossil fuels, creates less waste, and could even save you sixteen thousand dollars over its lifetime. That's enough to pay for a luxury vacation or sixteen shitty vacations. So, long story short, this is like the easiest choice in.

The history of no brainers.

If everyone in the United States just went with the reuse of water bottles, we'd save money solve an environmental crisis, and the best part of that is then that's one less environmental crisis.

You'd have to hear people like me bitching about.

You probably already have nine of these open a cabinet in your kitchen, and one will fall on you and tomorrow start using it.

That's how you save the planet.

My Gastonite is a political scientist and author of the Power of Christ. He helps business leaders, policymakers, and people like me make sense of the world.

Please welcome Ian Bremer, so thanks for coming.

Have to be here.

I'm trying to be a global citizen. I'm trying. I can't plead ignorance anymore to this part of the world. It was convenient for me for a while. What can I do? What can anybody do?

I mean, what other than just hear these sad stories are like something on Instagram? Is there any action? How can I educate myself further?

I would say, spend less time on social media. Okay, it's dehumanizing, it's disinformation. It's actively destroying our democracy and others around the world. It is making algorithmically, it's taking people and it's making them angrier and more hateful than

Now.

Spending more time with your family, with your community, in your school, it's with people that aren't just like you algorithmically, that's what.

You need to do.

Really simple question, not to be insensitive, but for so many Americans that see this as something so far away, why should they care about what's happening?

Because in principle, we the United States, stand for something beyond just ourselves. I mean maybe America first doesn't quite say that, but the Statue of Liberty does. We all came from somewhere, right, I mean, the Jews and the Palestinians are the same people. They came from the same place,

How can we not care about that.

Yeah, that's why it matters to us as Americans. Not because oil is going to one point fifty, not because people are losing their job. No, it's because we as Americans, if we stand for anything, we stand for that.

My guest and I as an economist at Brown University an author of several books on data driven parenting.

Please welcome Emily Auster. Hello. All right, exciting, huh, I'm excited.

Data and parenting very babies and babies.

Data parenting is nice, it's I like the term.

It sounds good.

But when my three year old is punching me in the face on Father's Day for the three times that day and I'm about to lose it, I'm not thinking about data.

So there are some problems. Okay, yeah, there are.

Some problems for which data isn't necessarily going to fix the problem. But I think there's another piece of data in parenting. And I think this is really true that like we can use data to feel less alone. And that's like part of parenting is hard, right, your kids hitting you in the face, it's painful.

Yeah, it's painful. It doesn't matter how old they are.

But what the data will tell you, is that one hundred percent of kids hit and the one hundred percent of them hit their dad, And so you're not alone because one hundred percent of other people were also.

Hit on Father's Day.

And in some sense, like I think that that tells us that we're doing okay. There's nothing wrong with your kid.

They just hit.

Sometimes.

Where is this data coming from?

Certainly, it's like a very yeah, okay, certain okay, certainly.

So data comes from a lot of places. Actually, when I teach them economists, they teach you brown. One of the big things I teach people is like, where does data come from? And the answer is it comes from surveys, We ask people, And data has its limitations. We don't always ask the most representatives set of people, and we don't always analyze it in the ways that get us

I didn't realize how much my parents parenting me was going to turn me.

Excuse me.

I thought I would parent differently better. I had great parents, but I thought I would do things differently.

Am I are we just doomed? And is there data on this?

Okay, there is data on There are some things you probably do do differently and so and sometimes because we've advanced our data, you know, you probably put your baby sleep on their back and your parents probably put you to sleep on your stomach.

Because we learn more.

About data that we can scott that later. But I think it is It is of course true that we're all products of our own parenting, but also that many of the things our parents did are great, and in the end, there's a lot of right ways to do this, and I think we always want to move away from our parents.

Just as an award winning singer, composer and instrumentalist whose new album is called You're the One, Please welcome Rhiannon Giddons.

I hope people can want.

All the great They're great. They're great. Thank you for being here, Thanks for having me, Thank you for chatting with us.

You are a MacArthur Genius Award winner, Grammy winner, Pulitzer Prize winner.

You studied opera in college.

But this is what really they got me. You write all your music with the banjo.

I write a lot.

Of my music of the band with banjo and voice and fiddle and whatever instrument I have around.

Yeah, when I think of the banjo, and correct me on this, but when I think of the banjo, I know you will.

I picture that scene in Deliverance and.

It's down in the South and it's scary, and it's Is that an accurate depiction of the banjo?

No?

And that's part of the problem, is that media has really warped our idea of how American music came to be. The banjo is an African derived instrument, was invented by people of the African diasper and the Caribbean and African American people were co creators of old time and what

Can I be ignorant for a second, if you like a guitar versus a banjo, I mean, I know they look different, but what's the what is the difference?

I mean, yeah, well they come there, come from different I mean, look to break it down, the banjo really is. It is descended from a lot of different West African loot instruments, and there's a percussive mode about it.

There's on a lot of.

Banjos, there's five strings, a little short string which is a drone string, which means it's in one key and it's so it's very different. And actually the banjo was more popular than the guitar for a long time in America. The guitar is a relative latecomer. So it's kind of like the banjo is like our indigenous instrument. You know, if you are also you have to remember all the indigenous instruments with indigenous people. We were here, you know,

Thank you for answering that question. I know, is you know, appeasing my question?

That's my job.

Good. Yeah, So, opera.

You're in town to accept the Politzer for this opera called Omar, about an enslaved African Muslim that you took the memoirs and converted into an opera.

Explain this. I mean, we went from banjo to opera. It's all just yeah, it's.

Been really interesting because it was the opposite. I went to Oberlin learned opera, and then kind of got burnt out and went down in North Carolina where I'm from and learned the banjo, and then full circle came back. Was asked to write this opera about Omar and Ben Sayid, who was a Senegalese Quranic scholar at thirty seven, sold

That's great, fascinating.

My guest tonight is a wilderness guide and self reliance expert who won season six of the History Channel show Alone. Please welcome Jordan Jonas. Right, So, thanks for coming to New York City.

What an honored Thanks for the invite.

Now I'm in your world. Yeah, you're in my world now.

People can have a reaction to hunting, big game hunting. It's easy for me to see pictures online and see this thing going, I don't like this.

You're killing an animal?

Right.

I also feel like you care a lot about nature and conservation.

How can those two be connected?

That's actually a really fascinating question. But I think we are no matter what we think, We're a part of nature. And in my experience, people who hunt, who rely on nature to you know, feed themselves, their families, there's almost there's few people that are more in tune with the health of a particular ecosystem because you rely on it.

The knee jerk, the knee jerk. Yeah, you see these pictures in that, you know. But I think one thing that really was beneficial for me. I'm not a hunter, but I definitely fished and killed grouse that week because I was starving and and you said, we're only going to eat what we can procure.

For the next thirty six hours. Well, guess what. COSTA doesn't really procure much.

But man, and this is gonna be silly to you and maybe silly to everybody else. But when I took this little grouse's life, it really meant something.

And it was sad to me. Yeah, but we then cleaned it. We cooked it that night.

It was my dinner, and I just thought on the flight home, I made a lot of notes.

I had so much I had to be thankful for. I was like, I've never been that close to my food before.

I appreciate it.

I go to the grocery store, I buy four pounds or whatever, three of it goes in the track. I mean, it's like, man, that was like such a different connection that's gone for.

The most part from us.

Valuable. Yeah, I know, I think we've all been disconnected.

Were talking.

You're talking about packaging earlier. You know, everything coming the other guy.

But yeah, but it's yeah, it's it's important to have that connection with our food.

Otherwise it just all happens on a farm or a field somewhere, and you can act like you're not a part of the system, but we are, so we should do our job well. Explore more shows from the Daily Show podcast Universe by searching Daily.

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