Hi, everyone, Luke here, a brief production note before we get to today's show.

Beginning this week, episodes of Michael and Us will be cross-posted on the

Jacobin radio podcast stream alongside shows like the vast majority, the dig, and casualties

of history. So if you're new to our podcast and have found us through the Jacovin feed, welcome.

If you want to get a sense of what we're about, the entire Michael and Us archive is available

on SoundCloud,

Spotify, and a local podcast app near you. We also have a Patreon, and two episodes a month are posted

there alongside extra bonus content. We do periodically. If you listen and enjoy the show,

we hope you'll consider supporting us there. And lastly, before we get to the show, if you could

follow us on Twitter

at Michael and Us, it's all one word, and maybe even give us a five-star rating on your podcast app.

You'd be doing us a favor. So anyway, welcome back to Michael and Us. I'm Luke Savage, with me as

always. Will Sloan. And before we get to it, I just want to say, don't you love the people who give four-star ratings

on iTunes?

Like, why are there even numbers between one and five?

Either you liked it or you didn't.

But actually, my favorite is not, I, there are those kind of rare, like, somewhere

in between ratings, but my favorite ones are the

really negative ones um actually no i take that back the perfect review uh the one time i looked at

our uh reviews on my podcast app was a three star one that said uh you know listen to the podcast

for a long time but uh you, tuned out after a while.

With all due respect, uh, Tom Hanks has not worked to gentrify the landscape of American culture.

...