It's Topics, the podcast where two comedians discuss serious topics in a serious way.

Although if something funny happens, that's fine too.

I'm Michael Ian Black, joined as always by Michael Showalter.

Hey, it's good to be here.

Yeah, it's always great to just dip our beaks into the latest installment of topics.

Before we get started, we do normally go over the rules and regulations, as it were, number

one.

The number one rule and the only rule is there are no rules.

We have a guideline, which is that we try to discuss 80% of any given topic.

And we have a suggestion, which is if whatever percentage we don't discuss,

we encourage you the listeners to pick up the ball and run with it and finish up

discussing the topic in your study groups.

And a study group is defined as two or more people.

And we've also said, I think you said this at the beginning, that if, that while this is a

serious podcast and we're going to be talking about serious issues, today we have a really

serious topic. If something funny happens,

if something silly happens, that's okay. We're not going to censor that or edit that out.

No, quite the contrary. Some of my favorite moments in the podcast occur when we have a

legitimate belly laugh.

Yeah, we, we stretched the mind, we exercise the intellect, but that does not rule out having a chuckle or a chortle along the way.

Mm-hmm.

You mentioned exercising the intellect, and it's fascinating, and this is a whole other topic,

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