Marshall and Saga here, welcome back to the Realignment.

We think of downturns as some sort of pain is necessary to readjust.

And I think we think this because we think in moral terms or we think in biophysical metaphors,

where we're like to get healthy, we have to run a lot and we're going to get sore.

And that's going to suck for a while or we have to lift weights and that's going to feel really miserable.

But we like come out on the other side, stronger.

It's not the right way to think about the economy.

We can have better things without worse things.

Like this has just been accepted that to have better things and it was really tragic.

I mean, ten years basically went on after the great financial crisis,

watching Europe deal with like this pointless austerity and years and years of elevated unemployment.

Why? What was the sort of better end?

Welcome everybody to our season opener.

We are very, very excited for what this year has in store.

Happy New Year to all you realigners that are out there.

We have 120 episodes plus this year that we are playing a god.

It kind of sounds scary, Marshall, when I say it that way.

But when you think about what we're trying to do here, that's not even enough.

I don't know if that's enough content.

That's the crazy thing.

Everyone who's been with us since the start in July 2019 knows that we started as a once a week show

all about DC politics and policy with a special focus on the way that populism was really upending everything.

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