With the World Cup only days away, and with our last couple of episodes being, well, heavy as hell, we thought we would take the opportunity to inject a little levity into the show once again and talk about the biggest things that the US gets wrong when it comes to soccer, football, calcio, the beautiful game. Things could be so much better for American Soccer, and we can make them that way.

The Trump Administration has been maddeningly, insanely inconsistent on the causes, justification, purpose, just about everything to do with their war in Iran. Megan and Clayton take you through why this is so strange, why Congress needs to step in, and how we need to orient ourselves differently towards foreign policy going forward.

The Supreme Court's decision in the Callais case is, to put it mildly, a bunch of hot garbage. Megan and Clayton struggle to stay calm as they take you through the history of the VRA up to this point, as well as what this decision means going forward.

There is a rising tide of misinformation specifically related to women's health that parallels the anti-vaccine movement with startling fidelity. Megan and Clayton talk about some of the tactics of these groups, and what we might be able to do to head them off at the pass.

Pam Bondi is turning the Department of Justice into an instrument of Trump's will rather than a legitimate law enforcement organization. Her actions are doing long term damage to our institutions and wreaking havoc on our judicial processes. Megan and Clayton take you through what is happening, and discuss long term prospects for repairing the damage.

Elon has ruined Twitter. Just about every element of the user experience has gotten worse since he took over, and he fundamentally seems to misunderstand the platform. We talked to Jake Christie, the curator of the Museum of Twitter, to understand a bit more about the Twitter of Yore, and what we might've lost now that it's gone.

Over the past year of the Trump administration, ICE agents have been running around the country acting with utter impunity. Without the threat of being help accountable for their actions, they have been running roughshod over anyone who they perceive as getting in their way. The only way to fix this situation, and to restore some measure of public trust in the justice system, is to make sure that those responsible are held accountable in the future.

Just about every culture in the Northern Hemisphere has a festival of lights around this time of year, from Diwali to Christmas to Hanukkah to the Lantern Festival to Yule . It speaks to a deep need for humans to connect at this time of year, yet we constantly hear and read about isolation and loneliness in the depths of winter. It's up to us to be villagers and celebrate with our friends and family.

That top tax rates and general tax burdens have decreased has been much reported on, but an equally important, if less well known, trend is that American states and cities maintain deeply regressive tax systems. Yet, wealthy people in the most regressive places continue to push for further tax cuts for themselves. This is, to put it frankly, precisely backwards and the exact opposite of what we should be doing.

Trump's recent "proposal", if we can call it that, for a 50-year mortgage, is one of the worst ideas his administration has ever had that wasn't actively intending to hurt someone or some group. Megan and Clayton take you through why it is such a terrible idea and what we ought to do instead.