Our final podcast of 2024 looks back on the top story and bottom story of the year, and you won't be surprised to see some symmetries in our answers.

But then we move on to the main event—a question from a listener (initials RW) about whether the 14th Amendment, rightly understood, actually permits the federal government to outlaw private discimination. We go several rounds (but not really enough rounds) about aspects of this issue before realizing after we finished that we didn't reach a verdict. Perhaps we'll return to it in our first episode of 2025. 

The title for this week's episode is taken from Steve's nomination for the slogan of the year, which comes from a Twitter person who responded to the UN demanding that Americans give up meat to fight climate change with the phrase: "they can osculate my fundamental orifice!" 

You'll just have to listen to the end to get the translation. 

Announcement: We'll be back on January 1 with another special holiday midweek episode that will introduce some format changes, a review of our predictions from last year (guess who had the best record), and a fresh round of predictions for 2025 that will likely be mostly wrong.