As the Trump administration targets the federal workforce, we're joined by Michael Lewis, editor of and contributor to The New York Times bestselling collection "WHO IS GOVERNMENT?: The Untold Story of Public Service.” Together, they explore the vital yet uncelebrated work of civil servants, discuss why negative perceptions of them persist, and consider what we may lose amid DOGE’s chainsawing. Plus, learn what your relationship with your mother says about your relationship with government. Follow The Weekly Show with Jon Stewart on social media for more: YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@weeklyshowpodcast Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/weeklyshowpodcast TikTok: https://tiktok.com/@weeklyshowpodcast X: https://x.com/weeklyshowpod BlueSky: https://bsky.app/profile/theweeklyshowpodcast.com Host/Executive Producer – Jon Stewart Executive Producer – James Dixon Executive Producer – Chris McShane Executive Producer – Caity Gray Lead Producer – Lauren Walker Producer – Brittany Mehmedovic Video Editor & Engineer – Rob Vitolo Audio Editor & Engineer – Nicole Boyce Researcher & Associate Producer – Gillian Spear Music by Hansdle Hsu Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: Why is public service under attack?
Hello, everybody. Welcome to the weekly show podcast. My name is Jon Stewart. I will be your weekly show podcast host on this celebratory. We are taping this on Wednesday, April 2nd, as we all know it. Liberation Day. It is Liberation Day, ladies and gentlemen. I don't know how you traditionally celebrate with your families, but Liberation Day was always, always big.
I may go down to Times Square today and see soldiers kissing nurses and see the people throwing their hats in the air. Three cheers. for Liberation Day. It's the day that we all remember where Jesus rose from the tomb and raised prices on Honda Civics by $2,000 a car. And I think we all remember how that goes. You know, this is prior to the announcement.
So God knows there may not, it may not be tariffs. It may be something else. The unpredictability of all this is probably part of what's driving all the attention to it, which is
i would assume donald trump's uh whole plan because god knows the man likes nothing more than a bunch of people not knowing what he's going to do and hanging on his every word and oh he's just so important to all of us meanwhile corey booker i don't know if you guys look i'm not a big performative you know but
I must say, I was quite taken with Cory Booker and especially the idea that he stood up there for 24 hours and broke Strom Thurmond's horrible filibuster record when Strom Thurmond, I guess it was in the late 50s, filibustered the Civil Rights Act because sure, why wouldn't you try and prevent that from ever happening?
But to see Cory Booker up there, and again, forget about his verbal abilities because they are massive. The ability to stand and speak, even if you've got some preparation and even if you're just reading it off a list, my God, you could read War and Peace and it wouldn't take you that long.
For him to be able to oftentimes extemporaneously with I'm sure preparation, still be, forget about being even riveting, just coherent, but maybe the most impressive to me as an older man is the lack of urination. I mean, forget about booking ending it with powerful John Lewis anecdotes.
To go 24 hours awake, conscious, which means if you're conscious, look, I'm awakened from dead sleep by urination. Not obviously, I mean, by the urge. And then I go, I don't want to suggest to you that as an older man, I just lie in my bed and piss myself. That is, I'm sure it's coming, but it is not here yet. So just the part of your brain that goes, hey, hey, bladder.
buddy and then you get up and you go but the idea that he could stand there as a conscious human for more than 24 hours because you're not allowed to urinate that's one of the you know there's all these rules you can't sit down uh you can't urinate i don't even know if he's allowed to have like space food i don't even know how they do any of that stuff but more importantly
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Chapter 2: Who is Michael Lewis and what are his contributions?
I mean, didn't they just let go of people who oversee the bird flu response? Like these fuses are lit.
Well, what's bird flu going to do? It's only jumped to cats now. And who's got cats? What's there to worry about? Yeah, the whole thing is fucked. But yeah, I really enjoyed. I've enjoyed, you know, some episodes I don't enjoy as much. I can't really point to many.
Yeah, who are you calling out? Name names.
It was that, I think there was like a Harvard economist who was like, I was like, that guy's just a dick. Oh, yeah. But mostly I'm always fascinated. But this one in particular was just incredibly pleasurable. You guys are doing a great job. I got to say. I get to show up here around four pretty drunk.
Well, it's Liberation Day.
It's Liberation Day, baby.
Yeah, you got to celebrate.
Libations for liberation. Any questions from the audience this week? Anything they want to?
Always.
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