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independence day. this independence day is like no other, as is the state of the nation: covid-19 numbers are spiking, widespread protests against racism continue, and a lack of leadership at the helm of the government is more evident than ever. all of this begs to ask: how do we celebrate this independence day—together, socially distant, or at all? what are the implications of celebrating a country in this current state? tom and rp unpack patriotism and its ever-changing definition on a remarkable july 4th weekend. 

tom scott is chairman & co-founder of the nantucket project. rp eddy was the architect of the Clinton administration’s pandemic response framework and the United Nations response to the global AIDS epidemic & is CEO of global intelligence firm Ergo.  

rp is co-author of the best-selling award-winning book Warnings: Finding Cassandras to Stop Catastrophes with Richard A. Clarke, Former National Security Council counterterrorism adviser.

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transcript
 
[00:00:16] Hi, everybody. My name is Tom Scott. Welcome, Fourth of July weekend. It's Fourth of July time. I can't believe it's that time again, mostly because I sort of for some reason, I had this psychological sense of it will end, the summer will start, we'll do summer and then we'll have the Fourth of July. 
 
[00:00:38] It's like here I am in the garage. 
 
[00:00:40] Here comes the Fourth of July and Robin Till stay home. 
 
[00:00:45] Yeah. 
 
[00:00:47] I mean, it's you know, I as usual, I don't know exactly how to consume or or consider the News of the World. 
 
[00:00:58] And let me just add that there was a moment earlier this week, and I think I'm still there, but I was very cognizant of how how much I was there earlier in the week, which is. 
 
[00:01:16] This world is completely chaotic. I don't know where anything in this world stands. And just as an example, like what's the Republican Party? Who's on the right? What does the left stand for? What's next with George Floyd? What's next with Kofod? What's going to happen to the economy? Where are the kids going to school. I could go on and on and on. You know, there's just so many things going on. And it does feel to me like we're now all speaking a form of psychobabble. Now, I just want to add that in part because of the show, because people communicate with me about the show through social media. I'm more in Facebook in particular than I used to be. And Facebook is a mess. I mean, it is just a mess. The back and forth and the things people say and the things that they post, it's just like, why how can that be enjoyable to somebody? Now I understand why it's a dopamine rush. Like, I understand the the car wreck aspect to it. I'm not seeing the the joy or the information side of what it is. So anyway, I just said a lot. 
 
[00:02:23] But but I really in my whole life I've never felt so strongly. And it may just be an emotion of of sorts, but I think there's actually a lot of logic in it where I feel like, what is this country like? What is this moment? 
 
[00:02:37] We are, yeah. I mean, we're leaderless. We're rudderless. We don't know which way the oceans are moving. You asked a lot of great questions. We don't have a lot of the things that often give us solace. We don't have sport unless you want to watch MDMA all day or South Korean baseball. And into your first point, we thought that perhaps this would be some degree return to normalcy and it's not....