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Speaker 1 (00:04):
Welcome to the Daily Dive Weekend edition. I'm Oscar Ramirez,
and every week I explore the top stories making waves
in the news and some that are just playing interesting.
I'll connect you with the journalists and the people who
know the story and bring you news without the noise
so you can make an informed decision. You can catch
a new episode of The Daily Dive every Monday through Friday,
and it's ready when you wake up. On the weekend edition,
(00:26):
I'll be bringing you some of the best stories from
the week. It might sound contradictory, but in a hopeful
sign for the FED, job openings have fallen to ten
point three million. While there continues to be a high
demand for workers, it shows that the labor market is
starting to cool, which helps the FED in fighting inflation.
The ratio of openings too unemployed workers has now dropped
(00:49):
to one point seven For more on what to know,
we'll speak to Molly Smith, us economy editor at Bloomberg News.
It's a funny concept. I think the way I try
to explain it to most people is that lately bad
news have been good news, at least for the said
um that when you see job openings falling, probably to
somebody who is applying for jobs, it's like, oh, well
(01:09):
that's not very good. But seeing as they've as they've
been so elevated, and that's the sign of demand for workers,
and how there hasn't been as much supply of workers
in response. That's actually been driving up wages all over
the economy and contributing to the inflation that we're seeing.
So when you see these job openings come down, this
is actually a sign of labor demand coming into better
(01:29):
balance with supply. And that's why this is an encouraging
sign for policymakers at the head in hoping that this
is leading towards getting inflation back down to target. Still, however,
in these very curious economic times, right, there's still a
ton of employers that are hiring. We're seeing a lot
more news headlines about companies, these companies, a lot in
(01:51):
the tech sector starting to lay off people, but still
by and large, a lot of companies are still trying
to hire more employees. Yeah, that's exactly right, um, and
that's why you can see, i mean ten point three
million job openings. That still a lot of demand for
workers out there. So that just really goes to show
you that these layoffs have been pretty contained and is
(02:12):
not a sign of widespread weakness in the labor market
so far. And yeah, I mean hiring has still been
very solid and layoffs as a whole have still been
relatively well. The other one of these numbers, there's you know,
a number for everything, right, so well, one of the
other numbers people pay attention to is the ratio of
openings to unemployed workers that declined to one point seven.
(02:34):
What do we see as far as that? What does
that number help us understand? That basically says that for
every unemployed worker, there are one point seven job openings available,
which is still a lot. I mean, I think the
said would prefer to see that more around, maybe just
one opening, like a one to one ratio, which is
what you would expect if you're one person and one
(02:54):
opening that lines up pretty nicely. But granted, this is
still down a good bit from the high that we've
seen in the past here, So coming back down to
one seven again another good sign of what the Fed
wants to see, but probably not enough yet. Where are
we seeing these decreases and job openings? They noted in
the in the one of these latest articles from Bloomberg.
(03:15):
We saw a lot of decreases in state and local governments. Yeah,
that's been a really tough sector and you've seen it
definitely on the You know that so many government workers, teachers,
healthcare as well, that's kind of falls into that. For
other category, that's been a really tough place to hire.
So when you see these vacancies drop, sometimes that's not
(03:36):
necessarily indicative of that there's less demand. But it could
also just be that these sectors are just realizing that
the demand isn't there and they're taking these postings down.
So that's another way to possibly interpret it. So, yeah,
we definitely saw some big jobs and vacancies and state
local government excluding education, and also um non durable goods
manufacturing and federal government jobs. Those postings also came down.
(04:00):
So we're starting to see certain sectors cool as we're
talking about employment right now and job openings. Obviously, the
Fed continues to raise rates. I think they say still
signal they'll probably do it a few more times. You know,
there's fears of a recession, right, all sorts of stuff
is going on. Does it seem like we're starting to
get a handle on what's going on with inflation. It's
tough to say. I mean, there are definitely signs that
(04:20):
inflation is cooling in several parts of the economy. It's
just not happening as fast as the Fed would like
to see, or really as Americans would like to see.
This affects all of us. Uh So, while it's been
more pronounced, and maybe when you're starting to see rent
prices coming down and some other forms of price pressures
like wages have still been rising but not quite as
(04:43):
fast as they were, that's all still inflationary right now.
Those things are still accelerating at a pretty rapid pace,
but they're just not coming down enough to really make
a broader dent on overall inflation. Molly Smith, us economy
editor at Bloomberg News, thank you very much for joining us.
Thank you. From politics, insiders are saying that President Biden
(05:10):
is gearing up to run for office again, and this
week we saw a preview of a possible campaign strategy,
one that will try to leverage the power of the
White House advisors will want to keep the President out
of every item in the news cycle, but keep up
diplomatic engagements, quick trips to swing states, and ramp up
the fundraising efforts. For more on how Biden will run,
will speak to Hans Nichols reporter first off on the
(05:32):
question of him running. Most of his senior staff and
people that talked to him and know him well think
that he's kind of already made the decision to run.
He hasn't done it formally, He hasn't gotten buying from
the entire family. But the White House is operating on
the principle that Biden is going to run again. They
need to start raising money, They need to start getting
a formal campaign appratus up. We saw this week is
(05:53):
kind of what the strategy could be and what you
saw them use the majesty of the presidency. This sort
of the surgical strikes that you're able to do with
Air Force one and then also not get involved in
every single news cycle and then maybe take the weekend off.
And as the president does run the next two years,
it's gonna live a lot like this week, which is
using the Rose Garden, using the West Wing. He's got
(06:16):
a big state dinner to kind of emphasize his foreign
policy bona fides, and you know, he did a trip
from Michigan, an important swing state. He just he's on
the tarmac now about to fly back, and then you
know Friday, it looks like he's heading back up to
go where he may. He may make another stop on
Air Force one politically related there. So I think of
it is like the Rose Garden reelection strategy plus Air
(06:38):
Force One making domestic and foreign trips. Yeah, and it'll
be interesting. Obviously, staying out of the news cycle, or
at least every store in the news cycle could be
an important one for him. You know, he's prone to
verbal gaps. He's admitted it himself. We see it all
the time. Former President Trump has that tendency to get
involved into every story. And when we saw a President
(06:58):
Biden run the first time, you know, some people said, hey,
they were accusing him of hanging out in the basement.
Obviously COVID was a big thing going around, but he
took that step back approach, and you know, obviously he
has more things that is disposable since he is the
president in the White House all that, but it still
seems like that's part of the campaign overall. Keep out
of it a little. Yeah, Look, the basement strategy worked.
(07:19):
I mean White eufstation with Fay was COVID related, but
the basement strategy worked in the mid terms. It wasn't
quite the basement strategy, but you didn't see the president
gas that Air Force one and fly to really competitive
swing states. He did a big West coast tour where
he went to Oregon in California, didn't go to Arizona,
didn't go to Nevada where there are these two big
competitive center races which the Democrats want. And the words
(07:42):
that kind of I diverbed that I heard several times
when I was reporting a story that they feel validated.
The White House feels that they were validated in their strategy.
They certainly feel validated by the mid term strategy, even
though they lost the House the status, the losses could
have been much worse, and they just they feel like
their approach is the right one. And it's not going
to be to put the president out front every time.
(08:05):
He's not gonna be doing dozens of interviews town halls,
he's not gonna be tweeting or sub tweeting either, going
to try to keep him above the fray. And you know,
use that commodity, which is a presidential visit or a
presidential time, use it a little sparingly and use it preciously. Yeah. Yeah,
as you mentioned, right, just coming out of the mid terms, right,
they they played up big, the Democrats at least did
played a big women's reproductive rights an abortion and all that,
(08:28):
and the losses they were expected to have during the
midterm elections didn't really happen. And so this is one
thing that they have kind of the wind that they're
back with at least even though they sustained a lot
of losses, right, it wasn't the big clap back that
a lot of people thought. So they're gonna keep using that.
The danger for the White House is that they won
for reasons that they don't fully understand and that they yes,
(08:51):
they did better one maybe the wrong, wronger, but they
did better than expected and defied expectations and two mid terms.
But they might not quite know why. I would suggest that,
like none of us really quite know why I was
in Washington and that was in Wall Street and none
of something. We never got a theory, but no one
quite knows why. And so if that's the case, they
could be you know, repeating what they did last time,
(09:13):
thinking that it's genius. It may not work. So that
would be the big caveat I would sort of put
brackets around like this, this entire strategy. I think all
of us in BC should get out of the predictions business.
So I want to be very clear, I'm not making
predictions right, but like you know, it's a version of
generals always fighting the last war and so and then
(09:33):
general's maybe not not knowing why they won the last war. Now,
the White House will probably bristle of that because they
had a theory of the case and they won and
they didn't win, but they you know, they held the Senate.
Maybe you're gonna pick up a season Senate and barely
lost the House and defied historical expectations. So that's their mentality.
And like you know, we'll have to let voters decide
in two years. And as you mentioned, to start gearing
up for all that fundraising. They're gonna need a lot
(09:55):
of money to compete in this campaigns. As as going forward,
if he it and bossed White House Christmas invite, uh,
it may not be because the President is dying to
see you and it hasn't caught up with you a while,
and maybe that you're gonna get head up for a
big check. Sometimes down a line, but maybe that's two
cent on my part. But they're gonna need to raise money,
and I think the Daily Mail Today reporters, they're gonna
(10:16):
be like twentysome holiday parties at the White House this season,
and a lot of them are the troops that for
members of Congress, there for the staff. This wasn't all
just for donors in the past. There's been a while
I come totally clean. There's been one for the press,
and uh, I'll come clean on this. I took my
mother in law to the White House Christmas party, so
I'm guilty. I'm part of the corruption, but I was
(10:37):
a good logic for one moment. And obviously the the
economic news, obviously it's very important looking forward. Were gonna
get a bunch of economic news by the end of
the week too, so they'll that will also figure into
all these plans. Hans Nichols, reporter at Axios. Thank you
very much for joining us, Thanks for having me. Finally
(10:59):
for this week, the word of the Year for two
is gas lighting. Miriam Webster chooses the word of the
year based only on data from lookups, and in two
lookups for gas lighting increase one thousand seven most Interestingly,
there was not a particular news event that drove those
look ups. It was a word that had interest every
single day of the year. We'll get a definition for
(11:21):
gas lighting and look at some other top words, including
loami for all that will speak to Peter Sokolowski, Editor
at Large for Miriam Webster. The word of the Year
for Merriam Webster is a statistical measure of curiosity. It's
the things that sent us to the dictionary in the
past twelve months. And you know, with a hundred million
page us every month at the Dictionary, we have a
(11:43):
lot of data to sort through and it tells us
something about what people are thinking about in terms of
what words are being looked up. Now, this is often
news driven. It can be Hollywood, it can be obviously sports,
and it can be politics. It goes without saying. In
the past couple of years, obviously health related concerns and
the pandemic. And this year we found a word that
(12:04):
was not associated with a single story, but rather a
single word that was looked up almost every day in
the past year in very high numbers. And to be honest,
it was a little bit below my radar because it
wasn't a word used by a newsmaker for example. However,
this is a word that's being used by more and
more journalists in more and more headlines. It's used by
(12:24):
a lot of sort of think pieces and analyzes of
not just politics, but corporate behavior, personal behavior. And of
course the word's origins are really in psychology. So this
is a term that has a huge broad span of use,
but also a word that we've noticed has been used
much more frequently in print and in writing since and
(12:44):
now we kind of come to a peak year for
gas lighting. That's so interesting and to your point, right,
usually something sparks a look up for a word, something
like you like you said, a newsmaker said it, or
some big thing happened, and even some of the other
top words of the year spurred some of these lookups.
Caught five when we're talking about what was going on
with the Supreme Court Queen's consort after the Queen died,
(13:05):
and uh, you know the the King Charles wife is
known as the Queen Concert. So when you hear these
unfamiliar things, people jump into it and yeah, that's so interesting.
And you know, I obviously I look at news every
single day for the podcast in my the news business
that I work in, and I did notice, you know,
headlines and journalists constantly using this. So yeah, it's interesting
(13:26):
that that this word was just kind of you know
a lot of people were looking it up throughout the year. Okay,
so now for the official definition, what does gas lighting mean?
According to Miriam Webster, well, we have two definitions of
gas lighting. And as you might know, this is a
term that originally was used in the context of psychological manipulation,
(13:46):
but it has broadened into the use that we most
often see, which is the act or practice of grossly
misleading someone, especially for one's own advantage. And that's the
you know, that's the way that most people use it.
It's a kind of synonym for the word lying. However,
it always has a kind of nefarious strategy or intent,
(14:07):
this kind of a plan that is associated with gas lighting,
which makes it a little bit different from saying lying
about who took the cookies, for example. Right, and uh,
this interesting This term has uh its origin from the
title of the play coming from nineteen thirty eight, and
then they made a movie about to play. You know,
the plot was all similar is basically a man attempting
(14:29):
to make his wife believe that she's kind of going
in saying. This is where the term originated, absolutely, and
it was used, you know, starting in the nineteen fifties
that the movie was a big success as a kind
of footnote. Angela Lansbury, the actors who just died a
few months ago, was one of the stars of that
movie from ninety four, and that, by the way, is
one of the reasons the word was looked up in
(14:50):
the past year as well, because of the mentions of
the film in her obituaries. But that psychological manipulation of
a person, usually over an extended period of time, is
what that original use of gas lighting is meant and
had meant. And the fact is, sometimes I see on
social media people sort of correcting others and saying, you know,
gas lighting isn't just lying for strategy. It's this psychological
(15:14):
manipulation that tries to convince another person of their own insanity,
that they can't believe their own eyes basically, And you know,
that's one of those things about languages. No one can
control it. And this is a word that has broadened
slightly and has come to a much wider use with
this broader definition. Yeah, to your point right, that intent
(15:35):
is a very important part of what gas light he
means and what differentiates it from lying and things like that,
as you mentioned, So that just an interesting look at
that word. I didn't want to mention some of the
other top words just so we're not forgetting them. Obviously,
oligarch was one of the top searches as well, and
we know that kind of came up again to the
point earlier of certain words that are sparked by world
(15:57):
events the Russian invasion of Ukraine and when you're trying
to put sanctions on oligarchs and whatnot. So so that
this is where this word got a big increase from
absolutely and you know, it's a really good vocabulary word. Honestly,
what the dictionary is not really there to measure the news,
it's there to measure the language. And oligarc is a
great word with Greek roots, and it has a peculiarity,
(16:19):
which is that you know, there can be people who
are ruling from a class of privilege in many cultures,
but the word oligarc really is so closely associated with
the former Soviet Union that we give a special definition
for that context. In Russia and other countries, that succeeded
the Soviet Union, one of a class of individuals who,
(16:40):
through private acquisition of state assets, amassed great wealth. And
so that specific use is really what sent people to
the dictionary. I didn't want to spend a few more
minutes on this, if you can indulge, just because I
do love learning more about these words and why they
kind of sparked up into the common culture here. Sentient
This was an interesting one because we saw this one
(17:01):
play out in the news. There was a Google engineer
who was saying that, you know, one of the AI
systems that they were working on had become sentient. First
of all, it's sort of a stuff of science fiction, right,
and it has become It's sort of part of the
reason why gas lighting is the word of the year.
That we are living in an age of constant questioning
of of sources. Right. The Internet is a source of information,
(17:22):
but it's also a source of enormous disinformation. What informs
us also deceives us, and so we don't often or
always believe our own eyes, do we in terms of
either news reports or the words of politicians, or in
this case, the abilities of technology to sort of have
actual emotions or feelings, which is it's a fascinating story.
(17:44):
There's no it's no wonder that this word at the
center of that story was also the center of a
lot of curiosity. Yeah, that word. Look Ups for that
word increase four eight percent. If you don't know that story,
go ahead and look it up because it is a
very interesting look and it and and Google denies the
whole thing that any ai is sentient. There was also
a cancel culture on the top list l G B
(18:05):
T q I A. And let's end off with this
interesting word loam me. This came up because of wordle.
You know a lot of people. It's funny because I
played wordle for a bunch and you get piste off
when it's like a word you never heard of, and
you're like, how the heck is that the word of
the day for this game? Here tell us what that means?
And uh and just how many look ups that got? Right?
(18:28):
I mean. The fact is there is a new phenomenon
in word games. You know, we've had scrabble, we have
cross words. People love language and they love playing with words,
and wordle and Cordle other words similar other games similar
to that have really sparked a kind of a whole
new kind of word ecosystem of of games and gaming
and frankly vocabulary fun. People love playing with words. You know.
(18:50):
Loae me just comes from the now loan, which means
a mixture of either plaster or It's often used for soil,
right or sand and l o a m y is
a five letter word that that corresponded to the word
quiz that day, and the spike was unbelievable. It was
four and a half million per cent, and that is
maybe unprecedented in our data, and it shows the breadth
(19:13):
of of wordle. On the one hand, it also shows
that you know, this is what the dictionary is for.
One of the principal questions the dictionary answers is is
that a word? Peter Sokolowski, Editor at Large at Merriam Webster,
thank you very much for joining us. It's a treat.
Thank you. That's it for this weekend. Be sure to
check out The Daily Dive every Monday through Friday. Join
(19:36):
us on social media at Daily Dive pod on Twitter
and Daily Dive Podcasts on Facebook. Leave us a comment,
give us a rating, and tell us the stories that
you're interested in. Follow the Daily Dive and I heard
radio or subscribe wherever you get your podcast. This episode
of The Daily Dive has been engineered by Tony Sorrentina.
I'm Oscar Rameris in Los Angeles and this was your
(19:57):
Daily Dive weekend edition das
Welcome to the Daily Dive Weekend edition. I'm Oscar Ramirez,
and every week I explore the top stories making waves
in the news and some that are just playing interesting.
I'll connect you with the journalists and the people who
know the story and bring you news without the noise
so you can make an informed decision. You can catch
a new episode of The Daily Dive every Monday through Friday,
and it's ready when you wake up. On the weekend edition,
(00:26):
I'll be bringing you some of the best stories from
the week. It might sound contradictory, but in a hopeful
sign for the FED, job openings have fallen to ten
point three million. While there continues to be a high
demand for workers, it shows that the labor market is
starting to cool, which helps the FED in fighting inflation.
The ratio of openings too unemployed workers has now dropped
(00:49):
to one point seven For more on what to know,
we'll speak to Molly Smith, us economy editor at Bloomberg News.
It's a funny concept. I think the way I try
to explain it to most people is that lately bad
news have been good news, at least for the said
um that when you see job openings falling, probably to
somebody who is applying for jobs, it's like, oh, well
(01:09):
that's not very good. But seeing as they've as they've
been so elevated, and that's the sign of demand for workers,
and how there hasn't been as much supply of workers
in response. That's actually been driving up wages all over
the economy and contributing to the inflation that we're seeing.
So when you see these job openings come down, this
is actually a sign of labor demand coming into better
(01:29):
balance with supply. And that's why this is an encouraging
sign for policymakers at the head in hoping that this
is leading towards getting inflation back down to target. Still, however,
in these very curious economic times, right, there's still a
ton of employers that are hiring. We're seeing a lot
more news headlines about companies, these companies, a lot in
(01:51):
the tech sector starting to lay off people, but still
by and large, a lot of companies are still trying
to hire more employees. Yeah, that's exactly right, um, and
that's why you can see, i mean ten point three
million job openings. That still a lot of demand for
workers out there. So that just really goes to show
you that these layoffs have been pretty contained and is
(02:12):
not a sign of widespread weakness in the labor market
so far. And yeah, I mean hiring has still been
very solid and layoffs as a whole have still been
relatively well. The other one of these numbers, there's you know,
a number for everything, right, so well, one of the
other numbers people pay attention to is the ratio of
openings to unemployed workers that declined to one point seven.
(02:34):
What do we see as far as that? What does
that number help us understand? That basically says that for
every unemployed worker, there are one point seven job openings available,
which is still a lot. I mean, I think the
said would prefer to see that more around, maybe just
one opening, like a one to one ratio, which is
what you would expect if you're one person and one
(02:54):
opening that lines up pretty nicely. But granted, this is
still down a good bit from the high that we've
seen in the past here, So coming back down to
one seven again another good sign of what the Fed
wants to see, but probably not enough yet. Where are
we seeing these decreases and job openings? They noted in
the in the one of these latest articles from Bloomberg.
(03:15):
We saw a lot of decreases in state and local governments. Yeah,
that's been a really tough sector and you've seen it
definitely on the You know that so many government workers, teachers,
healthcare as well, that's kind of falls into that. For
other category, that's been a really tough place to hire.
So when you see these vacancies drop, sometimes that's not
(03:36):
necessarily indicative of that there's less demand. But it could
also just be that these sectors are just realizing that
the demand isn't there and they're taking these postings down.
So that's another way to possibly interpret it. So, yeah,
we definitely saw some big jobs and vacancies and state
local government excluding education, and also um non durable goods
manufacturing and federal government jobs. Those postings also came down.
(04:00):
So we're starting to see certain sectors cool as we're
talking about employment right now and job openings. Obviously, the
Fed continues to raise rates. I think they say still
signal they'll probably do it a few more times. You know,
there's fears of a recession, right, all sorts of stuff
is going on. Does it seem like we're starting to
get a handle on what's going on with inflation. It's
tough to say. I mean, there are definitely signs that
(04:20):
inflation is cooling in several parts of the economy. It's
just not happening as fast as the Fed would like
to see, or really as Americans would like to see.
This affects all of us. Uh So, while it's been
more pronounced, and maybe when you're starting to see rent
prices coming down and some other forms of price pressures
like wages have still been rising but not quite as
(04:43):
fast as they were, that's all still inflationary right now.
Those things are still accelerating at a pretty rapid pace,
but they're just not coming down enough to really make
a broader dent on overall inflation. Molly Smith, us economy
editor at Bloomberg News, thank you very much for joining us.
Thank you. From politics, insiders are saying that President Biden
(05:10):
is gearing up to run for office again, and this
week we saw a preview of a possible campaign strategy,
one that will try to leverage the power of the
White House advisors will want to keep the President out
of every item in the news cycle, but keep up
diplomatic engagements, quick trips to swing states, and ramp up
the fundraising efforts. For more on how Biden will run,
will speak to Hans Nichols reporter first off on the
(05:32):
question of him running. Most of his senior staff and
people that talked to him and know him well think
that he's kind of already made the decision to run.
He hasn't done it formally, He hasn't gotten buying from
the entire family. But the White House is operating on
the principle that Biden is going to run again. They
need to start raising money, They need to start getting
a formal campaign appratus up. We saw this week is
(05:53):
kind of what the strategy could be and what you
saw them use the majesty of the presidency. This sort
of the surgical strikes that you're able to do with
Air Force one and then also not get involved in
every single news cycle and then maybe take the weekend off.
And as the president does run the next two years,
it's gonna live a lot like this week, which is
using the Rose Garden, using the West Wing. He's got
(06:16):
a big state dinner to kind of emphasize his foreign
policy bona fides, and you know, he did a trip
from Michigan, an important swing state. He just he's on
the tarmac now about to fly back, and then you
know Friday, it looks like he's heading back up to
go where he may. He may make another stop on
Air Force one politically related there. So I think of
it is like the Rose Garden reelection strategy plus Air
(06:38):
Force One making domestic and foreign trips. Yeah, and it'll
be interesting. Obviously, staying out of the news cycle, or
at least every store in the news cycle could be
an important one for him. You know, he's prone to
verbal gaps. He's admitted it himself. We see it all
the time. Former President Trump has that tendency to get
involved into every story. And when we saw a President
(06:58):
Biden run the first time, you know, some people said, hey,
they were accusing him of hanging out in the basement.
Obviously COVID was a big thing going around, but he
took that step back approach, and you know, obviously he
has more things that is disposable since he is the
president in the White House all that, but it still
seems like that's part of the campaign overall. Keep out
of it a little. Yeah, Look, the basement strategy worked.
(07:19):
I mean White eufstation with Fay was COVID related, but
the basement strategy worked in the mid terms. It wasn't
quite the basement strategy, but you didn't see the president
gas that Air Force one and fly to really competitive
swing states. He did a big West coast tour where
he went to Oregon in California, didn't go to Arizona,
didn't go to Nevada where there are these two big
competitive center races which the Democrats want. And the words
(07:42):
that kind of I diverbed that I heard several times
when I was reporting a story that they feel validated.
The White House feels that they were validated in their strategy.
They certainly feel validated by the mid term strategy, even
though they lost the House the status, the losses could
have been much worse, and they just they feel like
their approach is the right one. And it's not going
to be to put the president out front every time.
(08:05):
He's not gonna be doing dozens of interviews town halls,
he's not gonna be tweeting or sub tweeting either, going
to try to keep him above the fray. And you know,
use that commodity, which is a presidential visit or a
presidential time, use it a little sparingly and use it preciously. Yeah. Yeah,
as you mentioned, right, just coming out of the mid terms, right,
they they played up big, the Democrats at least did
played a big women's reproductive rights an abortion and all that,
(08:28):
and the losses they were expected to have during the
midterm elections didn't really happen. And so this is one
thing that they have kind of the wind that they're
back with at least even though they sustained a lot
of losses, right, it wasn't the big clap back that
a lot of people thought. So they're gonna keep using that.
The danger for the White House is that they won
for reasons that they don't fully understand and that they yes,
(08:51):
they did better one maybe the wrong, wronger, but they
did better than expected and defied expectations and two mid terms.
But they might not quite know why. I would suggest that,
like none of us really quite know why I was
in Washington and that was in Wall Street and none
of something. We never got a theory, but no one
quite knows why. And so if that's the case, they
could be you know, repeating what they did last time,
(09:13):
thinking that it's genius. It may not work. So that
would be the big caveat I would sort of put
brackets around like this, this entire strategy. I think all
of us in BC should get out of the predictions business.
So I want to be very clear, I'm not making
predictions right, but like you know, it's a version of
generals always fighting the last war and so and then
(09:33):
general's maybe not not knowing why they won the last war. Now,
the White House will probably bristle of that because they
had a theory of the case and they won and
they didn't win, but they you know, they held the Senate.
Maybe you're gonna pick up a season Senate and barely
lost the House and defied historical expectations. So that's their mentality.
And like you know, we'll have to let voters decide
in two years. And as you mentioned, to start gearing
up for all that fundraising. They're gonna need a lot
(09:55):
of money to compete in this campaigns. As as going forward,
if he it and bossed White House Christmas invite, uh,
it may not be because the President is dying to
see you and it hasn't caught up with you a while,
and maybe that you're gonna get head up for a
big check. Sometimes down a line, but maybe that's two
cent on my part. But they're gonna need to raise money,
and I think the Daily Mail Today reporters, they're gonna
(10:16):
be like twentysome holiday parties at the White House this season,
and a lot of them are the troops that for
members of Congress, there for the staff. This wasn't all
just for donors in the past. There's been a while
I come totally clean. There's been one for the press,
and uh, I'll come clean on this. I took my
mother in law to the White House Christmas party, so
I'm guilty. I'm part of the corruption, but I was
(10:37):
a good logic for one moment. And obviously the the
economic news, obviously it's very important looking forward. Were gonna
get a bunch of economic news by the end of
the week too, so they'll that will also figure into
all these plans. Hans Nichols, reporter at Axios. Thank you
very much for joining us, Thanks for having me. Finally
(10:59):
for this week, the word of the Year for two
is gas lighting. Miriam Webster chooses the word of the
year based only on data from lookups, and in two
lookups for gas lighting increase one thousand seven most Interestingly,
there was not a particular news event that drove those
look ups. It was a word that had interest every
single day of the year. We'll get a definition for
(11:21):
gas lighting and look at some other top words, including
loami for all that will speak to Peter Sokolowski, Editor
at Large for Miriam Webster. The word of the Year
for Merriam Webster is a statistical measure of curiosity. It's
the things that sent us to the dictionary in the
past twelve months. And you know, with a hundred million
page us every month at the Dictionary, we have a
(11:43):
lot of data to sort through and it tells us
something about what people are thinking about in terms of
what words are being looked up. Now, this is often
news driven. It can be Hollywood, it can be obviously sports,
and it can be politics. It goes without saying. In
the past couple of years, obviously health related concerns and
the pandemic. And this year we found a word that
(12:04):
was not associated with a single story, but rather a
single word that was looked up almost every day in
the past year in very high numbers. And to be honest,
it was a little bit below my radar because it
wasn't a word used by a newsmaker for example. However,
this is a word that's being used by more and
more journalists in more and more headlines. It's used by
(12:24):
a lot of sort of think pieces and analyzes of
not just politics, but corporate behavior, personal behavior. And of
course the word's origins are really in psychology. So this
is a term that has a huge broad span of use,
but also a word that we've noticed has been used
much more frequently in print and in writing since and
(12:44):
now we kind of come to a peak year for
gas lighting. That's so interesting and to your point, right,
usually something sparks a look up for a word, something
like you like you said, a newsmaker said it, or
some big thing happened, and even some of the other
top words of the year spurred some of these lookups.
Caught five when we're talking about what was going on
with the Supreme Court Queen's consort after the Queen died,
(13:05):
and uh, you know the the King Charles wife is
known as the Queen Concert. So when you hear these
unfamiliar things, people jump into it and yeah, that's so interesting.
And you know, I obviously I look at news every
single day for the podcast in my the news business
that I work in, and I did notice, you know,
headlines and journalists constantly using this. So yeah, it's interesting
(13:26):
that that this word was just kind of you know
a lot of people were looking it up throughout the year. Okay,
so now for the official definition, what does gas lighting mean?
According to Miriam Webster, well, we have two definitions of
gas lighting. And as you might know, this is a
term that originally was used in the context of psychological manipulation,
(13:46):
but it has broadened into the use that we most
often see, which is the act or practice of grossly
misleading someone, especially for one's own advantage. And that's the
you know, that's the way that most people use it.
It's a kind of synonym for the word lying. However,
it always has a kind of nefarious strategy or intent,
(14:07):
this kind of a plan that is associated with gas lighting,
which makes it a little bit different from saying lying
about who took the cookies, for example. Right, and uh,
this interesting This term has uh its origin from the
title of the play coming from nineteen thirty eight, and
then they made a movie about to play. You know,
the plot was all similar is basically a man attempting
(14:29):
to make his wife believe that she's kind of going
in saying. This is where the term originated, absolutely, and
it was used, you know, starting in the nineteen fifties
that the movie was a big success as a kind
of footnote. Angela Lansbury, the actors who just died a
few months ago, was one of the stars of that
movie from ninety four, and that, by the way, is
one of the reasons the word was looked up in
(14:50):
the past year as well, because of the mentions of
the film in her obituaries. But that psychological manipulation of
a person, usually over an extended period of time, is
what that original use of gas lighting is meant and
had meant. And the fact is, sometimes I see on
social media people sort of correcting others and saying, you know,
gas lighting isn't just lying for strategy. It's this psychological
(15:14):
manipulation that tries to convince another person of their own insanity,
that they can't believe their own eyes basically, And you know,
that's one of those things about languages. No one can
control it. And this is a word that has broadened
slightly and has come to a much wider use with
this broader definition. Yeah, to your point right, that intent
(15:35):
is a very important part of what gas light he
means and what differentiates it from lying and things like that,
as you mentioned, So that just an interesting look at
that word. I didn't want to mention some of the
other top words just so we're not forgetting them. Obviously,
oligarch was one of the top searches as well, and
we know that kind of came up again to the
point earlier of certain words that are sparked by world
(15:57):
events the Russian invasion of Ukraine and when you're trying
to put sanctions on oligarchs and whatnot. So so that
this is where this word got a big increase from
absolutely and you know, it's a really good vocabulary word. Honestly,
what the dictionary is not really there to measure the news,
it's there to measure the language. And oligarc is a
great word with Greek roots, and it has a peculiarity,
(16:19):
which is that you know, there can be people who
are ruling from a class of privilege in many cultures,
but the word oligarc really is so closely associated with
the former Soviet Union that we give a special definition
for that context. In Russia and other countries, that succeeded
the Soviet Union, one of a class of individuals who,
(16:40):
through private acquisition of state assets, amassed great wealth. And
so that specific use is really what sent people to
the dictionary. I didn't want to spend a few more
minutes on this, if you can indulge, just because I
do love learning more about these words and why they
kind of sparked up into the common culture here. Sentient
This was an interesting one because we saw this one
(17:01):
play out in the news. There was a Google engineer
who was saying that, you know, one of the AI
systems that they were working on had become sentient. First
of all, it's sort of a stuff of science fiction, right,
and it has become It's sort of part of the
reason why gas lighting is the word of the year.
That we are living in an age of constant questioning
of of sources. Right. The Internet is a source of information,
(17:22):
but it's also a source of enormous disinformation. What informs
us also deceives us, and so we don't often or
always believe our own eyes, do we in terms of
either news reports or the words of politicians, or in
this case, the abilities of technology to sort of have
actual emotions or feelings, which is it's a fascinating story.
(17:44):
There's no it's no wonder that this word at the
center of that story was also the center of a
lot of curiosity. Yeah, that word. Look Ups for that
word increase four eight percent. If you don't know that story,
go ahead and look it up because it is a
very interesting look and it and and Google denies the
whole thing that any ai is sentient. There was also
a cancel culture on the top list l G B
(18:05):
T q I A. And let's end off with this
interesting word loam me. This came up because of wordle.
You know a lot of people. It's funny because I
played wordle for a bunch and you get piste off
when it's like a word you never heard of, and
you're like, how the heck is that the word of
the day for this game? Here tell us what that means?
And uh and just how many look ups that got? Right?
(18:28):
I mean. The fact is there is a new phenomenon
in word games. You know, we've had scrabble, we have
cross words. People love language and they love playing with words,
and wordle and Cordle other words similar other games similar
to that have really sparked a kind of a whole
new kind of word ecosystem of of games and gaming
and frankly vocabulary fun. People love playing with words. You know.
(18:50):
Loae me just comes from the now loan, which means
a mixture of either plaster or It's often used for soil,
right or sand and l o a m y is
a five letter word that that corresponded to the word
quiz that day, and the spike was unbelievable. It was
four and a half million per cent, and that is
maybe unprecedented in our data, and it shows the breadth
(19:13):
of of wordle. On the one hand, it also shows
that you know, this is what the dictionary is for.
One of the principal questions the dictionary answers is is
that a word? Peter Sokolowski, Editor at Large at Merriam Webster,
thank you very much for joining us. It's a treat.
Thank you. That's it for this weekend. Be sure to
check out The Daily Dive every Monday through Friday. Join
(19:36):
us on social media at Daily Dive pod on Twitter
and Daily Dive Podcasts on Facebook. Leave us a comment,
give us a rating, and tell us the stories that
you're interested in. Follow the Daily Dive and I heard
radio or subscribe wherever you get your podcast. This episode
of The Daily Dive has been engineered by Tony Sorrentina.
I'm Oscar Rameris in Los Angeles and this was your
(19:57):
Daily Dive weekend edition das
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