From the Swiss border town of Alci here in France, this is obscure season four in American tragedy.

I'm your host, your friend, your ear lover, and literary mansplainer

in chief, Michael Ian Black, supine once again, as I often am here in my chambre. My little chamber,

my little bedroom. It actually feels like a little bit of a chamber because for some reason here in Alci,

we're staying in an apartment building, fairly modern,

and all the windows have metal rollers that come down over them.

I'm assuming the reason is they must get some fierce winds here in the French Alps.

And I'm guessing the metal blinds on the outside are meant to protect from those winds.

I can think of no other reason because we're on the fifth floor. I don't think this is a

particularly crime-ridden area. It is, however, Alpy. There are Alpine Mountains just within

sight of this apartment. It's rather pretty. There's a big lake here. Now, we just arrived last night, and it was gloomy and rainy and cold.

So we have not yet explored Alci, but I imagine when I'm done recording this podcast, that's exactly what we'll go and do.

We've been in France for, God, it feels like forever, but it's really

probably just been a couple of weeks. We have a couple of weeks left to go, maybe a week

and a half or so. And then from there, I fly back to Georgia for one day and then off to New York

to begin our second season of Have I Got News for you. And we will

undoubtedly have things to talk about when that television series reappears on your television screens.

So I've been trying to like sort of pay attention to the news, but not that much, because why?

You know, if you're, I don't know when you're listening to this, but the second Trump administration has just began.

And there's a flurry of all kinds of nonsense going on.

Ugly nonsense, I should add.

And Martha and I are grateful to be away from it for the moment.

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