It Could Happen Here Weekly 233

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool media.

Speaker 2 (00:03):
Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let
you know this is a compilation episode. So every episode
of the week that just happened is here in one
convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to
listen to in a long stretch if you want. If
you've been listening to the episodes every day this week,
there's going to be nothing new here for you, but
you can make your own decisions.

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Welcome to it could happen here a show, But thanks.
Falling apart, I'm Garrison Davis today, I'm joined by James Stout.

Speaker 4 (00:35):
Hello, Hi, Gay, I'm excited to see what's falling UPOT today.

Speaker 3 (00:40):
Well, that's our elections, which have, as we all know,
have been raged for as long as I can remember,
which is kind of true considering when I was born
circa the year two thousand oh.

Speaker 4 (00:52):
Yeah, the famous, the great and democratic collection of to
have in the United States.

Speaker 3 (00:58):
The flawless election of two Yeah. But no, we are
going to be talking about Trump's continuing claims that the
twenty twenty election was rigged and his investigation of election
fraud in not just the twenty twenty election but also
the twenty twenty four election, which if you recall, was

(01:18):
not rigged against Trump, considering Trump won that election including
the popular vote.

Speaker 4 (01:25):
Yeah, he won every way you could slice that up.

Speaker 5 (01:28):
A sweeping victory.

Speaker 4 (01:29):
Yeah, it was a fatle for the Democrats.

Speaker 3 (01:32):
But a lot of the investigations into election fraud actually
do revolve around the twenty twenty four voter roles, which
we will discuss in a bit, But first let's go
back a few weeks on Executive Disorder. I reported that
Cash Brittel went on too Fox News a few weeks
ago and announced that the FBI would soon be making

(01:53):
arrests related to Trump's claims that the twenty twenty election
was stolen, with Patel saying, as a conspiracy end quote,
they tried to thwart our elections and rig the entire system.

Speaker 5 (02:06):
We got all the evidence, we've.

Speaker 6 (02:09):
Got all the effortens I can announce on your show
that we've got all the information we need. We're working
with our prosecutors, the Department of Justice and the Attorney
General Todd Blanche and we are going to be making
arrest and it's coming, and I promise you it's coming soon.

Speaker 3 (02:23):
Patel also claimed on Fox News, quote, we have the
information to back President Trump's claims. About a week and
a half later, the DOJ announced quote multiple aliens charged
with illegally voting in federal elections.

Speaker 5 (02:39):
It's multiple, James, multiple.

Speaker 4 (02:41):
Well, okay, yes, we're looking at three.

Speaker 5 (02:44):
No, no more than three, more than three.

Speaker 7 (02:47):
Four.

Speaker 4 (02:47):
It was fun, fun for me, Okay, just for people
who aren't familiar with the skired of the United States,
it's that's not a statistically significant number. When it comes
to electoral outcomes, generally, they are decided by several multiples
of four.

Speaker 3 (03:05):
Usually, Yeah, Patel commented, quote Securing our elections from criminal
actors here at home and around the world is one
of the top priorities for this FBI. Non citizens voting
is a federal crime, period, and while other administrations may
have looked the other way in the past, those days
are over. We will continue to work around the clock
with our interagency partners to ensure those who engage in

(03:28):
such conduct will not get away with it. So these
arrests took place in New Jersey, and these quote unquote
multiple aliens were four permanent residents who registered to vote
and cast ballots in at least one federal election before
applying for naturalization via the N four hundred.

Speaker 4 (03:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:48):
Now, the N four hundred form has a section where
it asks if the applicant has ever registered to vote
or has voted in a federal, state, or local election.
Three of the peace people charged in New Jersey checked
no in the box asking if they had voted. The
other left the box blank, but when later questioned by

(04:10):
an Immigration Services officer at the us CIS interview, this
applicant answered no that they did not or have not voted.

Speaker 4 (04:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:18):
Now, interestingly, only two out of the four are actually
charged with quote, voting by an alien in a federal election, okay,
three are charged with false statements in relation to naturalization, yeah,
and two are charged with procurement of citizenship or naturalization unlawfully.

Speaker 4 (04:38):
Yeah. Well, because I'm guessing the goal here would be
to denaturalize them, right for.

Speaker 3 (04:42):
The people that were naturalized that that looks like that
will that will be part of what they do going forward.

Speaker 4 (04:48):
Yeah. I know I've reported on this in NED before,
but like large parts of USCIS have denaturalization targets right
in the same way that we've seen deportation targets for
ICE and CBPS. So like that will be the reason
that though the specific charges. Right, that is the easiest
way to denaturalize someone. I was going to say the

(05:10):
only way, but I think there are technically other ways.
But like the bulk of times you're going to see
someone denaturalized, it's because they concealed previously, it had been
that they had concealed like some loyalty to like like
a terrorist group, right, or perhaps there are bars for
like communists and Nazis, like like with capital letters. I'm
not talking about the political affiliation. I'm talking about like

(05:32):
being a member of a party with a party card there,
and I'm not talking about it the view necessarily.

Speaker 3 (05:37):
Yeah, that's a whole other like tangent, there's there's back
and forth rules. If you can really denaturalize someone for
being a member of a communist party, still depends what
they mean by communist party.

Speaker 5 (05:46):
Yeah, that's kind of like a vague term.

Speaker 3 (05:48):
But the false statements in relation to naturalization, as in
allegedly lying on the form by checking a box that
conflicts with what the federal government is alleging, is a
much more clear route to denaturalization. One of the people
charged is a green card holder from Liberia who immigrated

(06:09):
as a refugee in nineteen ninety eight, named David Newilli.
He's currently seventy three years old. He allegedly registered to
vote in New Jersey in two thousand and three and
attested he was a US citizen. The complaint claims Nuelly
voted by mail in the twenty twenty general election and
submitted a provisional ballot in person on November fifth, twenty

(06:31):
twenty four, for that general election next May. It's May
twenty twenty five. Nuelly submitted a N four hundred claiming
he had never voted in the US, but admitted to
voting twice in the naturalization interview. Okay, he is charged
with voting by an alien in a federal election and

(06:52):
false statements. Yeah, those are the charges he's facing.

Speaker 4 (06:55):
That's interesting because he seems to clarified in the interview,
right correct. I don't quite know how that works, but like.

Speaker 3 (07:03):
He did admit in the interview that he that he
did vote, but they're still charging him with false statements
based on the N four hundred.

Speaker 4 (07:10):
And it will be interesting to follow because it could
be pretty hard to stick the landing on that given
that he I mean, I guess technically what you put
on the form is there's no take backs, I guess,
But him using the interviewor to clarify it certainly seems
like he's trying to do what's in the spirit of
the things asking him to do. Yeah, there will be
an interesting one to follow.

Speaker 3 (07:30):
This was also interesting because it shows the investigative capacity
of the FBI. This guy admitted to that, Like, he
admitted to this in the USCIS interview.

Speaker 5 (07:40):
The FBI did not like crack the case.

Speaker 4 (07:42):
Yeah, yeah, like there, yeah, yeah, definitely, Yeah, he told
he told the cops that he did it.

Speaker 8 (07:46):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (07:47):
When was his USCIS interview.

Speaker 3 (07:49):
I'm not sure when the interview was. He submitted the
N four hundred in May twenty twenty five, okay, so
Trump two, it would have been in late twenty twenty five. Yeah,
this was at least with an last year.

Speaker 4 (08:00):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, it was. Some of those N four
hundred is thing forever now totally. It's kind of interesting.
But yeah, I'm just wondering to what extent previously, I
don't actually know, to an extent previously USCAS would like
refer people for prosecution.

Speaker 5 (08:13):
Yeah, that is that is a good question.

Speaker 4 (08:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (08:16):
Oh, wait, wait, wait, wait, now here here is August
twenty twenty five. Okay, was when he was interviewed, according
to the criminal complaint, relatively first turnaround.

Speaker 4 (08:25):
Yeah, I wonder if that's just a part of the
country he's in or whether that was because like they
wanted to get in the office, right. And then I
had to clarify or detain him because he had voted.

Speaker 3 (08:36):
And then in October, USCIS denied the application due to
a lawful acts of voting in the twenty twenty and
twenty twenty four elections and the false statement on the
end of four hundred. Yeah, we will take an ad
break here and then talk about the three other cases
after these messages.

Speaker 4 (09:05):
All right, we are back.

Speaker 3 (09:07):
Iden Koresh, forty three years old, is a Green Card
holder who immigrated from Israel on a B two visa
in twenty fifteen. In twenty twenty one, Koresh allegedly registered
to vote in New Jersey, asserting he was a US citizen,
and voted in person in the twenty twenty two midterm election.
Koresh later submitted an N four hundred and twenty twenty

(09:29):
five based on his charges, I believe his citizenship was
granted because he's charged with voting by an alien in
a federal election and procurement of citizenship or naturalization unlawfully.
A lot of these criminal complaints are quite short, around
seven pages, okay. Jasynthic Zoom is a seventy.

Speaker 4 (09:49):
Year old Green card holder who.

Speaker 3 (09:52):
Has lived in the US since two thousand after immigrating
from Jamaica. She allegedly registered to vote in twenty eighteen
and voted by mail in the twenty twenty general election.
She submitted an N four hundred and twenty twenty one
and was granted citizenship based on what the DOJ is
calling false statements. She's charged with two counts of false

(10:13):
statements in relation to naturalization.

Speaker 4 (10:17):
Two counts would be I guess, registering to vote and voting.

Speaker 3 (10:20):
She's oddly one of the ones who's not actually charged
with voting in a federal election. She's just charged with
two false statements. This is I think one in the
interview and the other on the end.

Speaker 4 (10:32):
Four hundred Oh okay, yeah, that can make sense to Yeah, yeah,
it's interesting they didn't charge Maybe, like I guess they're
like eyes on the prize, trying to denaturalize someone.

Speaker 3 (10:42):
Yeah, I mean, but like a big part of the
FBI's messaging in this is, you know, we found people
who illegally voted, but half of the people here aren't
actually charged with that, and I don't quite know why.
Maybe it's theoretically possible to charge could be added later,
but at least in the original criminal complaints issued when
DJ made the announcement, Egzoom is not actually charged with voting,

(11:06):
even though even though the criminal complaint says that she did,
but it's not one.

Speaker 4 (11:10):
Of the charges. Yeah, the normal pattern with federal charges
is to have a lot of charges, and like most
of these federal cases will end in plea bargains, right
because the exposure is so high. So yeah, it's interesting
that that's not there when normally the patents to put
as much as you can in front of the person
so that you end up with a plea vargain.

Speaker 3 (11:30):
This last guy is also not charged with illegally voting
in a federal election. Being a done Vig is a
thirty three year old Green card holder who immigrated from
India in twenty twelve. He's alleged to a registered to
vote in twenty sixteen and subsequently voted in person for
the twenty sixteen general election, and then by mail in
twenty twenty. Vig later submitted an end four hundred and

(11:53):
twenty twenty three, but he only faces one charge, procurement
of citizenship or naturalization unlawfully.

Speaker 4 (12:00):
So again, a lot of these charges.

Speaker 3 (12:01):
Even even though the criminal complaints allege a lot of
the same stuff, the actual charges vary greatly, and it's
it is unclear why exactly that is.

Speaker 4 (12:11):
Yeah, I think different. They're all in New Jersey, all
New Jersey, say same years, say it tourney, Yeah, yeah,
it's it's interesting. It'll be interesting to follow those cases
as well. Like I know, like I said that they
have some sort of denaturalization targets, so whether they're just
focusing their energies on that. It could be a case.
So it could be something to do with the specifics

(12:32):
of that crime that I just don't know about. Voting
will not as citizen.

Speaker 3 (12:35):
Yeah, there could be some prosecutorial reason that they aren't
pursuing it in certain cases but are in others.

Speaker 4 (12:42):
Yeah, And they're all alleged to voting in federal elections, right,
that's yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 3 (12:46):
In at least one federal election, either presidential, general, election
or midterm general election.

Speaker 8 (12:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (12:51):
And New Jersey does not have like local election voting
for non citizens.

Speaker 8 (12:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (12:57):
A few days before Patel announced the arrests on Fox News,
the Department of Justice sent a letter to the chief
election official for Wayne County, Michigan, demanding Wayne County hand
over all ballots from the twenty twenty four election. The
letter said that DOJ and its Civil Rights Division is
authorized to investigate and prosecute individuals who may have registered

(13:19):
to vote or voted in violation of US law. The
letter included three instances of recorded allegations and convictions in
Wayne County in quote unquote recent years related to voting fraud.
This pushed by the DOJ to get their hands on
ballots or voter rolls is part of a much larger pattern.

(13:40):
In January, during Operation Metro Surge in Minneapolis, one of
the demands from now former Attorney General Pambondi during negotiations
with Governor Tim Walls was for the DOJ to be
granted access to the state of Minnesota's voter roles quote
to confirm that Minnesota's voter registration practices comply with federal
law unquote. Trump's DOJ has actually sued over thirty states

(14:04):
for not complying with requests to gain access to their
voter rules. Cases against Arizona, Massachusetts, Rhode Island have been dismissed,
as have cases in California, Michigan, and Oregon, but the
DOJ is appealing those rulings. At least fifteen states have
complied or said they will comply with requests by handing
over voter registration lists, including driver's license and social security numbers.

(14:28):
These are largely red states Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas, Florida, Indiana, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, Ohio, Oklahoma,
South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, and Wyoming. In a
March hearing in the case against Rhode Island to gain
access to their voter rules, Eric Neff, the acting chief
of the Voting Section of the Civil Rights Division of

(14:50):
the DOJ, said that after receiving the voter rules quote,
our intention is to run this against DHS's SAVE database unquote.
That's the Systematic Alien Verification for Entitlement database here eause.
If don want to briefly explain what this database is
and how it's used.

Speaker 4 (15:09):
In very basic terms, it is a database, so you
have like everified. Right, will be an example of a
DHS database that employers can use to check if somebody
is able to accept employment legally in the United States.

Speaker 7 (15:22):
Right.

Speaker 4 (15:22):
Save is there for government agencies, not individuals, and they
should be able to determine whether or not somebody is
eligible for certain benefits.

Speaker 3 (15:31):
Right.

Speaker 4 (15:32):
There are things called public charge rules. If people want
a more in depth explanation of public charge rules, you
can scroll all the way back to November twenty twenty
four when I made a podcast about these things. We
looked at a number of tools that the Trump administration
might use to try and deportantly naturalize people in a
podcast episode back then. The problem with these databases is

(15:55):
they're not very good. The most obvious and amusing examples
of Verify not being very good when state agencies hire
cops who DHS claims are not legally able to work
in the United States and then the state agencies point
out that they used Everify, which is DHS's own tool

(16:15):
for verifying, and then everyone gets quiet and wonders like,
who screwed up here?

Speaker 9 (16:21):
Right?

Speaker 4 (16:21):
Because they have done their obligation right, large employers have
to use everify the same is true, I imagine for
SAVE right in that it is not a database which
is perfect, and so running one against the other. Also
that the phrase running here is doing a lot of work, right,

(16:41):
Like are they going to look for name matches? Are
they going to look for Social Security number or driver's
licensed matches? Certain non citizens will have what's called an
iti N on SSN. There are a lot of ways
which this could go horribly wrong. There's a reason that
these two databases are not normally combined. Not to mention

(17:02):
the fact that this provides a really large disincentive for
people a signing up for benefits, right, which we've already
seen just the rhetoric from the Trump administration in the
campaign provided a disincentive for people accessing benefits, but also
for people registering to vote, right Like, Yeah, people who
are of diaspora communities, whether or not they are citizens,

(17:26):
will be concerned about this. And that is not a
that it's not an unconscious side effect. I'm sure, right,
that is something that they are extremely aware of as
they go forward doing this.

Speaker 3 (17:37):
The Court raised concerns about SAVE and said that there
has been reporting of people being falsely identified as non
citizens in SAVES database. But Eric Neff responded that according
to the DHS, the accuracy rate of the SAVE database
is one hundred percent.

Speaker 4 (17:58):
So I'm sure that's fine. That's just no database of
the skills it.

Speaker 3 (18:03):
No, that's just mathematically impossible, Like it's yeah, ninety nine
percent and one percent are like vastly, vastly different.

Speaker 4 (18:09):
Yeah, but it's worth noting that, like in Trump's one
of his early executive orders, like like Spring of twenty five,
the one about preserving the integrity of American elections, part

(18:30):
of what he asks them to do there was to
overhaul SAVE and make it like a a single source
citizenship verification yeah database, which it is not, and it
is still not.

Speaker 3 (18:44):
Yeah, and there's there's there that is that push from
the executive order a few months ago to create like
state citizenship lists.

Speaker 9 (18:50):
M h.

Speaker 4 (18:51):
Yeah. They've tried to go a number of ways about this, right.
They also the fall of last year, the integrated SAVE
with the with the passport database. I think most people
will be aware that there are millions of American citizens
who don't have passports for instance, right. Yeah, they've added
some other stuff, right, but the idea here is to

(19:11):
create like and it should worry everyone, right, Like, this
is a citizenship database that they will then attempt to
combine with their biometric databases. I'm sure, and we've seen
this with like the the name of the android app
is eluding me. Now there's an android app that ICE
officers have which is supposed to verify someone's status based
on a facial recognition scan. We know it doesn't work

(19:34):
because there was one, for example, one lady who was
scanned twice. Each result returned it different. Yeah, neither of
which was her. This stuff is extremely dangerous for anyone, right,
Like you'd be a citizen or a non cenizen. The
idea that they're going to check you against like the
list of legit Americans should really worry people.

Speaker 3 (19:56):
Yeah, and unable to pass the Save Act in Congress.
Not to be confused for the same database, though they
are slightly related. Yeah, but unable to pass that in Congress.
The Trump signed executive order last March attempting to force
the Postal Service to not deliver mail in ballots if
the voter on the ballot does not appear on this

(20:17):
newly created list of pre approved voters using this state
citizenship list. Yeah, we'll see if that actually goes through,
but that it's another example of them, you know, trying
to trying to use state citizenship lists to just crack
down on the number of people that are able to vote.

Speaker 4 (20:33):
Yeah, we can all imagine that this will have different
impacts across different demographics, right, and that is very much
not accidental.

Speaker 3 (20:42):
And the last thing for the voter roles in Fulton County, Georgia,
and Maricopa County, Arizona, the federal government has simply seized
voting records. In Arizona, the FBI successfully subpoena twenty twenty
election records from Maracopa County, and in Georgia, the FBI
rated election warehouse in January after dubiously obtaining a search warrant.

Speaker 8 (21:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (21:05):
Then on May sixth, a federal judge ruled that the
federal government can keep the twenty twenty election materials that
were seized in that raid, even if quote, the seizure
in this case was certainly not perfect.

Speaker 1 (21:22):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (21:22):
Maricopa County's an interesting one, right, Like, but I think
it's part of a grand jury investigation. Yes, yeah, I
can remember at the time, and there's a twenty twenty election,
like Maricopa County's results being somehow contentious, the State Center
did their own investigation into that, like several entities have.

Speaker 3 (21:42):
Right, the details of that investigation is in part what
was the target of the grand jury subpoena.

Speaker 4 (21:49):
Okay, not so much Maracopa County, but a number of
Arizona counties were really important in the results of the
twenty twenty election. Right, there was a massive effort for turnout.
I personally know people in indigenous communities who literally traveled
for the entire day to vote. The indigenous turnout, especially
Indigenous women in Arizona, really did make a big difference
in the twenty twenty election.

Speaker 3 (22:09):
And Americopa County is the like by population, the biggest county.

Speaker 4 (22:13):
Americopa County is fast. A number of other like Arizona counties,
like outside Americopa, were also really pivotal in twenty twenty elections.
It's not surprising to see those ones being tied, Like
it wasn't surprising to me the time to see them
being targeted. You know, Yeah, americop is where Phoenix is
just for people to put it on the map, famous
for having really great law enforcement over the years, Joe

(22:35):
Opio was America do you share if.

Speaker 5 (22:38):
You Oh, yes, ah, last from the past.

Speaker 4 (22:43):
Yeah, yeah, not so often. Isn't he like doing some
running for office or something? I thought he.

Speaker 3 (22:49):
Was was he was for a bit. I have not
thought of Joe Opio for a few years though.

Speaker 4 (22:54):
What a life to lead. Yeah, it's been a while.

Speaker 2 (22:58):
Wow.

Speaker 4 (22:58):
Joe Opio born innineteen thirty two.

Speaker 2 (23:01):
That's that's wild.

Speaker 4 (23:03):
Yeah, he can't be even for the United States even cheritocracy.

Speaker 7 (23:09):
A little, Yeah, but no.

Speaker 3 (23:11):
Trump does continue to truth claims about Fulton County on
his On his account of a few nights ago, he
put out a video of the election board. The video
was edited to appear as if it was implying that
there was voter fraud or that the elections were conducted improperly,

(23:32):
and when that was not what the video is actually
actually showing. But he has his truth a lot after
the raid. That to watch out for the results of
the of the Fulton County election raid and now federal
judges letting the fence keep the materials that they seized,
even if it was in the judge's own words, certainly

(23:53):
not perfect.

Speaker 8 (23:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (23:55):
I think Fulton County plays a load bearing role in
the in maga understanding of the twenty twenty election, right.

Speaker 3 (24:02):
Yeah, and Trump, So that is where he got the
mugshot taken right like this is like he is, Oh,
I've forgotten about that personal vendetta against Fulton County.

Speaker 4 (24:11):
Yes, yeah, yeah, that totally makes sense. Up Pier by
the way, did run for mayor of Fountain Hills in
twenty twenty four. Oh my god, yeah, just eight years
before it's underdth birthday. What a country. Oh, it's incredible
he did. He received whopping one five and twenty seven
votes in the primary election. It's a thousand people who

(24:34):
thought the best hope we have is someone who is
approaching Sheriff Joe at nearly a century of age.

Speaker 5 (24:42):
Remarkable well with age, cubs wisdom.

Speaker 4 (24:45):
Yeah, up to a point.

Speaker 5 (24:47):
That doesn't for us today at a good half of
the year.

Speaker 3 (24:50):
We will keep a lookout for any more any more
arrests by Patel, who claims to have all the evidence
he needs, even though he only arrests so far is
just a fill people from New Jersey and then I
think one other person from Pennsylvania. Yeah, it was arrested
like in March. Again because the actual number of voter
fraun this country. Is it's minimal, according to according to

(25:11):
all investigations we've seen so far, very low.

Speaker 4 (25:14):
It's statistically insignificant.

Speaker 3 (25:16):
Yes, very low, to the point where it's statistically insignificant.
I think if you're going to be conserned of an
election rigging looking at the way that partisan jerrymandering has
been completely completely allowed to go through and gerrymandering over
districts that were protected by the voting right, Zach.

Speaker 4 (25:32):
Look at what that is. Polling places are. Look at
the like the electoral college exists to be in between
the popular vote and the result of the of the election. Right,
there are there are many things which distort the will
of the people. Non citizens voting is not statistically significant
in that, like, it's just not. But this will have
a real electoral outcome, or is I guess because it

(25:53):
will dissuade people from voting. It will dissuade people who
have become US citizens from voting. It will dissuade people
who were born as US citizens.

Speaker 3 (26:02):
And they could be pursuing charges against election officials in
some of these states, and like that is part of
trying to seize these these ballots and voter roles is
not just to charge the possibly for people who may
have illegally voted, but then trying to put some of
the blame on election officials themselves. And yeah, and that
is modi of intimidation is certainly part of the goal here.
And that's written explicitly in some of these executive orders

(26:25):
threatening charges against US officials for allowing certain mail in
votes to be to be counted. Yeah, when the Trump
administration claims that they should not be.

Speaker 4 (26:33):
Yeah. The nascence of this whole thing is Trump's calls
to electoral officials in Georgia, right, like the Fulton County,
the whole Yeah, fine, by find those votes. Yeah, yeah,
where it all began.

Speaker 3 (26:47):
So yeah, we'll keep up on this as it develops
leading into the midterm election.

Speaker 4 (26:52):
But bye bye for now. Yeah, but early vote often, voter,
early vote often. Hello and welcome, Dick. Could happen here
a very special episode today because I am lucky enough

(27:15):
to be joined by Molly Kong.

Speaker 9 (27:16):
Hi.

Speaker 10 (27:17):
Molly, Hi, James, thanks for having me. I'm excited to
hear about today's topic.

Speaker 4 (27:21):
Yeah, today's topic is buffalo. If if it's just came
up on your phone without you clicking it, So I guess, look, buffalo.
When people imagine the great planes before European colonization, I
think buffalo are the fauna that they particularly imagine being present.

Speaker 8 (27:39):
Right.

Speaker 10 (27:39):
It's such a romantic image, right, and they're gone now,
but they were one so many. Like every time we
drive through southwest Virginia. I'm in central Virginia, So when
we drive through southwestern Virginia, my husband always brings up
this account that he read of someone witnessing the buffalo
stampeding through the Cumberland Gap.

Speaker 4 (27:56):
Like we're oh wow, yeah, right.

Speaker 10 (27:58):
Down on the tip of southwestern Virginia and just looking
at that place and imagining buffalo there, like you have
to romanticize it.

Speaker 5 (28:04):
That's incredible.

Speaker 4 (28:05):
Yeah, that's sick. One of the coolest like American experiences
I've ever had, Maybe seven or eight years ago, now,
I was bike packing in the Colorado Wyoming border up there,
and I was with some friends. We've been like maybe
we're like three or four days in, you know, like
where you kind of hit the sweet spot at that
point when you like have it showered for that long

(28:26):
and you're just kind of disconnected from the world, that's
when it starts to get Molly's making a face fun.

Speaker 5 (28:32):
You can't see just four days of human stink, it
really starts to get good.

Speaker 4 (28:36):
That's when it gets good because you're just like, that's
how long it takes to disconnect, right, somethoking at your
phone and like worrying about not smelling the.

Speaker 5 (28:44):
Stuff, becoming a beast of the outdoors.

Speaker 4 (28:47):
Yeah, you just returned to your feral self. I'd like
to return to my feral self as often as possible.
But we're like riding. I get where we're going at Walden.
Maybe we're coming off this big plateau dropping into this
big kind of like where it gets kind of more plane,
e big big kind of meadow plane. And we're coming
down there and it's a few of us and these

(29:09):
buffalo just come like from the side of us, and
they're running alongside us, right, and we're riding and we're cooking,
going twenty twenty five miles an hour or something like that,
and these buffalo are just cruising next to us because
they're just trying to get like trying to check out,
like what are these weirdos doing? And they're just like,
why the fuck would you put all your stuff on

(29:29):
a bicycle? And go ride around like this and then
we're like, oh, it's a fucking buffalo, and like for
like maybe a mile, they just kind of wanted to
keep this thing that they just wanted to keep tabs
on us as we're going down this dirt road and
then like they were getting really close, right, so they're
like kicking up all this dust, and you got to
feel like you are like almost one of the buffalo.
You know, you're in the herd traversing the planes.

Speaker 5 (29:49):
I think you're supposed to keep your distance from them, right, Yeah,
they were.

Speaker 4 (29:54):
We didn't have many choice at that point. Yeah, when
they're like, do not approach. Yeah, they were approaching us.
We didn't stop. I was like pretty pretty keen on
not stopping. And Molly is right.

Speaker 5 (30:07):
They look so pettable, but they're really not.

Speaker 4 (30:09):
They're really Yeah, despite their fluffy appearance. It's it's advised.
Like any time in the Yellowstone pretty much, especially in
these summer months, you will find a video tourist approaching
a buffalo and regretting that scision pretty big. I've been
going by a bowl before and I would like to
keep it to one. Going for me.

Speaker 5 (30:30):
One is all most people get.

Speaker 4 (30:33):
Yeah, yeah, it is. I was pretty let me tell you,
I thought that one was all I was going to get.
I was I was ready to make my peace of
the world. Luckily I got a second chance.

Speaker 8 (30:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (30:43):
People kind of focus on a buffalo, right, They ignore
many of the other species that we lost during dis
intent period of ecological destruction, right, And I can see why. Really,
you can find images of piles of dead buffalo skulls.
There's that really haunting image of the idea of killing
animals only for their capes or their tongues. Often this

(31:05):
period of genocidal violence is referred to as a buffalo genocide,
and I think that encapsulates, right, not just the destruction
of the buffalo population, but also of the indigenous cultures
that relied on that buffalo population and of the ecology
they went with. Obviously, when I say destruction, I'm not

(31:25):
saying they've gone very much till here till present, but
the attempt by the government and capitalism to remove those
people from that land. But yeah, it is a shame
that these other animals don't get a fat shake. Have
you ever seen a blackfooted ferret?

Speaker 10 (31:40):
When you said there was going to be something about ferrets,
I was thinking about it, and I realized all domesticated
animals were wild animals, and it never occurred to me
that a ferret could live outside.

Speaker 4 (31:51):
Yeah, a ferret thrives in the outdoors. I really wanted
to have ferrets when I was younger, Like I enjoyed
the presence of ferrets. I enjoyed working with ferrets.

Speaker 5 (32:00):
Oh, he's kind of cute in a way.

Speaker 4 (32:04):
He's gross. The ferrets are very sweet. Yeah, we had
we had friend with ferrets growing up, so we would
use them to They use them to catch rabbits in
the UK, right. Oh. Yeah. The reason that these guys
struggle to get back on the landscape is because they
need massive prairie dog towns to feed of.

Speaker 5 (32:23):
Oh do they live in like societies? Do they live
like a prairie dog's? So the ferrets live in like
ferret villages.

Speaker 4 (32:30):
The ferrets predate the prairie dogs.

Speaker 5 (32:33):
But do they live in like a village.

Speaker 4 (32:34):
I don't know if they live in like I don't
know what their social structure is. In Colorado, there's a
National Blackfooted Ferret Center where you can go and see them.
I've cycled past it, but I regret not going in
maybe I'll make a special trip reach out if you're
with the ferret people.

Speaker 5 (32:49):
Sorry, I said, he looks gross.

Speaker 4 (32:51):
Yeah, please don't counsel us, because the prairie dog towns
can collapse, right, really, their populations can collapse pretty easily.
They get like infecta's disease is so they need like
a massive number of prairie dog towns in order to
have a sustainable genetically these ferret population.

Speaker 5 (33:07):
Oh, I get it, I get it.

Speaker 4 (33:09):
And because we don't have those right, because they are
not generally amenable to agriculture, and then the ecosystem is
very different from it what it's naturally worse. That means
I don't know if there are any there are when
they're not extinct genetically but ecologically, in terms of their
participation in the ecosystem, I don't think there are any.
Very fair I think there are some in the Charles
Russell Wildlife Refuge, but very few blackfooted ferrets, which is

(33:33):
a shame because of their cool little guys.

Speaker 10 (33:35):
I mean, I guess, given what we did to the
landscape of so much of the country, I'm sure there
are other animals that just like their niche is gone.

Speaker 4 (33:43):
Yeah, and that is exactly what I want to talk
about today, right, Like, specifically I want to talk about
buffalo because of the canceling of some public land grazingly
since of buffalo, before we do that, Molley, we should
talk about the terminology, right, Buffalo bison discussion.

Speaker 5 (34:02):
Right, because they're not buffalo, their bison bison bison.

Speaker 4 (34:06):
And as we are, what five minutes into this, someone
has already logged onto Reddit. They have opened.

Speaker 5 (34:11):
Already made the threat already exists, that's already that address.
It's too late.

Speaker 4 (34:15):
Yeah, we should have moved this to the to the
front of the episode again, and that if that is
you redditing, please stop. I am aware that scientifically we
should call them bison. I don't care. English speaking people
have been calling these animals buffalo since English speaking people
came to this continent. They did so because the animals
reminded them of Cape Buffalo. I actually have had a

(34:37):
frame gored by a cape buffalo as well. We're going
through most of my goring experience.

Speaker 5 (34:41):
You got to leave these big cow type creatures alone.

Speaker 4 (34:45):
He was ambushed that my my going was entirely my fault,
like you shouldn't be unkind to animals, and I deserved it,
and it was a good learning experience for me. It wasn't.
I think it's just a bad overall experience. Being Gore
wouldn't recommend it.

Speaker 5 (35:01):
I'm avoiding it.

Speaker 4 (35:02):
Yeah, you've got this far, you're probably good. I think
men in their twenties are probably like peaple does.

Speaker 10 (35:07):
I think once you hit thirty, your odds decreased dramatically.

Speaker 4 (35:11):
Yeah, you're out the wind, unless you're working with cattle.
Like my dad got pretty close a couple times when
I was a kid. I remember jumping over a fence once,
but I think that was more of a professional hazard
than like a lifestyle choice. So here's the deal, Right,
there are many species in the USA which have names
similar to species on other continents that they are not
the same European blackbirds and American blackbirds.

Speaker 8 (35:34):
Right.

Speaker 4 (35:34):
Robins would be another example. There is a different sheep's headfish.
Almost everywhere I have gone underwater, everyone has a sheep's head.
The coolest sheep's head for people wondering is California sheep's
head because it undergoes a sex change, making it a
pretty cool fish. Also, it gets really cool after it transitions.
It gets like these black and red stripes. It's one
of my favorite fish. If you want to be censurious

(35:56):
about buffalo names, I would suggest picking one of the
many Indigenous words that have been used to refer to
his animal for far, far longer than buffalo or bison. Also,
buffalo is one of the cooler words in English language.

Speaker 5 (36:07):
Buffalo, buffalo, buffalo, buffalo.

Speaker 4 (36:09):
Yes, exactly.

Speaker 7 (36:10):
Yes.

Speaker 4 (36:10):
It is the longest single word sentence because it's a
down and a verb and a proper down right.

Speaker 10 (36:16):
Right like so it's it's buffalo, the city, buffalo, the
animal buffalo, the verb meaning like what like to bully
or something to like.

Speaker 4 (36:23):
Yeah, I don't know if you've been around them, but
they do do this. They sort of bother the bush.

Speaker 5 (36:27):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (36:28):
Yeah, yeah, I'm making of course at motion with my
neck and shoulders. Not one apart from Molly can see.

Speaker 11 (36:33):
Uh.

Speaker 4 (36:33):
Yeah, they're they're they're just kind of aggressive in a
sort of pokey and yeah, like it's a good verb.

Speaker 7 (36:40):
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (36:41):
Hang around what you watch a buffalo, you'll get it. Yeah,
it's buffalo, the proper down buffalo, the nown buffalo, the
verb buffalo, the proper down buffalo, the verb no. Buffalo
the noun.

Speaker 5 (36:54):
I'm gonna have to diagram this one.

Speaker 7 (36:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (36:56):
Yeah, like bison from upstate New York are bullying other
bison from upstate New York.

Speaker 4 (37:03):
Yes, that is the a breakdown of the Buffalo sentence
fun trivia for everybody. Yeah, that's yeah, they will do
that the end of the year. Will quiz you why
are we talking about Buffalo today?

Speaker 5 (37:13):
I can't remember.

Speaker 7 (37:14):
I can.

Speaker 4 (37:15):
Let me tell you. It's because the Bureau of Land
Management has canceled grazing rights in seven allotments public land
in Phillips County, Montana privately owned bison. And there's been
a bunch of reporting on this, like when this stuff happens,
when stuff the Trump administration does with public land, the outdoors,

(37:35):
they're they're like Democrat blue wave, fake news, panic accounts,
really really go kind of wild with it. They did
with this one, right. I think people running whatever, like
you know, Occupy Democrats and Suit Nation for Change Yeah whatever,
yeah by Democrats.

Speaker 5 (37:53):
I forgot about pantsuit Nation. Wow, that's a real throwback.

Speaker 4 (37:57):
Yeah, I never forget about the Panasuit Nation. They live
forever in my mind. What I think, like the people
of that tendency have not realized is that these are
not per se wild buffalo. It's not like these buffalo
have individually, like oh, as a population survived the genocide,
been holding out in this land of Phillips County for
more than a century. Right. That doesn't mean that we

(38:19):
should be like callous about this. We shouldn't, But I
just want to explain a little more. I guess there
are still thousands of buffalo across the West on federal
and private land. Some of them have been raising on
public land with permits for more than four decades. Having
them on the landscape is a good thing, right. We
need the genetic diversity, even if they're privately owned.

Speaker 7 (38:41):
Right.

Speaker 5 (38:41):
So it's not just like I don't know knowing very
little about this.

Speaker 10 (38:44):
I think a lot of the discourse around these, like
permits for grazing on public land, it's like, well, why
should these farmers get to use our public land for
their property for their cattle? And I don't know enough
about that to care about that at all. But in
terms of what buffalo due to the grassland, like just
walking around on it and eating it is part of

(39:05):
the maintenance of that grassland. Yes, yeah, like the eradication
of the buffalo in the Midwest caused ecological havoc because
we need them walking around and shitting on it.

Speaker 7 (39:15):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (39:16):
Yeah, Specifically what we need is them coming in, eating everything,
trampling around, shitting everywhere, and then leaving, right, because that
is what like so many indigenous cultures had these like
these like traditions that the buffalo go away in and
we do a tradition and they come back. Right. This
happens for a lot of migratory animals. It's not just buffalo, right,
because it gave shape to time in people's lives. That's

(39:39):
how they impacted the landscape, right. They didn't stay in
one place. They moved through spaces. So like, if we
want to restore this short grass prairie ecosystem, which is
as it turns out, why people are putting buffalo on
this particular land, then we need a lot of space
to do it, and we need buffalo to be able

(40:00):
to move around. Right. So people who own these particular
buffalo are an NGO called American Prairie. You head of
American Prairie used to be American Prairie Reserve, No American
Prairie Foundation.

Speaker 5 (40:14):
Okay, great, are they the villains or are the heroes neither.

Speaker 4 (40:18):
I mean the Trump administration is the villains. Doug Bergham specifically,
I guess is always God.

Speaker 5 (40:23):
I forgot about Doug Burgher.

Speaker 8 (40:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (40:26):
Yeah, Fortunately Doug is now Interior Secretary, thanks to ARII
for signing a letter endorsing him. Also, fuck you. American
prairie is interesting. I guess, like, it's not what I
would want, but I don't think it's evil.

Speaker 5 (40:42):
Sounds like most NGOs.

Speaker 4 (40:43):
Yeah, it sounds like most of the world as it exists.
Not Yeah, then how I would do it. American prairie
is a is a big engine. They've been trying for
about a quarter of a century to buy up private
land adjacent to public land around the Charles M. Russell
National Wildlife Refuge and the Upper Missouri River breaks national money.

(41:06):
So the goal is to create like by by like
bridging these two pieces of public land, to create a
massive reserve where like one of the things with with
bison specifically right, they need a lot of space and
very few bison can cross like political boundaries.

Speaker 5 (41:24):
They don't have passports.

Speaker 4 (41:25):
They don't. Yeah, this is one of their issues. They're undocumented,
you could say, But think about the Yellowstone people get
really mad about the Yellowstone bison leaving the park. This
is a big deal. This has been a big deal
for it.

Speaker 7 (41:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (41:38):
Yeah, yeah, people like what like they're.

Speaker 5 (41:40):
Disney cast members, Like they're not allowed to leave in costo.

Speaker 4 (41:42):
Yeah, exactly, they have to return.

Speaker 5 (41:45):
Take that off.

Speaker 4 (41:46):
Yeah, take the body off and just wear their head.

Speaker 5 (41:50):
They can't be walking in the parking lot.

Speaker 4 (41:52):
Yeah, you can't see Mickey Mouse at Vonds like that
would really ruin the magic. Yeah, people get mad at them, right,
for a number of reasons.

Speaker 5 (41:58):
The bubble don't know about the park that.

Speaker 4 (42:00):
This is a thing, right and buffalo As it turns out,
they love to disrespect a fence, which I respect. I
like that about them.

Speaker 5 (42:08):
If I had shoulders like that, I would disrespect a fence.

Speaker 4 (42:11):
Yeah, they so like Cattle fencing is generally not sufficient
for buffalo fencing. But buffalo fencing can be built people.
It does exist when people are building it, it's better
if they are conscious of other worldlife. Right, they can
another of the megafauna in the megafauna that has existed
here for for millenia, but it's now much much much

(42:32):
lower numbers are like prong corn antelope.

Speaker 5 (42:34):
We have those here yes, I guess I don't really,
I've never really been out west, so you are Mulley's
out there.

Speaker 4 (42:42):
If you would like us to make a podcast where
I take Molly camping, yeah, we just look at animals.
That would be my ideal job, a podcast where I
just talk to someone about an animal every week, Like
we go camping, we see an animal, we talk about it.

Speaker 5 (42:58):
I didn't know ferret's lived outside. Like, think of all
you could show me?

Speaker 4 (43:02):
Yeah, be amazing. Yeah, God, we could have so much
fun if we start with the ferrets. Yeah, but prong
horn are amazing. You've not seen a prong horn.

Speaker 5 (43:11):
They lived in Africa. And what am I thinking of?
Like an ibex?

Speaker 4 (43:15):
Yeah, I mean ibex does live in Africa. I think
some of them live on Okay, we're gonna.

Speaker 5 (43:20):
Oh man, everyone's finding out. I don't know.

Speaker 4 (43:22):
Anything podcast diversion.

Speaker 5 (43:24):
I'm googling prong horn antelope. Yeah, you see them, and
these they are just out there.

Speaker 4 (43:30):
Yeah, they just like they they live on the landscape.
They actually were massively numerous, like before the various extinction events.

Speaker 5 (43:39):
So it's like a like a reindeer that lives in Colorado.

Speaker 4 (43:42):
A reindeer reindeer are only reindeer in North America when
they're in captivity Cariboo when they when they are wild
picture of Cariboo.

Speaker 5 (43:52):
We don't really have a lot of like wild animals
out here.

Speaker 4 (43:55):
Really see that this is yeah, because the East coast
is much more urbanized.

Speaker 10 (44:00):
Like like like every now and again, a baby bear
will wander into town and it's like big nicks.

Speaker 4 (44:05):
Okay, yeah, I like it when a bear there's another
animal I have massive respect for. I love how they
don't give a shit. I respect any animal that eats
from the trash.

Speaker 2 (44:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (44:14):
The prong horns are actually massive, Like I think antello
cap pridie is the genus. And then there are different species.
There were tons like we had we at one point
had tiny like weien a dog sized antelope. Oh like
a like a dick dick Yeah, yeah, like a dig
dig But.

Speaker 5 (44:27):
That's a cool guy but fast.

Speaker 4 (44:30):
Oh So, one of the things about prong horns is
they can jump. Like I've seen them jump.

Speaker 5 (44:34):
Yeah, it looks like a jumping guy.

Speaker 4 (44:36):
Well, they don't like to jump. A fence is a thing.

Speaker 10 (44:38):
Oh so then now you have like a problem. The
buffalo are stuck, but so is the antelope.

Speaker 4 (44:43):
Yeah, because that speed was always their like defense mechanism
right there, they're super that. I think cheetahs are the
only land animal that's faster and.

Speaker 5 (44:51):
They don't live in the same environment.

Speaker 4 (44:52):
No, yeah, I knew that different continents. Yeah, yeah, there
is not a North American cheetah. I mean, at this point,
you could think that might have been.

Speaker 5 (44:58):
A can tell me there is.

Speaker 4 (45:01):
I think there might have been at one point, like
a like a prehistoric shooter a time. They headlick ground
slow some things. But yeah, when you're building the buffalo fencing,
you have to allow the prong horns to go under
if you're trying to build an ecological fence.

Speaker 10 (45:14):
Oh, I guess because they could like bend over in
a way the buffalo can't exactly.

Speaker 4 (45:18):
There's just more bubble.

Speaker 5 (45:20):
It's too big.

Speaker 4 (45:21):
Yeah, there's a lot of chunk to a buffalo and
the way it couldn't get under there. Right. So the
other reason people don't like buffalo is because of brucellosis.
You know brucellosis.

Speaker 5 (45:29):
Is is it a buffalo disease?

Speaker 4 (45:32):
Well, it's a disease that buffalo can have. Maybe you
know from the Warren Zevon song don't. Okay, it's just funny.
I'm talking to Molly about really American shit to neither
there's a British person.

Speaker 5 (45:45):
I don't know any of what you're saying.

Speaker 4 (45:47):
Okay. Warren Zevon a very good famous musician, guy Sally Dead.

Speaker 5 (45:51):
But he has a song about buffalo disease.

Speaker 4 (45:54):
He has a song which in part it talks about brucellosis.
It says, the cattle will have brucellosis. What a great
journey we're going on.

Speaker 10 (46:02):
That's the service I provide, is the podcast idiot, because
I know nothing.

Speaker 4 (46:06):
You have a very deep, very deep well of knowledge.
It just doesn't extend to Warren's Evon.

Speaker 10 (46:12):
No listener left behind, Like there's no one sitting here
listening wishing that something had been explained more because I'm
making you explain what Antelope are.

Speaker 5 (46:21):
Yea and what a Warren Yvonn is.

Speaker 4 (46:24):
Yeah, we could go off on at Tangent Higgs.

Speaker 1 (46:26):
I don't know.

Speaker 4 (46:26):
This song is about the fact that Sweet Home Alabama
is a deeply, deeply hateful song, but it does. That
does get mentioned quite a lot. But yeah, the brucellosis.

Speaker 10 (46:36):
But I feel like once you're touching a buffalo you
have worse problems than whatever.

Speaker 2 (46:42):
This is.

Speaker 5 (46:44):
Oh, well not great.

Speaker 4 (46:46):
Yeah, it depends, it depends who you are, right, Like, Uh,
what brucellosis does is generally it infects heifer's so like
young lady cows, it will cause them to abort their
first calf.

Speaker 12 (46:58):
Sound.

Speaker 4 (46:59):
Yeah, it's sad. Also, because of the word it's controlled,
your herd can get killed out. If you have brucellosis, it.

Speaker 5 (47:07):
Would be contagious to people's like cattle.

Speaker 4 (47:10):
Yes, and that would be very bad.

Speaker 10 (47:12):
So okay, when you see people don't like buffalo because
they're worried about brusilosis, they're not worried that they will
get brucellosis, they're worried that it will affect their cattle.

Speaker 4 (47:18):
Yes, I do believe people can get brucellosis. I'm not
as familiar with that.

Speaker 5 (47:22):
Apparently I'm looking here.

Speaker 10 (47:23):
Apparently if you do get it, there's a twenty percent
chance that your testicles are going to swell up real bad.

Speaker 4 (47:29):
So oh wow, I didn't know that.

Speaker 5 (47:32):
Ok I guess the why they don't want it.

Speaker 4 (47:34):
Yeah, but that would also be bad, right like big
bull Brucellosis painful like that.

Speaker 5 (47:39):
Okay, so we're talking about the cattle industry. I'm on board.
I'm on board.

Speaker 4 (47:43):
Yeah, it's the cattle that they're concerned about. They can
take or leave the testicular swelling like they're tough.

Speaker 5 (47:48):
Why are they touching the buffalo in the first place,
they're not?

Speaker 4 (47:50):
Okay, yeah, they're not.

Speaker 8 (47:52):
Okay.

Speaker 4 (47:52):
Yeah, it's it's a buffalo coming out and causing the
cattle to get brucellosis. Right, here's the deal. Elk also
get brucelos.

Speaker 5 (48:00):
I know about elk, We have those, okay.

Speaker 7 (48:02):
Yeah, you know.

Speaker 4 (48:03):
Okay, So an elk also travels widely, right, and elk
it's not generally an animal that is kept behind high fences.
Sometimes that there probably are high fence like game farms
where people paid to go and hunt.

Speaker 5 (48:16):
Elk, as we have some in Virginia.

Speaker 4 (48:18):
Yeah, that's that's kind of gross in my opinion. I
don't like that. But elk also carry brucellosis. Right, So
if we're concerned about brucellosis, we also need to be
concerned about elk. But it really doesn't get brought up
in the elk discussion. It gets brought up in the
in the buffalo discussion. So these are the reasons that
some of the reasons that people don't like buffalo.

Speaker 10 (48:39):
Right, right, because they carry they carry a cow disease,
and they don't like to stay inside the park.

Speaker 4 (48:44):
Got it, Yeah, yeah, they don't like to stay inside
the park. We've talked for a long time, Molly, talking
of things that might cause your testicles to swell. Here
is some products and services or maybe it'll help. Yeah,
maybe maybe you'll have bought your first calf. Who knows.
It's roll the dice. All right, we are back. So

(49:17):
let's talk about the area where this is happening. Right,
This is happening in kind of northern central Montana around Livingstone.
Lots of the land in this area has actually dropped
below the population density that Turner considered to be evidence
of the closure of the frontier when he was developing

(49:38):
that thesis. Right, I'm not a big fan of the
concept of the frontier. If that's another podcast it I'll
make one day, But I don't like it.

Speaker 5 (49:45):
But there's like no people there.

Speaker 4 (49:47):
Yeah, it's yeah, there are. There are very few people there,
in part because cattle farming is hard, in part because
it's harder in a globalized economy, in part because of
climate change. There's this theory of the Buffalo Commons written
by two people called Popper, and they considered like this
specific area to be a tragedy of the commons, where

(50:10):
this beautiful plains ecosystem has been destroyed, and they put
forward the idea that the presence of buffalo and the
landscape could return it to a sort of short grass
prairie commons. This isn't a direct link to the American
Prairie Reserve, but this is kind of what they're trying
to do. They're not putting buffalo on the landscape because

(50:34):
they are a buffalo organization.

Speaker 5 (50:36):
Right, so they're trying to restore the grassland.

Speaker 4 (50:39):
Yes, that's the idea, because we don't have a prairie
national park. Right when colonization was moving west, as a
Department of Homeland Security likes to highlight with its use
of that image, liberty was floating across the planes there. Sorry,
let's just put the image in my head. Remember when
the Trump administration is getting very aggressive towards Somali people.
I guess it still is. Yeah, yeah, did you see

(51:01):
the Ai version of that where it's a Somali woman
like crossing the plaines? No, okay, it was pretty funny.
It was one of there you're.

Speaker 5 (51:09):
Doing an opposed like like like the Mermaid on the
front of a ship.

Speaker 4 (51:13):
Yeah exactly, Yeah, Like yeah, it was like this is
a Somali promised land. Like they were like, I guess,
parodying American rhetoric towards indigenous people and being.

Speaker 10 (51:22):
Like, like, Somali people can't do manifest destiny.

Speaker 5 (51:25):
I thought we loved that.

Speaker 4 (51:26):
Yeah, yeah, it was very funny. It was. It was
kind of amusing to see that American rhetoric reflected back.
Somali people have incredible posting abilities that HS was not
ready for. So what the what the APR is trying
to do is yet use the buffalo here as like
a landscape engineer, right, like an animal that will help

(51:48):
return this area to I guess natural state is a
problematic term, you know.

Speaker 5 (51:53):
But like to it's pre industrial state.

Speaker 4 (51:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (51:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (51:58):
When we think about like why isn't there a plane
national park, we have to consider the role the capitalism place, right.

Speaker 5 (52:03):
Because no one would go visit that.

Speaker 4 (52:05):
Yeah, well I think they would. The plans would beautiful
in their in their way, right, But I guess, like.

Speaker 10 (52:09):
You know, just thinking like is the role of the
national park to preserve this landscape, this ecosystem, or is
it to create a place where people could go and
buy things?

Speaker 4 (52:19):
Yeah, exactly right.

Speaker 5 (52:20):
Increasingly it's the latter.

Speaker 4 (52:22):
Yeah, And I think there is a bias towards preserving Yeah,
there's there's like a scenic vista bias. This is an
area where people could ranch cattle, and so like that
happened instead, you know, and then we got to a
point where like no one was going to give up
their private land to make a massive park.

Speaker 5 (52:41):
Well they didn't want to in any of the other
times either, So.

Speaker 2 (52:44):
The government needs to make you.

Speaker 4 (52:46):
Yeah, I think the government could force you back in
the day.

Speaker 10 (52:48):
I mean, I just can't imagine a new national park
ever coming into existence. We just don't have that kind
of political will anymore.

Speaker 4 (52:54):
Yeah, I mean we might get like the Donald Trump's
birthplace National Park or like something similar, you know, like.

Speaker 5 (53:01):
We would never get Yellowstone again, Yeah, we wouldn't.

Speaker 4 (53:03):
And like part of that is because they violently remove
the indigenous people from those places in order to I don't.

Speaker 10 (53:09):
Want to romanticize that. Like I live near Shenandoa Valley
National Park where people were forced out in a pretty
brutal way, that's a big part of the history here.
So I don't want to romanticize the creation of the
national park. I just mean, like, the government is not
going to spend a lot of money on something that's
just for everyone to enjoy.

Speaker 4 (53:26):
Ever again, yeah, yeah, and they're not going to say, like,
to an extent, we are removing this piece of land
from the rapacious capitalism that has destroyed the rest of
our natural spaces.

Speaker 5 (53:37):
So if somebody's going to eat this grass, it's going
to be hamburgers.

Speaker 4 (53:41):
We wanted to turn into the cheapest meat possible. Also,
like I should point out that like land back and
national parks are very very very different things. I like
to kind of illustrate this with the idea that during
the Nez Perce War, as a Nez person like fighting
their way towards the Canadian border, they are having gunfights
in Yellowstone National Park as tourists are coming to Yellowstone

(54:04):
to like check out the mountains and nursey the geysers
and stuff.

Speaker 5 (54:07):
You know, that's that's America.

Speaker 4 (54:10):
Yeah, it's just perfectly America, right, Like, we'll look at it. Look,
we're preserving this for you as we violently remove the
indigenous people and.

Speaker 10 (54:18):
Just like coming to spend your tourism dollars, never mind
that there's a war going on there.

Speaker 4 (54:22):
Yeah, just being like just kind of letting that go past.

Speaker 5 (54:26):
Whatever the time period equivalent of a visor and a
fanny pack was that was cooking.

Speaker 4 (54:30):
Yeah, yeah for sure, probably probably a cigar. And I
know this trousers to stop past your knee. So you'll
hear people saying a lot of shit about the API
of the America Prayer Reserve, right, And so I did
what I should do as a responsible journalist, and I
pulled their nine nineties.

Speaker 10 (54:48):
That's my favorite thing to do. Yeah, where's the money going? Yeah,
well where's the money coming from?

Speaker 4 (54:54):
Yeah? Where the money coming from. You'll hear a lot
of like anti API stuff, someone from the cattle in this.
If you go through that part of Montana, you'll see
signs that say like save the cowboys, stop the American
Prairie Reserve.

Speaker 10 (55:05):
I think we have a different understanding of what a
cowboy is me and the sign maker.

Speaker 4 (55:09):
Yeah, right, Well, it is inherently time, I guess, to cattle, right,
and the idea being that these bison are displacing cattle.
It's not a direct contract with cattle. In fact, the
APR has ten times more cattle on its land than
it does buys it. Like most ranches, the APR has
deeded or private land that they graze on leasing right

(55:32):
to adjacent public land. What the APR is spending its
money on, among other things, among like some staffing costs,
of its costs, paying consultants, paying fundraisers, pay consultants. Oh yeah,
they're dropping some coin on consultants. Is they buy up ranches.
The way land ownership works in this area is kind
of like a checkerboard, and you've got public land and

(55:53):
private land.

Speaker 10 (55:54):
So they're trying to make pathways for the bison by
buying contiguous plots.

Speaker 4 (55:59):
Yeah, they're not all contiguous, but their goal is to
have a large contiguous area in which.

Speaker 5 (56:05):
Right, and you just have to buy them when they
come up exactly.

Speaker 7 (56:08):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (56:09):
I think the argument is that they're they're pushing up
land prices, right, But in reality, this area is depopulating rapidly.
It might push up land prices a little bit, but
it's not like there's massive bidding wars going on here
for each of these ranches.

Speaker 10 (56:22):
Right, because are there new people seeking new cow ranching
opportunities who are trying to move in who are being
prevented from doing that.

Speaker 4 (56:29):
Will be people trying to like either I guess, if
expand their ranch, or if a family is subdividing its ranch,
or if you didn't inherit your family ranch, I guess,
and want to buy some land. Generally, how it works
here is you buy a certain part of land. It'll
be like sixty forty seventy thirty something like that. So
you'll buy land, and that would give you the privilege

(56:51):
to have like first DIBs on grazing on the public
land that is adjacent to your land. So most of
these ranches are checkerboarded, right, It's not like a bigtiguous plot.
So not being able to graize a bison on the
public land kind of fucks that up in these plots
for the American prairie people, right, And like I should
say that, like I have some sympathy for people ranching

(57:11):
in this area, like my family of farmers, Like it's
going to be really fucking hard right now when fuel
prices are insanely high to be trying to farm on
these especially the way that like American people farm have
massive expanses, right, you have to be in a vehicle
a lot. When I was reading about the brucellosis stuff,
and it made me think of foot and mouth disease,

(57:31):
which happened in the UK when I was a child.
I remember how traumatic that was for people having their
whole herds killed. Several people who were like within our
extended family social circle killed themselves and they're horrible when
they lost all their cattle. Yeah, like it's really fucked up,
Like at least in that part of the world, like
you might have. It might have been your great grandfather

(57:52):
who started bringing these cattle, right, Like, it's an intergenerational
project that nick joins lining through your family. So I
do understand these people like deeply tied to this land.
Also not in the same way as Indigenous people. I
can see that people like you know, don't want it
to change. I understand that, and like consolidation and agriculture
climate change, the way our foody consistem works, that is

(58:12):
an issue we should address if we want to take
care of the land. What the government is doing, it's
not how we address that. Sometimes you'll see people saying
that the APR is entirely a tax avoidance system for
the Mars family, like the chocolate people. Yeah, yeah, big chocolate.
You familiar the Mars family a rich as fuck.

Speaker 5 (58:29):
Yeah, I didn't know they were involved in the in
the bison industry.

Speaker 4 (58:33):
Well, they have donated. I couldn't find an exact figure, right,
Like with the change of nonprofit like the reporting laws,
it's a lot harder now than it used to be.

Speaker 5 (58:42):
So they don't own or operate it. They've just made
large donations.

Speaker 4 (58:46):
They've made Lars donations. It's a unit called Mars Vista
within the APR, which has some private housing on it.
But like I think people are fundamentally misunderstanding how they're
super wealthy, Like these people are worth more than one
hundred billion dollars. I would highly encourage anyone who thinks
that an NGO which is going through like in the

(59:07):
tens of millions a year, maybe by twenty fifteen. So
in the first fourteen years of this project's existence, say
donated twenty million. That's not touching the edges.

Speaker 10 (59:18):
I'm sure they have a complicated tax shelter system set
up for themselves that doesn't involve bison. It involves bank
accounts and countries. You haven't heard of.

Speaker 4 (59:26):
Yes, exactly, Like the Panama Paper's had zero bison in
it for a reason, right, Like you're just being very
it's very sweet if you think that. Like the way
that they are avoiding paying federal taxes is buying land
to put buffalo on.

Speaker 10 (59:39):
Like all these families have their own whole foundations that
are just about moving money around in opaque ways. Yeah,
if you're trying to avoid paying taxes, you don't donate
to a real charity that's actually doing something complicated with
physical animals and land. You have a foundation that does
grants for something obscure.

Speaker 4 (59:55):
Yeah, Like it's just not it's just just not it.
Like it's just it's not it. That's not how taxes work.
That's not how ridge people work. So we've talked about
Brucelosi is going to move past brucellosis, and I had
a diversion on chronic wasting disease and elk feeding, but
maybe we'll make that a whole other podcast. So we
also talked about this this checkerboarding of public land. Right,

(01:00:18):
lots of these ranching operations that they're buying rely heavily
on public land grazing. So in twenty twenty two. They
applied in twenty nineteen. The BLM allowed them to graze
bison on seven plots in Phillips County. Right, So that's
saying that you can put your bison on this public
land which is adjacent to the private land which you own.

Speaker 5 (01:00:39):
And that's standard practice. Everybody's doing that.

Speaker 4 (01:00:42):
It depends on the particular plot, right, So they had
to apply to the Bureau of Land Management.

Speaker 5 (01:00:47):
It's like pretty common for people to be grazing to
get these permits to graze on the public land.

Speaker 4 (01:00:52):
There have been bison on public land for forty years.
There remain bison on public land across the West, to
include some tribes grazed bison on public land as well
as on tribal land.

Speaker 5 (01:01:02):
But like the cattle farmers are doing this as well.

Speaker 4 (01:01:04):
Oh yeah, the cattle farmers are alder Yeah yeah, but that's.

Speaker 10 (01:01:06):
Like some I'm saying, like, if you buy this plot
of land, it's like kind of common that you would
also be grazing on the public land adjacent to it.

Speaker 4 (01:01:13):
Yeah, it's entirely understood, like or not even adjacent to,
but sometimes like interspersed with Yeah, Like so if you
look at like a sometimes you'll see like a de
died and a least acreage when you're looking at like
a land, like if you were if you were interested
in buying a ranch Molley.

Speaker 10 (01:01:28):
So like when they so, when they bought this land,
it would be reasonable for them to assume that they
would be able to use the parcels adjacent and interspersed
within it.

Speaker 4 (01:01:36):
Yes, yeah, okay, yes, and they would have known that
that would have required in some cases asking the BLM, right,
which is what they did. And in twenty twenty two,
the BLM said, go ahead, put your by some in
this on these particular seven plots, right, So they were
amended to include bison. They've got environmental impact study done,
you know, they did all the things.

Speaker 5 (01:01:56):
Is doing an environmental impact study of the presence of
a native of animal.

Speaker 4 (01:02:01):
Yeah, on its native range.

Speaker 5 (01:02:02):
What would happen if a buffalo lived here?

Speaker 8 (01:02:05):
Yeah?

Speaker 5 (01:02:06):
We asked ten government scientists.

Speaker 4 (01:02:08):
Yeah, we spent thousands of dollars finding out what happens
if buffalo lives in buffalo home. Turned out didn't do
massive ecological damage, So BLM said, let the buffalo back.
What is interesting about this rule change is the justification
the BLM is using and that is the thing that
people should be worried about. In my opinion, that should

(01:02:28):
be the headline. The headline should be, So the BLM
is trying to regulate these leases that have their roots
in the nineteen thirty four Taylor Grazing Act.

Speaker 5 (01:02:35):
I'm not unknowingly.

Speaker 4 (01:02:37):
Yeah, yeah, the Tailor Grazing Act a big deal when
it comes to public land in the West in farming. Right,
it is trying to regulate these leases to quote unquote
productive purposes. It doesn't say productive purposes anywhere I can
find in the Tailor grazing net. It does use the
term I guess domestic livestock.

Speaker 5 (01:02:55):
I think could be a livestock.

Speaker 4 (01:02:57):
Well, they are a livestock.

Speaker 5 (01:02:58):
I've eaten them.

Speaker 4 (01:02:59):
Yeah, they These bison are vaccinated, they are fenced, they
are tagged, they'll be handled. I'm guessing the way the
API does it is like a kind of non invasive handling,
like trying to keep them not acclimated to human contact
per se.

Speaker 5 (01:03:13):
But like it's hard to ask a livestock a bison
to human content.

Speaker 4 (01:03:17):
Yeah, you can get like beefalow, right, which is like
a like a hybridized bison.

Speaker 5 (01:03:22):
They sell bison that my whole foods. That's livestock.

Speaker 7 (01:03:25):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:03:26):
The APR is not raising them to kill them to
sell them for meat.

Speaker 10 (01:03:30):
But they could if they wanted to, Like, because I
don't think the government is ever going to go to
a cattle rancher and say you have to kill X
number of these or they're no longer livestock.

Speaker 1 (01:03:38):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:03:39):
Well that is the question, right, Like, what if we
choose if you gave me a million dollars today, I
would immediately cease making podcasts. I would buy a large
plot land, and I would have an ungodly number of
rare and endangered domestic livestock species. Right, I'd have jacob sheep.
I'd have polyseric sheep with four horns, you know, like
satan looking sheep. I'd be all about.

Speaker 10 (01:03:58):
It, and they would remain leag livestock even if you
had no intention of eating them.

Speaker 4 (01:04:03):
Well, that is the question, right. The productive purposes definition
could be extremely broad. What if you're doing practice like
restorative ranching.

Speaker 10 (01:04:14):
Right, what if the Bureau of Land Management was concerned
with the land being properly managed.

Speaker 4 (01:04:19):
Well, at a point, I guess the BLM was right
because there was a rule. This is actually kind of funny.
It was called the Conservation and Landscape Health Rule, and
the BLM rescinded that last week. So previously that was
one of the considerations for managing land, for managing public land,
And I guess like we should just briefly say that

(01:04:40):
there is no such thing as government land, right, It's
all native land. And the land which is currently managed
by the government is paid for by me and Molly
and everyone else. Doug Berghen doesn't own it. It is
there for future generations, right, Like.

Speaker 5 (01:04:54):
It's like, what is what are they going to do
with it?

Speaker 10 (01:04:57):
If they kicked the buffalo off of it.

Speaker 4 (01:05:00):
Will be my guest card the Cattalony leases.

Speaker 5 (01:05:02):
So they're just going to lease it to someone else.

Speaker 4 (01:05:05):
Yeah, But like, I guess some portions of public land
in that part of Montana are entirely land locked by
private land. Like one of the things that APR did
that made people like it there is that the APR
bought a ranch and then opened up a gated road
which allowed people to access fifty thousand acres of public
land that had previously been completely islanded. Right's so, like, right,

(01:05:27):
what their plan is to do? They have to sell
these ranches now, so.

Speaker 10 (01:05:31):
The government just is saying you can't use this public
the land anymore in such a way that might negate
your ability to use your privately owned land because we
don't think bison our livestock.

Speaker 4 (01:05:42):
Yeah, because bison awoke. More broadly, like this conservation of
landscape health rull with sinshon is worrying, very amusingly, the
BLM has forgotten to take down the website that explains
the value of the rule, so at the time of recording,
the BLM's website still say quote, the rule recognizes conservation
as an essential component of public lands management on equal

(01:06:05):
footing with other multiple uses of these habitats. Americans rely
on public lands to live a food, energy, cleaner and
water wildlife habitat and places to recreate. The BLM knows
the importance of balancing our use of natural resources with
protecting public lands and waters for future generations. The rule
will safeguard these lands and waters to protect our way
of life. Still a bit cringe, But they've now rescinded

(01:06:26):
that rule, So I guess our way of life is
now under threat.

Speaker 1 (01:06:39):
Because I just.

Speaker 5 (01:06:40):
Don't understand how this is justifiable at all. But I
guess that's not really the point for.

Speaker 4 (01:06:44):
A lot of people, right, Like, it sort of flies
under the radar because it's not, you know, like a
big Washington thing. I can see how like in our
major population centers, it can be easily to be like
the Defudd cares where the cows and buffalo go.

Speaker 10 (01:06:58):
But I think, even aside from from an ecological argument,
which I think is very important, right that the restoration
of these grasslands, this is the government saying no, we're
going to take this public resource away from someone who
is rightfully using it and paying to use it, and
we're going to sell that right instead to a capitalist
concern over a bullshit fake reason.

Speaker 4 (01:07:18):
Yeah, not that the APR is not. I suppose it's
not really a capitalist concern. It's like a nonprofit.

Speaker 5 (01:07:23):
But there has to be some sort of big cattle
lobbying at play here.

Speaker 4 (01:07:27):
Yeah, I think there are elements of the cattle industry
which have been opposed to bison, especially due to that
departure of bison from the park is really something that
for years has been like a point of tension in Yellowstone.
It's worth who is for this and who is against it?
I guess it is cattle ranches who are opposed to
the grazing of bison out here.

Speaker 5 (01:07:48):
And who specifically is getting those seven specific plots.

Speaker 4 (01:07:54):
Yeah, well, I think the reason they recinded those is
because they were the seven most recently approved. Okay, because
there are other plots. I think there are tribes in California,
for instance, who have applied for buffalo grazing on public land.
And I should point out that like a tribal cultural herd,
a food sovereignty herd is a very different thing to
the APR. I hope that APR did know that. I
know that tribal and trits.

Speaker 10 (01:08:15):
Would, but I guess as far as the government is concerned,
it's the same that danswers just know.

Speaker 4 (01:08:20):
I don't know yet. We don't know yet, right, We
don't know if those tribal leases have been approved. What
we do know is that, like this production standard is
a thory of threat to them. The Coalition of Large
Tribes actually wrote a letter opposing this decision. A quote
from it here. It is offensive and unacceptable that the
federal government would still seek to keep buffalo off of
these lands. Chairmen of the shann River Sioux Tribe, Ryman

(01:08:41):
Lebau wrote, adding that BLM lands are all former buffalo lands.
He calls the decision a painful reprise the genocide the
federal government attempted could commit against us and our relative
to buffalo. They also call it affirmative action for cattle,
which is kind of funny. Wow. True, yeah, but yeah
it's true, And it's like saying during cowdyr, Yeah, yeah,
this is one our one angula is fine and the

(01:09:03):
other one is in. I want people to be concerned
about this because it could be deeply damaging to the
attempts of tribes to recover their buffalo population. It could
be deeply damaging to our public lands. I guess I
want to talk briefly about the buffalo genocide because they
think it's something that people have like a grasp of,
but not like a maybe in depth understanding. What I

(01:09:27):
want to briefly say is that the government played a
massive role in wiping out of most of a buffalo.

Speaker 8 (01:09:32):
Right.

Speaker 4 (01:09:32):
We ended up with fewer than a thousand head at
Buffalo like there were times when a tree falling down,
a lightning strike, a bad flood could have significantly altered
the future of the species. Because there were so few.
Capitalism also played a role, though. The idea that the
buffalo hunters were like just following orders from the government

(01:09:53):
relies in part on books written by former buffalo hunters
trying to absolve themselves. I would suggest that we also
look at the incentive provided to kill the animals and
to not make use of their remains after people did that, right,
because like as much as the government did, the capitalism
that the government was ringing with it killed the majority

(01:10:13):
of the wild buffalo in this country. And that is
what's happening again, right we look at public lands management today.
The glass yearro was of chuck O Kanyon. Chakokanyon was
the site of the biggest building in what is now
the United States until the eighteen eighties. Oh chuck O
and civilization built these massive great houses there. Really really beautiful,

(01:10:36):
amazing place, one of the less visited units in the
National Park System. Gorgeous, amazing. I saw some out there too.

Speaker 5 (01:10:42):
This is all news to me.

Speaker 4 (01:10:43):
You got to go to Chaka Kanyon.

Speaker 5 (01:10:45):
We have to find something we can record that gets
me down to the Southwest.

Speaker 2 (01:10:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:10:49):
I bet there are some biggots, you know there are
because they use they appropriate the Zooni sacred Sun symbol
in some of their Nazi shit because have we not
fucking done enough? Well, apparently not right, because there is
there is a campaign to have drilling to like dealist
areas of Chaco Canyon. I also spent time last year

(01:11:09):
in Which in Homeland, with which in people there. What's
happening is a Trump administration is trying to grant drilling
permits in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the which and people,
I should say, preferred to use the term Arctic refuge,
So I'm going to try and use that going forward.
They don't like anoir just that. So what that will do,

(01:11:31):
right is on the on the plane there drilling is
the place where the caribou migrate. The porcupine caribou herd
makes the longest land mammal migration in the world.

Speaker 5 (01:11:41):
So we're just speed running the devastation of every cool,
big animal we have.

Speaker 4 (01:11:45):
Yeah, Like, we're going to do drilling in the place
where the caribou carve, right, and if they don't go
there to carve, then it's over. Yeah, And there are
so few of these animals left, right, they can cross
political boundaries, that can travel their great dis stance is
unimpeded by capitalism. Largely that's because the which in territory
is not a reservation. It's like they own it. So

(01:12:07):
they can go off public land onto Gwichinland and without
the caribou, like the Gwitchin culture cannot be the same
as it is, right the caribou is sacred to them
like that culture in the distance of the Cariboo, I guess,
are tied together, and like the same could be said
for bison, right Like that it's part of the reason
that we don't have bison on the planes anymore because
indigenous people on the bison went hand in hand in

(01:12:29):
the genocide of the indigenous peoples. There was also a
genocide of the buffalo, I guess, and those two things
weren't separate or distinct. And I think, like there's this
idea in the American liberal psyche that like a bison
being on the land constitutes a return and like that's
not it, right, Like privately owned bison being on the
APR is not land back.

Speaker 10 (01:12:47):
I mean, it would restore the grassland to some degree,
but that's not that doesn't have the same cultural impact
as returning the land to its natural stewards.

Speaker 4 (01:12:56):
Yeah, exactly, and allowing indigenous people to like manage the
land for future generations in the way that they did
for millennia before this massive extinction event, the European colonization.

Speaker 10 (01:13:07):
I hope nobody thinks they privately owned buffalo flock is
the same as land back.

Speaker 4 (01:13:11):
Yeah, I hope not. I really hope not. Like did
you see like when the folk Pet tribes were like
killing some of their buffalo to feed people during the
last shutdown.

Speaker 5 (01:13:21):
I do remember that. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:13:23):
Yeah, there's kind of a strange reaction being like, oh,
how sad that they have to to kill their buffalo, Like.

Speaker 5 (01:13:29):
But that's what the buffalo for.

Speaker 4 (01:13:31):
Yes, so it's why they the buffalo are there of
culture can exist and it's.

Speaker 5 (01:13:35):
Not like a sacred cow situation. Yeah, yeah, it's sacred
to them, but not in that way.

Speaker 4 (01:13:42):
Yeah, Like it's sacred to them and it is sustaining
to them, right, And like that's my understanding at least,
and having spent a little bit of time with people
who have that relationship to other animals like that, when
I think about like which inference in their caribou, like
they will fight as hard as they can to preserve
their cariboo herd, but that's not like a different thing

(01:14:03):
from them. They also hunt the caribou and eat it.

Speaker 7 (01:14:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 10 (01:14:05):
Part of the natural relationship with them is sometimes eating them.

Speaker 4 (01:14:09):
Yeah, and like they did in that way, the culture
is sustained by the ongoing presence of the animal right.

Speaker 10 (01:14:14):
I guess, I guess we just I don't know the
Western mind. We can only hunt something to extinction, we
can't contemplate.

Speaker 4 (01:14:21):
Yeah, wanting to coexist with it.

Speaker 10 (01:14:22):
A symbiotic coexistence where we eat them sometimes, but we
don't want them all to be dead.

Speaker 4 (01:14:28):
Yeah, right, We're not just going to be like, okay,
this that was from while it lasted on to the
next one. Yeah, I just do the next species now. So,
like people should be worried about this. This is not
the end of bison on public lands. It's not the
end of bison on tribal lands. But this productivity standard
should really concern people. BLM is the biggest public lands

(01:14:49):
management agency. Sometimes it gets jokingly called the Bureau of
Livestock and Mining, which is pretty much the way it's going, right, right, So.

Speaker 5 (01:14:57):
Is there a legal definition being used here, like something
from a statute or something from a contract, like, what
is this? What is productive use?

Speaker 4 (01:15:06):
That's a productive use is a standard that they have
derived from the term domestic livestock in the Tailor Grazing Act.

Speaker 10 (01:15:12):
And then how is domestic livestock legally defined any domesticated animal?

Speaker 4 (01:15:18):
Yeah, well they are claiming that it is domestic livestock
if it is productive.

Speaker 10 (01:15:22):
But this is circular, right, So productive use means livestock
and livestock have to be productive.

Speaker 5 (01:15:27):
But what is productive? It's live stock? Livestock is productively Like, well.

Speaker 4 (01:15:31):
There has to be like a cash exchange, I guess
like they're saying that it has to be raised for sale.

Speaker 10 (01:15:36):
But then like, how exactly are we measuring? That doesn't
have to be profitable?

Speaker 4 (01:15:39):
Does it have to be extracting the maximum output out
of that given area of land?

Speaker 5 (01:15:44):
Do you have to be exporting something?

Speaker 9 (01:15:46):
Like?

Speaker 10 (01:15:47):
Do you have to have a government can like what
is the threshold here for what's productive?

Speaker 4 (01:15:52):
Yeah, APR has given by some meat to food banks before,
so apparently that doesn't meet the standard.

Speaker 7 (01:15:59):
Right.

Speaker 10 (01:15:59):
So without without a hard and fast, like clear written standard,
this is the government just deciding who does or doesn't
get to do business with them?

Speaker 4 (01:16:08):
Yeah, and who who does and doesn't have access. There
are issues, big issues with grais and cattle on public land, ecological, social,
climate change, animal welfare. There are issues, many of them.
But the idea that if you wanted to, let's say,
if you wanted to raise fewer cattle and do what
they call regenerative ranching to something more sustainable, you couldn't

(01:16:29):
because it's not as productive. It's bonkers right on public land.

Speaker 10 (01:16:33):
Like right, so now you lose, you lose your government
contract because you tried you try something, try something new,
try something sustainable.

Speaker 4 (01:16:40):
You tried to be too nice to the land that
supposedly belongs to everyone.

Speaker 10 (01:16:44):
So in order in order to use this land that
is supposed to be for you know, public preservation, you
have to be as exploitative and destructive as possible.

Speaker 5 (01:16:51):
Yeah, a great, thank you, Doug Burgham.

Speaker 4 (01:16:54):
Yeah cool. Are we going to extend this to Like
I'm not as familiar with mining, but you can stake
a claim on public land, right, lots of most mining claims.
I imagine a state on public land and you can
you can exploit that claim. Is it now going to
be the case that like you have to exploit that
claim and like if we don't have this standard of
maintaining the land, and that it said it's gone now

(01:17:16):
and that the only standard is it has to be
as productive as possible.

Speaker 10 (01:17:19):
Then how is that land management? This is the Bureau
of Land Exploitation.

Speaker 4 (01:17:24):
Yeah, the BLM is just and I know the BLM
has done this for many cents. This isn't then this
isn't new for the BLM.

Speaker 5 (01:17:30):
But having officially rescinded their rule on conserving the land.

Speaker 4 (01:17:34):
Yeah, then this could be really bad. Right, Like the
massive chunks of the West are managed by the BLM,
and like the idea that they're only going to allow
it the most productive uses or force the most productive uses.
Like this is one of the many ways that Trump
administration is attacking public lands that people should talk.

Speaker 10 (01:17:54):
About more and again without adequately defining it. I just
feel like this is another vector for is handing out
government resources to donors allies.

Speaker 4 (01:18:04):
Yeah, and like without any change in statute. Right, this
is the law that Bergham is reinterpreting. Here, You've got
the nineteen thirty four Tailor Grazing Act and then like
there's a nineteen seventy six law that that and the
statutory language is that the BLM should manage the land
for multiple use and sustained yield. That is broad, but

(01:18:25):
like we are not going to get this Congress to
pass a better one.

Speaker 10 (01:18:29):
No, And if anybody does try to take this to court,
the Supreme Court will just say, no, you have to
strip mine the field.

Speaker 4 (01:18:34):
Yeah yeah, yeah, like your only choice.

Speaker 5 (01:18:36):
You have to frack, even whether or not you have
to set up tracking.

Speaker 4 (01:18:41):
You're dure like obliged to do feed lands even though
you can't. Like, it's just like a really concerning area
that I think has been approached kind of almost tokenistically
in some of the press. Like this is bad for everyone,
right if the government is saying you can only ranch
this way on a big pland, like that's also bad

(01:19:01):
for ranches all over the west, right, I don't think
that like the way that we restore our land to
its custodians and to like its natural state. It's big
private parks like APR is like a private national park, right,
Like you can walk through lots of it, you can
hunt on it like public land. Some places you can

(01:19:21):
camp on it. They have dispersed camping. That's nice. I
don't believe in the benevolence of the rich, because like,
look how we fucking got here, right.

Speaker 10 (01:19:30):
But that that half measure was the best thing we
had at this moment, and now it's illegal.

Speaker 4 (01:19:36):
Yeah, now it's And like I'm glad that these rich
people are putting buffalo on the landscape because we need
more of them. Like, if we're ever going to have
truly wild herds, we need that genetic diversity. Right, They've
been through horrible genetic bottlenecks in getting up to this
half a million number.

Speaker 10 (01:19:52):
Right, It's not like we can just try again later,
let it, let the number drop back down. We'll try
again in a hundred years, Like at some point we've
missed the boat.

Speaker 4 (01:20:00):
Yeah, and as the climate continues to change, we have
to think about how land management, food procurement plays a
role in our future. And like this is the opposite
of doing that. And I think people ought to be
concerned about that. There's not much you could do about it,
Like it's these people who weren't elected ruling on things

(01:20:20):
that are not saturtary. But it is something that I
think people ought to add to that many concerns with
the Trump administration.

Speaker 7 (01:20:28):
I guess he more worried.

Speaker 4 (01:20:30):
Yeah, I don't know. I don't want you to be
more worried. I want you to go outside, like see
a buffalo. It will be nice.

Speaker 10 (01:20:34):
That would at least know that I don't know the
future existence of the world as we know it is
being intact from all sides, even from directions I wasn't
aware of. Yeah, there are attack vectors that I just
had not considered.

Speaker 4 (01:20:48):
Yeah, this is a new and exciting way that they're
making tit worse. So yeah, I hope you enjoyed a
little diversion about buffalo. Next week, I want to talk
about bears. I want to tear the bears.

Speaker 10 (01:20:59):
I'm excited to learn about because I've seen a bear
and I know they live in the United States unlike
they do.

Speaker 5 (01:21:07):
I guess I was thinking of like spring Bok. Maybe
they kind of they look like that in it.

Speaker 4 (01:21:16):
M I don't know what.

Speaker 10 (01:21:18):
I've been to a zoo and big of antelope type
animals there, so I just I don't know.

Speaker 5 (01:21:22):
Everything at the zoo must be from far away.

Speaker 9 (01:21:25):
Now.

Speaker 4 (01:21:25):
The prong horn is like it's a there's a there's
a cool zoo. I'm not a big zoo guy.

Speaker 5 (01:21:30):
You've got to make sure it's one of one of
those ones that a credited zoo.

Speaker 7 (01:21:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (01:21:35):
Yeah, there's one in Palm Springs where you can see
I've seen big hon I've been fortunate enough to see
big horn sheep in their natural habitat. But for most people,
your best chance, again they look at the big horn
sheep is to get to that one in Palm Springs.
When you see a prong horn just pronging, you know,
like do they like yeah, they bounce al they got

(01:21:55):
those giant tendons right that they buffalo can go thirty
five miles an hour and they're faster than a buffalo.

Speaker 10 (01:22:01):
So like, I don't want to see a buffalo go
thirty five miles an hour. I don't want to see that.

Speaker 4 (01:22:05):
They can be it. Yeah, it's like seeing a mini
van like doing muscle cars. Shit, you know, like they
can jump, they could. They have this incredible buffalo can
like jump over stuff. They're they're actually very nimble despite
looking you know, like a like a cinder block.

Speaker 5 (01:22:19):
They're so cute that I want to touch one so bad,
but I don't.

Speaker 4 (01:22:22):
Want to get vice against it. Yeah, bricellosis is going
to be a long term issue. It's yeah, it's the trampoline.
There'll be a short term issue for you. So yeah,
don't touch buffalo, don't touch them. Send send Molly pictures
of your prong horning counters.

Speaker 10 (01:22:37):
Yeah, if you have seen a wild animal in the
United States, let me see it.

Speaker 5 (01:22:41):
I don't know we had those.

Speaker 4 (01:22:43):
Yeah, can in Molly's replies with your raccoons in your trash.

Speaker 5 (01:22:46):
Raccoons I know about I've seen it, right, Yeah, yeah
it was.

Speaker 10 (01:22:50):
I was in South Korea many years ago at a
theme park that had a zoo in it. I don't know,
it's a while ago. Perfect in the zoo area, there
was this huge display. Everyone was crowded around this very
cool zoo animal was raccoons.

Speaker 4 (01:23:07):
Oh really, they don't have them. Yeah, they play such
a cultural role in the American cultural hegemonies.

Speaker 10 (01:23:14):
I don't want to see a raccoon, but I guess yeah,
if you can't see one, that's an intriguing get.

Speaker 4 (01:23:18):
So, yeah, I remember, I like, my initial engagement with
raccoons was through the movie Pokahontists, which is a whole
other ship. So when I first saw a raccoon, I
wanted to visit it, right, because you know, they have biscuits.

Speaker 5 (01:23:30):
Yeah, you thought it was gonna be like a chatty yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:23:33):
Like a little friend.

Speaker 4 (01:23:34):
Yeah, it was very aggressive, be unnecessarily aggressive a little friend. Yeah,
I was approaching in a spirit of kindness. I think,
like generally, I also have been victimized by a skunk
for several years now, so I think maybe I just
that's not a friend. No, it's fine.

Speaker 10 (01:23:49):
Those ladies on TikTok that have pet ones will tell
you that is not a friend.

Speaker 4 (01:23:53):
Apparently they're very nice if they like, can be encouraged
not to. I don't know, I don't think it. Don't please,
don't capture a skunk, can bring it home with you,
like it's skunk wants to live on its own. But yeah,
this one skunk will find me every time I'm going
through that, like I'll be coming out at night.

Speaker 5 (01:24:07):
He's thinking about you.

Speaker 4 (01:24:08):
On my head. It's like a fucking Exocet missile. I
see him coming from like two hundred yards away.

Speaker 5 (01:24:14):
It's the fucking guy again.

Speaker 4 (01:24:16):
Yeah, he's pissed at me. I'm pissed at him. He
turns around, he squares up.

Speaker 5 (01:24:20):
Did you get got No?

Speaker 4 (01:24:22):
No, he'll show his ass to me and then I'll
I'll just kind of give him a wide berth and think, oh,
that was unusual, seeing it's gounn to be that, And
then two weeks later, there he is again.

Speaker 5 (01:24:31):
Yeah, he's waiting for you. He does not want you
to come back.

Speaker 4 (01:24:33):
Yeah, no, he doesn't. He's also trying to like exercise
control over the public land and aggressive.

Speaker 5 (01:24:39):
He's doing land management and you're not part of it.

Speaker 4 (01:24:41):
Yeah. Yeah, he's returning it to its natural state by
keeping European people off the land, which I guess is
honestly valid, respectable.

Speaker 5 (01:24:48):
He's heard horror stories from his great grandparents.

Speaker 4 (01:24:51):
Yeah, I can respect that night and now I think
of it in that way. But yeah, I've got some
good pictures of the back end of him. Well after
he kept doing it, I thought, I'm as well photograph
and document this tendency. So yeah, I have them. I'm
going to use them for some kind of greetings card
or something they haven't yet.

Speaker 5 (01:25:07):
Perfect with the family Christmas card, I think.

Speaker 4 (01:25:09):
Yeah, I just keep people on their toes. We've rambled enough, okay, Yeah,
please send us your wildlife pictures. We would love to
see them.

Speaker 5 (01:25:17):
And next week bears bears.

Speaker 4 (01:25:20):
Yeah, money before we go. Do you want to plug
your podcast about people who probably don't engage with animals
very much?

Speaker 10 (01:25:25):
Oh yeah, you can listen to my show A weird
Little Guys. I don't think there's been an animal in
the show in a while. Well, I guess eventually I
will get around to those guys that occupied that BLM land.

Speaker 4 (01:25:34):
But yeah, yeah, that's it.

Speaker 5 (01:25:36):
But it's that kind of shell.

Speaker 4 (01:25:37):
Yeah. I bet they love wolves. I bet I bet
they like think a lot about wolves even though they
don't see them.

Speaker 10 (01:25:43):
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. There was a guy who had
his user name on a Nazi forum was the device
a wolf, which is incorrect German for the white wolf.

Speaker 4 (01:25:53):
Perfectly, they do love wolves, Yeah, yeah, could I guess.
Thank you very much, Molly.

Speaker 5 (01:25:59):
Thank you, James.

Speaker 7 (01:26:12):
Welcome to take it out here a podcast where I
try to explain economics to you and Molly. I'm your host,
Fia Lung, And thank you Molly for agreeing to do this,
especially on extremely short notice. So I appreciate it.

Speaker 5 (01:26:26):
I am so excited to struggle to learn.

Speaker 7 (01:26:30):
So, okay, there's good news and bad news. The good
news is that the central thing that this episode is about,
nominally is a concept called monopsony, and it's actually really easy.

Speaker 8 (01:26:44):
No.

Speaker 10 (01:26:44):
See you said that. You said that in the work
chat earlier. You said monopsy and I was like, oh man,
she's so tired. That's not even a word.

Speaker 7 (01:26:51):
Well, okay, this actually gets into the thing because this
is a word that was made up specifically for this concept. Unfortunately,
I do also have to do the bad news, which
is that to actually understand the history of this, we
do have to explain stuff that's legitimately very complicated. So
I'm locked in. Yay, but okay, okay, monopsony. The hook
of this, this is part of the reason why you

(01:27:13):
get paid like shit is because of monopsony. So I
first was interested in writing about this specifically for this
show because weirdly NPR's Planet Money Like discovered the concept
of monopsony and did it a couple of pretty interesting
pieces on the history of the concept. And the place

(01:27:37):
that they go with it is they start talking about
one of my favorite economists, Joan Robinson, who is really
good and we're gonna spend most of this episode talking
about her. But one of the stories that they tell
this is a very famous story in the circles of
economists that I'm around, I guess is about her sitting

(01:27:58):
down with like a British class system inventing the term monopsony.
So okay, what is what is.

Speaker 5 (01:28:03):
Monopson it's one something mono.

Speaker 7 (01:28:07):
You know what a monopoly is. So monopoly is when
one seller, right, So okay, it's like, yeah, you have
I don't know, you have like Google, which is a
monopoly on like search engines. Right, And you know, monopoly
doesn't necessarily and what we'll be getting into this more
in a second, it doesn't necessarily have to mean that
there's literally only one right. But you know, like the US,

(01:28:28):
like every market you are dealing with in the United
States is some kind of monopoly where you know, sometimes
there's like a big three, or sometimes there's like two,
or sometimes there's maybe five.

Speaker 10 (01:28:40):
Or sometimes it's quite literal, like we only have one
power company in Virginia.

Speaker 7 (01:28:44):
Yeah, yeah, you know, And sometimes monopolies are deliberately set
up by the state, right where sometimes you know, the
state a state would just be like, yeah, fuck it,
there's only one power company here.

Speaker 5 (01:28:53):
Oh no, it's a private company. It's a private company.

Speaker 7 (01:28:56):
Yeah right, yeah, But sometimes private companies will be hand
at monopolies like this, right, Utility companies are a thing
where it does kind of make sense because having two
companies setting up rival electrical grids is like a nightmare.

Speaker 5 (01:29:08):
But well, that's why the state should do it.

Speaker 7 (01:29:10):
Yeah. Well it's like it's like, yeah, this is the
issue though, right, And this is why monopoly in theory
is like a thing that economists are not supposed to like,
because monopoly screws up the sort of like perfect competition
between all of these one million different companies that's supposed
to like make your life good because they're all forced
to sell everything at like the lowest possible price because

(01:29:32):
they have to outcompete everyone else. And it's like all
of this stuff. But then if you have one monopoly,
they can charge you whatever the fuck price they want
because there's only one of them, and the alternatives are
to eat shit.

Speaker 10 (01:29:42):
Or like like Amazon choking out. It was one hundred diapers, right.
It was a diaper company that offered like affordable order diapers,
and the yeah undercut them really hard concentrated period of time,
so they went out of business and they jacked with
the prices on dipers.

Speaker 7 (01:29:57):
Yep, yep. This is basically just what the modern tech
economy is is that some company will come in with
like one hundred billion dollars worth of tech money. Ex
there were a bunch of ride share wars in India
over this, where like all these ride share companies were
basically giving people for like really really low cost rides.
I mean, they're obviously still screwing the drivers, but like
oh yeah, naturally, yeah, yeah, and so they were just

(01:30:20):
trying to like edge of when I was out of
the market so that they could take control of it
and raise the prices and stuff eventually.

Speaker 10 (01:30:25):
Because it's like, you know, the capitalism enthusiast likes to
imagine that the economy is like you know, Darwinian evolution,
survival of the fittest, right, we evolve and compete and
the best man wins. But actually it's more like intentionally
introducing mongooses to the islands of Hawaii.

Speaker 5 (01:30:43):
Yeah, that's yeah, this is an evolution. You just introduce
a giant weasel that aid all the bird eggs.

Speaker 7 (01:30:50):
Yeah, right. And it's like, you know, if you look
at how capitalism spreads historically, it's it's not even like
capitalism doesn't outproduce other like economic systems usually what it
does is, like, you know, there's this line in the
Communist Manifesto that I think Marx was extremely wrong about.
We're just talking about like like trade is the cannon
that will bring down Chinese walls. And he's talking about

(01:31:10):
like free trade will like destroyed China's trade bearers. It's like, well, no,
like China's trade barriers were brought down by the Opium Wars,
like the British Navy like sailed in and like besieged
the capital. Like you know, but when people talk about monopolies,
they're talking about selling goods right right. And what Chillan

(01:31:31):
Robinson realizes very quickly is that hold on, this is
also true for employers, right if you are trying to
find a fucking job right under sort of like the
models of perfect competition that like neoclassical economics, the economics
that like you learned in school, they just normally assume that, oh, yeah,

(01:31:55):
you can just switch jobs really easily, so obviously companies
have to pay you.

Speaker 10 (01:31:58):
Right, But in most towns there's one major employer who
kind of sets the bar.

Speaker 5 (01:32:03):
Yeah, like here it's UVA.

Speaker 7 (01:32:05):
Yeah, like it's Walgreens or like Walmart, and like if
you ever had to find a job, Like you understand
how this works.

Speaker 5 (01:32:13):
I actually haven't, but I understand in the theory.

Speaker 7 (01:32:17):
To the listener, you've you've had to find a job.
Here's you're speaking to.

Speaker 5 (01:32:21):
You're speaking to the only person who's never applied for
the job.

Speaker 7 (01:32:25):
We literally never applied for a job.

Speaker 5 (01:32:28):
It's a complicated situation. Yeah, I've never Like, oh wow,
good for you.

Speaker 7 (01:32:32):
I love this for you. This rules for everyone else. Yeah,
Like it's really obvious that you know there exists conditions
where you have monopolies but for like hiring people. So
Joan Robinson like at this meeting with this classes coins
the term monopsony to be like, okay, there's one seller.

Speaker 10 (01:32:50):
Okay, I'm usually against a neologism, but I understand the
need for this word.

Speaker 5 (01:32:53):
I'm on board. Yeah, I'm on board with Joanne.

Speaker 7 (01:32:56):
It's a good word. She she's really cool. Yeah. I
I spread mentioned the caveat here, which is she does
do the like classic nineteen fifties communist thing of like
going to China and then getting led around on like
state sponsored tours and then coming back and assuming you
understand what's happening in communist China and that didn't go great,

(01:33:18):
but you know, a lot the rest of her work
is really good. And this is kind of where Planning
Money does a really interesting history skip, where in their
version of the story they go oh yeah, and then
everyone just kind of ignored it until recently it got
picked back up by these economists who were like, wow,

(01:33:39):
we did peer reviewed research and we found out that, like,
it turns out that yeah, actually there isn't perfect competition
in the labor market and that yeah, labor markets are
controlled by these monopolies.

Speaker 10 (01:33:50):
And I guess you have to do studies to prove things.
You can't just vibe it out.

Speaker 5 (01:33:55):
But I would say just the general vibe like I
could have told you that, I told you that, Mollie.

Speaker 7 (01:34:00):
Okay, I have such bad news for you, which is
we are going to meet the person in this story
whose idea it was to be like, hey, we should
like figure out how the economy works using data.

Speaker 5 (01:34:14):
That was a new concept for them.

Speaker 7 (01:34:16):
Yeah, yeah, was invented by a guy. We're good to
get to the story of the invention.

Speaker 5 (01:34:22):
Of and it was in like nineteen eighty seven.

Speaker 7 (01:34:24):
This is a sign I got. It was like the
thirties nineteen thirties when we invented this.

Speaker 5 (01:34:31):
It was in two thousand and four they brought math
into it.

Speaker 7 (01:34:34):
Oh god. One of my absolute favorite stories of all
time is, like, you know, in like the nineties, there
was like the craze over chaos theory, which I think
the only artifact of that is like the chaos theory
guy in Jurassic Park, one of my classes, Wings and
all these things happened. Like a chaos theory is it's
a it's a like a genuinely very interesting math concept.
But the thing about chaos theory is that it only

(01:34:56):
applies to things that are third order equations, a.

Speaker 5 (01:34:59):
Thing I definitely know what that is.

Speaker 7 (01:35:02):
Yeah, we could go off in a tangent on this,
but I'm just I'm just gonna tell the Econ show. Yes,
so everyone economics to me was like, oh my god,
there's this hot topic. But the problem is it doesn't
apply to the economic stuff people were doing in the
nineties because they don't use third order equations. They only
use second order ones because they're dumbasses. This is like
one of the trends of the show is that the
people who do mainstream economics are extremely dumb.

Speaker 10 (01:35:22):
And I've always had that feeling, but because I don't
understand the economy, it's hard for me to be sure.

Speaker 7 (01:35:27):
Yeah, well it's it's because it's ideologically motivated, right, you
know the reason that you study economics in high school?

Speaker 5 (01:35:34):
Who studies economics in high school?

Speaker 7 (01:35:35):
I didn't know there are like economics classes in high school, right,
like that? Right? Sorry when I say studies, like yeah,
like you had to take an econo great school. Yeah,
the reason there are economics classes in high schools is
not to teach people economics. It's specific it was specifically
designed as an anti communist thing to like teach kids
how capitalism really works through like again a model where

(01:35:58):
they don't teach you that monopolies exist, and you know, obviously,
like some of this has been incorporated into more modern stuff,
like the cause of a monopsony like kind of has
entered into the lexicon of like the economics you get
taught as like a little tiny baby child, which is
not actually economics. It's literally propaganda. That's what it was

(01:36:18):
designed to be.

Speaker 10 (01:36:19):
I mean, how fun to get to pretend to be
a scientist when you don't do real math and really
you're just a propagandist.

Speaker 7 (01:36:25):
Oh, it's so fun. It's so fun. One of the
other things like if if you're ever like in university
settings and you want to just like listen to someone
complain about shit for a while, go talk to the
math people about the ship people get Nobel prizes for
in economics, where it's like this is like shit that
like a child who studies mathematics could do. The math
doesn't even have a Nobel prize, right if you want

(01:36:46):
to get like a Fields Medal, there's not.

Speaker 5 (01:36:48):
Nope, that's so sad for the math guys.

Speaker 7 (01:36:50):
Matho doesn't have one.

Speaker 13 (01:36:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 7 (01:36:51):
Well, and the other thing is econsoable price is fake too.
This is this is another thing that's important. It's not
one of the prizes that was set down by by Nobel,
which like the Nobel prices. They created their own.

Speaker 5 (01:37:02):
And the dynamite guy knew what he was doing.

Speaker 7 (01:37:04):
Yeah, but it's like literally like the Central Bank of
Sweden made their own and called it a Nobel and
it's not a real one. It's a fake one.

Speaker 5 (01:37:13):
Wait, so you're saying that if we are confident enough.

Speaker 7 (01:37:16):
In our assertion, oh, yeah, we could just make a Nobel.

Speaker 5 (01:37:19):
We could tell people that we are Nobel Laureates in podcasting.

Speaker 7 (01:37:22):
Yeah, I mean as a huge thing. You also have
to have an extraordinarily large amount of money to do
to do propaganda for this, because the reason this works
is that the Nobel Prize in economics is also a
propaganda effort, right, And one of the ways you can
tell us a propaganda effort is that they didn't give
what a Joanne Robinson, who was one of the most
influential economists who has ever lived.

Speaker 5 (01:37:42):
Justice for Joanne genuinely like it's it's outrageous.

Speaker 7 (01:37:46):
It's just like one of the few things even to
the people who hate her are like, yeah, no, she
should have gotten one because she's one of the people
who invents the idea that competition isn't perfect, Like she
invents imperfect competition where there's like monopolies and shit, this
is all like there's something that's like foundational to like
everyone's to some extent understanding of economics, but most of

(01:38:06):
our ideas are completely ignored and saying like monopsony is
like a thing that you put in textbooks. But then
when you're trying to like you know, you're you're an
economist that like not even like the fucking Heritage Institute
or Heritage Foundation or whatever you're at, like a just
like a random economics think tank, right, Like you don't
take Knopsony into account when you're like, hey, we can't
raise the minimum wage because if you raise the minimum wage,

(01:38:28):
then everyone's going to get fired. And it turns out
to like, well, no, that's not true. And the reason
that's not true is because if you assume that neoclassical
economics is real, is that companies aren't hiring people at
like the lowest possible wage that like that they could
do without someone going to somewhere else. They're hiring them
even lower than that because they can suppress the wages

(01:38:50):
because where the fuck else are you going to work? Right, right?

Speaker 10 (01:38:53):
But also like people like human behavior is not subject
to the rules of mathematics in that straightforward kind of way.

Speaker 7 (01:39:00):
No, it's very dumb and like because this goes back
to something that's important to all of this, which is
that like economics as a field is not it's not
a science. It doesn't come from science, it comes from
moral philosophy.

Speaker 5 (01:39:14):
The economy guys they're always saying stuff.

Speaker 10 (01:39:16):
They're just like confidently asserting something and showing me a
graph that's just like, does not reflect my lived reality
at all.

Speaker 5 (01:39:22):
But they're very confident about the graph.

Speaker 7 (01:39:24):
No. Well, and that's the thing because because because it's
originally philosophy.

Speaker 5 (01:39:27):
It's like, no, the economy is going great. It's like not,
we're right, not from not in my house.

Speaker 7 (01:39:31):
No, it's like it's fucking bullshit. That's a reflection of
the fact that economics as a discipline works backwards from
the way that a science works, which is economics starts
out with assumptions about how humans work, right. It starts
out with the assumption that, like everyone's like a rationally
calculating actor who's like seeking to maximize their own utility.

Speaker 5 (01:39:51):
And I've never met that person. Yeah, it's philosophy. I
actually no, I.

Speaker 10 (01:39:54):
Love maximizing utility. Don't get me started on maximizing my
economic utility.

Speaker 7 (01:39:59):
It's literally utilitarianism, right. It's not something that's derived from
from empirical data. It's it starts with an assumption about
how things work and then projects that assumption onto the world.

Speaker 10 (01:40:12):
I don't want to be melodramatic, but I'm having a
breakthrough here in my understanding of what economics is I
thought they were just being dumb before suddenly I see
it completely differently.

Speaker 7 (01:40:24):
Yeah, it's ideologically motivated reasons they have. They have a
philosophy they've attempting to mathematically define, like project their philosophy
onto the world, and it doesn't work very well because
it's philosophy. It's not right.

Speaker 10 (01:40:36):
They're trying to prove a conclusion rather than map reality.

Speaker 7 (01:40:40):
Yeah, they're going backwards. Yeah, and this is something that
we're going to get into in a second. But first
we're going to get into are the products and services
that support this podcast? Wow?

Speaker 5 (01:40:49):
Speaking of the economy.

Speaker 1 (01:40:50):
Woo, we are back.

Speaker 7 (01:41:04):
So one of the things that's actually interesting about the
story of Joan Robinson is that there's a reason why
almost no one, I mean, I don't know that people
people listening to this podcast have a higher likelihood of
knowing who Joan Robinson is than like almost any other
group of people on Earth. But like, there's a reason
why she's not extremely well known by normal people.

Speaker 5 (01:41:26):
I'm gonna be so honest with emia.

Speaker 10 (01:41:28):
The only economists I know are the ones that Jabier
and Malay named his clone dogs after.

Speaker 7 (01:41:34):
That makes sense. Well, like people think you've heard of you,
like you've heard of like Adam Smith.

Speaker 5 (01:41:38):
Right, that's true. That's not one of the clone dogs.

Speaker 7 (01:41:40):
John Robinson is an economist who is important enough that
like you should know who she is.

Speaker 5 (01:41:45):
Yeah, but he would not have named one of the
clone dogs after her. I think they're I think they're
all boys. No, absolutely not. He probably like he would
chainsaw her.

Speaker 7 (01:41:52):
It's bad. But the reason that you don't know who
she is, and the reason that Monopsony kind of like
sat in the closet of mansion economics until people started
digging it out recently, is because John Robinson is part
of a tradition of heterodox economics, which is it's you know,
the economics that's not the mainstream ones, and all of

(01:42:14):
those people who got systematically purged from every academic institution
over the span of about thirty years by the neoclassical
economists because.

Speaker 5 (01:42:23):
The government doesn't want you to know their ideas.

Speaker 7 (01:42:25):
I mean, like well, like like genuinely what happened was
it was like it was it was a bunch of
these people like hired by capitalists in order to do
propaganda for them, and they went through and systematically took
over and purged all of the country's economics departments.

Speaker 10 (01:42:38):
If what she's saying is the entire framework of your
worldview just like functionally doesn't work.

Speaker 5 (01:42:43):
Yeah, yeah, that's that's not a good vibe for them.

Speaker 7 (01:42:47):
So let's talk about the kind of tradition that John
Robinson operates in, because this is actually a story that
really really tangentially the planet money people kind of allude
to and then ever talk about again even though it's fascinating.
So John Robinson is I guess you could call her

(01:43:08):
one of the sort of first people in what you
would call the post Kinesian tradition.

Speaker 5 (01:43:13):
Absolutely, I'm always saying that, do you know who Canes
is an economist? Was his name Maynard?

Speaker 7 (01:43:19):
Yeah, John Maynard Kanes. Okay, he's like, like if you
remember one thing about Canes, like if you need to
just be like you have a flash card, you need
to be like someone says Canes, he's the I guess,
like the Cetagal terms like countercyclical spending. But he's he's
the guy who's like, what economy bad, government should spend
money in order to make economy not bad. Again, that's

(01:43:43):
like the most basic part of Kanesianism.

Speaker 5 (01:43:45):
And that's all I need.

Speaker 7 (01:43:46):
Yeah, But like the thing about Caynes is that like
he wants like a nicer version of capitalism, but he
is like a capitalist, and so there's a sort of
miliu around him that John Robinson is kind of part of.
But there's a lot of elements of it. And people
who Canes like take stuff from who are extremely obscure

(01:44:07):
now because you know, Canes did a version of it
that like took the radicalism out. I promised earlier you
were going to get to the guy who like invented
the concept of actually doing scientific studies for macroeconomics. That
reason that makes me.

Speaker 5 (01:44:24):
So mad that the answer to that question isn't the
first guy who put math in who decided that we
should do math and economics. Oh, the first guy that
did it, the first economists, right, the guy even been
in economics.

Speaker 7 (01:44:36):
Right, economists do a bunch of math. It's just not math, that's.

Speaker 5 (01:44:41):
But like we should study the currently existing reality.

Speaker 7 (01:44:46):
Yeah, the world first.

Speaker 10 (01:44:48):
Right, it's just like trying to force reality into this
chart that I made.

Speaker 5 (01:44:52):
That's awesome.

Speaker 7 (01:44:54):
Yeah, And so the guy who was like, hey, what
if we observed reality? His name is Michael good for him?

Speaker 5 (01:45:01):
Great dub Michael.

Speaker 8 (01:45:03):
He rocks.

Speaker 7 (01:45:04):
Yeah, he has a long and convoluted history of stuff.

Speaker 5 (01:45:10):
Yeah, I'm gonna go ahead and say I don't endorse
everything he did. I don't know anything about him.

Speaker 7 (01:45:13):
Honestly, he kind of rocks. He's so he COLLECKI, like
foundationally is a Marxist, right, It's not sure that he's
from this school, but he's the guy from which one
of the major schools of Marxist economics is born, which
is called the Monopoly capital school, who are kind of
the Marxist version of the people who were like, oh

(01:45:33):
my god, hold on, monopoly has gotten so out of hand.
We have to change how our economics work. Robinson kind
of discovers Kaleki a little bit later in her career.
It's sort of like a forties thing, right, She's originally
writing about emperor competition and like monopsony in.

Speaker 4 (01:45:49):
Like the thirties.

Speaker 7 (01:45:50):
But Colleki's one of the people who is responsible for
a bunch of these ideas around, like him and Robinson
are responsible for a bunch of the ideas around. Like okay, yeah, actually,
it turns out that everything we've been talking about is
like the world is composed of monopolies and monoposes and
everything exists at best in the state of hypercompetition. And

(01:46:15):
this this becomes kind of its own school, and like
you know, it branches out in a bunch of different
ways through the work of some other people who who
start to look at like how is price set? And
this is something that we've talked about on this show before.
So so like, okay, if you've ever seen the graph

(01:46:38):
that like all of the econ people use where it's
like prices, supply and demand, right.

Speaker 5 (01:46:43):
What is it?

Speaker 7 (01:46:45):
Well, okay, so at a certain point and we've talked
about this on the show before, our friends as Strange Matters,
the magazine Strange Matters, I have written about this a lot.
If you like, ask a person it's funny. I actually
did this by accident with a fringe who runs like
a very very small business. Well it's not that small,
but like run runs runs like a very very small business.

(01:47:05):
And I asked her, like she was talking about, like, okay,
how do we figure out how to like price something?
And I talked to her about it and she goes, yeah,
it's cost plus markup right. And the thing about price right,
is price is not set by a graph, like prices
are set by a person in an office who figures

(01:47:25):
out what the price is going to be, right, and
the way that they do that is cost plus markup.
It's like, how expensive was the item for us to obtain,
and then what's the like additional price that we need
to sell it for in order to both make profit
and pay everyone. And this is really obvious to like
anyone who's done a job, but like, well, yeah, no, shit,

(01:47:48):
of course it's costless markup. In economics, this is considered
an extremely radical idea.

Speaker 5 (01:47:53):
I guess you know.

Speaker 10 (01:47:54):
In this, in this supply and demand model, it's just
like whatever people are willing to pay, you just keep
in create seeing the price until demand drops off and
then you back off a little.

Speaker 7 (01:48:03):
Yeah. In economics, that's called like companies being like price takers.
The theory and like normal economics quote unquote is that
companies they don't set prices. They take the price from
like what people are willing to pay, and that's objectively
not true.

Speaker 5 (01:48:20):
They're just constantly standing there tweaking the dial.

Speaker 7 (01:48:23):
Yeah, it's like no, no, no, no, no, no, like just
just on an objective level, what's happening is is you
know this, this is what's called like administrative prices, right,
and this is this is like the basic like one
of the basic revelations of like post Kanes in economics
is that price is set by a person who sets
it by cost plus markup.

Speaker 5 (01:48:42):
And there's the precog who floats at a pool of
goo and just into it's the prices.

Speaker 7 (01:48:48):
Yeah, they like see the data. It's like no, no, no, no, no,
it's literally just a person they set the price. It's
cost plus markup. There's some like psychology stuff there about
like what kinds of prices will break a consumer's loyalty
to like a store, right, because if you like raise
the price at a store too much, people will stop
shopping at the store. But like that's like the way

(01:49:10):
this stuff actually works. And this is one of the
big post Knesy and innovations is like, Hi, we're trying
to figure out how price works. So we went and
we asked a bunch of people how it works. A
remarkable choice, yeah, right, ah God, But this is an
issue for neoclassical economics because the whole like supply and

(01:49:34):
demand setting price is like the basis of their whole thing,
and it's the basis of all of their politics. Now,
at this point, we need to talk about the thing
that's legitimately complicated. Before we get into that, We're going
to talk with something that's not complicated, which is how
to use these products and services.

Speaker 5 (01:49:55):
Wow, we're actually doing the economy right now.

Speaker 7 (01:49:58):
We are.

Speaker 1 (01:50:10):
We are back.

Speaker 7 (01:50:11):
Okay, so we're gonna stop doing the economy. And the
reason we're going to stop doing the economy is that,
you know, when I talked about there being an ideological
purge right people, a Strange Matters wrote about this economist
named Frederick Lee who was an IWW member and who
was one of the sort of I don't know, like
the guy trying to pull the five thousand different strands
of heterodox economics together. And he writes a really really detailed,

(01:50:36):
in depth analysis of at each individual school, how did
the neoclassical people come in and purge everyone and then
maintain control of it. And one of the ways you
can tell that this isn't about who is correct, it
is about who has power is something called the Cambridge
Capital controversy, which I'm going to assume Mali you have

(01:50:57):
you haven't heard of this.

Speaker 10 (01:50:58):
No, I was just really sort of marveling and turning
that phrase over in my mind.

Speaker 5 (01:51:02):
It's not about who is correct, it's about who has power. Yeah,
I'm gonna store that one away. That's a good turn
of phrase.

Speaker 7 (01:51:09):
It's a good way of understanding this, and it's a
good way of understanding the central thing of like, hey,
why did everyone kind of ignore monopsony for eighty years?
And it turns out that the answer is that being
right doesn't do anything in economics.

Speaker 5 (01:51:27):
That's heartbreaking.

Speaker 7 (01:51:28):
Yeah, it's bleak. And some of these people people who
have institutional power. So one of the things that Joan
Robinson is most famous for doing is her and her
collaborator Piero Saraffa, who's another whole story, who's an extremely
wild guy. Saraffa is the other person who a bunch
of this, like heterodox economics is based off of. There's

(01:51:48):
a large extent to which heterodox economics means that, like,
you think Saraffa was right instead of the Chicago School people,
and like the neoclassical people or Marx or you're sort
of like fusing the two of them. And he and
Joe and Robinson are writing out of Cambridge, the one
in England. But then there's also a whole bunch of

(01:52:09):
neoclassical economists are at Cambridge, the one in Massachusetts.

Speaker 5 (01:52:13):
They really can't be doing that. Yeah, well, we got
to rename at least one of them.

Speaker 7 (01:52:17):
And they fight it out. That's why it's called the
Cambridge capital controversy. They know more. Yeah, so, okay, the
thing that they're fighting about is extremely convoluted. At some point, Mollie,
I'm gonna drag you on here and we're gonna do
the actual full version of it. But the short version
of it is really funny. And the short version of

(01:52:42):
it is that this is a fight about Okay, so
you have like two different kinds of what are called
capital goods. So you have like, I don't know, I
think the capital's power one. It's like tools that make
ice cream and tools that make airplane And the question
is how do you figure out how much those tools

(01:53:03):
are worth together?

Speaker 5 (01:53:04):
Well, are you selling ice cream on the airplanes?

Speaker 7 (01:53:07):
You know they where you're selling them? Doesn't taste really,
I just think.

Speaker 5 (01:53:13):
Is there synergy at play here?

Speaker 12 (01:53:14):
Mia?

Speaker 5 (01:53:15):
Like, well, I'm actually.

Speaker 7 (01:53:17):
One of the legitimately the idea that you could use
the same equipment to do multiple things, is like a
really serious problem for an enormous number of economic schools.
Like it's like real bad. It's like kind of it's
kind of even bad for like the mathematics behind like
classical Marxist political economy. It's it's it's really bad for

(01:53:40):
like the classical people. It's not great.

Speaker 5 (01:53:43):
So my new airline where everyone gets a free ice
cream is really throwing a wrench into this.

Speaker 7 (01:53:48):
Yeah, well, as long as as long as the same
machines can either be making ice cream or you can
be making airplane and you can't tell which one.

Speaker 5 (01:53:57):
What are they teaching at economy school? What if even happening?
So we were arguing about ice cream machines, Well.

Speaker 7 (01:54:04):
So so what what they're what they're arguing about, right,
is if you are doing like normal neoclassical economics, can
you point at like factories and go how much is
this worth? And this is a real problem because it
turns out that the way the neoclassical economists do this

(01:54:24):
is circular. So, okay, you're trying to figure out how
much money a factory is worth. I'm going to quote
here from the book Capital Is Power which has a
very good explanation of what's happening here. The money value
of any capital good, that is, the amount investors are
willing to pay for it, is the present value of
its expected future profits, computed by discounting this profit by

(01:54:47):
the prevailing rate of interest. So value equals expected profit
divided by rate of interest. So basically what they're saying
here is that, like, okay, you're trying to figure out
how much money is the factory worth. The amount of
money the factory is worth depends on how much money
you make from using the factory to make a plane
or make ice cream. That's like basically what that's saying,

(01:55:08):
and then there's a discounting rate because you're making that
money in the future.

Speaker 10 (01:55:12):
The problem with all of these principles is it's a
perfect blend of stuff that's like completely fucking obvious, like
statements of observed reality. Yeah, and then also stuff that
somebody just made up based on a feeling that they had,
and you can never.

Speaker 5 (01:55:26):
Tell which one you're doing, you know what I mean?

Speaker 10 (01:55:28):
Like, yeah, like what the factory is worth is based
on how much money it can make, obviously.

Speaker 7 (01:55:33):
But here's the problem. This is one of those you know,
you know, the Calendart Hawes meme where it's like you
can divide everything into two categories. This one surprisingly seems
like it observed. Reality is actually bullshit because because the
problem is all right, so, okay, so in order to
find out the value of the factory, you need to
know what the profits are going to be.

Speaker 10 (01:55:53):
Well, I thought the value of things. I thought the
price of things was set by supply and demands. The
value of the factories whatever, someone's willing to pay for it.

Speaker 7 (01:56:00):
Right, But here's the issue though, Like that's like sort
of true.

Speaker 5 (01:56:04):
No, I'm just making a jug that like prices and
values appear to be disconnected.

Speaker 7 (01:56:07):
Legitimately, that is drilling into the problem with what's happening here,
which is that, okay, but how do you know how
much money the factory is it going to be worth?

Speaker 10 (01:56:15):
So we're saying like the factory has an inherent value
versus the factory has a price.

Speaker 7 (01:56:19):
Yeah, so our price.

Speaker 5 (01:56:20):
Is not reflect an inherent value.

Speaker 7 (01:56:22):
So this is also kind of the core of this issue, right,
which is like.

Speaker 5 (01:56:25):
That money isn't even real.

Speaker 7 (01:56:27):
Well yeah, but it's like, okay, if if you want
to compare how much two different types of machinery are worth.
You need to compare them in terms of money. Because
they're making two different things. You have to be able
to compare them. But the problem is the moment you
start doing that, you then have to go, Okay, how
much is it worth? And how much is it worth?
In theory is like it's it's like marginal utility. Right,

(01:56:48):
So in order to know how much the machine is worth,
you have to know how much money it can make.
But in order to know how much money it can make,
you need to know how much the machine is worth.
The issue here, right, is that you're trying to find
one price for how much the factory is worth. But
you can't find that one price without knowing how much

(01:57:10):
profit you're getting from using the factory to make the thing.
But you could have multiple different levels of profit from
that same factory. The problem is, how do you determine.
You know, you could make ten dollars in the factory,
where the factory could also make twenty dollars. How do
you figure out which one of those it is? Because
that's what determines the value the factory is how much

(01:57:32):
money it makes. So okay, you turn around to the
neoclassical theory of how you figure out what the profit is.
But that theorem requires you to know the marginal utility
of the factory. So it requires you to know how
much profit you're going to get from using the tool. Right,
you have to know how much the tool is worth
in order to figure out how much a profit is.
But then you have to figure out in order to

(01:57:52):
figure out.

Speaker 10 (01:57:53):
So this is why they just make stuff up, because
otherwise they get trapped in the infinite loose.

Speaker 7 (01:57:56):
Yeah, it's worse than that, because the value of the
factory depends on how much money you're going to make
from the ice cream. But how much money you make
from the ice cream depends on how expensive it is
to have the ice cream machine. Right, So they're both
set by each other. Right, If you only have one
of them, you can't calculate the other one. They're both

(01:58:20):
like X and Y, and in order to figure out
what one of them is worth, you already have to
know the other one.

Speaker 5 (01:58:26):
Right, you need a constant at some point.

Speaker 7 (01:58:28):
Yeah, and legitimately, and this is a shit show because
it means that you actually can't figure out how much
the capital goods are worth in order to move on
to stage two of the process, where you figure out
the profit because you already need to have the answer
to the question you are asking, and so like this
is an issue bad enough that the IMF publishes these

(01:58:51):
or I think it's maybe it's the World Bank publishes
these like giant tables of like the value of capital
stocks right in a country. Well, they'll go through there.
They're trying to produce economic data about like a country,
and they're like, okay, like how much are the factories worth?
And the people who are trained to produce these books,
there's multiple different values that these factories could have depending

(01:59:12):
on how much money they make, and they're literally just
chose to choose one of them, like at random. They're like,
fuck it, pick one.

Speaker 10 (01:59:19):
This is not making me more confident about the economy.

Speaker 7 (01:59:22):
No, Well, but this is a shit show because because
this is what this fight is about. It's about like
the whole Cambige capital controversy is is like Joan Robinson
going hold on. In order in order to like figure
out your equation for how price works, you need to
know something that you can only figure out by knowing
the price already.

Speaker 5 (01:59:41):
Well, that's why you just feel the price in your heart.

Speaker 7 (01:59:44):
Well, yeah, but this causes, this causes like a decade
of like fighting about this all of the like famous
neoclassical economists. Actually, ho, can you list a Javier's dogs?

Speaker 5 (01:59:55):
Yeah, okay, so Milton from Milton Friedman, Murray from Murray
ro barred, and two dogs, one Robert, one Lucas for
Robert Lucas Junior.

Speaker 7 (02:00:05):
Wow. He actually, I think he actually dodged all of them.
I think I think he meant by bye by not
naming someone. Paul Samuel said, I think he actually dodged it.

Speaker 10 (02:00:15):
He considers these dogs to be Conan's offspring, so these
are all clones of his dog Conan. He considers the
dogs to be Conn's offspring and thus his own grandson's
because he believes the dog is his son.

Speaker 7 (02:00:26):
He's fucking Christ anyway.

Speaker 10 (02:00:29):
Yeah, but that's the only reason I know any of
those people are.

Speaker 7 (02:00:32):
Oh my god, wait, hold on, hold on, I'm sure
I'm not looking at at which Robert is this named
after Robert.

Speaker 10 (02:00:38):
Lucas Junior from the University of Chicago.

Speaker 7 (02:00:41):
Oh, he dodged it. It was it was mostly the
other Robert Robert Slowell sloow. God damn. I think I
think he actually dodged having any of his dogs be
named after the people who got their asses kicked in this.
I think he managed to do it. So Paul Samuelson
is like after Milton Freedmen and maybe Hyek. He's like

(02:01:02):
probably the third most influential neoclassical economists, and he's like
one of the people at the American Cambridge who are
like arguing with like neoclassical people and they lose. They
just straight up lose this fight because they're wrong. And
the consequence of them being wrong is every single thing
they've ever written is wrong. Because if you can't calculate

(02:01:22):
how much a factory is worth, literally nothing you've ever
written functions that's so funny. They can't do it.

Speaker 5 (02:01:30):
Didn't of them kill themselves like.

Speaker 7 (02:01:33):
You would think, But they were just like, oh well,
we'll just guess.

Speaker 10 (02:01:37):
Because I like a lot of people were like at
the end of their careers. Right, you're like sixty seventy
years old, you're like professor emeritus of macroeconomics at Cambridge
or we're never the fuck and do you find out
that everything you've ever written was no longer Like we
all agree that everything you ever said was wrong.

Speaker 7 (02:01:52):
How do you do Here's the thing. They just kept
writing as if they didn't lose. Okay, this is why
I was saying, it doesn't matter.

Speaker 5 (02:02:00):
Who can say who wins or loses, because it's all fame.

Speaker 7 (02:02:03):
Yeah and so and so likely. Literally what they did
is is that this stuff, this fight never like broke
out of like academic economist circles, and so no one
today has any idea any of this shit happened.

Speaker 5 (02:02:14):
Good. No, because it doesn't mean anything.

Speaker 7 (02:02:17):
Yeah, well, I mean, idiot, it does in the sense
that life, to me, you can demonstrably prove that, like
these people can't tell you how much a factory is worth.

Speaker 5 (02:02:25):
I've read the Wall Street Journal. I know there's no
such thing as an economist.

Speaker 7 (02:02:29):
Yeah. Part of what's happening here is like the reason
we all intuitively do that is because these people win.

Speaker 10 (02:02:35):
Right, So this entire like academic field just kind of
shrugged and said, it doesn't matter.

Speaker 5 (02:02:40):
What we're saying doesn't mean anything.

Speaker 7 (02:02:41):
Yeah, there were like a couple of people who tried
to like actually work with it, and everyone eventually just
stopped paying attention. Legitimately, the answer for like modern economics
is just to pretend that it never happened and then
go like, oh, well, these people never produced anything of
note academically, and it's like, well, on the one hand,
that's like not true because the stuff that they did

(02:03:03):
right is really good. But also their descendants, yeah, didn't
get academic positions because you purge them all. And this
is this is one of these things where like part
of the reason that the new classical people took over
in the first place was because they thought that they
were right about this argument of like what caused the
seventies economic collapse, which had like supposedly disproved Kanesianism. But

(02:03:27):
then in this time period they got just obliterated, like
they have taken an L the size of which, genuinely,
I don't know if anyone in an academic field has
ever taken a bigger L than these people did in
this fight. They got just like beaten into pulp and
it just didn't matter, like Nailmi.

Speaker 5 (02:03:48):
Wolf finding out live on air that her entire book
was based on misunderstanding of a term.

Speaker 7 (02:03:53):
Yeah, it's it's like that shit like except this, this
is like every economist.

Speaker 5 (02:03:59):
Except in this In this case, they went on to
continue to produce work based.

Speaker 4 (02:04:03):
On that premise.

Speaker 7 (02:04:03):
Yeah, you know, but this is the part of the
story that like isn't in the accounts, you know, when
Planet Money has to explain, like why the work of
Joan Robinson, like isn't something that mainstream ECCONMYS pay attention to.

Speaker 10 (02:04:19):
Oh full circle, okay, yeah, that's where we were going.

Speaker 5 (02:04:23):
Yes, it's it's because.

Speaker 7 (02:04:25):
Like John Robinson had the temerity to ab a woman
b B a leftist and seeing not be one of
these like neoclassical freaks and and d she beat them.
Like John Robinson is one of the major people in
this fight.

Speaker 10 (02:04:40):
I should I should have had more faith that we
were coming back around. I thought we were I thought
we were lost. I was confused. No, I get it now.
So when they were writing about like it's so crazy
that nobody uses this term anymore, the underlying truth there
is that they are.

Speaker 5 (02:04:54):
This is why lossing over this.

Speaker 10 (02:04:56):
The fact that the reason this term isn't better known
is because they entire field of economics is based on
suppressing challenging truths.

Speaker 7 (02:05:05):
Yeah, and there's one other aspect too, which is the
economics is an example of how this works on like
a small scale, right, But this this happens on a
macro scale with just about everything that you consume, which
is there are two models for sort of suppressing how
information spreads and how like you know how social moup
has developed, where one you just suppress them or to

(02:05:28):
you co opt them and you do what's called recuperation.
And you know it is interesting, Like the concept monopsony
will appear sometimes like like in like textbooks, but they'll
just be like, oh, yeah, this is anotherything that can exist,
and like monopolies can also exist. Let's go back to
spending all of our time dealing with like a bunch

(02:05:49):
of stuff that's incredibly fake. And they will strategically like
misuse the concept of monopsony in order to deal with it,
like as a critique the recouper rate, like the word,
but then they won't use any of the political conclusions
of it.

Speaker 5 (02:06:05):
That's clever of them.

Speaker 10 (02:06:07):
That's clever of them, so that you don't go looking
for more about the term because you have it and
it's defanged and you don't need to worry about it.

Speaker 14 (02:06:13):
Yeah, And the thing is that the political consequences of
it is this is the thing I talked about at
the beginning, which is like, yeah, I menopstmally as a
concept is why you get paid one of the reasons
you get paid, like.

Speaker 7 (02:06:23):
Shit, And Joan Robinson's inclusion is like, yeah, capitalism is
an inherently exploited economic system.

Speaker 5 (02:06:29):
Yeah, that's the logical conclusion there, right, Yeah, but that's
not allowed.

Speaker 7 (02:06:34):
No, And so you know, like Robinson's legacy is that
part of her work is co opted and recuperated in
a way where they teach the tiniest part of it
that can't be used challenge a system, and the part
of it where she deals a kind of intellectual death
blow to an entire field of economics that in like

(02:06:56):
the history of academia. I don't know if any one
has ever been so decisive.

Speaker 5 (02:07:01):
We defeated intellectually, and yet they just sort of brushed
it off and moved on. Yeah, which I feel like
that is so damning, right that you're just I mean,
you've just admitted that everything you've ever said is based
on nothing. If you can just disregard this.

Speaker 7 (02:07:16):
Yeah, God, I can't find the exact quote, but Samielson
has this line about how like they need to just
treat it as an article of faith. That this can
be done, and they just kept going and it.

Speaker 5 (02:07:28):
Is just so you can't tell me this is a
science if you're like, well, it's just based on you
just have to have faith.

Speaker 1 (02:07:34):
You just have to believe.

Speaker 10 (02:07:35):
Yeah, I mean the economy has always put on tinker
Bell rules, right, Like you have to believe or it
won't work.

Speaker 5 (02:07:40):
You have to clap for her.

Speaker 7 (02:07:42):
Yeah, in order for the entire system that these people
are paid to propagate, because this entire school of economics
is created by a bunch of right wing billionaires to
get them together in order to push against like both
communism and like the Kynesian idea they should pay taxes.
This is something also, I guess I kind of want
to conclude about this. It's like there are a lot

(02:08:03):
of times where you see, like like a newspaper columnists
and they're saying the most unhinged thing you've ever seen,
or like you know, I'm gonna take I take a
very incendiary example, and you look at like Ezra Kleine,
and Ezra Kleine is like being like, oh, you have
to like take the ideas of like some random fucking
nazi seriously, and no, I don't, No, you don't. But

(02:08:24):
the but the reason he's saying this, it does it's
not even about what he believes.

Speaker 5 (02:08:30):
Oh, these people believe nothing.

Speaker 7 (02:08:31):
Yeah, this is what they're being paid to say because
Klein's job is to is to act as a way
to sell like fascist tech oligarchy to liberals. Like and
this is the same thing with like you get these
newspaper columnists who'll like say, like the most unhinged shit
you've ever seen. And yeah, they're saying that because it's
their job to produce this, right, Like, they're not acting

(02:08:52):
as individual people. They're acting as it cutouts and projections
of like the people who they've been hired.

Speaker 5 (02:09:00):
By, and those people have a monopsony on opinion. Yeah,
well every opinion, every opinion writer is saying the dumbest
shit you've ever heard because of monopsis.

Speaker 7 (02:09:11):
Well yeah, I mean, but like literally it's because they
can they can choose who the fuck to hire, right,
Like that's the actual reason. And you know, and like
journalism is one of these things where it's like you see,
newspapers have an incredible amount of power because there's like
seven fucking newspapers left and if you want to do journalism,
like you're fucked. You either like fall in line and

(02:09:33):
accept them paying you like absolute dogshit, or you go unemployed,
or you're like one of the very few people who
was able to like make a living doing this independently,
but like.

Speaker 5 (02:09:44):
Or you're us we found a way, yeah, or like
a rich and successful podcaster picks you out and goes, hey,
we're gonna pay you to do this, right, Like No,
But I think I think about that all the time,
that it really this is such a unicorn job because
almost every job in media you do, you have to
you have to suck it up and eat the ship,
and you have to say the dumbest thing anyone's ever heard,

(02:10:05):
because that's how you keep your job, and that's not
our reality. And I'm so grateful for that.

Speaker 7 (02:10:09):
Yeah, I think I think that's a good place to end.
I guess I don't know. We're going to end on
a hopeful note, which is we got well, okay, We're
gonna end on the cynical note, which is, like the
only way to have an even sort of good job
in this economy where employment is controlled by employers is
to get incredibly mined luck, like be the most lucky
person in the entire world.

Speaker 15 (02:10:29):
Yeah, so, I don't know if if you want to
live in a world where you don't have to win
the lottery in order to have like a pretty well
paid in order to I am so close to hitting
the median salary of assists white dude in the US.

Speaker 7 (02:10:43):
I'm so close. I can see, I can taste it.
If you want that.

Speaker 5 (02:10:47):
I love my union podcasting jobs.

Speaker 7 (02:10:48):
Got you gotta win the lottery or you got to
build a world where that's not how any of the
shit works, which is what Jolan Robinson would have wanted.

Speaker 12 (02:10:56):
Sorry, Joanne.

Speaker 3 (02:11:12):
Nostalgia is a relatively new feeling for me. I'm in
my mid twenties, and for the first time, I'm seeing
stuff from when I was a kid come back in style.
We are fully in the throes of two thousands of nostalgia.
I'm talking emo, Indie Slea's denim y two K standard
definition digital video and one of my favorites, the bubbly

(02:11:35):
frutiger aero design style that partially inspired Apple's new liquid glass.
But now that our cultural nostalgia cycle has cut up
to when I was a kid, I'm starting to realize
what kinds of things I'm nostalgic about. One of the
biggest is two thousand and eight's Lego Batman the video game.

(02:11:59):
This game is great, no dialogue, Danny Elfman, music, simple,
classic designs. This game is what introduced me to the
gothic art deco world of Gotham City and the dark
carnival of Batman characters growing up around the prairies of Saskatchewan, Canada.
This game was my window into the big city with

(02:12:20):
its cathedrals and skyscrapers, and likely planted the desire to
one day move to New York City. After a twelve
year hiatus, the fourth game in the Lego Batman series
comes out today, Lego Batman Legacy of the Dark Night,
a new installment that blends stories from across the Batman films,

(02:12:41):
shows and comics, featuring classic Lego puzzle gameplay with the
movement and combat of the rock Steady Arkham games. I
actually got to play a demo version of this new
Lego Batman game last October when I attended New York
Comic Con, the largest pop culture convention on the East
Coast and the most attended in North America. New York

(02:13:03):
Comic Con is a four day fan fest for Everything Superheroes, comics,
sci fi, and fantasy, held once a year at the
Javits Convention Center in Manhattan. This is it could happen here.
I'm Garrison Davis. Part of my intention in attending New
York Comic Con was to gauge how the big media
companies and pop culture in general was reacting to the

(02:13:25):
movement against wokeness, which was a large force throughout twenty
twenty five. One of the first panels attended was the
tenth anniversary panel for the TV show Mister Robot, with
creator Sam Smil and stars Raymon Malick and Christian Slater.
Most of the panel was spent reminiscing on the show's production,
which was probably what most fans want out of a panel,

(02:13:47):
but Mister Robot is a relatively political show. To his credit,
Ismael discussed the show's origins as an anti capitalist and
anti corporate hacker story inspired by the two thousand and
eight recession and the Arab Spring.

Speaker 16 (02:14:00):
I took away from that is that there was the
world felt in crisis. How naive was I back then
that that that was what crisis was like? But uh,
and and that these young people in not just Egypt,
but in the entire Middle East was using technology to
organize and start a revolution, and that really inspired a

(02:14:23):
lot of what of what the story of mister Robot
and and specifically the character of Elliott.

Speaker 3 (02:14:30):
Smel went on to call the show's imagined dystopia a
quote unquote Pleasantville compared to our current political situation.

Speaker 16 (02:14:39):
Honestly, I feel like the show we did was not
nearly as fucked up as what it would be like today.
I mean, it's like Pleasantville now.

Speaker 7 (02:14:58):
I mean.

Speaker 3 (02:15:00):
At a panel for the Tina Romero queer zombie movie
Queens of the Dead, transactor Jack Haven referenced then recent
and somewhat misleading reporting that the FBI was declaring trans
people as terrorists. In another panel, a trans comic artist
also mentioned that trans people were being designated as violent extremists.

(02:15:25):
This artist also discussed queer censorship in comics. She had
drawn a cover for the DC Comics series of a
character called Red Hood, but this cover was never released
because the comic series was canceled by DC after the writer. Also,
a trans woman made two posts joking about the death

(02:15:45):
of Charlie Kirk. Meanwhile, one of the Siskuy artists for
the hit series Absolute Batman. Drew art of Absolute Batman
snapping the neck of an ice agent literally at New
York Comic Con, and this artist continues to draw covers
for the series. Speaking of Batman, I also attended an

(02:16:05):
industry panel on Batman animation hosted by directors, character designers,
and showrunners James Tucker, creator of Batman, The Brave and
the Bold, and a producer for the show Batman Keeped.
Crusader mentioned having to ignore the anti woke backlash some
recent shows received for depicting certain characters as black or

(02:16:27):
gender swapped. Nerd culture has been dealing with this stuff
for a while. Gamer gait was a contributing factor to
the rise of the all Right, and since then pop
culture fandom has been one of the main battlegrounds in
which the culture war is waged. At New York Comic Con,
While hints of the domestic political climate did slip through

(02:16:48):
in brief moments during panels, the prevailing mode of the
convention was falling back on comic fantasy as an escape inwards,
but not really an escape out. It's like your parents
are fighting and rather than leaving the house or trying
to intervene. You crawl into your closet and hide with
your stuffed animals, video games, and comic books, soothing yourself

(02:17:12):
with the comfortable familiar. While walking around the convention floor,
I felt like I was a ghost trapped. In twenty nineteen,
this particular form of nerdy superhero fandom culture was stuck
in stasis, living in the undead husk of the MCU.
The main thing differentiating New York Comic Con from a

(02:17:35):
pure pre pandemic Avengers Endgame era time capsule was how
much it felt like an anime convention. I attended my
fair share of comic cons in the twenty teens, but
the volume of anime stuff at New York Comic Con
really surprised me. New York Comic Con itself has had
a troubled history with anime. Shortly after New York Comic

(02:17:57):
Con was created in twenty and six, the same company
behind the convention also started an anime con called New
York Anime Festival. But as the New York Comic Con
rose in popularity, it started to eat away at New
York Anime Festival. The two conventions merged in twenty ten,
but that meant that superheroes and anime had to compete

(02:18:18):
for time and space at the convention, and around twenty ten,
superheroes were winning that battle. To quote Anime News Network,
the New York Anime Festival was quote slowly and quite
literally shoved into the basement at the job At Center
over the years by New York Comic Con management until
it ceased to exist altogether unquote. Come in twenty twelve,

(02:18:41):
the New York Anime Festival component was phased out altogether.
At the time, anime and manga were not doing so
well in the United States, having just suffered a market
crash due to a combination of factors related to the
Great Recession, the pivot from DVD to digital, the bankruptcy
of the Borders bookstore, the shutdown of the US distributor

(02:19:05):
Bandai Entertainment, and manga publisher Tokyo Pop, followed by the
twenty eleven Tokohu earthquake, which disrupted manga and anime production.
So it wasn't at all surprising that Western media and
the then ascended superhero genre dominated the New York Comic
Con show floor. But now, oh, how the tables have turned.

(02:19:27):
Come twenty twenty five, the exhibition boots for major Western
pop culture companies were outnumbered and dwarfed in size by
Japanese animation, manga and video game booths. This humiliation wasn't
isolated to the show floor. Even before entering the exhibition space,
huge banners hung in front of the main entrance for

(02:19:49):
anime like My Hero, Academia, Digimon Gundam and the new
manga Love Bullet banner ads for Crunchy Rolls New Manga
Reading Platform covered the glass walls at the Javits Convention Center.
The only banner that rivaled the anime ones in size
was for the Anne Rice Gay Vampire Show on AMC.

(02:20:10):
Once you got to the show floor, the company with
the biggest single presence was Japanese entertainment company Bandai Namco.
This was by a large margin. The Bandai Namco presence
was significantly bigger than the Marvel and DC booths combined.
Most but not all, of the Japanese and South Korean

(02:20:30):
companies were concentrated in the middle of the exhibition floor,
next to the main entrance. On the north side. Toy
Animation of Dragon Ball and One Piece Fame had their
booth right at the show floor entrance. And it was
bigger than the Nickelodeon, Avatar and Paramount Star Trek booths combined.
The Adult Swim and HBO Max booths were even smaller combined,

(02:20:54):
They took up significantly less floor space and were less
busy than the exhibition booth for the Japanese and a
company behind Chainsawman, Jujitsu, Kaizen and the Attack on Titan
Finale Studio Mappa, who had a booth at New York
Comic Con for the very first time. Anime and manga
distributor Crunchy Role had a larger presence on the show

(02:21:15):
floor than the combined presence of publishing giants Scholastic and
Penguin Random House. The Crunchy Role booth was also bigger
than the one for DC Comics. Manga publisher Viz Media
has maintained a large presence on the show floor for
the past decade. Viz Media is the largest physical publisher
of graphic novels in the United States with twenty five

(02:21:38):
percent of the market share, and is owned by the
same company that publishes shown in Jump, which is the
largest physical comic publisher in the world. The biggest global
publisher of comics in general is the South Korean digital
comic platform Webtune, who also had a comparatively large exhibition booth,
as did Japanese video game companies Nami and Capcom. The

(02:22:02):
video game Ninja Gaidan four had a booth to itself,
and collectible card game company Boushi Road had a booth
rivaling that of card game Titan Wizards of the Coast.
Even the sort of third party merch slot that you
find at these types of conventions was selling more and
more anime stuff than I'd seen in previous years. Looking

(02:22:24):
back at the New York Comic Con twenty eighteen show
floor map, Bandai Mco. Had a much smaller booth, about
the same size as Dark Horse Comics. This was less
than one quarter of the size of Bandai's show floor
presence in twenty twenty five. Besides Bandai, the other animeor
manga related booths in twenty eighteen were for Dragon Ball,

(02:22:46):
Square Enix, and Viz Media. Looking back at the other
large booths from twenty eighteen feels like a snapshot from
a bygone age. Comedy Central, Rooster Teeth, Shira, Funko Pop,
and the TV channel. Of these, only Funko still had
a booth in twenty twenty five, and a much smaller

(02:23:07):
one at that as the company has suffered a massive
drop in sales and what was once a pop culture
giant is now in severe financial stress.

Speaker 5 (02:23:19):
It could happen here, well, return after.

Speaker 4 (02:23:21):
These messages we now returned.

Speaker 7 (02:23:28):
It could happen here.

Speaker 5 (02:23:31):
Outside the comic con environment. I have seen anecdotal evidence
of animes growing popularity. Besides random Instagram reels or TikTok videos,
the most common thing I see people watching while riding
the subway is anime. When I was in Berlin last
October covering a convention, on my way back to the Airbnb,

(02:23:54):
I came across a group of about fifty people cause
playing chainsaw Man because that night the chainsaw Man movie
released in German theaters. Most of the costumes worn at
a weekend Halloween party at the mood Ring nightclub in Brooklyn,
We're from anime. Also fun fact, Mayor old candidate zarmm

(02:24:16):
Donnie made an appearance at this party ahead of the
upcoming election. US Olympic figure skater and gold medalist and
Listen Lou talked about anime during interviews at the Olympics
and was seen carrying around a chainsaw Man plushy your
top five anime.

Speaker 11 (02:24:32):
Okay, I'm not going to rank these like in their
exact places, but Jujitsu guys and Chainsawman for sure.

Speaker 1 (02:24:38):
A new chapter dropped today, Actually Today's big day.

Speaker 4 (02:24:41):
Big day reader, Yes, okay, attack on Titan.

Speaker 7 (02:24:46):
Was airon Justified.

Speaker 4 (02:24:48):
Yeah, Madoka Magica and I think it's like could be
forgetting some but m soa.

Speaker 1 (02:25:00):
Graduation.

Speaker 3 (02:25:01):
But does this perceived rise in popularity actually reflect in
sales well. In September, the Demon Slayer movie Infinity Castle
won the US box office with a seventy million dollar
opening weekend, eventually earning almost eight hundred million dollars worldwide,
becoming the seventh highest grossing film of twenty twenty five

(02:25:24):
and the highest grossing international film in the United States,
surpassing the twenty five year record held by Crouching Tiger
and Dragon. In October, the chainsaw Man movie opened number
one at the US box office, beating the Bruce Springsteen
biopic starring Jeremy Allen White, which no one really saw.

(02:25:46):
The chainsaw Man movie grossed almost two hundred million dollars worldwide.
For the past eight years, Netflix has been heavily investing
in anime. Last summer, Netflix claimed that anime is watched
by half its global users. In twenty twenty five, Netflix
users watched almost nine billion hours of anime, a ten
and a half percent increase from twenty twenty four. In fact,

(02:26:10):
the rate of viewership growth for anime on Netflix is
ten times that of all other content on the platform.
In January of twenty twenty six, Netflix announced a new
deal with anime studio Mapa to exclusively stream a slate
of original Mapa shows. Polygon and Vox Media pulled over

(02:26:31):
four thousand people in twenty twenty four, and forty two
percent of gen Z participants in the US said that
they watched anime every week. But It's not just anime.
Manga exploded in international popularity over the pandemic and continues
to out sell American comics domestically. Manga sales have quadrupled

(02:26:53):
in the US since twenty twenty, reaching a yearly market
value of about one point three billion dollars by twenty
twenty three. Of the forty four point seven million graphic
novels sold by American bookstore chains and online sellers, twenty
one point eight million were manga. That's almost fifty percent

(02:27:15):
of sales. Coming in second place was comics for kids,
which made up about thirty eight percent of sales approximately
seventeen million copies. In twenty twenty three is the year
we have the most complete data on. Seven out of
the ten top selling comic book authors were Japanese, and

(02:27:35):
this is in the United States. Of the seven hundred
and fifty top selling comic books in the US, almost
four hundred were manga. Here's a clip of a PBS
news piece from twenty twenty four.

Speaker 4 (02:27:49):
Over the last few years, Japanese animation and comic books
have seen an explosion of popularity in the United States.

Speaker 11 (02:27:56):
We couldn't fill the stores fast enough.

Speaker 17 (02:27:58):
Barnes and Noble Senior director of Books, Shannondovido.

Speaker 11 (02:28:02):
The readers in the space are so voracious. It's a
good thing that the series are so long and so
beautifully drawn, because not only do they look for ten
other series to read once they finish one, they go
back and reread.

Speaker 17 (02:28:14):
Manga sales in the US quadrupled from twenty nineteen to
twenty twenty two, with a peak of twenty eight point
four million copies sold. It is now the fourth largest
fiction category overall in the United States, behind romance, thrillers,
and fantasy.

Speaker 11 (02:28:28):
It's one of our top ten subjects any day. During
the pandemic, it was in our top five pretty consistently.

Speaker 3 (02:28:36):
Meanwhile, shelf space for superhero graphic novels has been reduced
at Barnes and Noble the past few years, sometimes to
a single shelf, to make way for an expanding collection
of manga. Manga sales are also rising in the superhero
Holy of Holy's direct market comic bookstores, where manga was

(02:28:56):
up thirty three percent in twenty twenty five. The main
driver of sales for US comic publisher Dark Horse Comics
is through licensing manga like Berserk. So what might be
causing this? As pop culture has become one of the
main battlegrounds of the cultural war, maybe anime and manga

(02:29:16):
serve as a safe refuge from the divisive, all consuming
politics of the United States. A few months ago, we
got behind the scenes news about the end Or Press Tour.
Creator Tony Gilroy admitted in an interview with The Hollywood
Reporter that Disney requested Gilroy and the cast refrain from
using the words fascism and genocide in early promotion of

(02:29:41):
the show to avoid political outrage. When James Gunn described
Superman as a quote unquote immigrant, right wing news pundits
manufactured a backlash with a Fox News graphic reading super
woke and Jesse Waters saying you know what it says
on his cape MS thirteen. Former Superman actor Dean Kane

(02:30:02):
also complained about Superman becoming too woke a month before
he joined ICE as a part of a publicity stunt.
American culture war issues do effect the way our entertainment
industry operates, from what projects get greenlit to casting and
even corporate mergers. The Trump aligned Ellison family bought Paramount

(02:30:23):
in twenty twenty five and now seek to acquire Warner Brothers.
All that considered, it would seem that anime and manga
may not get nearly as cut up in our American
culture war debate and be relatively safe from both woke
and anti woke influence. Though this idea demonstrates the limits
of woke as an understanding of politics, because, of course,

(02:30:47):
Japanese media is in fact very political. Take Gundam, Godzilla,
attack on Titan, films like Love and Pop Jin Rao
or Kyoshi Kurosawa's new movie Cloud. A lot of Japanese
media russ with their extremely punitive judicial system and the
country's relationship with nationalism and the military, not to mention
the growing popularity of media that plays with gender and

(02:31:10):
sexuality like Yaowe and Boys Love, or the common presence
of gender non conforming characters in works like Jiu Jitsu,
Kaizen and chainsaw Man. And yet there aren't as many
anger YouTube videos to crying Woke chainsaw Man for having
a beautiful, non binary twink. America is just largely insulated
from Japanese political issues. Last February, Japan's Conservative Party swept

(02:31:35):
a parliamentary snap election, getting over two thirds control of
the lower house, the largest majority since World War Two.
But both chuds and woke alike can enjoy anime because
it feels outside American politics, and it is true that
Japanese creators aren't trying to navigate around a potentially hostile

(02:31:56):
American audience, which means they can do certain things that
American com companies might find too risky. The vitriolic reactions
to the Last Jedi definitely affected Disney's plans for Star Wars,
which soon prioritized the comparatively safe and sanitized Mandalorian TV show,
which has a movie version coming out this week. Most

(02:32:18):
of the non and Or Star Wars shows are primarily
trying to capitalize on nostalgia, whether for the original trilogy,
the prequels, or even the Clone Wars TV show from
the two thousands. And Or was championed and protected by
Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, but now she's transitioning out of
that role. In an exit interview with Deadline, Kathy Kennedy

(02:32:40):
alluded that going forward, Lucasfilm may not pursue risky projects
that break the mold. Quote you have to be bold,
and you have to be willing to take risks with
people and ideas. Otherwise you are just doing the same thing.

Speaker 4 (02:32:54):
Right now.

Speaker 3 (02:32:55):
We're in an era where companies are so risk averse,
and I get it. I hear all the comfort stations
they've got Wall Street to please, and I get it.
But I also believe that that's what contributes to things disappearing. Ultimately, quote,
this reliance on nostalgia and this extreme risk aversion has
landed us in a pop cultural recession, and Japan is

(02:33:18):
ready willing and able to fill the gap. This is
not simply a matter of thing Japan, but rather this
points to real differences in the production and distribution process.
A lot of manga is read in Japan. As popular
as it's getting here, we are nowhere close to how
much manga is read in Japan. Despite their smaller population,

(02:33:41):
Japan still is the primary producer and consumer of manga,
with a market value of almost four point five billion
dollars a year. Manga that sells really well often gets
adapted into an anime, and when that anime airs in
the US, the show then helps drive sale of the
original manga. The top selling manga in the US usually

(02:34:05):
follow whatever is the most successful currently airing anime adaptation.
In recent years, that's been Chainsaw Man, Spy Family, Demon Slayer, Berserk,
and ju Jitsu Kaizen. This model doesn't really exist.

Speaker 5 (02:34:19):
In the US.

Speaker 3 (02:34:20):
We don't have regularly airing twenty two episode seasons of
comic book shows anymore, especially any of that appeal to
a wide age range. The closest comparison is what Amazon
Prime has done with mini series like The Boys and Invincible.
But even the juggernaut that was the MCU did not
meaningfully boost sales of the original Marvel comics. It could

(02:34:44):
happen here will return after these messages we now return
to it could happen here. In an interview last January, Generally,
chief creative officer and president of DC Comics, talked about
why manga is beating Western comics. Quote, the stories told

(02:35:08):
in Japanese manga and anime are incredibly powerful. I often
find myself wondering what is missing in Western comics and
why aren't they able to achieve the same flavor. I
think manga has an advantage over American comics, which are
mostly about superheroes, and that's where the majority of sales
and readers are concentrated. In Japan, it's closer to literature

(02:35:30):
and anyone can read it. And it's not just hero stories.
There's a much wider range of genres, like stories about
cooking and soccer. You can draw stories from that. So
I'm very happy that manga has been so successful because
it gives me a goal to aim for. The manga
market is bigger than our industry, so the question becomes,

(02:35:51):
what can we learn from this? Jimily is right, but
this is only getting at one part of the equation.
It's not just that manga has a wide range of genres,
but also a constantly growing collection of original characters and
new series within familiar genres like Shonan or Boy's action comics.

(02:36:14):
Japan is actually generating new culture, not just recycling the
same four ips over and over again. Something like Chainsaw
Man has its fair share of Japanese and American inspirations,
but importantly, it's not a simple spinoff of one of
those franchises, but an evolution of the genre. Most manga

(02:36:35):
series have a defined beginning and end, usually written by
a single author, as opposed to the perpetual continuity of
most Western comics, where opening up an issue feels like
jumping into the middle of a story that's been going
on for years, passed on from one author to another.
This certainly has its own appeal, but it can be
challenging for new readers. When people first get into manga

(02:36:58):
or anime and finish a serieses, there's then this massive
backlog of different series, all with unique characters. A collected
manga volume is also much cheaper than a DC or
Marvel trade paperback, about ten dollars compared to twenty dollars
part of DC comics strategy of trying to learn from

(02:37:18):
manga has included the creation of a new line of
paperbacks called DC Compact Comics. Regular Western comics are significantly
taller and wider than manga, printed on glossy full color
paper about seven by eleven inches, whereas manga has cheaper paper,
usually in black and white, in a more compact package,
usually five by seven and a half inches. DC Compact

(02:37:42):
Comics offers quote unquote, new reader friendly stories in a
manga sized package at a cheaper price point, but this
is only copying the form factor of manga. In twenty
twenty three, three of the top five selling DC Comics
titles were old classics from the late eighties, Watchman, Sandman,

(02:38:03):
and Batman Year One. These are the type of comics
that DC combackt Comics is reprinting. It's all of these
old comics retrofitted into manga size for ten bucks, and
this is helping DC with sales, but it's still a
self cannibalizing process. These things can't run forever on a
nostalgia alone, and if they keep trying to, they're going

(02:38:27):
to lose to whoever can make new stuff on mass
which right now is Japan and South Korea, with China
ride around the corner. Even when DC is promoting new stories,
they're still relying on the same handful of characters, and
this has forced them to do a series of confusing
continuity resets to attract new readers, though this often has

(02:38:48):
the backfire effect of alienating existing readers and making the
whole ordeal seem too complicated to bother investing time and
money into. Japan does have their own version of IP recycling,
like Pokemon, Dragon Ball, and Gundam, but in a long
running series like Gundam, new installments are often completely separate

(02:39:09):
from one another, remixing key concepts in a new canon
or premis Gundam. Wing introduced Gundam to most Americans when
it aired on Tunami, and that show is entirely distinct
from the original Gundam series from nineteen seventy nine. This
continuity separation is continued with new installments like Iron Blooded
Orphans and Witch from Mercury. Something similar is attempted in

(02:39:32):
the Marvel Ultimate Universe or DC's Else Worlds, or more comparably,
in something like the critically acclaimed Absolute Batman or Absolute
Martian Manhunter series, but historically these concepts get roped into
multi verse slop and crossover events that feed into the
same nostalgia loops and franchise self cannibalization. The risk of

(02:39:55):
version among US media companies not only restricts what type
of stories can be told, but also who is telling them.
Even the new darling of DC Comics Absolute Batman, the
groundbreaking series that's redefining the character, is written by a
guy who has been writing Batman since Obama's first term.

(02:40:16):
At the New York Comic Con Batman Animation panel, I
recognized animators and directors that I've known of since I
was a little kid, because I watched the bonus features
on all of my Batman DVDs. The big announcement at
that panel was that they were adapting Batman Nightfall, a
comic book run from the nineties, into a multi part

(02:40:38):
animated film series. I also attended panels for Gundam and
The Chainsaw Man Movie, and the Japanese directors on the
panels were considerably younger. The Chainsawman Movie director is in
his thirties. Likewise, Gundam, Iron Blooded Orphan was written and
directed by people in their thirties, and we used to

(02:40:58):
let young people make cool superhero stuff. Batman, the animated
series was made by kids in the nineties. The problem
is those kids now in their mid sixties are still
the only people allowed to make Batman stuff. The manga
industry has pipelines for young writers and artists to submit
their work and get published because publishers are always looking

(02:41:21):
for new stories, and the huge popularity of digital comics
in Japan and South Korea also provides easier opportunities for
young creators to get their comics in front of a
lot of eyes. Keeping this balance of new stories and
old ip is working out pretty well for Japanese capital
on a global scale. They are much better at producing cheap,

(02:41:44):
widely available branded merchandise. Pokemon and Hello Kitty are the
top two highest grossing media franchises in the entire world.
Most of that is merchandising revenue. Out of the top
ten highest grossing media franchises, five are j Japanese. The
others are Winnie the Pooh, Mickey Mouse, Star Wars, Disney Princesses,

(02:42:05):
and the MCU. American audiences suddenly deciding that Goku rules
and Batman drools doesn't cause this state of affairs. Rather,
the opposite production and economic conditions determine which characters or
franchises are seen as cool and culturally relevant. As the

(02:42:25):
anime and manga industry has seen rapid growth the past
few years, there's been discussions within the industry about whether
anime should continue to cater to a Japanese audience or
try to appeal to the growing international market. In December,
the Japanese Prime Minister met with entertainment industry figures to
discuss how Japan's media market could expand overseas to enhance

(02:42:47):
their diplomatic power. Neon Genesis Evangelian creator Hideyakiano has argued
that anime should not adapt to a growing overseas audience,
but that the audience should adapt to uniquely Japanese aspects
of anime. The government of Japan has recently announced that
they are boosting state investment in the creation of Japanese

(02:43:07):
media like manga, anime, and music, and strengthening its global
distribution networks. While speaking on a government panel of experts,
Hideakiano pointed to labor shortages negatively affecting production studios, but
some of the new government efforts may actually do more
harm than good for the international market, like AI driven

(02:43:28):
translation tools and assistance in combating online manga piracy. Capital
goes through periods of growth and recession, while retracting capital
pushes living labor out and increasingly relies on dead labor,
like DC compact comics, reprinting the past over and over again.
This is the part of the cycle that Western companies

(02:43:49):
have been stuck in the past few years. But the
rise of anime itself grew out of the Great Recession.
It was the collapse of the DVD market and the
rise of internet piracy that laid the groundwork for early
streaming platforms like Crunchy Role, which would play a significant
part in pushing anime and manga into the mainstream come
the twenty twenties. According to the Japan Times, overseas sales

(02:44:13):
of Japanese content reached thirty seven point six billion dollars
in twenty twenty three, surpassing Japan's semiconductor exports. And if
you look at the revenue for Pokemon and Hello Kitty
compared to Star Wars, The MCU and Batman, it makes
sense that Japan wants to keep growing their international market.

(02:44:34):
But this commodity warfare is not a matter of East
versus West, but a battle between old and new capital.
Old capital in Europe and America had early global dominance.
Europe fell off, but then came Japan, and now South
Korea is growing and is gearing up to steal Japan's

(02:44:55):
lunch money. Last September, Disney announced a new partnership with
the South Korean com company Webtune to create a new
digital comic platform using the Marvel and Star Wars catalog.
But Marvel and DC aren't gonna overcome the dominance of
Japanese media by just reprinting old comics as web tunes
or manga sized packages. That doesn't fix the core issue,

(02:45:19):
which is caused by Western companies not investing in new labor.
They are increasingly relying on the dead labor of their
ubiquitous iconography. Even my beloved Lego Batman is an instance
of this. The game is primarily pulling from plots of
old Batman movies, with combat ripped from the Arkham games.

(02:45:39):
In the marketing for the game, the different Batman skins
literally have a nostalgia meter moves like DC Compact Comics
is an attempt to manage the crisis while still not
taking risks and investing in living labor. They don't want
to invest because superhero comics aren't growing, which just further

(02:45:59):
compounds the problem. Meanwhile, anime and manga are rapidly growing
in the United States, which is why Japanese companies are
buying almost half the show floor at New York Comic Con,
whereas ten years ago they were in a tiny corner
of the basement.

Speaker 4 (02:46:21):
I am wearing my women want Me, Fish Fear Me hat.

Speaker 3 (02:46:26):
This is it could happen here Executive Disorder, our weekly
years cast covering what's happening in the White House, the
crumbling world, and what it means for you. I'm name
joined by Proper Devans, Mi Hawong, James Stout and James's hat.

Speaker 2 (02:46:43):
And James's hat.

Speaker 4 (02:46:44):
What do they say, Garrison?

Speaker 2 (02:46:46):
Oh they hurt?

Speaker 5 (02:46:47):
I think I think the audience heard.

Speaker 4 (02:46:49):
Gotta leave that one in.

Speaker 2 (02:46:50):
Women fear him, Fish want him, something along those lines.

Speaker 4 (02:46:53):
Yeah, fish want me. It's a whole thing with fish.

Speaker 2 (02:46:56):
Fish fear women, women want fish, something like that. I
don't know. Del Toro made a movie about this, Yes
he did, Yes he did, Garrison, what happened did nothing
happen this week. I guess we can all go home.
It seems like a like like an uneventful news week, right, Yeah,
nothing happened with the I R S or anything. Shootings overseas?
All good, Cuba fine, nothing happening in Bolivia, nothing happening

(02:47:19):
with Roe Castro.

Speaker 5 (02:47:22):
Well that doesn't for it's not happening here.

Speaker 4 (02:47:25):
Thank you.

Speaker 5 (02:47:26):
We'll see you next week.

Speaker 2 (02:47:28):
Yes, it's not happening here. A podcast brought to you
by Marijuana.

Speaker 4 (02:47:35):
And Sleeping Pills. Should we start with some little things
and then move on to some big things. Not that
that little things are unimportant, but we're covering them in
less detail now and maybe more detail later. Yeah. Former
Interior Secretary now Representative Ran zin Key is once again
attempting to delist brown bears from the David Species Act.

Speaker 2 (02:47:55):
He hates those brown he fucking hat. They're trying to
do the same thing with grizzlies too. They're a little
further behind, but there's a push going right now. Like
grizzly numbers have recovered a lot. They're starting to do
bad stuff. We gotta start outing them.

Speaker 4 (02:48:10):
Yeah, if the grownd bears and britty bears are the same, species.
They're just brown bears would be the term I would
use to describe all of the Usus horribilis, I guess
in North America. Yeah, like Kodiak brown bear and grizly bear.
But yes, you're right. The justification that Zinki has given
is that populations are getting higher, and he specifically cited
a tragedy in which I hiker lost their life in

(02:48:31):
Glacier National Park and another attack on two tourists in Yellowstone. Yeah,
the Endangered Species Act has nothing to do with how
dangerous an animal is, not as population size really play
a role in these It's not that these bears attack
these people because they were hungry, because the other bears
that outcompeted them for food. Now, one person walked up
on a sow with cubs, so that group yep, came

(02:48:51):
across the sourer's cub and the other one. I think
the bear was probably foraging for berries and a person
surprised it in some thick timber. A lot of people
thought that they would dealist grizzlies, but they didn't straight
away in January and they so if I haven't, I'd
write a whole two thousand words of this. When he's left.
If you want to learn more about bears, a lot
of a lot of bear content. We will also bring
you a bear episode in the coming weeks in which
I talked to Molly about bears, because it seems like

(02:49:13):
you like me talking to Molly about animals. Talking of animals.
Trump administration has reapproved an exciting way to kill them,
the M four cyanide trap. It's been reapproved.

Speaker 2 (02:49:27):
Thank god, single issue syanide vote. That's been my one
issue for your gearson. You know this I'm all about,
And it's not just this. I'm just in general support
of them. Anything that increases regular Americans daily access to cyanide.
You know That's why I'm also against clean air regulations continue.

Speaker 4 (02:49:45):
James, I will. I've bumped into a few of these,
like maybe you have two. It's not a code to
get a coat, to get it's a different thing. But
what this is is it's like a spring loaded, trapped
a little thing poking out the ground, normally covering cloth
and baited. It's triggered when some I think, bites and
pulls it. So it's designed to then squirt the cyanide
up into the mouth of It's normally canines, right, it's

(02:50:06):
not much else. Yeah, bites and pulls them. These things
have killed dozens of pets and livestock.

Speaker 2 (02:50:12):
It's a pretty fucked up kind of trap. Like it's
really bad.

Speaker 4 (02:50:16):
Yeah, it's pretty bad. The old ones that used to
use like a thirty eight special blank that would really
fire the cyanide up. That was a massive fucking issue. Yeah,
that was a coyote geta see.

Speaker 2 (02:50:29):
I just want to put those in my normal thirty
eight and just concealed carrious cyanide. Everyone dies, get really close,
get really close. They attack you from like upwind, you know,
and then then it's just you. Yeah, once you open
your mouth and get really close to me, you know.

Speaker 7 (02:50:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:50:47):
I guess like people will maybe be familiar with these
from an incident where the fourteen year old boy was
injured and his dog was killed. This was back in
the twenty teens. In that case, M forty four was
not on the family's property, but it was less than
one hundred yards from their house. Wow. And they've discontinued
using them in Idaho after that. But the BLM as

(02:51:08):
a whole discontinued their use only in like late twenty three,
early twenty four. Trump administration hates every living creature, so
it's not really surprising that these are back. Obviously, the
issue here is livestock, right, Like they're protecting livestock yep
from Canid's. Yeah, there are better ways of doing that.
We shouldn't be fucking putting cyanide in a public lands.
It's not It's sorry, this one gets me kind of annoyed.

Speaker 2 (02:51:31):
Yeah, just the general belief that anything that might interfere
with a livestock animal justifies, Like widespread genocide of crucial
species is really bad. Yeah, and also dominant in a
lot of the American West.

Speaker 4 (02:51:47):
Yes, and like cooties are some of the smartest creatures
we have, right, They've resisted all attempts to control their population.
They continue to thrive. Believe in all fifty states, I
think there are maybe not forty nine. I don't think
there are any in Hawaii, but yeah, incredible animals. Coke to
America by Dan Flores's a good book about them. In
the Channel Islands Channel Lines National Park, a fire has

(02:52:09):
already hit over fourteen thousand acres. It is on Santa Rita.
It's threatening a grove of very rare tory pines. Tory Pines.
Really we have some here in San Diego and some
up there. The initial reporting suggested that the mariner himself
had fired distress flares and those flares had ignited the fire.
What the coast guard is now saying is he was

(02:52:30):
on like a fifty two foot boat by himself. Boat
people mad about me saying boat not whatever, and no,
I don't care. The boat had run aground and it
was rocking, and I'm guessing that rocking either short in
something or cut of fuel line that caused a vessel
itself to ignite, and then the vessel igniting caused fire
on the island, and he then fired flares standing within

(02:52:54):
a previously burned area, so the fire had burned pasted in.
He fired flares. Quite why he wasn't able to signal
with his radio or if he was able to signal
with his radio and then the radio got burned or
other means of communication right like a personal locator beacon EPERB.
I don't know. All I know is what's been reported
so far, but noneless. This is really tragic for one

(02:53:16):
of the very few areas in California which has been
less ravaged by capital. Move along to Immigration. I have
seen evidence that USCIS income is plummeting, and this is
because they're processing fewer applications right then, they're moving much
much much more slowly with actually processing the applications to

(02:53:37):
give people the right to have visas or to permanent
residency cismship. The agency is normally funded by fees, and
it seems that it will soon not be funded by
fees anymore. So despite all these DOGE cuts and efficiency cuts,
the agency is going to end up costing taxpayers more money,
which is great. Today, United States marines boarded the motor

(02:54:00):
tanker Celestial, which they quote suspected was on route for
Iran flights from Uganda. The Democratic Republic of Congo and
South Sudan are facing new arrival restrictions due to the
outbreak of a BOLO in the region. With USAID funding slash,
like the US would have normally led a response to
something like this or at least helped fund it now won't.

(02:54:21):
This means that the outbreak will be bigger and more
people die. Scott Persent has said that the United States
will temporarily allow quote the most vulnerable nations to access
Russian oil selectively and temporarily lifting sanctions. Also, Ukraine has
begun using unguided rockets on first person view drones, and
this is a pretty serious development for remote control warfare.

(02:54:45):
They're using them to suppress Russian air events, but they
released videos of that for the first time this week. Finally,
for me, it appears at a large batch of new
immigration judges will be starting work immigrant judges. It's worth
noting I'm not judges in the sense that we understand
the for other judges in the legal system. They're more
like bureaucrats like Robert. Yes, Robert's more real of a judge.

(02:55:08):
That's certainly not reverend judges. Their ranks have been purged
by the Trump administration rate since thirty, twenty twenty five.
I know lots of them have retired, or quit or
been fired. I can imagine that this new cohort might
be more favorable to the Trump administration's immigration goals.

Speaker 7 (02:55:24):
So there's been in the past few days in massive
intensification of month long protests in Bolivia that has escalated
into a general strike. It's also turned into one of
the traditional Bolivian protest tactics, which is a series of
roadblocks blocking access to the capital. These are largely the
result of two kind of different, kind of related fights.

(02:55:48):
The first one was an attempt at agricultural reform that
would have done a whole bunch of sort I guess
you'd call it like nineteen ninety four style Mexican constitution,
like neoliberalization, like collectively held addious land. And then now
the protests have been gaining steam over dire economic situation
and the liberal reforms passed by their writing president after

(02:56:12):
the MAAS effectively imploded during twenty twenty four and twenty
twenty five, leading to the first writing president in Bolivia
since the early two thousands, and also the re emergence
of Carlos Mesa, a guy I literally never thought I
would hear about again, but apparently is back somehow after
getting ousted by like basically effectively the exact same style
of mass roadblock protests in two thousand and five. He's

(02:56:33):
now also back for some reason. But yeah, these protests
are probably going to continue to escalate. We've reached the
miners throwing dynamite phase of Oblivian protest, which tends to
precede government's collapsing. We will see how this story progresses for.

Speaker 3 (02:56:52):
Our first main story, we'll discuss the shooting at an
Islamic center in San Diego.

Speaker 4 (02:56:59):
James doing us to us off. Yeah, So the shooting
happened on Monday, the eighteenth of May. Three people were killed.
We'll go over a little bit about them in a second.

Speaker 1 (02:57:09):
Here.

Speaker 4 (02:57:09):
It happened at the Islamic Center of San Diego, which
is the largest MASK in San Diego County. People might
be familiar with the Islamic Center of San Diego because
of other stories about surveillance on the MASK over the years.
In this case, the two shooters were Kane Clark seventeen
and Caleb Bavaskar's eighteen. Shortly after the shooting took place,

(02:57:30):
police searched Kane Clark's house. It took them a long
time to get a warrant. Normally they can use an
e warrant for these things to get one very quickly,
but some reason took several hours. Officers were actually at
Clark's house when the shooting began. This was because his
mother had called police to report her son was missing
in her car in camouflage and had stolen her weapons.

(02:57:54):
She called them two hours before the shooting began. Despite
that they were able to make it to the Islamic
center of San Diego, kill three people, then move further
down the street and fire at a landscaper who seems
to have been largely uninjured or not injured in a
serious way. Then they proceeded further down the street before

(02:58:16):
ending their lives. I think one of them shot the
other and then shot themselves. I think it's worth noting
that Sandiac has driven itself into debt, spending massive amounts
of money, specifically on cops and specifically on surveillance, and
neither of them did anything to prevent this. The San
Diego Police Department received a call two hours before the shooting,

(02:58:37):
to quote Police Chief Scott Wall quote, she believed herself
was suicidal, and she began to share information that several
of her weapons were missing, her vehicle was missing in
addition to her son. Will said. She also said her
son was with a companion. They were dressed in camera
that it's not consistent with what we would typically see
from someone who was suicidal. They tried to use their
automated license plate readers referred to a Flock cameras Flock

(02:59:01):
actually doesn't provide the hardware, and San Diego. Their only
lead was a single hit in Fashion Valley, which is
several miles away from where the shooting took place, also
further from Clark's house than the sight of the shooting was.
But Vasquez comes from Tchula Vista, which is much further south.
There is no way that I can see to get

(02:59:22):
from Fashion Valley too ICSD without passing automated license preate readers.
You can't take surface streets and avoid them. I've ridden
most of that route. This was the way I used
to commute on my bicycle when I was teaching. In
the end, that didn't make a difference. They weren't able
to get there and prevent the shooting. Not a single
office discharge their firearm. Last month of San Diego officer

(02:59:43):
did discharge his firearm, and a lady with a ballpoint
pen missing several times in a busy street. Let's talk
about the three people who were killed here. Yeah, I
think they're more important than.

Speaker 2 (02:59:54):
These Well, yeah, because they undeniably they've any of those
kids from getting killed.

Speaker 4 (03:00:00):
Yeah, in a way that like is genuinely laudable and heroic.

Speaker 8 (03:00:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (03:00:05):
So, Amina Abdullah was a security guard of the mosque.
I saw a reported he had eight children. He seems
to have significantly delayed the shooter by exchanging fire with
both of the shooters.

Speaker 2 (03:00:16):
And initiating the mask's lockdown protocol.

Speaker 4 (03:00:19):
Yes, so he used his radio to initiate the lockdown protocol.
The shooters live stream the shooting and I've reviewed some
elements of that and you can see they basically get
into the entrance of the mosque and then get hold
up there.

Speaker 2 (03:00:31):
Yeah, because they moved past him and he engaged them.

Speaker 4 (03:00:34):
Correct.

Speaker 2 (03:00:35):
Yeah, because they were attempting to get past him to
the kids, and he engaged them, drew them back, and yeah,
I mean all of this would have been so much
worse if he hadn't done what he did, which cost
him his life.

Speaker 4 (03:00:46):
Yes, exactly, Like, yeah, he engaged him. He continued to
draw their fire lick until obviously he passed away. Other
two victims Mansur Caziha known as Abu Aziz, who worked
at a mosque for decad since they broke around. He
was managing the store like the little gift shop snack shop,
and Nadir al Wad. His wife teaches at the school

(03:01:09):
and he lives right next door. He actually was at
home when the shooting began and he ran toward the
mosque when he heard the shooting, and it seems that
both of them were in the parking lot, directing people
away from the mosque and again drawing the attention of
the shooter right so that unfortunately resulted in them both
losing their lives. The shooters, as I said, then fled

(03:01:31):
in a white BMW, shot at a landscaper, and then
took their own lives. It appears that they met online.
Basquez lives in Chula Vista, like a good distance away
from where the shooting took place. There was a press
conference shortly afterwards where the mayor was heckled. Gloria is
a pretty unpopular mayor for a number of reasons, making

(03:01:53):
San Diego very unlovable for poor people. He's consistently attacked
and house population, I guess notably in this case because
of the presence of a pro Palestinian artist. He boycotted
our Pride march. But what it's worth Gloria himself is gay.
City has had a really bad record of hate crimes,
and I think in San Diego, because of this long

(03:02:13):
history of hate crime and bigotry and anti blackness and
anti Semitism and Islamophobia and the deep roots they have here.
People assumed that these two young people would have come
from East County, which is I think sometimes it's this
myth right that like all bigotree exists kind of east
of the fifteen and it's fine after that. That is
very much not the case, and these two people do

(03:02:36):
not come from that scene. They do not come from
that world. There are groups that are white supremacist in
East County, without a doubt many of them, and individuals
who I mean Metzica was not living that far away, right,
This is not that. Claremont, where Clark lived, is one
of the most diverse neighborhoods. I have taught in high
schools in Claremont. I taught in the community college there.

(03:03:00):
Tons of my students over the years have been people
who attended this moth school or they have children who
go to the school in the preschool there. So yeah,
this is like very close to home for me. I
guess we should discuss a little of the shooter's kind
of accelerationist worldview.

Speaker 3 (03:03:16):
I guess, yeah, yeah, the imagery and associated manifesto that
leaked down line after the shooting.

Speaker 2 (03:03:25):
I mean just The shortest thing we can say before
getting into it is that this is a christ Church
inspired attack. Yes, motivated by anti like anti Islamic Islamophobia,
right obviously, but also these shooters were very motivated by
anti Semitic beliefs, by in cell beliefs, and by general
fandom of mass shootings, you know.

Speaker 7 (03:03:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:03:46):
The first inclination we had that this was LinkedIn Natz
accelerationism was some pictures are released of the shooter's vehicle
where a gas can had an SS sticker on it. Eventually,
pictures came out of their weapons which had slogans like
race war and hate speech written literally the words like

(03:04:09):
hate speech just go on the weapon, Yeah, as well
as wearing Nazi imagery on tactical clothing.

Speaker 2 (03:04:18):
Garrison will have more to say and we'll look at
more about these shooters, but first, here's some ads and
we're back, all right.

Speaker 3 (03:04:39):
To start off, I pretty much agree with extremism researcher
Jared Holt, who's one of the best in the business
that quote, these kids could not have been any clearer
that they cooked their skulls on Neo Nazi accelerationists slop yep,
their manifestos are as sloppy as they are extremist, but
they do make clear they sought to be copycats.

Speaker 4 (03:05:01):
Unquote.

Speaker 3 (03:05:02):
Yeah, that's an entirely, entirely correct yep analysis of what happened.

Speaker 2 (03:05:08):
It's one of the laziest manifestos in some ways. It's
very patterned off of the christ Church shooter's manifesto, which
was you know, say what you will about it, a
fairly original work. Like there's one of the more notable
segments of this is a chunk where they're talking about
their beliefs. They talk about the Freemasons, and whichever one
of them was writing that portion is like I don't
actually know anything about them, but I know that they're bad. Basically,

(03:05:31):
like they haven't had time to get into this part
of the ideology, which is like it's very it's very sloppy,
it's very online. It's very much a product of terrorgram
you know, like in yes, like the sloppiness is part
of the humor I kind of expect for these guys.

Speaker 8 (03:05:48):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (03:05:48):
At large parts of it were just like parentheses unfinished yep.

Speaker 2 (03:05:51):
Yeah, yeah, and I think that's part of a bit,
you know.

Speaker 3 (03:05:54):
Yeah, So the manifesto was titled Sons of Terrant, named
after the christ Church shooter. Yeah, about half of it
was written by each of the shooters, and it states
that the Terrant was their biggest inspiration. The manifesto shows
a deep referential knowledge of Nazi colorationism, but in a
very like regurgitated sense, right almost is if you asked

(03:06:16):
chat GPT to make a new Nazi colorationist manifesto. I'm
not saying they actually did that, but that's the sort
of like vibe that it has.

Speaker 4 (03:06:23):
Yeah, it's very generic.

Speaker 2 (03:06:24):
Yeah, it's slopped.

Speaker 3 (03:06:25):
There's really nothing like new it all in there. It's
mostly just referential.

Speaker 2 (03:06:29):
And it has that chat GPT vibe in part because
they're just copying these other manifestos that were written by
guys who were somewhat more original eve than them, and
they came by it, I think primarily not even from
initially scanning the original documents, but from seeing chopped up
up pieces of them in these conversations that they're having
in these like groups that they're in, and so it

(03:06:52):
just kind of inculcates this slop mindset. They're like, this
is kind of it's not just the manifesto that slop
the way these people were radicalized. Probably was also slap Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:07:04):
Yeah, there's this big element of like gen z irony
throughout stuff like this, and you can see that on
the shooter's TikTok and their Steam page, which has a
whole bunch of anime Nazi Edits little TikTok dances with
accelerationist imagery and like anime art. The way that these
two shooters identified with Nazi excelerationism and mass killers is

(03:07:28):
very close to the way a lot of people just
identify with pop culture fandom. The columbine aspect is also
pretty crucial here, and one of the shooters rites about
that in the manifesto. On their Steam they had a
anime columbine edit. Yeah, trying to understand a shooting like
this as just primarily ideologically driven has its limits, right,

(03:07:51):
That's certainly an aspect of it.

Speaker 5 (03:07:52):
That's very clear.

Speaker 3 (03:07:54):
Yeah, ideological imagery is front and center, but there's also
this copycat aspect and like the Saint lineage of these
shooters trying to make themselves infamous bysocting themselves with these
other mass killers, and the in group signaling is what
the fashion of ideology is resting on.

Speaker 2 (03:08:10):
Yes, the in group signaling is key because when you
just say they're trying to like copy their copycasts, they're
trying to copy these other killers, then that makes people
think of someone who is kind of purely narcissistically so
focused on the outside on how people see them as
a result of their act. But at least equally important
is this group of folks that they socialize with in

(03:08:33):
these telegram chats and other communities that they think are
cool and that they like, and they are trying That's
why the manifesto is the way it is. That's why
the christ Church Manifesto was the way it was. They're
trying to signal to their differing communities of people online.

Speaker 3 (03:08:46):
It's like part of a fan It's is like the
way that we think of pop culture. That's what this
is for a small number of young people online.

Speaker 2 (03:08:54):
Yeah, and it's like it go. It's not just even
Nazi stuff. Like I've seen a lot of people making
a big deal about the fact that one of the
shooters had a profile image of a character Ashley Graves from.

Speaker 4 (03:09:05):
The Incest video game.

Speaker 2 (03:09:07):
Yeah, a video game called The Coffin of Andy and Leiley,
which is like a really fucked up incest video game
and she's like she's like specifically like a really bad
evil person. And it's like the comments I've seen are
basically like, yeah, I'm not surprised that he would idolize
someone who would do this, would like idolize a character
like that. It's a bit yeah, it's like that. That's yeah,
these are these are all things that are like popular

(03:09:28):
in these weird little chunks of the right. Like it's
it's it's an encompassing thing. It's not just these people
are Nazis or these people want to be famous. And
if you're just looking at the at that, then you're
going to be confused by this like very sloppy seeming
manifesto unless you understand it's there to make their friends laugh, you.

Speaker 3 (03:09:45):
Know, yeah, I mean like and and as ideological as
this is, it's just as mimetic. Yeah, even if the
overt Nazi stuff is very strong in this case, and
as much as people will focus on the Nazi stuff
and a lot of the reporting, we can't over look
this sort of like fandom and like column buine aspect.
You know, crucially, there's two shooters here that's very very

(03:10:06):
column bin esque and that's something they acknowledge in the manifesto.
They did live stream the shooting in a discord call,
so there were people aware that this shooting was happening
since before the shooting started, people to hop on to
this call.

Speaker 4 (03:10:21):
Shoes, It's said in their manifesto the I'm going to
wait until they had a good number of people on
the call before starting so they could ensure someone recorded it,
which indeed someone did.

Speaker 3 (03:10:32):
Just as a side note here, I've seen a lot
of people talk about this as like a as like
quote unquote seven six' four, shooting all, right seven six
four refers to a specific group of or a specific
online community that does child likes. Exploitation they try to
extract and blackmail children into providing child sexual best material
and sometimes convincing children to also do acts of. Violence

(03:10:55):
there is not an explicit seven six four connection THAT
i am aware of at this. Point sometimes these communities
do overlapped interseex SO i wouldn't be surprised if there
is something seven six foot related that comes out about
one of these shooters. Eventually, sure but THIS i think
that framing that that understanding is slightly. MISTAKEN i think
people jump to that very. Often there was obviously the

(03:11:18):
sort of like group element of this. Shooting they're streaming
it in a discord, call BUT i THINK sem six
floor does actually refer to a specific. Group it's not
just you, know neo natzic acceleraationist shooters in. General i've
seen some people question why a mosque was chosen as
the target if a lot of the manifesto is, antisemitic

(03:11:41):
that's kind of like the crux of their. Ideology they
did The Islamic center likely because they wanted to specifically Copy, Terrant.
Right that's even down to the clothes that they're. Wearing
the military fatigues that they're wearing are very similar to
What terran wore in the, manifestos even around the same
length of As terrence. Manifesto, Yeah AND i think a
vital part of this and when you when you're looking

(03:12:02):
at this sort of which seems like things that are
incongruent between what they're writing and what they're, doing it's
that this is sort of the most advanced stage of
the production of politics to, aesthetics and it's reached a
point where like the aesthetic itself is like the medically. Alive,
yes in a way that's you, know in a way
that operates independently of like what the people who made
the ideology were trying to. Do and now the aesthetic

(03:12:25):
itself is getting people to just do the, things and
so they're doing it for the, esthetic which is what
the politics has been turned. Into and you, know even
like the selection of video games they have on This steam,
profile he's designed with this in. Mind the incest, game one,
example parts Of iron four is also included on The
steam Pro.

Speaker 2 (03:12:44):
God of course it fucking.

Speaker 4 (03:12:45):
Is but here's the.

Speaker 7 (03:12:46):
Thing here's the.

Speaker 3 (03:12:47):
Thing the shooter unlocked no. Achievements they weren't even.

Speaker 2 (03:12:51):
Playing it's about being cool to your.

Speaker 4 (03:12:54):
Buds they weren't even playing the.

Speaker 3 (03:12:56):
Game but he but he wanted to include the game
on the profile because it references or has been a
part of other Neo nazi accelerationists in the.

Speaker 7 (03:13:04):
Past.

Speaker 3 (03:13:04):
Yeah, similarly a lot of like The enemy visual novels
included on the profile seem to be.

Speaker 2 (03:13:09):
Unplayed, yeah it doesn't happen. Enough this gets looked at
because of how horrifying the actions are as something separate
fundamentally from like all the other shit that like dumb,
shit young people do to be cool and it really
shouldn't entirely.

Speaker 3 (03:13:26):
Or just being, suicidal, right or just being extremely mentally
like unwell and like, underregulated socially.

Speaker 2 (03:13:31):
DISINTEGRATED i think the desperation to fit in anywhere is
tied with that sort of thing, too, Right like the
fact that you would lie about the stuff you're interested
with in order to put on this image that is
more fitting for what you think this community wants to
see from. You you.

Speaker 3 (03:13:48):
Know part of the tragedy here is that these, people
as kids found community in these acceleration of spaces that
became the primary way they socialize in a very similar
vein as a lot of people socialized online About Star
wars or whatever anime is popular on, TikTok or like
those other fandom spaces that are not designed around going

(03:14:10):
into a place of worship or a school and killing
tons of.

Speaker 4 (03:14:12):
People, YEAH i GUESS i should just Sayreal, briefly THE
fbi removed thirty firearms From Cane clark's family. Home it
seems still the firearms they. Use for whatever it's, worth
it just make a huge, DIFFERENCE i, guess other than
to say that like these were all complying With california.

(03:14:34):
Law california has very strict gun. Laws it's very hard
in this country to stop people getting the means to
kill lots of.

Speaker 2 (03:14:40):
PEOPLE i mean that, said it's entirely possible that that
is why there weren't more people. Killed you, know we
really it's impossible to say that the gun that they
were using isn't wildly different from an ar in this
kind of. Situation but you, know there's limitations on the
amount of m and a mag or whatever then may

(03:15:01):
have had some. IMPACT i don't really HAVE i don't
have enough granular detail about all of, that and it's
also kind of impossible to, say but, yeah these were
All kali legal.

Speaker 4 (03:15:09):
Guns, yeah you see the kid IF i would not
suggest watching the, VIDEO i don't think anyone needs to
watch the.

Speaker 3 (03:15:15):
Video it's not good for. You this is no reason
to watch it or read the. Manifesto there's nothing in.

Speaker 4 (03:15:21):
There, yeah none of this will make your, grief you,
know more more? Real ya is your solidarity more? Completely
you don't need to. Do you see the kid fuck
up the window for a while in a, video which is.
GOOD i wish someone had fucking shot him when he
was doing. That one of the last THINGS i want to.

Speaker 3 (03:15:36):
Add there has been an attempt by some popular right
wing figures to try to turn this into another trans.

Speaker 2 (03:15:45):
Shooting, yeah Specifically Elon.

Speaker 5 (03:15:48):
Musk, Yes Elon musk has boosted.

Speaker 3 (03:15:51):
Claims, yeah completely unfounded, false just actually outright.

Speaker 2 (03:15:55):
False absolute lies admitted by the.

Speaker 3 (03:15:57):
Opage he's just lying false iss that either one or
both of the shooters were a. Transgender this seems to
be primarily using a picture of one of them that
has long hair as the sort of quote unquote evidence
they are not.

Speaker 4 (03:16:13):
Trans neither of them are.

Speaker 3 (03:16:15):
Trans they write about HATING lgbtq people in the.

Speaker 2 (03:16:19):
Manifesto they're not. Trans it's not a trends. Shooting, no
they hating trans people in. Particular.

Speaker 7 (03:16:24):
Yeah, yeah but you know they're just like these people
Like Elon musk and all threight when people doing this
like they're just overtly doing The Julius striker Like Dear,
stormer Like jewish crime, shit like that's just all this this.
Point it's, yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:16:39):
They don't think it's true anymore than like we. Do
they just know that you've got in this period of
time right after something like this, happens if you flood
the zone with shit like, that some number of people
will never get. Corrected that's all this. Is, yeah reality
is very malleable in those first few. Hours.

Speaker 4 (03:16:56):
Yeah, YEAH i think some of them will also think it's. Funny.
YEAH i think in the same way it signals that
you're calls to your friends and in the same way
that these people did, that like it's. Disgusting, wow it's
all the same.

Speaker 7 (03:17:07):
Thing, yeah we're doing the meme.

Speaker 2 (03:17:09):
Genocide it's arguably genocide has always been a.

Speaker 9 (03:17:13):
Meme.

Speaker 4 (03:17:14):
Yeah the whole thing has been really hard on The
San diego community where we have a big fire At
EASTER i ll aposto as well getting under. Control we
will share a fundraiser for the families of the three
people who unfortunately lost their. Lives it's already upper half
a million, dollars which is nice to. See but, YEAH

(03:17:34):
i know that that mask specifically has spent so much
time on. SECURITY i know they've applied for, grants LIKE i,
know they've they've done everything they. Can they have, cameras
they had armed. Security They it's really sad that this
community felt that this might happen and it. Happened you
know that they felt that they weren't, safe And i've
filed some public records requests that will take weeks months

(03:17:57):
to come. Back but if there is more reporting on
this to be, done we will do, it especially like
this is WHERE i, live this is my, community So
i'm going to try my best to find out as
much AS i. Can but, yeah it's a tragedy right.

Speaker 3 (03:18:11):
Now before we go on and ad, BREAK i have
one more story. Here On, tuesday there was a primary
election In. Kentucky Incumbent Libertarian Republican Thomas massey lost the
election by ten points to A pak And trump backed,
Challenger Ed. Gallrain massey broke With trump over the release

(03:18:33):
of The epstein, files though Unlike margree taymc, green he
did not step down but continued to serve In, congress
opposing The One Big Beautiful, bill The war On iran
and aid To. Israel trump's Selected, gallarin a Former navy,
seal to run Against, massey and this election became the
most expensive primary In house race. History Great apak and

(03:18:56):
other Pro israel lobbying groups spent over nine million dollars
to unseen Massive, jesus and overall ad spending in this
primary reached over thirty three million Dollars.

Speaker 7 (03:19:08):
Jesus's wide receiver one.

Speaker 3 (03:19:10):
Money, yeah it's, wild it's this is this is crazy
for A kentucky house.

Speaker 5 (03:19:14):
Scene that's. Good that's gonna go to A republican either.

Speaker 2 (03:19:16):
Way it's it's just A trump's ego.

Speaker 3 (03:19:19):
Thing it's like A Trump israel. Thing, yeah it's it's
it's pretty.

Speaker 2 (03:19:23):
Wild, yeah, Yeah israel, too. Obviously, yeah of course.

Speaker 3 (03:19:26):
The pros are a. Lot you funded a, significant significant
part of the ad.

Speaker 4 (03:19:30):
Spending it's.

Speaker 3 (03:19:30):
Crazy another interesting, factor packs on both sides of this
race USED ai deep fake ads depicting the opposing. CANDIDATE
i want to briefly show some of, these not the whole,
ones just just very short clips, together like the sense
of of what of what the deal is?

Speaker 7 (03:19:49):
Here incredible impending sense of.

Speaker 4 (03:19:51):
Dread, YEAH i love.

Speaker 13 (03:19:53):
It These trump, traders they can't stand our president and
can't help but let it. Show like O eddy gal
Rynd Oo geddy left The Republican party After trump won
THE gop nomination in twenty. Sixteen take a look for
yourself and when Did wogedy change his registration back to
THE Gop After Joe biden was sworn, In trump was

(03:20:17):
in the foxhole and okty Gal rynd tucked his tail
and Ran kentucky fourth the back is responsible for the
content of this.

Speaker 2 (03:20:23):
Ad oh my, god it's.

Speaker 4 (03:20:25):
Done Donald trump.

Speaker 3 (03:20:26):
Side this is the craziest part of the ad where
a deep Fake Donald trump is in the trenches with a.

Speaker 7 (03:20:41):
Rifle it just looks like a. Photoshop it looks it
looks like a Shitty moan photo.

Speaker 4 (03:20:45):
Shot, yeah Like World.

Speaker 2 (03:20:46):
War one or. Two it could kind of be.

Speaker 4 (03:20:48):
EITHER i think of GIVING D, day, right like you
got the tank, barriers like he's got The grande the tank.

Speaker 2 (03:20:54):
Barriers but that looks that is that a?

Speaker 4 (03:20:55):
Garage, yeah because he fighted it twice without running the.

Speaker 7 (03:20:58):
BANK i don't think they know who we're.

Speaker 4 (03:21:02):
Going to this and they have.

Speaker 2 (03:21:03):
Already his camo doesn't look anyway what?

Speaker 4 (03:21:05):
Happened?

Speaker 3 (03:21:06):
True so Woke Eddie gueran right, away As trump was
in the, trenches.

Speaker 4 (03:21:11):
The foxhole, garrison the. Foxhole my apologies under.

Speaker 3 (03:21:15):
Fire this is the Pro massy, ad, Right so the
promasciads are trying to frame The, trump The trump backed
candidate as woke Woke Eddie.

Speaker 2 (03:21:25):
Gallay, YEAH i love, IT i love.

Speaker 4 (03:21:27):
It who Abandoned?

Speaker 5 (03:21:28):
Trump, meanwhile the Anti massy ads looked like.

Speaker 9 (03:21:34):
This Thomas mercy caught in a thropple In washington.

Speaker 4 (03:21:39):
With the squad on the what, no what is happening?

Speaker 9 (03:21:45):
Mess he voted just the squad against Finishing trump's. Wall
he voted with them against hiring new border.

Speaker 1 (03:21:51):
Agents, jesus this is as.

Speaker 9 (03:21:53):
Adultery it's a complete and total betrayal Of President trump
And kentucky. Conservatives On may, nineteen Fire Thomas Massy Mega
kentucky is responsible for the content of this.

Speaker 2 (03:22:03):
ADVERTISING i guess the upside of this is the term
thrupples really gonna. Mainstream. Huh they trust people in just
like small Town kentucky didn't know what this Was Thomas.

Speaker 3 (03:22:17):
Massey is it a quote unquote throufle with the squad
showing him holding hands the squad is more than showing
him holding hands WITH aoc and other deep faked interactions
BETWEEN aoc and Elan.

Speaker 2 (03:22:32):
Omar yeah, great cool.

Speaker 4 (03:22:34):
Stuff yeah. Wow the cable news generation really going to
be having that minds melted by that.

Speaker 3 (03:22:40):
Shit, lastly an ongoing story we followed ON edi the
past few months is Whether trump will endorse in The
Republican senate runoff In. Texas early reports indicated That trump
would back Incumbent Senator John cornyn over mega hardliner And
texas Ag Ken, paxton But trump seemed irritated that his
intentions were, leaked and following, That paxton started to make

(03:23:02):
moves in a bid to win the president's. Favor In,
March paxton promised to drop out of the race if
The Republican senate tailed the filibuster to pass the voter
restriction bill dubbed The Save America. Act at the, time
the bill Was trump's top, priority and this gambit By
paxton seemed to, work as later that month he was
seen meeting With trump at Mar A, lago and then

(03:23:25):
this Past, Tuesday trump Endorsed paxton Via truth On truth social.
Quote he is a winner in all. Caps ken is
a strong supporter of terminating the filibuster in all caps
and very, importantly The Save America. Act John cornyn is
a good man AND i worked well with, him but
he was not supportive of me when times were tough.

(03:23:47):
Unquote this endorsement seemed to Catch Senate republicans off, guard
some of whom now worry the seat may be in.
Jeopardy Republican Majority Leader John thune is still Backing Senator.

Speaker 4 (03:23:59):
Cornyn what's going on that?

Speaker 8 (03:24:01):
Break, yeah.

Speaker 4 (03:24:13):
That was a lovely. Song or we're about to hate a.
Song let's say song, stated we're about to hear the.
Song i'm about to hate a. Song, WELL i am
excited about.

Speaker 2 (03:24:20):
That that must mean it's time to learn about. Tariffs
rocky Jazz, bob rocky jazz.

Speaker 5 (03:24:30):
Bo sorry, lack.

Speaker 1 (03:24:35):
Rocky jazz bo rocky Jazz.

Speaker 7 (03:24:38):
Bob by, god there's tariff news. Again so let's run
through a few pieces of tariff. News we have now technically,
speaking started the terriff refund of. Process people are starting
to get their money. Back this is going to be
a catastrophe that unfolds over the course of, genuinely who

(03:24:59):
knows how. Long my guess IS i don't think this
is done by next. Year we've also seen a series
of negotiations from The trump administration with a whole bunch
of different. Countries THE us had a summit With china
Where trump is ution in ping met and appear to
be trying to wind down the trade. War there is

(03:25:21):
an attempt to reduce tariffs on goods that aren't under
the sort Of section three oh one national security. Tariffs
there's also been some attempt by The chinese government to
get THE us to back off of using the national
security powers for more. Tariffs the deals on this one
are still kind of. Inconclusive we're going to see more

(03:25:42):
as this. Unfolds there's a very good quote THAT i
think is interesting FROM Us Trade. Rep Jamison guer where in,
writers well this is reported in, writers was On Fox
Business news where he, said, quote it's not really a
situation where we go and Get china to change the
way they, govern the way they manage their. Economy career
Told Fox businesses last week this was about three weeks.

(03:26:04):
Ago now that's all baked into their. System BUT i
think there is a world where we find out where
we can optimize trade Between china and THE us to
achieve more. Balance so this is effectively a pure back
off of everything they've been saying about like all of
the all of The chinese economy inherently having rigged trade

(03:26:27):
because of government, subsidies et, cetera et.

Speaker 4 (03:26:29):
Cetera on, it it.

Speaker 7 (03:26:30):
Seems like they're kind of trying to wind this, DOWN
i think largely because they have with this war In,
iran they have dropped a second nuke on the, economy
and they want to make sure that the two bombs
they've dropped on the on their own feet aren't going
off at the same. Time so in that vein we've
also seen THE eu has finally gotten together to approve.

(03:26:54):
Ish it's a little, complicated a provisional deal with the
administration that the are also still a little murky. On
but the short version seems to be THE us imposes
of fifteen percent tariff On european, goods while once again Per,
reuters THE eu would quote remove import duties ON us
industrial goods and grant preferential access TO us farm and sea.

(03:27:16):
Produce we still don't know exactly what that's going to look,
like but those are the preliminary details after these negotiations
were thrown into chaos When trump was trying to Invade. Greenland,
yeah we'll know more about what these deals look like
in the weeks to. Come, now the other piece of
news we should talk about here is that On, friday

(03:27:37):
on The friday that you're presumably listening to this On,
Heaven walsh is going to be sworn in as the
new chairman of The Federal. Reserve this has come as
part of a deal where in order to getsh out of,
committee The Justice department dropped their investigation into Former Federal
Reserve Chairman Jerome. Powell it is worth, noting, though That

(03:27:58):
Jerome Powell Rum powell has obviously stepped down as the
chairman of The Federal. Reserve, coward that's, ALL i got.
Nothing my brain is too cooked On Federal reserve to
be able to react. Properly but Coma Jerome powell is

(03:28:18):
not stepping down from The board Of, governors which he's still.
ON i think he's still also on The Open Market,
Committee So worsh has his work cut out for. Him
we should. Mention so who Is Kevin. Walsh we've talked
about this a little bit. Before he, IS i would,
say more stable and more hinged than the previous Candidate

(03:28:40):
trump has been talking. About he has experience in The Federal. Reserve,
however he's also very very close to a lot of
the tech, right particularly feel and end. Reason that is
absolutely a cause for alarm that these sort of tech
fascists have gotten their guy as the head of The Federal. Reserve,
however he has effectively inherited a, Grenade so how are

(03:29:06):
things going to be going for him when he when
he takes office in about two. Days as we're recording
for this not. Great the yield on the thirty year
teen notte is that five point four, percent which is
the highest it's been since two thousand and. Seven for
people unaware of what high teennote yield, means it means
things bad for THE us, economy and investors are spooked

(03:29:28):
and kind of. Panicking this seems to mostly be investors
finally starting to price in weight hold on this war
In iran is not simply going to, end so he
is inheriting a situation that is going to be a
mess because these high interest rates means that there's going
to have to be sort of fed interest rate hikes

(03:29:50):
in order to curve. Inflation, However trump wants exactly the
opposite of, that So larsh is immediately caught between a
rock and a hard. Place the rest of The Federal
Reserve board does not want to slash int rates right,
now And Jerome, powell who hates, him is still on
the board and is still attempting to manage a kind
of rear flank resistance To trump's control over THE. Fed

(03:30:14):
so who, knows there's going to be some pretty dramatic
clashes my guess fairly soon between some combination Of trump
wash and the rest of The Federal Reserve. Board and
we will keep you. Informed nice speaking of money and,
taxes Giving trump allies control of massive pools of, money.

Speaker 2 (03:30:36):
And that and that of our tax, money thank.

Speaker 3 (03:30:39):
You On, Monday President trump dropped his ten billion dollar
lawsuit against THE irs after he negotiated With trump administration
man to create a one point eight billion dollar fund
to compensate victims of political quote unquote.

Speaker 5 (03:30:54):
Weaponization.

Speaker 3 (03:30:56):
Yeah the Lawsuit trump levied Against trump's government alleged the
i R s failed to prevent a contractor from leaking
his tax returns in twenty, nineteen When trump was also.
President part of the. Settlement this is, wild, RIGHT i
have to think this is this is. Wild you know the,
headline it's Very.

Speaker 2 (03:31:16):
Trump trump wins lawsuits Against trump. Government, yeah Against trump's.

Speaker 5 (03:31:22):
Cires, yeah you, know technically didn't win the. Lawsuit it was.

Speaker 3 (03:31:25):
Settled and part of the settlement is this one point
eight billion dollar Fund.

Speaker 2 (03:31:31):
Garrison one point seven. Seven, yes, technically come, ON yeh
was rounding up that's, right, baby this.

Speaker 4 (03:31:42):
World, yeah in this, Case, garrison he's unacceptable to round
up because they had something they were going for, there
they were, cooking they.

Speaker 3 (03:31:52):
Found this fund is for people who believe they are
victims of political oppianization by THE doj acting A.

Speaker 4 (03:31:59):
G tuddland.

Speaker 3 (03:32:00):
Quote it is this department's intention to make right the
wrongs that were previously done while ensuring this never happens.

Speaker 7 (03:32:07):
Again.

Speaker 3 (03:32:08):
Quote blanche himself will appoint a five member committee to
evaluate weaponization claims submitted by the. Public so this is
basically a scheme to Usurp congress's power of the purse
by literally weaponizing the judicial.

Speaker 5 (03:32:25):
Process but this story actually gets. Crazier oh.

Speaker 3 (03:32:29):
Yeah another part Of trump's settlement Against trump is that
THE doj has pledged That trump and his two eldest
sons are to be forever exempt from tax audits by
the irma quote The United states releases waives acquits and

(03:32:50):
forever discharges each of the plaintiffs from and is hereby
forever barred and precluded from prosecuting or pursuing any and
all claims.

Speaker 4 (03:33:01):
Unquote Incredible.

Speaker 3 (03:33:03):
NOW A dj spookesperson later Told The Financial times that
this exemption only applies to existing. Audits but that's not
really what the document, says and that's not What trump
administration is saying outside of this one statement from A dj.

Speaker 5 (03:33:17):
Spokesperson so who Knows Julius.

Speaker 7 (03:33:20):
Caesar didn't do this? Shit like what are we doing?

Speaker 2 (03:33:23):
Here, yeah, yeah it's it's. Again the standard for a
long time previously was that like The president AND vp
were audited like, yearly because it's just like what you,
do like in a, democracy just because you it should
be built into the system that you don't trust that
the president isn't. Corrupt that's a bad. Idea it's speaking of.

Speaker 3 (03:33:44):
Corruption the whole idea of settling a lawsuit yourself.

Speaker 4 (03:33:49):
Yourself it's, yeah using everyone's.

Speaker 2 (03:33:53):
MONEY i, WOULD i would sue myself a. Lot i'm
gonna be, Honest, Garrison i'm gonna be. HONEST i don't
like what THE i didn't know he could do.

Speaker 8 (03:34:04):
THAT i just.

Speaker 7 (03:34:09):
This has somehow managed to turn me into why they
Made Jimmy carter give up this peanut farm? Loob like, yes, no.

Speaker 4 (03:34:16):
That was literally WHAT i was looking Like Bill, clinton
not the most exactly, anaogous but Like Bill clinton used
to cross the street to use a different phone to
avoid transgressing the hatch At, yeah and now we're here.

Speaker 7 (03:34:30):
Observed.

Speaker 4 (03:34:31):
Yeah, Yeah i'm not A Bill clinton, fan but, yeah come.

Speaker 2 (03:34:35):
On but just just thinking about the difference in severity
between How Monica, gate which is what it was literally
called often at the, time was treated and how the
president creating a one point seven seven six billion dollar
slush fund for people who tried to do an insurrection
is being treated like it's it's.

Speaker 3 (03:34:54):
Insane, yeah, Right and that's that's the other thing we should. Mentioned,
right this is going to be mostly used by people
who were prosecuted for their involvement in The january sixth.
Insurrection these funds are not going to be granted to
like left wing activists who are being prosecuted By trump's
doj for a political targeted like.

Speaker 2 (03:35:09):
Come there might be some lawsuits around, THAT i, mean we'll.
See Senator Ron wyden Of oregon has said That democrats
are going to fight every element of the self dealing.
Measure not only is this another heinously corrept act by
the most corrupt administration in, history it's clearly a violation
of the law that prohibits interference by executive branch officials
AND irs. Audits so we'll see if any of that is.

(03:35:30):
Successful good. Luck i'm not against, tryan but it's not
my odds on.

Speaker 9 (03:35:33):
Bet.

Speaker 2 (03:35:33):
Yeah, yeah not to demean the. Effort i'm just trying
to be reasonable.

Speaker 4 (03:35:38):
Here, yeah we can.

Speaker 3 (03:35:40):
Dream back in twenty, nineteen WHEN i was in film,
SCHOOL i was interviewing a federal.

Speaker 2 (03:35:47):
Judge wow humblebrag high for.

Speaker 3 (03:35:49):
Some like documentary, project and she talked about the rices
in twenty, nineteen So trump. One she talked about how
she thinks that it's really going to be the judicial
system that saves us from. Authoritarianism, this this is this
is our this is the last line of defense we
have against a.

Speaker 7 (03:36:05):
Dictator judge things their job, good like like to be.

Speaker 2 (03:36:10):
FAIR i knew a lot of journalists who are like the,
press free press that back.

Speaker 7 (03:36:18):
In, Reality like The Supreme court just like repealed The
Voting Rights, Act and.

Speaker 3 (03:36:22):
That's What i'm that's What i'm getting. To On, friday
THE Us Supreme court Rejected democrats' emergency appeal in The
virginia redistricting, case leaving the decision by The States Room
court to block the new voter Approved house map in.
Place THE Us Supreme court offered no explanation in their
brief one sentence unsigned memo.

Speaker 7 (03:36:43):
That that that might be the shortest shadow dock, yet
which is insulting because they were already like one. Paragraph.

Speaker 3 (03:36:50):
Yeah The Virginia's Room court ruled the new map violated
the state constitution via procedural error during the referendum. PROCESS
I i often think about the CONVERSATION i had with
this with this federal judge in twenty. Nineteen as all
this stuff's been, Happening i'm, LIKE i would really love
to talk with her. AGAIN i should maybe try to
track her down and the like ask because, yeah oh, boy.

Speaker 4 (03:37:14):
Yeah how do you conceive of yourself, now like your
role in this?

Speaker 7 (03:37:19):
Yep how do you function ideologically as a person whose
job it is to do the? Law when The Supreme
court has said That article, one section four of The,
constitution when it says That congress can pass laws or regulate,
elections does not actually apply To congress passing a law
to regulate. Elections like what do you do after that
in order in order to make it so that black
people don't get a? Vote?

Speaker 4 (03:37:37):
Again, like where do you put your idea on the
tea now it's all.

Speaker 7 (03:37:40):
Fake. Yeah, God i'm extremely angry about.

Speaker 3 (03:37:44):
THIS i mean, yeah around that time was when the
partisan jerrymandering was like explicitly allowed by The Supreme. COURT
i mean you, can, yeah we can track a lot
of a lot of the stuff to that ruling as. Well,
right and this WAS i think that that was a
round twenty, nineteen between twenty eighteen twenty twenty.

Speaker 4 (03:38:02):
One shall we move on to the war which is
not a war In? IRAN i believe we. Shall, Okay,
WELL i will start at the start of this. Week just,
GONE i guess where the president has said a deadline
for strikes about which we found out through a series
OF ai generated, images and then back down from it

(03:38:24):
at the urging avalids in the region as talks. Continue,
Meanwhile iran has not stopped using drones and missiles to
Attack kurdish group's Largely Iranian kurdish groups in Southern kurdistan
indigenously produced. Missiles, yes we're going to talk about indigenous production.

Speaker 2 (03:38:43):
Later, yes, okay, Okay art AND i see what you're.

Speaker 4 (03:38:47):
Doing trump On monday said he would hold off the
quote unquote scheduled. Attacks, Meanwhile iran has opened AN x
account using x dot, com the everything website for The
Persian Gulf Straight, authority a direct contravention of my desire
to not make this Segment twitter.

Speaker 5 (03:39:07):
Review this is the worst episode we've done in a.
While it.

Speaker 2 (03:39:11):
Is it's like this is, yeah you, know you.

Speaker 4 (03:39:14):
Know twenty eight days later when it opens and all
this bad shit is just like clicking. Through, yeah that's
every week, now.

Speaker 3 (03:39:21):
Every news sentence one of us, SAYS i just my
headache grows a, little a little, bit a little bit bit.

Speaker 7 (03:39:26):
Like longing for the halcyon. Days we thought that twenty
twenty was the worst year.

Speaker 2 (03:39:29):
Ever people are nostalgia for twenty. Twenty now folks are
getting hopeful about the hauntavirus out.

Speaker 7 (03:39:35):
There oh please Please.

Speaker 4 (03:39:37):
God so, yes it RUNS x account for THE, pgs
A Persian Golf straight. Authority it's claiming that it has
established a controlled maritime zone in the straight hashtag strait
Of horn moos hashtag horn moves undercourse. Straight if you
want to get in on that, conversation.

Speaker 2 (03:39:57):
Why would you hashtag it that this isn't A you are.

Speaker 4 (03:40:00):
The Islamic republic Of iran and what are you? Doing
it's creating a hashtag Because donald trumpet has bombed you
for three months without declaring. War yet, like what a,
World what a time to be. Alive, MEANWHILE cbs see
again every fucking. Sentence, man only the, only the, best Oh.

(03:40:24):
Man every TIME i see a full, STOP i want
to just go and walk into the. Ocean IF i,
DID i might eventually float to the straight upform, moves
WHERE cbs is reporting that THE us has identified ten naval.
MINDS i spoke to my mind guy that this is
the LIFE.

Speaker 2 (03:40:44):
I, lead is mine guide.

Speaker 4 (03:40:48):
Mine, Guy it's going to be my New you.

Speaker 2 (03:40:52):
Could d m the old iatola On. Twitter it's possible
you can get the new. One there's no way to.
Know although the old one never got back to me
about whether or not he liked, anime so that remains
an unanswered.

Speaker 4 (03:41:02):
Question he would post About american. Sports it's very. Funny
these are The maham three and seven, minds so it's seven.
Minds here are the particularly advanced. Ones they apparently can
absorb some, sonar making them very hard to, detect and
they can go off when you're searching for. Them neither
of these are contact, mines, Right The muhamma, three's for,

(03:41:24):
example they're midwater, floating whereas sevens are going to be
on the. Bottom they can go off using a number
of different, sensors like The muhama threes could go off
using magnetic or acoustic sensors when the ship is, nearby
so you don't even have to directly bump, them which is.
Great if they have found, ten one assumes that there
are actually tons more than. That we are now waiting

(03:41:46):
until something bumps into.

Speaker 7 (03:41:48):
One.

Speaker 4 (03:41:48):
Great for a long, time there was Like schrodinger's minds
right that we now the minds are, there that the
mines are.

Speaker 7 (03:41:55):
Real so it's.

Speaker 2 (03:41:56):
Cat the cat is out of the. Box, No, No,
JAMES i. AM i seem to recall several weeks, Ago
Donald trump Said iran's offensive capability has been completely. Degraded that's.

Speaker 4 (03:42:05):
Correct, yeah no, navy no. Boats so they must have
got the very quickly in the initial hours after the strikes,
BEGAN i, guess and it just took this long to.

Speaker 2 (03:42:13):
Find, well sometimes sea turtles lay particularly explosive, eggs But
Donald trump can't be expected to have anticipated that.

Speaker 7 (03:42:21):
Well and we've already denied the suicide dolphin, program so
we couldn't stop the sea.

Speaker 4 (03:42:25):
Turtles, yeah well these are not suicide, dolphins, right what
if these dolphins intended to live another?

Speaker 2 (03:42:30):
Day homicide dog?

Speaker 4 (03:42:31):
Exactly, yeah, yeah that big band, name or like the
dolphin from Sea. Quest reach out to me if homicide
dolphins is the name of your, band.

Speaker 2 (03:42:40):
Reach out to me if you Like. SeaQuest.

Speaker 4 (03:42:42):
Yeah like a lot of any military, technology these are entirely, copied,
RIGHT i think as A, Norwegian swedish minds And french.
Minds but That's iran does this a, lot, Right it
sort of plagiarizes other people's military.

Speaker 2 (03:42:56):
Technology, yeah like a smart person.

Speaker 8 (03:42:59):
Does.

Speaker 2 (03:42:59):
Yeah, yeah it's like THE us, did like everyone else
if they see someone else make a good. Weapon that's
how war.

Speaker 4 (03:43:07):
Works, yeah and The iranians do it in a more
direct way than. MOST i will, say they didn't even.
Pretend but why if the world has cut you off
with sanctus, anyway what did you go to?

Speaker 1 (03:43:14):
Lose you?

Speaker 2 (03:43:15):
Going this isn't like Fucking android copying ship from iPhone's
code or. Whatever this is just how war.

Speaker 4 (03:43:23):
Works, yeah what are they going to?

Speaker 1 (03:43:25):
Do bomb?

Speaker 8 (03:43:25):
Them?

Speaker 2 (03:43:26):
Yeah we Never we didn't sue THE ussr for plagiarism
when they got a new, like that's not how this.

Speaker 4 (03:43:31):
Worse, Yeah i'm sure some Like french guys are mad about. It,
yeah they going to. Change let's talk about reporting FROM
nyt today That israel intended to install Mood off And
Dinner jad as the new leader Of iran and the
way that they intended to do, this of, course AND
i think this is particularly telling of THE Idf they

(03:43:53):
bombed his.

Speaker 2 (03:43:53):
House, yeah that's, all that's the only thing they know
how to, Do.

Speaker 4 (03:43:57):
James, yeah it's when you only have a ham the
world is a.

Speaker 2 (03:44:00):
Nail WHEN i read that and made me. Think this
great comedian now, Dead Bill hicks had a bit during
The Gulf, war The First Gulf war where he was
like talking about the amazing guided missiles THE us has
that we could like fire down, chimneys and he was,
like couldn't we theoretically use that technology to shoot food
into the mouths of hungry?

Speaker 4 (03:44:19):
PEOPLE i THOUGHT i read that. Story unfortunately they Injured
almadida jadh, Again, yeah because it's It's, rael, right and, like,
yeah nothing they love to do more than the killer
range or A muslim person and so, yeah spectactically they

(03:44:40):
attempted to Install Apmadida jad a guy who wanted to
Wipe israel off the map in the power In, iran.

Speaker 2 (03:44:47):
This guy was the. Devil if you, remember if you
were if you watched the news when he was first
president Of, iran this guy was the. Devil so a
massive pusher.

Speaker 4 (03:44:57):
Of the nuclear. Program, yeah like, yeah, Fascinating.

Speaker 7 (03:45:01):
Probably the world's most famous. Hardliner maybe he's just maybe
he's the only guy they knew, about.

Speaker 4 (03:45:07):
Like, Right like do they have some incredible compliment they.

Speaker 5 (03:45:12):
WELL i mean this is part of israel strategy.

Speaker 3 (03:45:13):
Though they want aggression to increase so they have justification
to take over the region and like crack down like even,
Harder like this is that was part of their strategy
With hamas for.

Speaker 4 (03:45:21):
Years yeah, sure but they already have. Justification they're already
killing a bunch of people In, iran like.

Speaker 3 (03:45:26):
They can try to rope in even more, countries broken more.
People like this is like a scaling.

Speaker 4 (03:45:31):
Issue they are the accelerationists of the of the internationals
really Genuine.

Speaker 3 (03:45:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (03:45:36):
No we also found out That Israel loki Invaded, iraq
setting up two bases in The iraqi desert and shooting
At iraqi troops and civilians who came near.

Speaker 3 (03:45:46):
Them coy, Guys Israel loki Invaded.

Speaker 4 (03:45:50):
Iraq, yeah, yeah that's. Me, YEAH i am here to
maintain a youth audience by using the language that they. Understand,
yeah that's. Good let's talk about The. Senate On, tuesday
The senate advanced to resolution quote who directed The removal
of The United States Armed forces from hostilities with or
against The Islamic Republica iran that have not been authorized By.
Congress this is more of a rebuke than anything with

(03:46:14):
a reasonable chance of actually stopping the, war but it's still.
Significant significant Because Bill cassidy crossed party lines after losing
his primary, election in Which trump campaigned against. Him only
after losing, though yeah, right, yeah after this guy had
destroyed your whole, life you suddenly grow a. Backbone that makes.
Sense he was joined By Susan conins Of, Main Lisa

(03:46:34):
markowski Of, alaska And Ran paul Of. Kentucky, while of,
course do you guys want to guess which festering tird
Of democrat senator across the other Way.

Speaker 7 (03:46:44):
Fedterman, yes, yeah of.

Speaker 2 (03:46:46):
Course when you said, FESTERING i thought of, Man, okay.

Speaker 4 (03:46:49):
Okay well we can, YEAH i mean, yeah, yeah, yeah
calling him Fester man in the. Chat good. Stuff John
cornyn Of, Texas Tommy tubaville Of, alabama And Tom tillis
Of North carolina didn't, vote which allowed the vote to.
Pass in, practice even if the resolution passed The, HOUSE
i guess The president could veto it if you wanted.

(03:47:11):
To it's, interesting, though they've been gradually peeling Off. Republicans
Right makowski switched last Week cassidy this. WEEK i don't
think the non voting was much about, this as they
just didn't vote at all that. Day But, cassidy we
can see. Why Right colin To makowski are the once
and they talk about like swinging a Lot rampaul is
plowing his own lonely furrow as he always. Has but

(03:47:34):
it's interesting that they've gradually peeled these people away from
The Republican. Party, meanwhile In, nigeria The United states has
carried out a series of strikes Against islamic state. Targets
they Killed abubaka Al, manuki someone who went by several other.
Names you'll see a lot of other names In. Impressors
he definitely was solidifying a power within The West africa.

(03:47:57):
Provinces islamic state and definitely becoming, relevant especially you, know
post a territorial caliphate In iraq And.

Speaker 3 (03:48:04):
Syria, yeah this is the stuff that the most of
that Counter Terrorism trategy document was writing.

Speaker 4 (03:48:10):
About, yeah and they have been pursuing This internegeria for some.
TIME i wrote Last christmas about them winding up for
grown strikes right into the station troops. There trump's statement
was always somewhat. Incomprehensible trump said he had been hiding In.
Africa that man had obviously lived In africa his entire,
life never. Left trump called him second in command. Globally

(03:48:31):
that thing not outside the realm of, possibility but it's
also not lear. Right there's not like a direct like
pyramid chart that we can go. To it was a
JOINT Us nigerian. Operation we saw overhead. Videos looks to
me like it's from a. Drone it seems like there
was a helicopteric, component potentially a ground component as. Well THE,
us of course has had special and conventional forces In

(03:48:51):
africa for, decades but this is still a remarkable strike for.
Them it will be maybe the first to. Many it
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email Us gone, Yep Cool zone tips at protone dot.

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Me sure we reported the.

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News arguably put a turns girl on your.

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Couch Rip Stephen?

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Colbert is he? Dead we reported the. News, Hey we'll
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until the heat death of The.

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Universe It Could Happen here is a production of Cool Zone.
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