It Could Happen Here Weekly 235

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Also 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 (00:27):
It's bare time, yep, it's bad time. Hi everyone, welcome
to take could Happen Here? A podcast where I talk
to Molly Konga about animals.

Speaker 4 (00:36):
Hi, Molly, I'm so excited to learn about bears.

Speaker 5 (00:39):
I've been thinking about it all week.

Speaker 3 (00:41):
That's atacta good You've had good bad thoughts, because there
are people who think about beads a lot, and I
think it's not good for the mental well being.

Speaker 4 (00:48):
I was trying to find if I took a picture
of that time a baby bear was like standing on
the Median Strip outside my old apartment and I couldn't
find it, so I was thinking about him.

Speaker 3 (00:57):
Okay, Yeah, I hope he's okay. He's found a better
place to be in the Median Strip. I bought a
show and tell item today. Molly can see it. No
one else can.

Speaker 4 (01:05):
I was hoping he was going to be a live bear.

Speaker 3 (01:06):
It's not a live bear. I don't I'm not allowed
because of Woke. You can't have a pet grisly bear.

Speaker 4 (01:11):
If you're about to tell me that those are bear antlers,
I'm leaving.

Speaker 3 (01:14):
Yeah, it's from These are actually original Jacalobe antlers from
the California Jackalobe. Now it's a mule deer shared antler.
I thought it was cool. I thought you'd like to
see it.

Speaker 6 (01:23):
It's beautiful.

Speaker 7 (01:24):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:24):
I think lots of people don't realize that the antlers
fall off and regenerate.

Speaker 4 (01:29):
I feel like he's been a long time growing those.

Speaker 3 (01:31):
Yeah he did, and then he just left them there
as a gift for me in the wilderness. So I
have a few of these.

Speaker 4 (01:37):
He's not getting laid this spring.

Speaker 3 (01:38):
Oh no, he's going to grow some more, ok and
he's going to fight another dude with them in order
to get laid.

Speaker 4 (01:45):
So that fell off in a fight.

Speaker 5 (01:46):
So he's just walking around with one. Oh he'd okay,
he shed them.

Speaker 3 (01:51):
Yeah that they shed them and regenerate them. Okay, like
this is how. This is how they get bigger and
more robust antlets each time. But they put a lot
of a caloric energy into growing these.

Speaker 4 (02:03):
That seems like that would really take a lot out
of you.

Speaker 6 (02:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (02:05):
Well, then they get horny and fight with other male
deer for quite a while. Those antlers not horns, that's correct,
but the horny is not related to them. Yeah, they
go and then they yeah, they lose a lot of
weight in that ratting time and then they have to
gain it all back before the winter.

Speaker 4 (02:22):
Just so focused on fighting and fuck, and they can't
even eat.

Speaker 3 (02:25):
Yep. It's the many such cases, many such cases. Yeah. Yeah,
So I'm not talking about mule deer today and that
they are cool. The first time I saw when I
was like, I see why they call it a mule deer.
Really got the ears going on. I want to talk
about another type of charismatic North American megafauna, bears. So

(02:46):
there are three species of bear in North America. Should
have quiz, molly, you know what they are?

Speaker 4 (02:50):
Okay, grizzly, brown, black.

Speaker 3 (02:58):
Close that's for it's going to keep praying.

Speaker 6 (03:03):
Bears.

Speaker 3 (03:04):
Yeah, nominally they are, but I think, yeah, you didn't
get them all during your period of guessing brown, black,
and polar. Within brown bear, we have grizzly bears, brown bears,
and Kodiak bears. We used to think that the California
bears were a different species and not they just lived here.

Speaker 4 (03:23):
They just have different politics.

Speaker 3 (03:25):
Yeah, yeah, exactly. They we'd have been legalized, so they
just sort of thing differently. The brown bears are what
I want to talk about, So I'm going to use
brown bear as like a blanket term for when they're
on the coast in Alaska, they're called brown bears, right,
and those are generally the biggest ones. And if you
ever seen it, if you've been to Alaska, Molly no.

Speaker 4 (03:45):
I would love to go to Alaska.

Speaker 8 (03:46):
I've never been.

Speaker 3 (03:47):
Yeah, Alaska fucking rips. I love Alaska.

Speaker 5 (03:50):
I found out recently that black bears can be brown,
and I just think we need I think we need
to re evaluate the naming system.

Speaker 3 (03:58):
It's not good, yes, because people, you know.

Speaker 5 (04:00):
The advice about a brown bear versus a black bear
is different. But if a black bear can be brown,
and you're relying on a rhyming phrase to know what
to do, you don't know what kind of bear that is.

Speaker 3 (04:09):
Yeah, they call them cinnamon bears sometimes the brown black bears. Yeah,
you can tell a grizzly bear the bigger they've got
that more pronounced hump. They have a different shape to them.

Speaker 4 (04:20):
No, you can tell. I cannot.

Speaker 3 (04:23):
You'll fucking know that. Grizzly bears coming like they don't
make themselves, you know, quiet, but yeah, the big hump,
they've got a more pronounced hump. Grizzly bets can also
really get into like a blonde coloration even.

Speaker 5 (04:35):
Well yeah in California, sure everybody's blonde out there.

Speaker 3 (04:38):
Yeah, they get frosted tips when they live by the
coast for too long and they listen to sublime here. Yeah,
let's talk about bears. I get my bear interactions by
way of establishing some credibility. I want to point out that, like,
interacting with bears doesn't make non expert I'm not an expert,
And what we're going to talk about here is non
experts interjecting their inexpert opinions about bears and why that's

(05:01):
actually a problem.

Speaker 5 (05:02):
I'm probably interacting with bears is not a desirable outcome
for most listeners.

Speaker 3 (05:07):
Yeah, I mean I love a bear like I see
because I come from a place where there's very little
that can kill you. Well, I mean there are things, right,
there are cars, and we have cancer in the UK
as well, of course, but like animal wise, you're more
or less nuclear.

Speaker 9 (05:19):
Right.

Speaker 3 (05:19):
We have adders, which is a type of snake and
they are venomous. But like, I can't think the last
time I ever heard of someone getting killed, but I'm
sure someone has been killed by an adobyte, but it's
very rare.

Speaker 5 (05:29):
Now you don't have when you have a lion on
like a flag or something, somebody has one.

Speaker 3 (05:33):
But I have a few lions. We've got some flag lions. Yeah,
you know the lines, the lines In fact, we I
love the lines on a flag because they're drawn by
someone who's never seen a lion. But just like a
game of telephone has resulted.

Speaker 4 (05:45):
Anybody he knows they're very majestical.

Speaker 3 (05:46):
Yeah, it's majestic, kind of like a dog longer hair.
I think there was the input before he drew the lines.
I kind of like being on the landscape with animals
that are bigger than me and like they are the
apex predator. The first time I saw Grizzly Bear, I
had a bush planed to a lake in the Wrangle
sent Elias Wilderness. It's in Alaska, Southeast Alaska, massive wilderness area,

(06:11):
and we were gonna hike around a bit and then
pack raft off the end of the glacier. There it
goes into like a meltwater river, and so the river's
kind of different every years as it melts and the
river streams brayed together. Then we were going to pack
for a few days and then hike out and that
was a fun adventure. So we landed, we hiked a bit,

(06:32):
we inflated our little boats, and we paddled across the
lake at the end of the glacier, and then we
got to pace where were camping, went on a walk
and immediately saw a sat grizzly bear and her cups,
which was sick.

Speaker 5 (06:43):
That's cute as hell. I would love to see that.
I would love to see some baby bears.

Speaker 3 (06:47):
Yeah, it's sick. I'd best to stay away from them.
That's when they can get angry.

Speaker 5 (06:51):
I would like to see them from like over here, yeah,
and then they can be over there, like maybe on
the other side.

Speaker 6 (06:56):
Of a river.

Speaker 3 (06:57):
Yeah, I get well, the bears, there's none afraid of water,
but yeah, that's they do love to eat salmon. Yeah,
it was sick. That was a sick trip. Generally, we've
got to see the glacier carving, so like that's when
a little baby glacier is born. Right, But the glacier
a section of it broke off, and I'm talking a

(07:17):
section of size of like a city block here.

Speaker 4 (07:19):
Why but it's so shiny when it breaks.

Speaker 3 (07:21):
Yeah, it's shiny and it's allowed. It's like an earth
shattering rumble.

Speaker 9 (07:26):
Right.

Speaker 3 (07:26):
And then this thing was it was majestic, right, Like
it looks like a mountain has fallen into the water
and that was cool as fig and then you realize that,
like it has displaced a mountain sized amount of water.

Speaker 10 (07:39):
Mood.

Speaker 3 (07:40):
Yeah, and now there are like fridge sized ice blocks
coming at head height towards you. So yeah, we did
some fast uphill running in that moment. But it was
a last So it was summertimes. It wasn't getting dark, right,
you have like twenty four hours sunlight, so at least
it wasn't dark when that happened.

Speaker 4 (07:54):
Only time to run from the glacier.

Speaker 3 (07:56):
Yeah, great time to run from the glacier. I wouldn't
want to do it in the wintertime. I don't think
they carve in the winter time. Maybe they still do.
I think it's to do with temperature rising. So that
was my I've seen a lot of black bears. I'm
a San Diego black bear truther. But it's another fun
thing about me. For some reason, people don't think there
are black bears in San Diego, and that is not true.
I have seen barefootprints, people have seen bears on game cameras.

(08:19):
Bears pop up on top of Mount Palamar all the time.

Speaker 5 (08:22):
It's like the ongoing feud about whether or not we
have panthers on the East coast.

Speaker 3 (08:27):
Oh yeah, you guys love to It's like a Carolina
panther or something.

Speaker 4 (08:32):
People are very sure I have no skin in this game.

Speaker 3 (08:35):
Yeah, I think that's a breeding family of mountain lions
now maybe in Michigan. So they're getting closer, they're getting
They're coming your way as you soon will. I've seen
a lot of bears, or a good number of bears.
Seen a lot of black bears right, we have them
in California. The fact that I've seen bears does not
make me a bear expert. And another non bear expert

(08:55):
has been diving into the discourse on bears after.

Speaker 2 (08:58):
A tragedy like genuinely a terrible.

Speaker 3 (09:00):
Thing, when a hiker lost their life in Glassier, we'll
try and to say the American way Glacier National Park.

Speaker 5 (09:06):
We're going to get messages about this, this British word.

Speaker 3 (09:09):
Yeah right, it's not like a buffalo issue. I'm just
straight colonizing it. I'm sure it had an indigenous name,
and so so are you if you're saying Glacier. This
is really sad, right. A hiker from Florida was more
by a bear, Andyde very shortly in relation to that,
serious injuries occurred in another morning in Yellowstone National Park.
Not so long ago, a contractor really uranium mining site

(09:33):
was killed by a black bear in British Columbia and
Canada a couple of weeks ago, maybe thirteenth of May.
It looked like unusual to be killed by a black bear,
probably worth pointing out that very rare for black bears
to kill people. And also someone at that site clearly
had a firearm because they euthanased the bear. Euthanas dies
a phraser used there. They killed it right like it

(09:54):
wasn't suffering. I don't think that they killed the bear
pretty shortly thereafter, and it's undergoing a neckt now. But
that's another incident I guess to add to this list.
And again right there, there was a firearm present. There
is seems in there that didn't prevent the person being
mauled by the beck. And so former Interior Secretary Ryan

(10:15):
Zinky has decided to wade into the debate. Do we
remember Ryan Zinky?

Speaker 5 (10:20):
He's not the one from Real World road Rules, right,
so that's the transportation guy.

Speaker 3 (10:25):
I don't think so. If he is, I'm not aware
of what Real World road Rules is.

Speaker 5 (10:29):
I'm just having drouble remembering which members of cabinet have
been on reality TV, and I don't think this is
one of them.

Speaker 3 (10:35):
Okay, sorry, no, not to my knowledge. Zinky, he was
maybe seal officer. He's now representative from Montana. He was
Interior secretary in Trump's first administration. He presided over a
series of attacks on public lands, so that we saw
in Trump one point over.

Speaker 4 (10:50):
Exactly what you want to see from your secretary of
the Interior.

Speaker 9 (10:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (10:53):
Yeah, he's trying to rebrand himself as some kind of
protector of public lands. Now he's kind of too late.
On that one in my opinion, but he's certainly on
the protector of bears. Last week he tweeted, maybe he's
zeated and we're not doing that. We're gonna okay dead
naming it. Last week, two grizzly bear attacks claimed the
life of a hiker in Glacia National Park and seriously

(11:15):
injured to others in Yellowstone National Park. The tragedies are
a sobering reminder that grizzly bear populations have recovered well
beyond sustainable levels and it is time for Oh, we
should start killing them. Yep. It's past time for the
federal government to delist them and give states to management tools.
Got them back, Yeah, we're going to kill them back.
This is what we do.

Speaker 8 (11:34):
Eye for an eye for Florida man.

Speaker 2 (11:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (11:37):
I was speaking to a bear a scientist who studies
human bear interactions this week, and he referred to these
as revenge killings. Yeah, because they won't just kill. They
often in many instances don't know which bear. Sometimes we
can we can that we can know the size of
the bear right from like the size of the jaws
that we can have several bears. There are different sizes

(11:58):
of jews. Seems a distance between the different teeth stuff
like this.

Speaker 5 (12:01):
Right, right, Like if one bear is like if it's
like a jaw situation, like one bear just has it
out for hikers.

Speaker 4 (12:06):
Sure, I guess go get him.

Speaker 3 (12:08):
But that's not like it's not happening. Yeah, and they
will end up killing a number of bears in an
area when this stuff happens, right, which is it's just
a revenge killing. So we're taking out like we're taking
out our anger on that species because they came after
our species.

Speaker 5 (12:21):
It seems like the problem is not that there's too
many bears.

Speaker 3 (12:25):
That is correct, Molly, That is that is why we're
here today.

Speaker 5 (12:28):
He seems to be positioning this as there's just too
many bears. People just can't avoid the bears because there's
so many bears.

Speaker 3 (12:36):
Then it's not the case. Millions of people every year
visit the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem, and very few of them
see a bear, right.

Speaker 4 (12:42):
And even few of them touch a bear.

Speaker 3 (12:44):
Yeah, you're touching a grizzly bear. It's a bad day,
viet Let's I guess it has decided it wants to
be touched.

Speaker 5 (12:50):
I don't want a victim blame obviously, Like these are
wild animals that are unpredictable.

Speaker 4 (12:54):
You're in their home. What does guy do? Why was
he so close to the bear?

Speaker 3 (12:58):
We don't know exactly what this I did. There are
a number of bear safety things which I do want
to talk about, And I spoke to Tom Smith last
week and I'm going to turn that into another podcast,
but like, this is the person who is the guy
who writes the studies on human interactions with bears right
and specifically on how those could be like de escalated.
And he said he's not aware of an incident in

(13:18):
which someone has been killed by a bear in which
they were adhering to all the best principles right now.

Speaker 5 (13:24):
I'm not blaming the victim, Like if you don't know,
you don't know, you're inexperienced outdoorsman or whatever.

Speaker 8 (13:29):
But I feel like.

Speaker 5 (13:30):
There's a series of just like pieces of advice and
if you follow them, you're not going to get in
that situation most of the time.

Speaker 3 (13:37):
Mostly most of the time. Yeah, I think if I
was going into bear country, I wouldn't take a dog.
A lot of people take dogs. Dog is a great
way to find a bear. You're looking for a bear,
you could go send out your dog, and it'll come
back to you with a bear and toe some like
hunting dogs and also tree bears. But that's not what
I'm talking about.

Speaker 4 (13:55):
It because the bear sees the dog as a delicious snack.

Speaker 3 (13:58):
I think the dog sees as a bear as a threat, right,
and I'll stop back and they'll get and then like
the bear then obviously sees a dog as what the
fuck is this little animal? A begs predator here? Yeah,
Like we're locked in, and the dog can smell the bear, right,
so it's going to find it, and the be can
smell the dog, so they're going to find each other.

Speaker 5 (14:17):
I guess I was thinking of my dog, which a
bear would definitely see is a delicious snack.

Speaker 3 (14:20):
Yeah, your dog, I could see. Maybe it'd be sub
snack sized, it wouldn't be worth it, but.

Speaker 4 (14:25):
Like a little cocktail weenie.

Speaker 3 (14:26):
Yeah, a sausage dog would try it, it wouldn't give it,
like I've seen. I've sent you a video of a
sausage dog, Yeah, chase chasing off a mountain lion like
they didn't give a fuck. Very brave.

Speaker 4 (14:36):
So yeah, don't take a dog, don't try and pet it.

Speaker 3 (14:39):
Yeah, don't take a dog, don't try and pet it.
In this instance, I think the person was moving through
thick country where the bear was probably foraging for berries,
and they probably startled the bear, as you don't want
to start the bet If you're moving through thick country
like that, that's when people will say hey bear, or
they'll use a bear bell, or they'll talk loud and

(15:00):
converse with people in their group. It is generally preferred
to be in a group when we're in grizzly country, right,
not on our own. We don't know the details of
this incident. There have been some reports that the person
discharged bear spray, and I want to get onto the
best ray topic, late Bex. They have a lot to
say about that. Let's go back and talk about the
bears in the history.

Speaker 4 (15:22):
Yes, contextualize the bear.

Speaker 3 (15:24):
Yeah, rensink he wants to delist the bear from the
Endangered Species Act. Right, bears haven't always been protected by
the Dangered Species Act. That's why California has a bear
on its flag that doesn't live here anymore.

Speaker 4 (15:35):
Oh, we don't have those anymore.

Speaker 3 (15:37):
No, we kill them ball. We don't have brown bears here.

Speaker 4 (15:39):
So is he on the flag? Because you're sorry? About
it because you're proud of it.

Speaker 3 (15:43):
No, I think it's more of a pride thing. I
think it's more of a ye, we got him, fucking yeah. Yeah,
I don't actually know what he's on the flag. I'll
do some searching. I'm pretty sure it's not because we're
sorry about it. We have a good source right of
what European people did when they first encounter bears. It's
not my story from Alaska.

Speaker 8 (16:01):
Oh.

Speaker 4 (16:02):
I thought they did not know about them.

Speaker 3 (16:04):
Well they did, because, as it turns out, as Lewis
and Clark were moving across the plains right, they encountered
indigenous people who very specifically told them not to fuck
with bears. Let me quote from Lewis's diary.

Speaker 5 (16:17):
I thought you would not have to tell like if
I have never I had no concept of bear, and
I see a bear, my instinct is going to be
I'm going to leave that guy alone.

Speaker 3 (16:26):
See Yeah, but these guys are just built different. As
it turns out, they're bear poking and no desire is
extremely turns out counterproductive for them. Let's read from the
Lewis and Clark diary. Is a first on the podcast.
Quote the Indians give a very formidable account of the
strength and ferocity of this animal, which they never dare
to attack, but in parties of six, eight or ten persons,

(16:48):
and are even then frequently defeated with a loss of
one or more of their party. This animal is said
to more frequently attack a man on meeting with him
than filly from him. When the Indians are about to
go in quest of the white bear, previous to their departure,
they paint themselves and perform all these superstitious rites commonly
observed when they're about to make war upon a neighboring nation.
I think he's talking about brown bears. We talked about

(17:09):
white bears.

Speaker 5 (17:10):
Zeb I was gonna say, is he talking about polar bears,
because you definitely don't do that.

Speaker 3 (17:14):
Yeah, yeah, I do not fuck with it. Bare polar
bear will end you. That was on the fifteenth of April.

Speaker 5 (17:19):
So he's like, yeah, it takes eight or ten guys,
usually one of them dies.

Speaker 4 (17:23):
They don't always succeed.

Speaker 8 (17:24):
I'm gonna go check it out.

Speaker 4 (17:25):
I got it.

Speaker 3 (17:27):
Yeah, yep. So by early May, Captain Clark and Dryer
killed the largest brown bear this evening which we have
ever yet seen. It was a most tremendous looking animal
and extremely hard to kill. Notwithstanding he had five balls
through his lungs and five others in various parts. He
swam more than half the distance across the river to
a sandbar, and it was at least twenty minutes before

(17:48):
he died. Then they go and say they thought it
weighed about five hundred pounds, but they didn't have any
apparatus to weigh. So that's the first interaction with a bear.
Less than a month later, quote, six good hunters of
the party fired at a brown or yellow bear several
times before they killed him, And indeed he had like
to have defeated the whole party. He pursued them separately
as they fired on him, and was near catching several

(18:10):
of them. He pursued two of them separately, so close
that they were obliged to throw aside their guns and
pouches and throw themselves into the river, although the bank
was nearly twenty feet perpendicular.

Speaker 4 (18:19):
Oh my god.

Speaker 3 (18:21):
Yeah, so enraged was this animal that he plunged into
the river only a few feet behind the second man
he had compelled to take refuge in the water. When
one of those he still remained on the shore shot
him through the head and finally killed him.

Speaker 4 (18:32):
That's not fair. They should have let him have that guy.

Speaker 3 (18:35):
Yeah's eye for an eye, Like it's fascinating to me,
right that, like you do see this sometimes in like
indigenous people's records. Right, there was I forget his name,
I forgot I was reading about this one Indigenous American
guy who was like, every time I see a bear,
I got to go try to take it on. But
like he recognized that was like not a normal response, right,

(18:57):
Whereas apparently everyone in Lewis and Clark's party was immediately
after killing the first bear they saw, despite having been
told we.

Speaker 4 (19:05):
Found the murder monster.

Speaker 3 (19:06):
Yeah, it tells me so much about the American psyche,
right that the Indigenous people were like, you know, they
they will kill you.

Speaker 5 (19:13):
And like how much bear meat were they eating?

Speaker 3 (19:16):
Yeah, I mean it may be a bit. I don't know,
like you can eat bare meats kind of greasy from
what I understand.

Speaker 4 (19:21):
So they're just going after bears just because it's fun.

Speaker 3 (19:24):
I do understand that Lewis and Clark had to collect
and catalog animals, which obviously they didn't bring them back alive. Right,
they brought back skulls and hides and that kind of thing,
so that the Western way of understanding the world could
catalog and understand these animals. And there is a great
deal of knowledge that that way of seeing the world
gain from that expedition. But they also mixed it up

(19:44):
with a lot of bears. You can read more examples
in their diaries. There's this idea that still exists in
parts of the American sort of psyche that we don't
have to live alongside nature. We have to conquer it right,
that we have to prove us are like apex position,
and that doesn't always go well for us.

Speaker 4 (20:03):
I don't need to prove anything to a bear.

Speaker 3 (20:05):
Yeah, I'm at peace. I'm happy to coexist with bears.
I'm happy that they're there, They're happy that I'm here.
I hope we can have a nice time. I don't
want to fight with bears. Lewis and Clark, by the way,
I find that Lewis and clark Is vision fascinating. Like
at the time they were crossing the plains, they were
meeting with indigenous people who had been to Paris to
check it out and come home.

Speaker 4 (20:27):
I have no concept of that.

Speaker 3 (20:29):
Right. We see them as like questing into the great unknown,
and these people are like, yeah, no, I went over,
but those.

Speaker 4 (20:34):
People have, they've been out back.

Speaker 11 (20:36):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (20:36):
Yeah, they just didn't want it right. They came back
because they liked it. They were having they were fine.
It wasn't that they hadn't been exposed to the European world.
It was just that the European world had not physically
expanded to attempt to colonize the places that they lived. Certainly,
this idea that they going on.

Speaker 4 (20:52):
It really makes what they did a lot less impressive.

Speaker 2 (20:54):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (20:55):
I mean it was a long journey, sure.

Speaker 5 (20:58):
I mean people hug the Abaloche of Trail every year.
I'm not impressed.

Speaker 3 (21:02):
That does go a perpendiculative.

Speaker 4 (21:04):
I'm just saying people walk a thousand miles all the time.

Speaker 3 (21:07):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. They did a lot of canoeing. It's
a weird hobby Lewis and Clark. It's just a fun hobby.
I like walking. But yeah, I mean it's an impressive journey.
But like I think sometimes we have this idea of
them like questing into the unknown, and that's just not it.
That have met people who have been like oh yeah,
I've been there, Like, what do you think of Paris. Sadly,
the Lewis and Clark expedition was not the low point

(21:27):
for the grizzly bear population, but money. Talking of low points,
now is a time for us to transition to an
advertisement for products and services. All right, we are back.

(21:49):
I want to quote from a federal court case here
on protections for bears. By the nineteen thirties, just one
hundred and twenty five years after European settlers moved into
Grizzly Country, grizzly bears were found in only twocent of
their former range. Nor did this monk the low point
for the grizzly Thirty seven separate grizzly populations were identified
in the contiguous United States in nineteen twenty two. Only

(22:10):
six remained nineteen seventy five.

Speaker 4 (22:13):
So is this largely habitat encroachment or over hunting or
I mean, obviously.

Speaker 3 (22:18):
Both all of the above.

Speaker 4 (22:19):
Like, so we were just going out there and shooting them,
just the bounties.

Speaker 3 (22:22):
There were bounties for men by the millions. Yeah, they
were paying people to shoot the bears.

Speaker 4 (22:27):
We've got a buffalo situation.

Speaker 3 (22:28):
Yeah, yeah, we got a buffalo situation here.

Speaker 5 (22:30):
So this wasn't just like people doing hobby hunting and
like concurrent habitat encroachment. This was like an intentional destruction
of bear.

Speaker 3 (22:39):
The bear doesn't coexist well with like the human habitation
and specifically like animal.

Speaker 2 (22:44):
Agriculture, right, like it is that's not a great name.

Speaker 3 (22:47):
Yeah, it doesn't. It doesn't give a fuck, and it's
a big animal and it will tear shit down and
people are scared of it. Bears used to live all
across the plains, right, It was only a small segment
of the bears that in the mountains. They're the ones
that survived, just because those are the areas that it
was harder to make amenable to capitalism.

Speaker 4 (23:06):
That never occurred to me. Yeah, that never occurred to me.
That they have retreated from the hills to get away
from us.

Speaker 3 (23:12):
Yeah, I don't think it's that the Plains bears went
to the hills. I think it's that the Plains bears
are gone.

Speaker 5 (23:17):
Right, They're just the ones that survived because they were
like that's crazy.

Speaker 4 (23:21):
The bears just used to be roaming around down here.

Speaker 3 (23:23):
Yeah, the bears would be out and about. Actually, the
eastern most grizzly bear sow with cubs that I'm aware
of is on the APR, like in the Missouri River
breaks that's in the American Prairie Reserve. People who didn't
listen to a Buffalo episode callback, Yeah, that's what's what
they call a call back in the industry. The bears
used to be all around, right, Like, I guess maybe

(23:44):
if the plains right or an area that's especially kind
of appealing, especially when we look at like the period
after the nineteen twenties, right when people were trying to
bring the planet to heal through the application of technology. Right.
I think it's I'll do Leopold who talks about the
way humans fuck with ecosystems as a bit like somebody

(24:05):
who doesn't know how Watch works taking a part of
Watch just being like that fucking cogails doesn't look like
it's doing much to me. Let me whip that bad
boy out, like make it lighter.

Speaker 5 (24:14):
I always think of what was it somebody who's colonizing
and farming in Hawaii brought mongoose because they thought the
mongoose would eat some They thought the mongoose would eat
something that was causing a problem for the crops.

Speaker 4 (24:25):
It turns out the mongoose don't even eat that so now,
but like feral mongie.

Speaker 5 (24:29):
Sometimes, like around sunset at the beach, you'll see all
these like mongoose just like coming out of the underbrush
taking over the beach.

Speaker 3 (24:36):
Okay, that's amazing.

Speaker 4 (24:37):
Because like they have no natural predators there.

Speaker 3 (24:39):
Yeah, right, like yeah, introducing animals into ecosystems and removing
animals from ecosystems has all these downstream effects that like
we never think, like I am to Sophie about this today.
Like I grew up in the UK, right, where we
have tons of rabbits.

Speaker 4 (24:54):
Oh, she has a rabbit in the garden today, does
she show you?

Speaker 3 (24:56):
Mm hmm, yeah, yeah, I've seen a rabbit. Yeah, it's
able to identify it. The rabbit population is high in
part because we've removed many of their predators. Right, the
wolves are gone in the UK, The bears are gone
in the UK. We have some foxes, but not as
many because they are dangerous to sheep populations.

Speaker 6 (25:14):
Right.

Speaker 3 (25:14):
We have some raptors, but not as many. So now
we have times to rabbits. When the rabbits do well,
they eat crops in part, right, and they come in
and eat your carrots as depicted in the Peter rabbit.

Speaker 5 (25:26):
Oh, a Peter rabbit is just tearing the garden apart
every day. Mister McGregor was right.

Speaker 3 (25:31):
It's a bold statement. Molly Konga childhood villain. Now, the
rabbits have a disease called mix and mitosis, which is
horrific disease where like they sort of become almost like zombified. Yeah,
I think it. It came from Australia.

Speaker 4 (25:46):
They've got a rabbit problem.

Speaker 3 (25:47):
Well, they were trying to eradicate them, right, so.

Speaker 4 (25:49):
Also they invented a rabbit disease.

Speaker 3 (25:51):
I don't know this is what now I'm wondering if
they invented the rabbit disease.

Speaker 4 (25:55):
Lit's because they did that to another invasive animal.

Speaker 2 (25:58):
Right, Well, they lost a war.

Speaker 4 (25:59):
They gave them all a disease.

Speaker 3 (26:02):
I'm not even then they lose a war against emuse,
that's right. The Australians really have a bad record.

Speaker 2 (26:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (26:09):
So basically it is a disease that existed in American
rabbits only causes mild issues with them, but it is
horrific in European rabbits.

Speaker 4 (26:18):
Yeah, it looks like they did it on purpose. Yep,
you know creat up guys.

Speaker 3 (26:23):
Yeah, mixmatosis and rabbits, like is a thing that like
genuinely as a kid would like, So I used to
shoot a lot of rabbits when I was a kid, Right,
and you shoot these rabbits with mixed motosis and be
like what the fuck is this? Like how have we
done this to a living creature? They become so incapacitated
that like sometimes crows will start eating them before they've died,

(26:44):
or like they wander onto the road and get hit. Right,
it's really really really horrible.

Speaker 4 (26:48):
Oh I'm looking this up and I regret.

Speaker 3 (26:51):
Yeah, no, yeah, Google makes motosis pictures at your own risk.

Speaker 4 (26:55):
No, don't, actually don't.

Speaker 7 (26:56):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (26:56):
It almost looks like they have like cataracts over their
their eyes. It's it's really really horrible, right, But like,
this is what happens when we continually try and mess
with an ecosystem that has existed in harmony, and like
it changes based on inputs and changes in the climate. Right, Like,
it's not like it's a fixed thing. It has shifted

(27:16):
and changed through time, but it has found a balance
every time. And then we come in and just keep
pressing one side of the scale.

Speaker 6 (27:24):
This will fix it.

Speaker 3 (27:24):
Yeah, more, but keep chucking more on there and wondering.

Speaker 4 (27:28):
Kill the bears back.

Speaker 5 (27:29):
I just I can't get that's just like a child's
approach to things.

Speaker 3 (27:34):
This is our policy, right, Like, okay, so let's talk
about Zincy, right, let's talk about let's talk about the
protections that he wants to take away. These protections were
passed into law by the Endangered Species Act in nineteen
seventy three, and the Endangered Species Act lists grizzly bears
and the lower forty eight as threatened. If you're not
familiar with the essay, it prevents you from hunting, harming,

(27:57):
or harassing lifted species without a special permit.

Speaker 4 (28:00):
Maybe he thought he's supposed to threaten them.

Speaker 3 (28:02):
Yeah, yeah, like harass them, Like maybe it's going to
do it threatened yea, these.

Speaker 4 (28:06):
Are threatening, of course we should threaten.

Speaker 3 (28:08):
Yeah, he was going to post a mean tweet about them.
They didn't want to be accused of harassing them and
violating the essay. One thing the ESA does not do
is prevent you from defending yourself against these bears, which
it seems to be the implication in his post, right
that like, because you're in you're.

Speaker 4 (28:23):
Allowed to defend yourself against a person, so I'm sure.

Speaker 3 (28:26):
It's likewise a bet. There was a Night's case not
so long ago about someone who had killed three grizzly bears.

Speaker 5 (28:32):
So if you get arrested for killing an endangered animal,
is it like a murder trial where you have to
like prove self defense?

Speaker 3 (28:38):
I think it would depend on where you did it, right.
I was standing my ground your Yeah, sure I was.
I don't even want to make jokes about standiy Grand Miles,
because fucking horrible. The nine second opinion says we hold
the good faith belief defense for a prosecution and then
they give the theal code. Right, it's governed by subjective
rather than objective standard satisfied when the defendant actually, even

(29:02):
as unreasonably, believes his actions are necessary to protect himself
with others from perceived danger from a grisly bear.

Speaker 5 (29:09):
That's interesting that the language, because you don't see that,
and so in self defense in like if I harmed
you and an actual No, it doesn't have to be actual,
but it has to be a reasonable assumption, like my
belief has to be reasonable. But in Listen, there's saying
it's okay if your belief was unreasonable. Yeah, if you're
just scared dumb as well.

Speaker 3 (29:27):
Yeah, yeah, if you if you have no idea what
you're doing, you can still kill these bears, right, Like,
it gives you a very broad remit for self defense.

Speaker 5 (29:35):
Because you could just say you felt that way, because
it doesn't matter if that's reasonable or not.

Speaker 4 (29:40):
Yeah, so it effectively doesn't matter.

Speaker 3 (29:42):
Yeah, effectively if you if you are willing to state
in court that you were threatened by the bear, I
felt that way, right, it seems like you can you
can shoot the bear. I almost just scared. I'm as
scaredy cat. Maybe it relies on toxic masculinity to like
self self police itself and it's scared.

Speaker 12 (29:57):
No.

Speaker 3 (29:58):
It also, of course, the say does not include animals
based on how dangerous they are. So like Xinki's argument
that we should deal with bears because two people got
hurt one person got killed, it doesn't line up with
why the essay exists.

Speaker 5 (30:10):
And like I'm very sorry for those people, of course,
but like that's not like an epidemic of bear attacks.

Speaker 3 (30:15):
No, cattle kill more people by a factor of ten
than bears.

Speaker 4 (30:19):
Dogs kill more people with guns.

Speaker 3 (30:21):
Yeah, lightning kills more people than bears.

Speaker 4 (30:24):
Dog shot a lady with a gun the other day.

Speaker 3 (30:26):
Oh wow, Well, good for him, like it's good to
see people pushing boundaries. I like, bad for her. I
guess I'm sorry to hear that, but I do think
there are some best practices that could have been followed
there that I prevented the dog shooting.

Speaker 4 (30:39):
The dog was certainly not certified on the range, right.

Speaker 3 (30:41):
Yeah, the dog hadn't gone taken his apple seed clinic
or whatever. So the ESA, right, it distinguishes between a
threatened and engaged species and danger species is quote in
danger of extinction throughout all or a significant part of
its range. A threatened species is quote likely to become
an endangered species within the foreseeable future throughout all or
a significant portion of its range.

Speaker 8 (31:01):
Right, Like if we start killing them.

Speaker 3 (31:03):
Yeah, or keep killing them, yeah.

Speaker 5 (31:06):
Right, Ryan, Zincy just opens up on bears.

Speaker 3 (31:09):
Yeah, yeah, Zincy taking his Navy steel training and going the.

Speaker 4 (31:13):
Sealed Teams six is going to Yellowstone.

Speaker 3 (31:15):
Yeah yeah, they're going after that bear. Then you know,
then then they look at reasons for this great disease, predation,
destruction of habitat, commercial take, inadequacy of regulatory mechanisms to
protect them, or natural or man made factors, including brand
Zincy killing them because grizzly bears in the lower forty

(31:36):
eight are threatened. There are defined ecosystems. There are six
of them in which we're trying to recover the their population.
So one of these is a Greater Yellowstone ecosystem. The
Yellowstone Bears have been ping ponged around the ESA for
some time. As it turns out, the bears were removed
in two thousand and seven and then returned in two
thousand and nine by a court decision. Then it was

(31:57):
removed again under Zinc in the first Strump administration.

Speaker 4 (32:01):
I feel like, if you're on the cusp like that,
leave it alone.

Speaker 5 (32:05):
Like obviously if every time you dealist them they become
threatened again, like, leave them alone.

Speaker 3 (32:10):
Yeah, that's it. Well, in this case, it wasn't. The
reason for the delisting was challenged in court and found
to be insufficient. It wasn't that a population like to
could dive.

Speaker 4 (32:20):
We're just changing our mind about how much we care
about bears.

Speaker 3 (32:23):
Yeah, or like in this case, basically what the court said,
I can actually read you from the court order. It's
crow Indian try their al versus USA. The policy implications
of Great Yellowstone Grizzly delisting are significant, but they cannot
affect the court's disposition. Althose order may have impacts throughout
grisly country beyond. This case is not about the ethics
of hunting. It's not about solving human or livestock grisly conflicts.

(32:44):
As a practical or philosophical matter, these issues are not
before the court. Then, little ellipses where I've skipped a
bit by delisting the Great Yellowstone Grizzly without analyzing how
delisting would affect the remaining members of the lower forty
eight Grizzly designation. The Service failed to consider how reduced
protections for the Greater Yellowstone ecosystem would impact the other
grisly populations. Thus, the Service entirely failed to consider an

(33:07):
important aspect of the problem.

Speaker 4 (33:09):
So the Bear has got a good lawyer.

Speaker 3 (33:10):
There were two different court cases and they were combined
in this Montana case. Then they got a good lawyer.
Essentially that what they're saying though, right, is that like
this is an issue which we have to look at
like nationally, because if we have state controller and Wyoming
or Montana of the three states, right, Wyoming, Montana and Idaho.
One of them says that we've got too many bears
killing too many cows. That so open it up on

(33:31):
the bears, open season on bears. The bears don't know
what state they're in.

Speaker 4 (33:36):
They simply do not respect borders.

Speaker 3 (33:38):
They do not they Yeah, they refuse.

Speaker 4 (33:40):
To graistictional boundaries meaningless.

Speaker 3 (33:42):
To they engage in interstate commerce. So this one, it's
going to be like a federally controlled issue. Unfortunately, our
federal government right now is not one that's massively amenable
to conservation.

Speaker 4 (33:54):
It's run by bear murderers.

Speaker 3 (33:56):
Yeah, they would love to mert. I mean Donald Trump's son,
right is big into Oh.

Speaker 5 (34:00):
He does love big game hunting, doesn't he does? He
does some of those like rich boys afar.

Speaker 2 (34:04):
Yeah, he's got It's funny.

Speaker 3 (34:05):
Someone was like, oh, someone was talking to me the
other day about like you should picture this outdoor publication,
and then I realized it was owned by Trump Junior.
So that's a no from me. That's a clear note
for me. But they love conservations, Yeah, Like I would
be down to picture hunting publication about like the damage
that the border wall does to our landscapes and our
and our like I've seen a mule deer try and

(34:26):
get through the border wall and it's very very Yeah,
it's really sad because she had been habituated going that
way for water genetically for generations, right, and now she
can't And uh, yeah, that's pretty fucked. I'd love to
write that for a hunting publication, not writing it for
Donald Trump Junior's one. I don't think he's commissioning it either.
To be honest, I don't think. I think they're probably

(34:46):
using if I'd had to guess some artificial intelligence, but
I've never actually read it. I'm not going to. Don't
care if you're interested in the ESSA and what it's
done for gristie, but I has something to link to.
A Center for Biological Diversity report, which is pretty good.
This was published when the ESA was fifty, so it's
a few years old now. But people will be thinking,

(35:06):
I have seen pictures of people hunting grizzly bears. I
thought that you couldn't do that. That's because those bears
are in Alaska, so they are not considered to be threatened.
Different bears, yeah.

Speaker 4 (35:17):
Or like the same species of bears. They just live
somewhere else.

Speaker 3 (35:20):
Arctos horribilis. Yeah, the same horibles. Yeah, yeah, they really
are for him. Yeah, they really screwed him on the name.
This is part of the way the colonial mindset interacts
with nature, right, horrible mister horrible Yeah, horrible bear. That's me,
Like I'm aware of like Arctos Syriacus, which is the

(35:42):
Syrian there, fine, except that makes sense, that's descriptive. He
also lives in other parts of the region. But that's okay. Yeah, yeah,
we could call him Arctos alsham. I guess if we
if we wanted to get with it there there are
translations to the Bible that used Syria to describe the
whole region as well, so it did. It's okay, but
like horrible bear, Yeah, horrible bear. They really did him

(36:04):
dirty on that. One could have got it nice bear.
Maybe our petition for that, he should.

Speaker 4 (36:09):
Call it those lawyers from Montana.

Speaker 3 (36:11):
I get the coalition together again with the crow tribe,
the bear. It's not inherently horrible, right, We've just been
horrible to the bear. He's just doing what he does.

Speaker 8 (36:19):
Maybe that's why he's so bad.

Speaker 5 (36:20):
Maybe, right, He's like, you know, if you're gonna call
me horrible, I'll be horrible.

Speaker 3 (36:23):
Yeah, maybe maybe, maybe he's he's playing to the stereotype.
So the Alaska bears can be hunted, right, they are hunted.
Things do get a little complicated in Alaska with different
rules gaverning sport hunting and subsistence hunting at federal land
and state land. There is a coal program in Alaska
right now that is understandably very controversial. The idea is

(36:45):
that they will cull the bear to help the caribou
population recover. You are looking at a thing which is
multi factorial and only. But this is like taking the
part out of the watch right that was talking about.

Speaker 4 (36:58):
Like, because other things go on for the cariboo.

Speaker 3 (37:01):
Yeah, yeah, it's not the bear who moved into the
cariboo's home. It is people, right like. And it's not
the bear who caused climate change.

Speaker 4 (37:08):
Right like.

Speaker 5 (37:09):
There are other factors we could address, but we're taking
it out on the bear.

Speaker 3 (37:12):
Yeah, which will be a common theme throughout our discussion
here today. But I understand that we want the caribou
herd to survive as well. But if you're trying to
manage the caribou herd for hunting by controlling bear populations
to allow more caribou. I know, I don't think.

Speaker 4 (37:27):
That's we're modifying the wrong varia.

Speaker 3 (37:28):
Yes, pretty gate. Yeah, there is Alaska legislation that I
thought was interesting to make such programs go through peer
review that appears to be going absolutely nowhere. It seems
stuck in the Alaska House.

Speaker 5 (37:40):
So we had to get a bunch of scientists to
determine whether or not there will be environmental impact of
buffalo going back to where buffalo live, But we can't
get a scientific review of whether or not we should
be killing the bears.

Speaker 3 (37:50):
Yes, I know that there are other reasons for us
to do environmental impact studies like hydrology and stuff. Thank
you Eis people who reached out. We appreciate all our
science listeners. But yeah, it is pretty sad that we
can't get up get a I guess the argument would
be per review takes too long, okay, but like you
could get a couple of people to be like, you
know what, it takes a lot longer to get all

(38:11):
the bears back. Get a couple of scientists. It wouldn't
take that long that they need jobs right now. Get
a couple of bear scientists and employe see how it goes.

Speaker 2 (38:19):
So let's talk.

Speaker 3 (38:19):
About I guess like wy Zincy wants to delist.

Speaker 5 (38:23):
Them a Bearstol's wife and.

Speaker 3 (38:28):
Like an eating way they live to Yeah, yeah, yeah,
she's she's living her best life. It seems that one
incident was a sow with cubs who was foraging for berries,
and on the other one was a bear foraging for
berries who was surprised. This is nothing to us a
population levels.

Speaker 5 (38:45):
As I said earlier, it's just like it's an unfortunate
thing where somebody was in a bad situation.

Speaker 3 (38:51):
Yeah, it's we live in a landscape where things can
kill you. Most of those things are cars, but some
of them are animals.

Speaker 4 (38:57):
Well, we should start shooting the cars.

Speaker 3 (38:59):
Yeah, but we don't do a revenge attack on foard
every time someone gets in a motor accident. Right. I
looked at bear vault to beare volt. If you're not familiar,
money makes bear cans. You're familiar with bear cans.

Speaker 4 (39:10):
So it like tin cans you wear around your next
to you jingle jangle.

Speaker 3 (39:13):
Yes, yes, you can talk to the bear.

Speaker 2 (39:16):
He holds one, can you hold the other one?

Speaker 5 (39:18):
There's a stroke like he's in history house here in
your tree house exactly.

Speaker 3 (39:21):
Yeah, you say, I'm coming through you, please don't eat me.

Speaker 6 (39:24):
No.

Speaker 3 (39:24):
A bear can is a thing that you put your
food in when you're camping.

Speaker 4 (39:27):
I was picturing like a big necklace made out of
like old tin cans, like.

Speaker 3 (39:32):
An old timey a like a ley, but for cans beans.

Speaker 5 (39:37):
Yeah, I don't know why you You wouldn't need to buy that.

Speaker 4 (39:39):
You could make that at home.

Speaker 3 (39:40):
Yeah, you can make that for free. Bere Vault keeps
like an open source collection of bear maulings. Bears, according
to their data, have killed sixty six people since nineteen
seventy four.

Speaker 8 (39:50):
That's not very many.

Speaker 2 (39:52):
It's not a lot of people, right.

Speaker 4 (39:54):
One a year, Yeah, a little more than that.

Speaker 3 (39:56):
It's very, very hard to make a public health argument
for dlifting brown bears.

Speaker 5 (40:01):
More people, more people than not have measles, like in
my immediate area.

Speaker 3 (40:05):
Get well, that's a whole other public health issue. I'm
afraid when they do ESA studies on what kills bears,
it's human interactions. I noticed a lot of bears, probably
guns mostly trains. Trains kill a lot of bears.

Speaker 4 (40:19):
That's so sad.

Speaker 3 (40:20):
Yeah, it's really sad.

Speaker 5 (40:21):
So maybe wait, so you're supposed to make noise of
the bear. Here's you comment. Trains are loud as hell.

Speaker 3 (40:25):
They come pretty fast, I think, and I think that
they're not like super loud if you're just like if
they're not trying to be loud, you know, like if
if you're in a linear direction to the train, maybe
they're habituated to it because the trains come so regularly.
I don't know, that's so sad.

Speaker 8 (40:41):
Yeah, I never thought about bear getting hit by a train.

Speaker 3 (40:44):
Yeah, it's good. Bears get hit by cars too, especially
black bears. I mean, I'm sure brown bears do. They're
just bigger. I wonder if that's part of why, you know,
like there's a sort of we can't afford to keep
smashing our trains on bears situation here. I'm not sure.

Speaker 4 (40:57):
I think the train's probably fine, Yeah, I mean the
train going.

Speaker 3 (41:00):
Some of those bears are pretty big. I'm sure it
delays their train operations.

Speaker 4 (41:04):
I mean, if there was like a massive train derailment, yeah,
that's maybe we need to build a bear fence or something.

Speaker 6 (41:09):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (41:10):
Yeah, well, we have these wildlife under passes right that
allow worldlife to go under or over three ways. While
ago the right was getting really mad about one in
Santa Monica. This was like a I think Benny Johnson
had done like an investigation into this overpass. His theory
here was that the overpass was allowing I'm not joking,
terrible cougars to come into neighborhoods and kill people's children.

(41:34):
We came into the cougar's neighborhood, the cougar's, Benny, are
already fucking there because.

Speaker 5 (41:41):
And how many children have been eaten by cougars in
Santa Monica.

Speaker 3 (41:45):
I'm aware of one person in California being killed by
a mountain line in the last few years, and a
few more people have been killed, and you can think
of a couple more people.

Speaker 4 (41:55):
But mostly on like hiking trails, right, Like it's not
their yards.

Speaker 3 (41:58):
Yes, I'm not aware of it. Cougar coming into anybody's house.
That's not really how the mountain lion lives its life.

Speaker 5 (42:04):
I mean sometimes people's Chihuahuas have lost their lives to
this scourge.

Speaker 4 (42:09):
I understand, yeah, yeah, but not their children.

Speaker 3 (42:11):
Not their children, And like animals aren't coming to your
house and taking your child, and the idea that they're
not there anyway, like they if they want to come
into your neighborhood. They can come into your neighborhood. They're
good at moving across country, that's what they do.

Speaker 4 (42:23):
This will just keep you from running into it with
your lexus.

Speaker 3 (42:25):
Yeah, exactly like it. And it's going to allow like
the little mice and other small creatures, right that can't
some nim belief jump over highway barriers. The obvious other
argument for delisting bears is that.

Speaker 2 (42:40):
People want to kill them.

Speaker 8 (42:41):
Get a different hobby.

Speaker 3 (42:42):
You can even kill black bears in most states in
the Western United States if that's your thing. Right, It
seems like a lot of people just don't want bears around,
and that makes me sad because I think sharing our
landscape with bears is beautiful and they think it's special
that we have this thing in this country, Like it's
one of our national symbolic mammals, right.

Speaker 5 (43:04):
I mean he's like a gigantic guy who just wants
to eat berries and hang out.

Speaker 3 (43:08):
Yeah, he wants to kill stuff, sure, But.

Speaker 5 (43:11):
Like just I love the idea of just like this
huge animal just like roaming around looking for a little.

Speaker 2 (43:16):
Sweet treat Yep.

Speaker 3 (43:17):
Yeah, they they they're incresis precious, They're incredibly adaptable, right,
they can eat berries, they can eat meat, they can
eat fish.

Speaker 5 (43:25):
I love when they just take one bite of a
fish and throw it back so wasteful.

Speaker 3 (43:28):
He's just like me, for real, it's too fishy. He
wants it, yeah, he wants it like a fresh one.
The other argument, I guess is a certain population to recovered,
which kind of it shows a misunderstanding the importance of
having a population for genetic diversity, right, But also like.

Speaker 5 (43:43):
I just I'm really stuck on like, just because there's
a lot of them doesn't mean you have to kill
There's a lot of squirrels in my neighborhood, but I'm
not allowed to shoot them.

Speaker 3 (43:50):
And you can't just do a squirrel genocide.

Speaker 5 (43:52):
I think, oh, there's just a lot of these, I'm
going to do violence on them.

Speaker 3 (43:56):
Just yeah, I don't do that. There are a lot
of these, and it's been incoming convenient for us, and
therefore it's interesting to look at like the certain population
sort of doing well. At the Yellowstone Bears. The Yellowstone
Bets are much higher meat content in their diet than
they used to.

Speaker 4 (44:11):
Well, the tourists the reading, Yes.

Speaker 3 (44:12):
That's right, Yeah, that's mostly it. They feed them into
the moor every year they drop off a bus at
the bear cave as an offering, and then the bears
violated the treaty. That's why they're mad. No, it's because
climate changes is making it hard for them to find
their berries right, and human pressure is pushing them further
and further away from certain areas. Eating more meat is

(44:33):
going to lead to more conflict with hunters, both in
terms of them both being in the same space at
the same time trying to do the same thing.

Speaker 5 (44:40):
And honestly, it's so harmful for the bears that they've
all been listening to Jordan Peterson.

Speaker 8 (44:45):
The cardboard diet is not for everybody.

Speaker 3 (44:48):
Just imagining a bear.

Speaker 8 (44:49):
It's not good advice, you guys.

Speaker 3 (44:51):
Yeah. Yeah, They've become like terrible transfhobs. That's really why
we want to tea list them. I think we can
look at what happens when animals lose their protections. We
can see the way that Wyoming, for instance, dealt with wolves.

Speaker 13 (45:05):
Right.

Speaker 3 (45:05):
Are you familiar with this incident last year of that
wolf that was like horrifically mistreated in Wyoming. Oh that
was really fucking gross.

Speaker 4 (45:14):
Did they like torture it?

Speaker 2 (45:15):
Yes?

Speaker 4 (45:16):
Why?

Speaker 3 (45:17):
Because I guess it made them feel big and strong.

Speaker 10 (45:19):
Right.

Speaker 5 (45:19):
So again, this isn't about like managing conflict with livestock.
It's not about like you know, ecological management, it's not.
This is about people who just want to hurt animals. Yeah,
because they didn't just kill this wolf because they didn't
want it around.

Speaker 4 (45:33):
They did look horrible to it.

Speaker 3 (45:35):
Yeah, I mean this guy. There are videos of this,
right that this guy.

Speaker 5 (45:39):
So they tormented in an animal and then they made
a video of it. They made like an animal snuff film.
This is just about torture.

Speaker 3 (45:47):
I'm not saying everyone who wants to dealist Disney Breads
grispy bears wants to torture them in this way.

Speaker 4 (45:51):
But like this, like this desire to engage in this violence.

Speaker 3 (45:55):
Yeah, like for certain people, right, there's an idea somehow
that they can prove like strength and virility and masculinity.

Speaker 8 (46:03):
Get into powerlifting.

Speaker 3 (46:05):
Yeah. So what this guy did the people un familiar
His name is Cody Roberts.

Speaker 6 (46:08):
Who never met a good Cody.

Speaker 3 (46:11):
I've met some nice coadies.

Speaker 8 (46:12):
Oh no, okay, we know what.

Speaker 3 (46:14):
Yeah, he hit the wolf on his he ran down
the wolf on its snowmobile.

Speaker 4 (46:19):
So it wasn't bothering you. You pursued it.

Speaker 3 (46:21):
Yeah, he chased on his snowmobile. He taped its mouth
shut and took it to a bar.

Speaker 4 (46:26):
Does this man has a wife? Have a wife and
a she?

Speaker 3 (46:28):
Okay, that's a good question. I'm trying to work out
if he went to jail eighteen months formation cremation, uh,
and he gets a prison term if he fails. He
fathered guilty plea to fellony animal cruelty. I understand that
there are people like within the hunting ranching outdoor space
who think this guy's a piece of shit. There are
many of them, I know many of them.

Speaker 5 (46:50):
Because that's a very weird thing to do. Like, yeah,
it's psycho, it's no good thought process. What is shooting it?
I don't agree with, but I understand that you would
do that. That's the thing people do. But why did
you like chase it down and abduct it?

Speaker 3 (47:05):
Yeah? Why did you choose to make this animal suffer?

Speaker 6 (47:09):
Like?

Speaker 3 (47:09):
Like did you just show no respect for life?

Speaker 14 (47:11):
Right?

Speaker 3 (47:11):
Like you we joke like, oh, does you have a
way of She's okay, but genuinely, this is a person
who is like a psycho, Like.

Speaker 4 (47:17):
No, I'm not joking. I'm not joking.

Speaker 5 (47:19):
Actually, Like, if you if this is your first instinct
for how you treat a living creature, like.

Speaker 4 (47:25):
I bet he's not good to women either.

Speaker 3 (47:27):
Yeah, Like, this doesn't seem like a person who people
should feel safe around.

Speaker 4 (47:32):
Oh it was a young female wolf too.

Speaker 14 (47:34):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (47:34):
Oh no, what have you found?

Speaker 6 (47:37):
Sorry?

Speaker 4 (47:38):
I just was I found a picture of her.

Speaker 3 (47:40):
Yeah. No, it's really sad. The whole thing is really sad.
Like to injure this animal right to the to the
extent that it can't get away or defend itself, and
then tape up its mouth and then drag it to
a place where it's going to be in fear for
the rest of its life before you kill it. It's
it's unconscionable. It's horrific. I'm not saying that that will

(48:02):
happen to bears, but I'm saying that.

Speaker 4 (48:04):
Like a bear would be a lot harder to do
that too.

Speaker 5 (48:06):
Yeah, I would be, you know, I think I think
as his punishment, this guy should try to do this
to a bear.

Speaker 3 (48:12):
What I am saying is that even if we like
go ahead and dealist bears without serious controls, if we
start to manage them just as like vermin, right, like
as a pest like this opens up all kinds of avenues,
and I think.

Speaker 4 (48:28):
A lot of people will find themselves in a situation
that is beyond their grasp.

Speaker 5 (48:33):
Yeah, right, Like if if suddenly you are if you're
a guy who's like, yeah, i'd love to shoot a bear,
now you're allowed to.

Speaker 4 (48:38):
I think people are going to find themselves in situations
they didn't anticipate.

Speaker 3 (48:42):
Yeah, I know in Alaska, for instance, if you want
to hunt a brown bear and you're not a NASCAR resident,
you have to go with a guide. That's probably a
good thing.

Speaker 5 (48:49):
Right, Like I think if we start killing the bears back,
more people will get killed, but bears, a lot of
these guys are gonna die.

Speaker 3 (48:56):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, the bad deaths will go up, without
a doubt. Yeah yeah, Ready, your your best chance of
getting into an encounter with a bear is probably hunting, right, Like,
if you're not not hunting bears necessarily, but let's say
you're Yeah, because you're moving around the woods quietly, you
could start the one.

Speaker 4 (49:14):
Right, So that's already against the advice for not encountering.

Speaker 3 (49:19):
And then if you then you're able to shoot something,
and then you Let's say you're in your backcountry hunting, right,
you have to backpack them.

Speaker 4 (49:27):
Now you have met me out.

Speaker 3 (49:29):
Yeah so, but then now you're coming back to the
carcass for your second load of meat. A bear may
have found that carcass.

Speaker 4 (49:35):
Right, somebody might already be there.

Speaker 3 (49:37):
He might not want to give that up. It's his now,
Yeah that you Yeah, you're then find yourself in a
difficult situation. Talking with difficult situations, Molly, I have to
pivot to advertisements again. Yeah, hopefully this one's not for
a wolf tape. We are back. Let's talk Molly about

(50:06):
safety in bear country, grisly country, specifically right after this
this tragedy where this hiker died in Glassian National Park.
I have seen a number of articles claiming that bear
spray is quote a placebo or that you quote shouldn't
bet your life on it.

Speaker 4 (50:23):
Well, I think if you think it's a placebo, you
should taste it.

Speaker 3 (50:26):
Yeah, it's It shows a fundamental misunderstanding ifs not only
how bear spray works, but also what a placebo is. Right,
Like you three of the words in your title, all
of the nouns you don't understand.

Speaker 4 (50:38):
The bear doesn't know what it is.

Speaker 8 (50:41):
The placebo effect will not work.

Speaker 3 (50:42):
On bear Yeah right, yeah, exactly, get right. Yeah, well,
the Placibo effect actually does work on bears. You can
spray things that are not bear spray and they still.

Speaker 4 (50:51):
Don't like the bear spray before.

Speaker 3 (50:53):
Yeah, it's just the I guess maybe the Perceibo effect. Yeah,
it's a noise. It's the cloud, like I guess it's
not really a place.

Speaker 4 (51:01):
Bewildering because it's it's startling.

Speaker 3 (51:04):
Yes, yeah, yeah, but you're not saying it's actually.

Speaker 5 (51:07):
The bear will not have sort of imaginary symptoms of
bear spray exposure due to their beliefs.

Speaker 3 (51:13):
Yeah, yeah, that they have been bear spray. I should
note that most of the articles are written by the
same person.

Speaker 4 (51:20):
So what's his motivation here?

Speaker 5 (51:22):
Why is it he's like, does he own a company
that sells something that like rivals big bear spray.

Speaker 3 (51:27):
No, it's a person who's got a guy called west
Saila who used to write for Outside magazine and no
longer does. There's a escalating trend in the severity of
his claims about the lack of efficacy of bear spray
that correlates with him making income that is directly related
to the number of views on the articles making those claims.

Speaker 4 (51:48):
That is really destroying the information landscape.

Speaker 3 (51:50):
Yeah, I mean I think also people not knowing what
the fuck they're talking about and being given a platform
is also destroying the information landscape. Right, but they both
of those are in play here.

Speaker 5 (51:58):
Really see the sort of escalating way people write because
their income is dependent on clickbase.

Speaker 3 (52:04):
Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah that the clicks to cash pipeline
is not helping us.

Speaker 5 (52:08):
I make the same amount of money even if none
of you listen to my podcast.

Speaker 3 (52:11):
Yeah, you guys, you could all turn this off right now,
I'd still be poor. This is not true, right, I
take really strong offense at this. I don't know the
qudit wait to say this is bullshit? Right?

Speaker 5 (52:24):
Like if Bear Spain never worked and couldn't work, he
wouldn't be the only one saying it correct. There be
there will be scores of people saying I tried this
and nothing happened.

Speaker 11 (52:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (52:35):
Also, like we have data on this, right. This is
not a thing that we need to pull out of
our ass. This is not a thing that we need
to rely on individual anecdotes for. This is not a
thing that will be determined by the outcome of a
single incident in Glacier National Park.

Speaker 2 (52:51):
This is a thing that we have masses of data on.

Speaker 8 (52:53):
There's bear scientists.

Speaker 3 (52:55):
I spoke to one, Molly.

Speaker 8 (52:57):
I can't wait to hear that.

Speaker 3 (52:58):
I had a very lovely conversation. He has the two studies,
and to be clear, where sit sees and I don't
know if it's just that he didn't read them, or
he didn't read them well, or that he read them
to the best of his ability. And this is what
we're getting.

Speaker 4 (53:13):
I mean, scientific literacy is pretty poor.

Speaker 3 (53:16):
Sure, it's always okay not to write an article making
claims about something that impacts people's safety if you don't
know what you're talking about. It's always okay to be
quiet when we're discussing the people's well being. That's fine.

Speaker 4 (53:29):
Adults talk about it.

Speaker 3 (53:30):
Doesn't impact your substack in the same way.

Speaker 4 (53:33):
But oh, it's a substack situation.

Speaker 3 (53:36):
Yeah, it's a subsect situation. I would suggest that writing
that best bray is dangerous or useless is akin to
saying that seat belts are dangerous or useless, and that
we can, if we look hard enough, find one person
who was killed by their seat belt, and no one's
ever been killed by best braidedge. I have been best
braid more than once.

Speaker 5 (53:54):
Didn't kill me when when we were talking about this earlier,
this most shocking fact of all to me so far.

Speaker 4 (54:00):
Bear spray is less potent than police pepper spray.

Speaker 3 (54:05):
I believe there's less OC and bear spray.

Speaker 5 (54:07):
I would have assumed it's more, but it's less. Yeah,
I think the such sensitive nose.

Speaker 3 (54:12):
Very sensitive nose is to be clear, it's still very
unpleasant for humans like I consider myself to have a
nose of every sensitivity and having been a recipient a
bear spray, it's highly unpleasant.

Speaker 5 (54:22):
Right, But I just I thought, you know, I would
have assumed you said I've been bear sprayed, like, oh,
that's like way more hardcore.

Speaker 3 (54:28):
Sure, yeah, yeah, yeah. So the bear spray. Part of
the reason I think that it has less of the
OC oil in it is that it has to be
propelled out at a velocity that allows it to be
used even if the bear is coming at you and
the wind is blowing towards you. Right, so the bear

(54:49):
is coming with the wind, so you're spraying of pay
and then the spray would be you don't want the
spray to all be blown back to you. Right, you
want it to be able to get out, to create
that barrier between you and the bear, and it does. Again,
doctor Smith's studies have shown the best bait does work
even with an unfavorable wind.

Speaker 6 (55:05):
Right.

Speaker 3 (55:06):
I will link to both these studies. Everything he's done,
which I think is really cool because this stuff impacts
like your safety in Griz country. Everything he's done is
available publicly for free. Hell yeah, very unusual in the
in the academic research space, right, But I think it's
great because it allows you to look at this best
play as a Perceibo article and then you can go
find the study. I will link it right here, and

(55:27):
you can say, huh, sure, seems like this guy can't
read a study.

Speaker 4 (55:30):
And does he has he read those studies he claims to.

Speaker 3 (55:34):
Yeah, he quotes soon, So it's not.

Speaker 8 (55:35):
That he just isn't aware of them.

Speaker 5 (55:37):
He just doesn't believe the expert because of a personal expert.

Speaker 3 (55:41):
I I think he either didn't grasp the table or
didn't grasp so the So I again, like the person
who wate these studies is extremely easy to contact, and
anyone doing reasonable journalism would do so.

Speaker 2 (55:54):
Right.

Speaker 5 (55:54):
So I guess is he saying I read this study
and it's wrong, Or is he saying I read the
study and it agrees.

Speaker 3 (55:59):
With me, saying I read the study and it says
best bray doesn't work. It agrees with me?

Speaker 9 (56:03):
Yet?

Speaker 4 (56:03):
Oh no, yeah, yeah, he could have just emailed the
other Could it just usk?

Speaker 3 (56:08):
Could it just usk?

Speaker 2 (56:09):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (56:10):
So, like there are incidents in the study which are
it considered successful and non successful uses. Some of the
non successful uses are with a black bear, when you
spray it and it comes back later. That is still
the brown bo is not killing you in that situation, right,
I'm sorry, a black bear.

Speaker 5 (56:26):
It still works. Like efficacy doesn't mean permanent.

Speaker 3 (56:30):
Yeah, And at some point when you're making a study
like this, you have to decide, like what a You're
trying to create a binary relationship about his theories of things.
Right that the other study he wrote was efficacy of
Firearms for their defense in Alaska. It's worth noting that
in the Efficacy of Firearms study, more than one hundred
and twenty bears died out of a data set something
like two hundred and fifty. None of the best bray

(56:51):
bears died. Oh that's a lot right, yeaheah, it's a lot.

Speaker 4 (56:56):
And I feel like it's better if everybody survives the encounter.

Speaker 3 (56:59):
Yeah, it's better for all of us if we use
this extremely well researched tool.

Speaker 5 (57:06):
Right and again, having read zero studies, I read zero studies,
but I know only one point one person's a year
are killed by bears. Yeah, so if this never worked
and couldn't work, more people would have been killed by bears.

Speaker 3 (57:23):
Maybe, Yeah. Yeah, certainly a lot of people who use
the best Bray didn't get killed by bears, right.

Speaker 4 (57:27):
Like, none of them did.

Speaker 3 (57:29):
It is possible to use best brain and be killed
by bears, like.

Speaker 5 (57:32):
Especially happened to It's happened to maybe fifty people reside.

Speaker 3 (57:36):
Yet residues of bear spray will attract bears in the like,
well that's unfair. Well it's an interesting smell, right, and
they have an amazing nose, so I'm guessing like they
will come check it out. And I know that, Like,
there are instances where people have, for instance, used best
Pray in the way that one might use bug spray.
I use spraying their tent.

Speaker 6 (57:54):
That's not going to work.

Speaker 3 (57:54):
Yeah, yeah, well you're going to bring them in.

Speaker 5 (57:57):
That's like saying, I'm going to use this gun to
protect myself by making a circle around me with bullets.

Speaker 3 (58:01):
Yeah yeah, exactly, smearing myself with.

Speaker 4 (58:03):
It, but the bullets in a circle around my Yeah.

Speaker 3 (58:06):
It's not quite cargo cult thinking, but like it's a
you know, it's like magical thought process. I guess, like
that's not how best pay was you spray it at the.

Speaker 5 (58:14):
Bear homeopathic gun is where you just lick the bullets.

Speaker 3 (58:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (58:17):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (58:18):
Let's talk about the things that you can do, right,
Like you can keep a clean camp. This is really big,
don't attract them? Yeah, so if we look at like Yosemite, right,
Yosemite and that that like Smite Kings Canyon Sequoia Park System,
you can't bring bear spray in there, right, Oh, but
you have to have a bear can. So I've backpacked

(58:39):
in that area. They have done surveys that showed that,
like most people were acquainted with best bear practices, but
we're not following them on the trail.

Speaker 4 (58:47):
So it's not that they didn't know better.

Speaker 6 (58:48):
Is the don't care?

Speaker 3 (58:49):
I think people it's hard to like fathom a giant,
several hundred pound half ton creature. It's going to come
in and steal my cliff bars, right, but it will
And that gets hard to fathom how good their smell.

Speaker 5 (59:03):
Is because they love a delicious snack. Like they're berry boys.
They're berry boys. They're going to come get your little tree.

Speaker 3 (59:09):
Yeah, they love they love a high carbohydrate like energy snack.
They're endurance athletes. They want to eat your cliff bar,
if your keito, you're fine.

Speaker 8 (59:17):
But they would like candy.

Speaker 3 (59:18):
But they love candy. Yeah, Like I know it would.

Speaker 8 (59:20):
Be unethical to give a bear.

Speaker 3 (59:24):
Wrong, So we want to keep a clean camp or
in bad country. Right, that means stuff with odors. It's
not just our food, but also like the maybe the
clothes we cooked in. We have a scented toothpaste stuff
like that.

Speaker 8 (59:36):
Wow.

Speaker 3 (59:36):
Yeah, like if I had, if I was in the
habit of using a shampoo smelled like I think they
spoke to doctor Smith about this, like he said, if
I used apricot shampoo, probably wouldn't bring.

Speaker 12 (59:46):
It with me.

Speaker 5 (59:46):
Wow, because they just want to come check out that
sweet tree.

Speaker 2 (59:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (59:50):
Like it's kind of you think that they eat berries, right,
you make yourself smell like a fruit, Like it's kind
of on you, Like I get Yeah, it makes sense.

Speaker 4 (59:56):
Like Winnie the Pooh, he's just like following his nose
you find a sweet tree.

Speaker 7 (01:00:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:00:01):
I don't want to blame anyone for not knowing things.
None of us are born knowing anything. And it's not
like they issue PSAs about bears every day.

Speaker 4 (01:00:09):
I bet there's a pamphlet at the trailhead.

Speaker 2 (01:00:11):
Yeah, there's definitely.

Speaker 3 (01:00:11):
Well, when you go to Yosemite, you have to sign
him with a ranger for a wilderness permit and then
they'll give you the once over. But there are other
things we would not do.

Speaker 10 (01:00:19):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:00:20):
I would not sleep alone in a tent in bear country, said,
and there are two of us, had probably two tents, right, Like,
just gives one of us a chance to deploy the
bear spray and the bear does come in. We can
get bear fences, we can try very hard not to
surprise bears. Right. So I was trail running in Alaska

(01:00:40):
last year in some pretty thick brush, Right, I used
a little bear bell. It's dorky, but like.

Speaker 4 (01:00:46):
Oh, it sounds cute as hell.

Speaker 6 (01:00:48):
I want to look at that.

Speaker 3 (01:00:49):
Well, there's an unfortunate video that you'll probably see when
you google bear bell of a hiker who thought the
bell bell with a repellent, and so the black bear
is charging him and he's waving, just.

Speaker 8 (01:01:00):
Ring the bell at it all.

Speaker 3 (01:01:01):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, So it sounds like people.

Speaker 5 (01:01:04):
Are purchasing these solutions but not understanding the functions of them.

Speaker 3 (01:01:08):
Yeah, And like, I don't want to blame people for that,
because part of the way we get to a place
where we could destroy so much of our megafauna, is
it so a few people care about or understand it, Right,
that's an education issue that we can't solve quickly or
like on a podcast. I think that it would behoove
anyone who's going camping in especially like Griz country, right,

(01:01:29):
so in Alaska, Wyoming, not all of Wyoming, Montana, Idaho.
And like I've camped in those places. I've come to
all of those places to learn about these things, right,
because it's not just a negative instant for you, Like,
it's also a negative incident for the bear. Even if
you have to bear spray a bear, right, that fucking
sucks for the bear.

Speaker 5 (01:01:46):
I mean I've been I've been pepper sprayed, and the
bear can't even go like wash his hair with dawn.

Speaker 3 (01:01:51):
Right, Yeah, he can't stand in the shower like looking
down like I know this this. I guess the positive
outcome of that is that the bear will be like
likely to not want to come around people so much, right,
because they'll associate this negative attraction with the best bray.

Speaker 5 (01:02:04):
Right, So this seems like it's that it does work.
And then also if we're all doing it, you'll you
want to do it as much. Yeah, because the bears
will leave us alone.

Speaker 3 (01:02:12):
Yeah, we have the solution for being in bear country, right, Like,
it's carry our bear repellent.

Speaker 4 (01:02:17):
Unless the bears are like me.

Speaker 5 (01:02:18):
You know, I've been parpigedprayed by all kinds of cops
and I'm still going to go look and see whether I'm.

Speaker 3 (01:02:22):
Just keep on keep on tanking. Yeah, I'm not a
very stupid man. It's like the uh, the Yosemite. I
guess it just keeps spraying me.

Speaker 2 (01:02:31):
These people.

Speaker 3 (01:02:31):
Why this. There were some instance where I guess brown
bears got sprayed to charge the person, but like as
they were charging, the person sprayed them and they came
through the spray. But then there's a spray got more condensed,
like I know they're not the person over and kept
on charging. Okay, I don't want, Yeah, which is obviously
not a great outcome, but it's a better outcome than

(01:02:53):
you're getting warreed by the bear, right.

Speaker 8 (01:02:54):
Better than it eat my bear.

Speaker 3 (01:02:56):
But like, I really want to push back on this
narrative that we should be all carrying firearms.

Speaker 4 (01:03:00):
First of all, most people, most people don't need a gun.

Speaker 3 (01:03:03):
Yeah, I mean, like, there are reasons to warn guns ion,
lots of them, but like, defending yourself from bears probably
isn't one unless you're already very proficient with firearms, and
even then.

Speaker 2 (01:03:16):
I don't want to kill a bear.

Speaker 5 (01:03:18):
Like, but I just to think if you're telling every
casual hiker who goes to where bears might be that
they need to own a gun, a lot of those
people would not have otherwise owned a gun. Yeah, are
not good at handling a gun. In a situation where
they need to use the gun against the bear, it's
going to go badly. But also, now there's a gun
in their home that they would not otherwise have had
in their home, and the odds of a firearm accident

(01:03:40):
in the home are now higher.

Speaker 3 (01:03:41):
Yeah, well yeah, infinitely high than it didn't have one.

Speaker 5 (01:03:43):
Right, So it's not going to work out for you.
In this limited instance that you think you need it for.

Speaker 3 (01:03:49):
Yeah, and then you've introduced to dangerous.

Speaker 2 (01:03:51):
Now you have a gun you didn't need.

Speaker 3 (01:03:52):
Yeah, Like, it is impossible. May if you are getting
If I am getting more by a grizzly bear and
you bearst pray that bear, I will have I see
eyes and hopefully survive. If you shoot that bear, it
is very possible, and it has happened that you will
also shoot me.

Speaker 5 (01:04:06):
Because the average person not a good shot under controlled circumstances.
Bear attack not a controlled circumstance.

Speaker 3 (01:04:12):
Yeah, like everyone like this is especially a thing with men, right,
they will tend to overestimate their ability with firearms dramatically.
In my experience, this is not a fuck around and
find out situation. You don't want to find out that
you're not very good at shooting as a grisly bear
is charging you.

Speaker 5 (01:04:28):
And even if you are very good at shooting at
the range, you're not in this situation.

Speaker 8 (01:04:33):
You're not.

Speaker 3 (01:04:33):
You have to deploy the firearm right now, and we
have to.

Speaker 5 (01:04:36):
Like, your hands are shaking, there's piss running down your life.

Speaker 3 (01:04:39):
We're scared. Yeah, you have to incapacitate the bear, like
I've been in up close situations with big animals. It's scary,
like thinking I'm going to die now. It has a
profound effect on the human body, and it's not one
that does and it does it doesn't actually enhance your
john Wick characteristics. Yeah, so I would highly recommend it.

(01:04:59):
If you're going to bear country, you get some bear spray,
don't fly, but you can't fly with bare spray, So
you're gonna have to buy it when you get buy
it when you get there. This is not like big
bear spray. This is also an accusation that like big
bear spray sort of funded these studies or that this
is silly, right, the death spray industry is not that
big guys.

Speaker 2 (01:05:19):
It works.

Speaker 3 (01:05:20):
It is statistically more effective than using firearms.

Speaker 6 (01:05:23):
It works.

Speaker 8 (01:05:24):
What does it cost like forty bucks?

Speaker 3 (01:05:25):
Yeah, not even that.

Speaker 4 (01:05:26):
And how much does a gun cost? A lot more
than that, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:05:29):
A lot more than that, especially if you're going to
actually practice with it. Right, if you're going to get
bear spray, I would sugest you get a You can
get a dummy. It's just got water in it and
you can practice. Right. There are a couple of safeties
on a bear spray. One I do have one here.

Speaker 4 (01:05:43):
With like within arms reach in your arms.

Speaker 3 (01:05:44):
You want to go one over here? Yeah, I got
my RACKUS best bray, but like it's a safety on
it and there's actually a zip tie when you get
it to stop the safety coming off, just to stop
it like blog in your back going off in the
shipping container, yeah, or in the in the walmart or whatever.
So you've got to whatever of that, right, And then
they they sell packs which has the water one and

(01:06:05):
the spicy one, and you're going to practice deploying the
water one, right, and like that's smart. Yeah, when you're
carrying your bear spray, if it's in the bottom of
your backpack, oh, the bear doesn't give you that much
advanced notice. Yeah. So the bear spray is like when
I was when I'm running in places where there were
grizzly bears, I wear a little running vest. Put it

(01:06:28):
in the front here. If I have binoculars and I
have a little binocular pack, I put it on the
side there. I've done it on my belt before.

Speaker 5 (01:06:35):
Googled bear spray and the pictures, the pictures that are
used to advertise the spray.

Speaker 3 (01:06:41):
I gotta see this. What's yeah, how do I send
you sen you can just put it in the chat.

Speaker 4 (01:06:49):
This is not a real picture.

Speaker 8 (01:06:50):
Is this a real picture of a man spraying of bear?

Speaker 5 (01:06:52):
Because the bear is sort of enveloped in this cloud
of spray, So it just looks like one of those
soft effect paintings of the bears still wet in like
a cloud.

Speaker 3 (01:07:01):
It looks like it looks like like a I'm a
big fan of T shirts of wolves howling at the moon.

Speaker 8 (01:07:09):
It's a bear, old man's brain.

Speaker 2 (01:07:11):
I don't know why if you're staging it. This is
bizarre because.

Speaker 4 (01:07:15):
That's not a real picture of something of that happened.

Speaker 6 (01:07:17):
I don't know.

Speaker 3 (01:07:18):
I don't think so, because there's no bare body and
you can see this. You can see the bush right
like it's just its head. They haven't bothered.

Speaker 8 (01:07:24):
It's very close.

Speaker 3 (01:07:25):
Yeah, so yeah, and the bear doesn't look too upset.
It's kind of Yeah. That is a fascinating case. If
we scroll down, there are there are better images of
people using bear spray, which.

Speaker 4 (01:07:35):
Is incredible, incredible product photos that.

Speaker 3 (01:07:38):
Yeah, that is really quite remarkable. Suggest everybody who is
going into bear country buy bear spray and practice using
it like it's better for you. It's better for bears.
It's cheaper than a gun. You can if you want,
by a bear fence, the electric fence that goes around
your camp if camping in the back country, I think

(01:08:00):
that's a good idea. If you're in an area with
lots of bears, they way very little. Now I'm by
myself when actually after talking to doctor Smith, well I
won't because I haven't got enough money, but i'd like
to maybe I'll hear from the bear fence people. You
can follow all the best practices, right, and you're not
just going to learn them from a podcast. You're going
to look up the parks system. You're going to look

(01:08:20):
at doctor Smith's research.

Speaker 4 (01:08:22):
Ask a park ranger. He'll tell you that's his job.

Speaker 3 (01:08:25):
Yeah, some of their jobs depends what depends what kind
of rangers they are. Some of them are cops. The
overwhelming bulk of evidence suggests that the way to go
with bears is bear spray until a bear kills an
oil rig. We will have we will continue to have

(01:08:48):
bears on our landscape, but it's something that we should like,
genuinely care about, really, like the trophic cascade is not
as much of a of a thing as it was
once made out to be that. I'm sure you've seen
that thing about how wolf change rivers.

Speaker 4 (01:09:02):
No, you have to tell me about wolves too.

Speaker 3 (01:09:05):
A whole other episode. Yeah, well, fucking wolf management is
a whole other thing. The bears have entered the discourse
this week because a bear killed someone. We don't talk
about it when someone kills a bear, right the go
ask it. They're coming bears from aircraft right now. And
I'm not saying that, like a human life is equal
to a bear life, but I'm saying that.

Speaker 4 (01:09:24):
Hunting from an aircraft is such bitch behavior.

Speaker 3 (01:09:28):
I know, if you want to take a bear, do
it with a knife like a like a hero or
a bow.

Speaker 4 (01:09:33):
But or you know, do it Lewis and Clark style,
use a musket.

Speaker 6 (01:09:36):
That's fine.

Speaker 3 (01:09:36):
Yeah, yeah, right, eight of your friends and a musket
at the edge of the river and you don't have
best brace. You're only optionists to jump into the room
twenty feet clip with a bear that you could have
left alone. So yeah, I want to. I guess like
end by saying that, like the outdoors isn't entirely safe,
and that's part of what makes it beautiful. There have

(01:09:56):
been times when I have been in the wilderness where
I've thought going to die, and I keep going back
to the wilderness because like it's also one of the
things that makes me feel so grateful to be alive.
And it's okay if it isn't entirely safe. We know
that when we enter the wilderness, and we do our
best to mitigate that risk, right, We plan, we take

(01:10:19):
safety precautions, we bring our first aid kit in our
best brain, and we tell someone where we're going and
when we're coming back, and we do all this stuff,
but we understand that there is some inherent risk and
that's all right. Like if we wanted to see wildlife
and have no inherent risk and have it be comfortable,
we would just go to the zoo, right, And the
zoo sucks compared to the outdoors, right, Like I don't

(01:10:39):
want to see a bear in a cage. It's undignified
for the bear.

Speaker 4 (01:10:43):
It's so sad for them in there.

Speaker 3 (01:10:44):
Yeah, Like it's the meaning to me to see something
demean for my entertainment in that fashion. Like we can't
comprehend animals outside of the habitat. I don't think like
seeing a grisbee bear in Alaska of trying to eat
salmon or being a black bear in California doing its
thing hamingson berries. Like that's cool, and I want you

(01:11:05):
all to have that, and I want your children and
grandchildren to have that, and so, like, I think we
should be very skeptical about people making safety based arguments
for destroying our our megafauna here like that. You'll hear
it with wolves, right, You're hearing people doing it with cougars,
which is absolutely ridiculous.

Speaker 4 (01:11:25):
Like most of these animals will not bother you if
you leave them alone.

Speaker 3 (01:11:28):
Yeah, and like if very very ocasionally people have been
killed by cougars who are not bothering the cougar, right, like.

Speaker 5 (01:11:34):
Very occasionally, you know, a freak accident, Yeah, doesn't justify
destruction of an ecosystem.

Speaker 3 (01:11:40):
People get killed by lightning, but we're not just killing clouds.
People get killed by cars. We don't get bombing the
Ford factory. I understand the desire to be safe, but like,
we will take away a lot of things that are
really beautiful if we just want to be safe.

Speaker 8 (01:11:53):
But again, we're controlling the wrong variables.

Speaker 5 (01:11:55):
If you're worried about people dying in unfair and you know,
terrible accidents.

Speaker 4 (01:12:00):
There are things we could talk about.

Speaker 5 (01:12:01):
Yeah, there are policy decisions that could be made that
would save thousands and thousands of lives.

Speaker 3 (01:12:05):
Yeah, if you want people to be safe and be
concerned about free healthcare.

Speaker 4 (01:12:10):
Bears have killed sixty six people.

Speaker 5 (01:12:13):
I bet that many people died today from not being
able to get their insulin.

Speaker 3 (01:12:16):
Yeah, yeah, right, yeah, there's a perfect example. Right, Like,
if you want to keep people safe, then think about
things that will keep them safe. And I think we can.
We can very easily keep people bears safe. But the
threat to the bears is us. That's it. The only
other thing that kills bears really is other bears, and
so it's on us therefore to advocate, right, Like the

(01:12:38):
bears can't advocate for themselves. Luckily they had people who
brought that court case in twenty nineteen. But like, if
we want to continue to enjoy the outdoors in the
way that they are, we need to stop randomly removing shit.
And bears are one of those things, especially brown bears,
that it's very easy to whip up fear about that.
I think we should just leave them alone. I think

(01:13:00):
we should be weary also of sort of anthropomorphizing them.
Like I see this sometimes with people and animals, like
they don't need this for entertainment. They don't see the
world in the way we do. And that's okay that
they're animals. They have their own logic. We coexist with them.
But like not that. It's not like a Disney animal.
It's an animal which goes about the world using its
own logic, using its own understanding, and trying to pursue

(01:13:22):
its own ends for its own means.

Speaker 13 (01:13:24):
Right.

Speaker 3 (01:13:24):
But nonetheless, it is a majestic thing to see on
the landscape and something that we should take care that.
You know, we don't let corporate interest and people who
find it entertaining distory.

Speaker 8 (01:13:37):
I would love to see a bear.

Speaker 3 (01:13:38):
Okay, we'll do that. We'll add that to our list. Okay,
tep me to see a bear. Yeah, I am going
to take Molly camping. We will. Maybe we'll go to
We'll go to we go Yellowstone area, like I've never
been to Yell, you know, have you not been to Yellowstone?

Speaker 4 (01:13:51):
I've never been out worse.

Speaker 3 (01:13:52):
Wow, Okay, I've got some friends who got a cabin
outside the park. Maybe we could have a little cabin trip.

Speaker 4 (01:13:58):
Sophie's and mid Yellowstone.

Speaker 3 (01:14:01):
We can go in there and like, look at the guys,
enjoy the Yellowstone ecosystem. No disrespect to my Yellowstone friends,
but that's a lot of tourists. Like I ain't going
outside to be around that many people.

Speaker 5 (01:14:13):
Yeah, like there's there's Yellowstone style nature outside the bounds
of the park.

Speaker 8 (01:14:18):
You go there.

Speaker 3 (01:14:19):
Yeah, I mean even if you just go, if you're
getting away from you can get it. Just get away
from Old Faithful and that that park and you can
get away from people. Just fine. But yeah, we can go.
We could go to Yellowstone, see it there. Maybe see
an elk. Pretty cool, Elk.

Speaker 4 (01:14:30):
Make a pretty co I bet that's big as hell.

Speaker 3 (01:14:32):
Yeah, elk's the biggest ship. Like like a cow with horns.
Well not the cows, cats have horns. Elk antlers a mistake.
But yeah, we could go to or like that, like
the Greater Yeat like outside of the park, like that
Wayoming area just outside of Yellowstone. It's really beautiful. Be
a fun place to go camping. Maybe see a bear,
have a clean camp. Maybe we can find out a

(01:14:53):
way to find a way to expense that bear fence.

Speaker 5 (01:14:55):
That's what I'm saying. Podcasts from out there it becomes business.

Speaker 12 (01:14:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:15:00):
Yeah, we will podcast from bear country proving that we
can happily co exist with bears.

Speaker 2 (01:15:04):
Thank you to all the ferret people.

Speaker 4 (01:15:06):
By the way, I can't believe how many contacted you.

Speaker 3 (01:15:09):
Yeah, massive outreach of the ferret people. So if you
are someone who can help me, get on one of
the ferret counting surveys. I will count ferrets with you.
We will make a ferret podcast, and we will change
America's perception of the blackfooted ferret. On your behalf.

Speaker 8 (01:15:24):
It's already working.

Speaker 4 (01:15:25):
You got me.

Speaker 6 (01:15:26):
I love them now.

Speaker 3 (01:15:27):
Yeah. Muley's Team Ferret. Yeah. You can't see this because
it's a podcast, but she has a massive tattoo.

Speaker 4 (01:15:34):
It's one of the biggest around the neck.

Speaker 3 (01:15:37):
Yeah, around the neck. Yeah, and there's a further one
in the lip, but it says team Ferret.

Speaker 6 (01:15:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (01:15:43):
Yeah. So yeah, Money's become a ferret advocate. I hope
you have all become ferret and black bear advocates. Send
me pictures of your bears. Money, do you know what
fat bear week is? Before we go?

Speaker 4 (01:15:53):
That is my favorite thing about bears is fat.

Speaker 3 (01:15:55):
Bear Okay, sick good yeah, bears getting plump in the
the autumn before they hibernate.

Speaker 5 (01:16:01):
Is I mean, how could you hate them? How could
you hate them? They're just roly poly little guys hunting
for a little sweet treat.

Speaker 3 (01:16:07):
Yeah, their bulking cycle is incredible to me, Like the
way a bear just adds thickness in a relatively short
period of time. It's remarking powerful. Yeah, it's powerful. That
lives the power of salmon. Maybe we didn't have trawlers,
we'd all eat more fish. But yeah, check out Fat
Bear Week if you haven't, if you're not from the US,
I hope this has been fun. Fund a little diversion

(01:16:30):
into animals that live here. They used to live all
the way down into Mexico actually, but now sadly Mexican bears. Yeah,
well there are still Mexican black bears.

Speaker 4 (01:16:39):
They have bears too, Yeah, yeah, I got to look
up where bears live.

Speaker 3 (01:16:43):
Yeah, they lived. We could do a whole other one
on the jaguar was there being fucked by the border
wall right now pretty badly. But there'll be a fun
episode up in over an, Arizona that Yeah, there's pretty cool.

Speaker 15 (01:16:57):
Animals are friends, don't kill them.

Speaker 12 (01:17:13):
Welcome to It could happened here a podcast about what
workers can do when they try. I am your host,
Mia Long, and with me today to talk about a
company known, I guess in Portland for being a place
for you shop and known most other places for being
the people who make pens is Morgan and Renee from
Bujie Workers United and Morgan Renee welcome to the show.

Speaker 16 (01:17:36):
Thank you, Hi, Thank you Mia.

Speaker 8 (01:17:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (01:17:39):
So, and obviously I guess, as you may have gotten
from the word union and the title probably continuing the
word union, I don't know, we haven't written it yet,
is that. Yeah, one of the Muji stories in Portland
is unionizing. Can you talk a little bit about like
what Muji is for people who are unaware of this slash,
don't follow pens and or or haven't been to the store.

Speaker 16 (01:18:02):
Yeah, so Muji is probably I would describe it as
a worldwide Japanese minimalist lifestyle department store. And that's a
lot of words to say. It's a department store that
is for essentially basics. Muji is short for a full
name that essentially translates to no brand, and that's the

(01:18:23):
idea that they're trying to push for and they're trying
to show to people that it's like an eco friendly
company and they try and push like high quality products.
And at our location in Portland, it's the only one
on the American West Coast, and we have a relatively
small shop. There's only thirty two people in our bargaining unit.

(01:18:44):
And this is a wall to wall bargaining unit, which
essentially means that everyone below the lowest management level at
this location is involved with the union.

Speaker 12 (01:18:55):
Yeah, which is a really cool and B So we're
talking about how this is the only one in the
West coast. This is mostly a Japanese company that operates
a little bit in the US and does things here,
right my understanding, So.

Speaker 16 (01:19:10):
It is a Japanese company. It's actually primarily operates like
all over the world. It was began in Japan in
the eighties, I believe, if I know my company history correctly,
but they pretty rapidly expanded to across Asia and Europe
and then have also since expanded into Africa and the Americas.
If the Americas were relatively late. I don't think that

(01:19:33):
there was a store in the America's before the turn
of the millennium and the portaland location itself opened in
I want to say twenty eighteen, sometime like just pre COVID.

Speaker 12 (01:19:43):
Yeah, so it's relatively recent. And I guess the thing
that's even more relatively recent is he all starting to
organize a union. So can I ask how did that start?
And what was the sort of things that started to
get the ball rolling on it?

Speaker 16 (01:20:00):
So I guess the way that organizing started was back
in November of twenty twenty five, maybe shortly before that.
We had a round of appraisals. These are like yearly
end of fiscal year appraisals that are technically supposed to
be the end of the fourth quarter. Typically they get
pushed back by a month or two. I just company practice,
because the appraisals are tied to our raises, and each

(01:20:23):
employee who's worked for a year or more at the
company gets a praise, And so we're scored in a
system of one to five, and if you get a
three or better, I believe the system goes. You get
a raise that is directly tied to the number that
you got. They used decimal systems. So the thing is
that this year they gave us the lowest raise in

(01:20:46):
a memory of any of the workers that are currently there.
Myself included for context. I'm one of the workers that
has been at the store of the longest and at
four no more than forty years now we have a
pretty i turn around, which is how I ended up
being the longest tenure of the lower the management workers.
And this came in a year that was the best

(01:21:09):
year in the Portland Locations history. Yeah, there's this competition
that Muchie runs internally where it puts each store under
like a group of stores worldwide, almost like almost like
World Cup groups in a way, where you're just kind
of like randomly sorted into groups. And each year one
of the groups is chosen and within that group, they

(01:21:32):
examined the performances of each of the stores within that
group and select a winner to be the Store of
the year. So in twenty twenty four we won Store
of the Year, and it was kind of a shock
to a bunch of us to have such low races
after that. For example, my rays of sixty five cents
last summer Jesus Christ was the highest by a significant margin.

Speaker 17 (01:21:57):
Yes, it went as low as around twenty five cents.

Speaker 16 (01:22:01):
Yeah, that's right, I.

Speaker 12 (01:22:02):
Have done the math. But like, is that sub inflation?

Speaker 2 (01:22:06):
Like I, yes, that is sub inflation.

Speaker 17 (01:22:09):
It tends to be. There are employees who have been
working for more than two years who still get paid
around minimum wage.

Speaker 12 (01:22:17):
Jesus Christ.

Speaker 16 (01:22:19):
In addition to that, the staff members who are keyholders
and full timers and above get bonuses, and the bonuses
are directly tied to the amount of money that the
store makes over the target amount for the month, and
they drastically increased the targets for the year going forward,

(01:22:39):
which meant that because of that, our bonuses were getting lower.
So this year, for the last month since that race,
I've actually been making less money per month than I
was the year before.

Speaker 12 (01:22:52):
Jesus Christ, So you're getting pay cuts basically, yes, Jesus Christ.
After winning Store of the Year, incredible stuff. Incredible stuff
from the people who are running their company in an
extremely normal way.

Speaker 16 (01:23:09):
That was the spark that set this push for the
union ablaze. And so in November I contacted the IWW
Industrial Workers of the World and received a response, And
so at first it was just me and one of
the IWW representatives that we were meeting together to talk
about forming a union, and we ended up having those

(01:23:30):
meetings somewhat regularly, and the amount of people attending those
meetings slowly started to grow, so it was maybe like
two people, three people here and there. And then we
took a break from the holidays because people were just
generally unable to make it out and everything was super
chaotic at the store. And after the holidays, I had
the idea of hosting potlucks essentially and inviting people to potlucks. Ah,

(01:23:54):
I can't remember, Renee, were you coming to these meetings
before or after the potlucks?

Speaker 17 (01:23:59):
The first meeting I went to was at the hall
where it was essentially just us grieving about our working
conditions while the seasonals were there, and sort of it
was I don't know how much it was in the
works for you, how much stuff you had done up
until that point, but I think that was the moment

(01:24:21):
where we sort of became confident as a body in
our prospects were unionizing. And then ye, the Pollux.

Speaker 16 (01:24:35):
Thereafter, Yeah, and the Pollux ended up starting to pull
around around ten people. I think the highest attended one
was actually twelve. And so when you have a shop
that has about thirty two people in the bargaining unit,
that is about a third of the shop attending an
early union meeting while we're still in the underground phase

(01:24:55):
of organizing, and we managed to successfully remain under round
up until we decided to go public on our own terms.
On March thirty. First, we had a march on the Boss,
which slightly inconveniently, the boss had actually left the shop
about forty five minutes early in for a shift, and
we had accounted for her leaving early, but we didn't

(01:25:15):
account for her leaving that early, and so the march
on the boss kind of had this anti climax moment
where the manager just wasn't in the store anymore and
there wasn't anyone that actually had supervisory authority at the
store for the march.

Speaker 12 (01:25:33):
Which I think there's two things there. I want to
I want to come back to. Wond is the like,
oh yeah, well, of course management. Management never found out
about the UNI, but just left early because their management.
And it's like, oh right, no, yeah, what happens if
you leave just randomly walk off your job site like
forty five minutes early, you're fucked. But managements just like, yeah,

(01:25:54):
fuck it, I'm just done. I'm just out, Like I'm
just I'm just leaving. Everything's gonna be fine, even if
I'm not there, so I'm just leave roadly, right. God,
I wanted to talk about the potlucks a little bit
because it's a really good idea as just a way
to make sure you can consistently get a bunch of
people there, and yeah, can you talk about sort of

(01:26:15):
what that was like and how they've been and what
the effect of that has been.

Speaker 16 (01:26:19):
The POTLUCKX came about because I had the idea that
people are going to be more willing to come to
an event if it wasn't just going to be a
meeting where they sat down and had to talk shop
and they had to start talking about work while they're
off the clock.

Speaker 2 (01:26:35):
But they'd be more much more.

Speaker 16 (01:26:36):
Likely to come if the meeting was framed more as
a way to just hang out with their coworkers and
eat dinner.

Speaker 6 (01:26:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 16 (01:26:42):
So this actually came from my experience when I was
a kid. I grew up behind and even though I'm
no longer Behi, the way that our community did it
back home was mostly through community feasts and having prioritizing,
like the feasts first and then the religious discussion later.
So taking that sort of and putting a more of

(01:27:02):
a union spin on it was the idea behind that,
and it was a massive hit. Oh yeah, Renee, do
you have any more thoughts on that?

Speaker 9 (01:27:10):
Yeah?

Speaker 17 (01:27:11):
I think the fact too that our worker body is
I don't know if uniquely is the right word, but
especially tight knit and supportive of one another really just
sort of helped things flow in a very natural and

(01:27:32):
easy going way. It was just super like salient for
everything to come about out of these pollocks. We just
sort of like sat down and immediately started like complaining
about work. That oh yeah got us going, and like
pretty much every meeting sense like that's how we just

(01:27:54):
like start our our discussion or in our meetings is
just what bullshit have you been facing from your managers?
Et cetera. And we have to cut it short every time.

Speaker 16 (01:28:09):
Yeah, it feels bad sometimes to have to cut these
complaints periods short because I think they can go on
for two to three hours if if we're not careful,
and I think the early ones did to actually go
on for two to three hours, and we had clearly
cought books that we didn't get any actual business done.
We just spent two to three hours eating food and

(01:28:29):
complaining about work with each other. And honestly, that kind
of helped people get more comfortable with the idea, and
it really agitated people in a way that I don't
think we would have been able to do if we
had just like tried to talk to people at work
about unionizing or had like a more formal meeting, And
it really just kept the moment in going.

Speaker 8 (01:28:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 17 (01:28:49):
I think it has this effect of like realizing everything
because I mean, even I would walk in and be thinking, like,
you know, this is like such a taxing endeavor unionizing
the workplace, and yeah, yeah, every once in a while
you'd have some sort of hesitation, I guess, but then

(01:29:11):
every time I would leave, it would just sort of
be like, this is like this is the only option
and we're definitely going to do it, and we're all
with it and it feels good.

Speaker 12 (01:29:23):
Well yeah, yeah, it seems like from from everything that
I've heard and everything that you're saying, it seems like
it's a really powerful way to sort of both combat
atomization both. Is it just like, oh, this is like
a social space where you and the people you work
with who are your friends can exist with each other,
and then also in a we can combat sort of

(01:29:44):
alienation and adimisation and stuff by just doing the union
work of Oh my god, we all have all of.

Speaker 6 (01:29:50):
These issues with our bosses.

Speaker 9 (01:29:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (01:29:52):
Yeah, and when we return, we're going to talking and
going to ask about the issues with the bosses. But
first here I don't know the product services that support
this podcast.

Speaker 17 (01:30:14):
We are back.

Speaker 12 (01:30:17):
I was like, oh, I have a good transition. I
can go from complaining about the bosses to talk about
what the bosses are doing. And then I was like, shit,
I was supposed to cut an add We didn't think
of that one fast enough, but you know, speaking speaking
of doing things fast enough. So yeah, I wanted to
ask before we get into sort of how things have
been going more recently and where the campaign is going

(01:30:40):
in elections stuff, other than sort of the pay raise stuff,
what are the kinds of things that people have been
dealing with Atmuji.

Speaker 16 (01:30:48):
So there's a lot of small things that have kind
of piled up, and honestly, I say small things, but
each one of these is kind of just like shocking
on its own, but not rising necessarily to anyone that's
worked in the service industry at all. Yeah, So, beyond
the races, there's just been like a long pattern of
emotional abuse from the bosses. People have been have been

(01:31:12):
yelled at for pretty much no reason. The bosses have
directly insulted workers' abilities, like on the floor as they're
doing stuff. They've done things like pressure staff not to
use their sick time, even going so far as occasionally
implying that getting sick is like your own fault and
that people are able to perfectly prevent themselves from getting sick.

Speaker 12 (01:31:32):
Yeah, in your job, you have to be around people
all the time because you're doing a service. God, I
hate this, like getting weird pseudo eugenesis shit about disease
that's just everywhere now that runs the Department of yeah,
Health and Human Services of the CDC.

Speaker 16 (01:31:52):
Like this, this weekend or this last weekend at the
time of recording was Memorial Day weekend, and on SAT,
the peak day of that weekend, there were three thousand
customers approximately in store over the course of the day.
And reminder that we are a team of thirty two
people in total, and so of course not all thirty

(01:32:14):
two people are going to be at the store at
once at the same time. And so when your crew
is maybe ten fifteen if you're lucky, people big and
handling a customer volume of about three thousand over the
course of a day. You're interacting with so many people
that it's worse than Maybe it's not worse than, because
kids can get pretty pretty nasty sometimes, with much respect

(01:32:36):
to all the teachers out there, it can get to
be a bit of a biohazard, especially when you're working
in places like the fitting room that don't have ventilation
and you're possibly interacting the closest with customers, and you're
constantly interacting with like clothing that has been like pressed
up against people's bodies. You're interacting with people that just
aren't being super conscious about the space, and you're maybe

(01:32:58):
you're in this small confines with two, three, even four
other people for a prolonged period of time. Of course,
the customer service team is going to get sick more.

Speaker 12 (01:33:07):
Yeah, that's like a small and medium sized like convention
that's just running through your store over the course of
one day. It's like, oh, yeah, everyone has like pax
pocks or whatever they're like convention plague is. But that's
just like going to work. It's like oh yeah, no,
of course, apparently somehow you're supposed to like magically have
the like anti disease talismans. Yeah, it's like the plagued masses.

Speaker 16 (01:33:33):
And on top of that, I've called out maybe once
a month. I think that maybe there's one month where
it was twice a month since January. And I've already
used up all the allocated sick time that I get
for a year, Jesus. And that's with one of the
better sick pay plans as a full timer. And so
I can't imagine what people are having to go through
at part time, where they're already not getting enough hours

(01:33:55):
to pay rent off of their job. Yeah, and they're
having to decide essentially between coming to work sick or
calling out and taking that financial hit. I know one
of our staff members has actually been evicted because they
were not able to make rent because they didn't make
enough hours.

Speaker 17 (01:34:10):
Oh my god, we're just having your sick hours rejected
on the app.

Speaker 6 (01:34:16):
But it's an app.

Speaker 12 (01:34:17):
Oh my god.

Speaker 2 (01:34:18):
Yeah, that's right.

Speaker 12 (01:34:19):
If your sick hours can get rejected, you don't have
sick hours like yeah.

Speaker 16 (01:34:24):
And there's more too. It doesn't end there. They apply
policies that we have this employee handbook that has this
list of requirements and expectations and it is not really
a huge part of our employment typically, but the policies
that they have listed there are applied and consistently. Stuff
like the uniform code is one of the biggest examples

(01:34:45):
of this, where they will more heavily enforce the uniform
code against people of color, or people with alternative styles
of dress, or even they can be they can be
fairly fat phobic. There have been multiple people that have
said that the managers will shure them to essentially cover
up parts of their body, that they will allow skinnier
people to show.

Speaker 12 (01:35:05):
What Jesus Christ, Oh my god, that is so incredibly shitty,
and that's got to be illegal somehow, even under like
unhinged American labor law. That just feels like it feels
like a very open form of discrimination. But Jesus Christ,
oh my god.

Speaker 16 (01:35:26):
Yeah, do you have anything to add renee.

Speaker 17 (01:35:28):
Along those lines, just sort of like being asked to
profile people. All employees can be scheduled to cover the
securities breaks, which basically just involves standing around one of
the entrances and reporting anything quote fishy on the radios,

(01:35:50):
anything suspicious, they say suspicious.

Speaker 12 (01:35:53):
So they could just co opt you into being a
security guard.

Speaker 17 (01:35:56):
What, Yeah, the security guard doesn't have any duties regarding
like loss prevention. All the managers do that as part
of their duties, I guess. But yeah, so they just
sort of say suspicious people.

Speaker 16 (01:36:12):
And on that note too, there have been times where
people have been maybe not strictly disciplined. I actually don't
know for sure if there's been an instant of someone
being written up, but there have been times where the
managers have approached people and essentially just I yelled at
them for allowing someone to get out of the store
with merchandise, even though loss prevention is very specifically not
part of our job description and that the official store

(01:36:35):
policy actively discourages staff from engaging an active loss prevention
like that.

Speaker 12 (01:36:40):
So you're getting yelled at for doing the thing you
were told to do that is explicitly not part of
your job, that's supposed to be the manager's job, and
the managers are pissed off that you're not doing what's
nominally their job. That you also and the written thing
you're not supposed to do. Exactly incredible, incredible, incredible catch

(01:37:00):
twenty two logic here, it's real, just oh, yeah, you're
explicitly not supposed to do this. You could get punished
if you do it, but also if you don't do it,
we're gonna yell at you. It's gone. Jesus Christ.

Speaker 16 (01:37:13):
Yeah, yeah, naturally, there's not really anything that we can
do about this besides unionize and besides start taking actions
on our own, because the law certainly isn't going to
help us for this. Even organ state law, which is
which hans to be more protective of workers than other

(01:37:34):
states are. They're incredibly overwhelmed right now with requests and
going through the bully Bureau of organ Labor and Industries
I think is the acronym going down the Bullie websites lists.
There's a complaints box, but it says on the website
that they have an incredibly high backlog of complaints that
they're trying to process and that they're going through a

(01:37:55):
triage system, and none of the things that we've listed
so far to be placed very highly on that triage.
In addition to that, we don't have access to direct
access to our HR department at work. They ask us
to go through a third party reporting company called Lighthouse,
and as far as I know, no one has ever

(01:38:17):
heard anything about Lighthouse doing anything to resolve a situation
between them and management when management is treating them unfairly incredible,
and it's essentially feels like just shouting into the void
interacting with Lighthouse because you're just sending a complaint to
a body that you don't have any access to and
just hoping that they fix something.

Speaker 12 (01:38:38):
So they've contracted out their HR department, so you're just
like talking to their car or is it that you
can't communicate with them directly? And that's very weird.

Speaker 16 (01:38:48):
So they have an HR department. The workers at the
physical location cannot communicate with HR. We are not given
their their phone numbers, or their emails or anything like that.
All of our HR communication has to be done through
our general store manager. So when we have problems with
the general store manager or assistant store managers, we can't

(01:39:09):
really go to HR because we have to go through
the very people that we're having problems with in order
to reach our HR.

Speaker 12 (01:39:15):
Incredible. It's all means to make HR even faker, which
is incredible. Oh good lord.

Speaker 16 (01:39:23):
It would also be remiss, I guess, to forget about
the sexual assaults, Oh Jesus correct, Maybe not specifically sexual assault,
but definitely sexual harassment possible sexual assault that has been
raised to management before, where the management supposedly pushed those
complaints to HR, but then HR would wait for weeks

(01:39:45):
before doing anything about it. Oh my god, this happened
a year or two ago. No, it was probably more
in the realm of two to three years ago, if
my memory is correct, where we had a coworker that
was not just pro filing people and calling security on
people that were doing nothing, but he was also sexually
harassing other coworkers. Jesus Christ and the store managers told

(01:40:12):
us that they had pushed these complaints to HR, but
HR wasn't doing anything, and it took them about a month,
I believe, to fire this person. And essentially what they
were doing before is they were telling people that if
they talked about the situation or create a drama about
the situation, that they would retaliate against the people that

(01:40:33):
were talking about the situation.

Speaker 3 (01:40:34):
Oh my god, Jesus.

Speaker 16 (01:40:37):
They didn't say outright, but they implied everything up to
job loss for the people that were talking about this.

Speaker 12 (01:40:43):
Oh my god.

Speaker 16 (01:40:44):
And they started pulling people into the office and essentially
having one on one conversations Oh my god, that were
honestly quite scary to the people that were trying to
spread the word about this, and they created quite a
hostile store environment for a long time. Around that time
was actually the first time that we had attempted to
try and get a push to unionize, but that ended

(01:41:05):
up dissolving and that was essentially the end of that
up until on this most recent push.

Speaker 9 (01:41:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (01:41:11):
God, that's really hideous, both the way in which they
just pushed it up the latter to HR and then
just didn't do anything about it for like a fucking
month that that also just the only thing they did
do about it was retaliating against people who were trying
to talk about it. That is Jesus as disgusting.

Speaker 16 (01:41:30):
Yeah, about the most that they did during that month
to the actual coworker in question that was doing the
harassment was they tried to maintain some degree of physical
separation between him and the other coworkers and that was it.
They kept him on the roster, They kept him at
the same positions that other people were working. He had
essentially all the same job responsibilities as other people and

(01:41:53):
still had a pretty high degree of contact with other
coworkers during this whole time.

Speaker 12 (01:41:56):
Yeah, So the people who were trying to speak out.
I guess it until this I was fired, we're getting
punished more than he.

Speaker 16 (01:42:01):
Was, essentially, Yeah, Jesus all the way up until he
was finally fired. And I don't know what it was
that actually got them to do it this time, but
they wanted to wait until they had got something actually
on camera, I believe, but it's kind of hard for
you to catch something like harassment words on camera.

Speaker 6 (01:42:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 16 (01:42:22):
If their bar for sexual harassment is stuff that they
can catch on camera, they're never going to get most
instances of harassment, and they're not doing their their proper
job investigating these accusations.

Speaker 12 (01:42:34):
Yeah, and that also means that they're delivered strategy is
to wait for someone to get hurt again, exactly. That's right,
They're just throwing them to the fucking lions dend. Their
strategy to detect that a bus is about to hit
someone is to push someone in front of the bus
and take a picture of it, which is just so
unbelievably unacceptable.

Speaker 2 (01:42:52):
Yeah.

Speaker 16 (01:42:53):
And I want to be clear too that this whole
list is very much non exhaustive. There have been so
many cases of just patterns of abuse for management and
it's not possible for me to go down the entire
list of things. I mean, as I mentioned previously, it
would be two to three hours of people complaining about

(01:43:14):
stuff that they had gone through at work during these meetings,
and occasionally you get some repetition, but this is something
that is very consistent. It's just a part of working
at the store.

Speaker 12 (01:43:25):
Yeah, every day there's another unique core that someone is experiencing,
and I guess this brings us to Okay, so how
do you make the horrors stop? And that is unionizing.
So yeah, let's talk about what's been happening recently in
terms of like how the union is immobilizing and about

(01:43:48):
the upcoming election, which will be a few days after
you're hearing this, assuming you're listening to this the day
it comes out.

Speaker 17 (01:43:55):
Yeah, So we've been sort of ramping up a little bit.
It's been being inflowing since we started, you know, last
like November, but we're really trying to kick it into gear,
get people aware, get people back engaged. So we have

(01:44:19):
a few things we've been doing well. On May first,
for May Day, we tabled with the IWW and just
started a petition just for signatures from the community. For
support for acknowledgment if we ever need to, you know,
pull it out and show our bosses that you know,

(01:44:41):
this is no light endeavor. This is not like something
they can laugh off. Yeah, but it ended up being
sort of successful beyond what I imagined. We got lots
of attention, lots of people saying that they had di
I know that we were unionizing, people taking lots of

(01:45:03):
pictures of us. Our big banner, got one inquiry for
a journal report that I think is out now, and
we were also written about in what was it? Was
it Oregon Live or was the Oregonian? Do you remember, Luna?

Speaker 16 (01:45:21):
We had a small article published about us by the
Northwest Libor Press that was then picked up by the
Portland Mercury.

Speaker 17 (01:45:30):
That's right. Yeah, So we did that. And then other
than that, we're sort of fighting some recently published propaganda
from our boss is with display a hilarious amount of misinformation, Yeah,
average boss communication.

Speaker 16 (01:45:48):
The other big thing that's been happening is that the
reason that the election is happening so long after our
initial march and declaration of intense to unionize is that
the bosses have been trying to divide up the bargaining
unit in a fairly strange case where the employer has
been contending that the merchandising staff, which is essentially the

(01:46:09):
back of the house staff but only like a sub
section of the back of the house staff, are not
eligible for unionization under the same union as the rest
of the staff are. H they did this under the
notion that the merchandising staff don't share a community of
interest with the rest of the staff. And the other
thing that they tried to do is they tried to
take the keyholders, which are sort of like a shift

(01:46:30):
lead position, away from the bargaining unit by trying to
get them designated as supervisors, specifically Section two to eleven
supervisors under the National Labor Relations Act. And we managed
to shoot down both of those contests in a board
hearing with the National Labor Relations Board. Hell yeah, and

(01:46:51):
the process took a little bit over a month if
I remember correctly, and without going too heavily into detail
about it, the community of interests rule basically says that
if employees don't share a community of interest with members
of a bargaining unit, they have to unionize under a
different union. And then the other thing is that the
NLRA says that if you have supervisory authority, and there's

(01:47:16):
a whole laundry list of authorities that are defined in
the act. If you are a supervisor, then you don't
get to unionize legally, period. And so what made this
case strange is that typically employers try and add groups
of employees onto the unit they believe are on the
side of the employer of the anti union side, and

(01:47:38):
the union generally has to contend that these people don't
share community of interests or are supervisors or whatever. So
it's kind of a bit of a strange situation where
it's turned on its head, where instead the employer is
having to prove that these people are not sharing community
of interests or our supervisors. And so, even though we
couldn't afford proper legal counsel and so then and representatives

(01:48:00):
were myself and a friend of ours who was a
member of the IWW, we were able to essentially represent
ourselves in this board hearing, and the case was decided
in our faith for on both counts. Hell yeah, so
rock it really does?

Speaker 11 (01:48:16):
I was.

Speaker 16 (01:48:17):
I was not shocked to find out that the case
was decided in our favor on the community of interest issue,
because that would be like saying that the back of
the houseworkers at a restaurants can't unionize with the front
of the houseworkers just because they have different job descriptions.

Speaker 6 (01:48:31):
Yeah, Chiverish right.

Speaker 16 (01:48:34):
However, I was surprised at first. I was surprised at
least that we managed to win on the issues of
supervisory authority with the keyholders. I thought that it would
take a pretty solid case in order for us to
defend against that. And huge props to our friend, who
I'm not sure if they're comfortable being name dropped as

(01:48:55):
an IWW member like five to the world, so I'm
not going to name them, but it is large thanks
to this friend of ours that'll be on that case.
Oh so that's where we stand now, and the board

(01:49:17):
hearing was decided in our favor, and the election has
been decided for next week, and both guys are now
just trying to have our campaigns in preparation.

Speaker 12 (01:49:27):
Yeah, hell yeah. It's a sort of different version of
like the very common tactic of because bosses want there
to be more time in between when you file your
paperwork to unionize and the election, because it gives them
more time to do intimidation and fear tactics, and like
that period in between designed to unionize and getting to

(01:49:48):
actually do the vote is one of the perios where
union is most vulnerable. And it's also really impressive that, Yeah,
you just sort of walked into the board hearing and
beat them by just reading a bunch of labor law stuff. Yeah. Yeah,
workers of the world too, fucking anti union lawyers zero.

Speaker 2 (01:50:09):
Yeah.

Speaker 16 (01:50:10):
Basically, yeah, it was very strange across examining my manager
under oath hell yeah, and then going to work. I
didn't manage to attend the entirety of either of the
days of the hearing because I had to close. I
had to go to work at noon on both days
that the hearing was. That's so nuts, which is why

(01:50:33):
I wasn't there for the full hearing for either of
the days. So I ended up having to log on
in the morning onto the zoom meeting and attend the
first two and a half hours and then hop off
call and leave and then go to work and see
my managers at work.

Speaker 12 (01:50:50):
Oh my god, Oh my god. It's also that's so nuts.
You didn't get time off to go to the union
hearing exactly.

Speaker 17 (01:51:04):
Yeah, I mean they were getting paid right, that's.

Speaker 2 (01:51:06):
Why they were getting paid.

Speaker 16 (01:51:08):
Oh my god, the managers that were testifying in favor
of the employer capitalism.

Speaker 2 (01:51:13):
Bad system.

Speaker 12 (01:51:15):
Wow, we could possibly have expected this.

Speaker 16 (01:51:18):
Yeah, it was actively a challenge to find witnesses to
testify for us, because the people who would be able
to call us witnesses or coworkers are people who are
maybe working the days of the hearing and can't actually
get time off to come testify because they have to
be at work.

Speaker 8 (01:51:36):
Oh my god, that's so fucked.

Speaker 16 (01:51:38):
There was one person who we approached because we were
hoping that they would testify for us, who couldn't because
she was working that day. It's too too complicated of
a process to want to try and like subpoena them
and legally get them to have the time off to
come to the hearing.

Speaker 6 (01:51:56):
Jesus.

Speaker 16 (01:51:56):
So we ended up just having to figure out a
way to present witnesses and have a slightly weaker case
because of it. And thankfully that didn't end up mattering.
But for a minute I was worried that we wouldn't
be able to have as good of a case as
we could have because we were not able to get
a keyholder on the stand like we were hoping.

Speaker 12 (01:52:13):
Yeah, I'm glad, I'm glad you're able to pull it together.
That's really impressive. And yeah, that you still just beat
them even though they had And I guess that is
one of the lessons of this is like, yeah, if
you're willing to put the work in and work together
and figure out how to navigate the system and figure
out where you can apply pressure, like, yeah, you can
beat a bunch of people who have way way more

(01:52:35):
resources than you do because they're usually just wrong.

Speaker 2 (01:52:39):
Yeah.

Speaker 16 (01:52:40):
Yeah, I want to actually really drive that point home
that neither I or my co representative have experience in
any sort of like legal fields. Neither of us are
even lost students. We are just the people that decided
to step up and take on this role. And I

(01:53:00):
don't think that there is some like special unique quality
about us that allowed us to do it. It was
just putting in the work that was required. It's a
scary thing, being asked to essentially represent yourself in a
legal setting, and I think it's a testament to how
people are capable of things that they're not necessarily trained

(01:53:23):
to do, and that this whole process of unionization does
not necessarily require the vast resources that you might think
it entails. It requires some planning, it requires some tactics,
but it is something that everyone is able to do.

Speaker 12 (01:53:42):
Hell yeah, I guess if I was really on my
game here, I would have something about like the concept
of the organic intellectual, et cetera, et cetera. But I
don't even think that's really what's going on here. It's
just like, in the same way that like economics is
designed to be esoteric, and you know, like finance is
designed to be difficult to understand. But in the immortal

(01:54:03):
words of Dan Elson, there are plenty of c students
who've gotten economics degrees, like you can understand this. It's
just it just takes some work, and it takes some
dedication to fighting together, and it takes yeah, people working together.
But these people are not smarter than you. They're all
better than you. They have more money, but that's ultimately

(01:54:23):
not the fact that it decides everything.

Speaker 16 (01:54:26):
And I don't want to discount the amount of support
that we received from the rest of our coworkers as well. Yeah,
this was truly a group effort, and everyone helped out
in their own small ways, whether it was helping take
care of social media posts, whether it was helping cook
for us, host meeting locations. I've been dealing with a
pest problem at my apartment, so I've been unable to

(01:54:49):
for about the amount of time that all this legal
process has been going on, So I haven't been able
to host pollocks anymore, and a former coworker of ours
has been hosting instead and putting in the work for that.
It really is something that works when everyone comes together
and takes part in the process.

Speaker 12 (01:55:08):
Hell yeah, So speaking of everyone coming together and helping
to work for the process, if people want to help
you all, what can they do.

Speaker 16 (01:55:16):
We are looking actually at a bit of a financial
struggle right now. The biggest thing is that we don't
have enough the funds at the moment to go on strike,
not for any significant duration at least. Yeah, we have
a go fundme Mojie Workers United.

Speaker 12 (01:55:33):
Yeah, we will put that in the description.

Speaker 16 (01:55:36):
The other thing is that we are looking for a
lot of social media support. Actually, Mushi is a very
media driven company and we are trying to set up
an Instagram account that has a lot of visibility. You
can follow us also Moodie Workers United on Instagram. And
it seems like people have been sharing our articles and

(01:55:58):
across the internet, both the WLP article about us and
then now you're interviewing us, which is an enormous help
to trust.

Speaker 8 (01:56:07):
Mia.

Speaker 16 (01:56:07):
Thank you. We super appreciate it.

Speaker 17 (01:56:09):
Yeah, thank you so much, of course.

Speaker 12 (01:56:12):
Happy.

Speaker 16 (01:56:13):
I don't know if you have anything to add to that, Renee.

Speaker 17 (01:56:15):
Yeah, just the Instagram. We have lots of very talented
artists working Muji like everyone. It's great graphic designers, a
lot of just very fun and cool people. So yeah,
I'm sure that will be expressed in our future social
media posts. Yeah.

Speaker 12 (01:56:37):
Hell yeah, what we'll link that description too.

Speaker 16 (01:56:39):
Awesome, thank you Mia.

Speaker 9 (01:56:40):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (01:56:41):
On a one final thing, you want to plug direct action?

Speaker 2 (01:56:44):
Yes, I do.

Speaker 7 (01:56:46):
So.

Speaker 16 (01:56:47):
We've had We've spent a lot of time talking about
the legal side of unionization because our union is currently
seeking federal recognition with the NLRB. I want to emphasize
that this is not the end of unions. The goal
is not a contract. The goal is to use direct
action to enact the changes that you want to see
in your workplace. For what are probably obvious reasons, I

(01:57:09):
don't want to talk about specifically stuff that we have
planned or maybe not even stuff that we've done in
the past. But for example, one thing that I can
talk about is that we have an ice response plan,
Like what do we do if I shows up at
a workplace and tries to tries to raid us. We
have a plan for that. And I obviously don't want
to go further into detail about that, but that is

(01:57:30):
something that we did as an example of a direct action.
There's also other stuff. There's lots of historical examples of
workers getting gains in their workplace. You have examples of
stuff like just a simple march on the boss has
historically worked to sway the boss even without necessarily a
change in the contract. Or you can have stuff that's

(01:57:52):
all very legal on above board obviously, of people like
just agreeing to not be as friendly with their boss
at work and an emotionally sway their boss that way,
or having smaller outside of work actions where people are
helping each other out and having a workplace mutual aid project,
or even something as simple as implementing like a workplace

(01:58:12):
fitness plan. That's something that we've discussed a couple of
times at meetings, very loosely, like just going on hikes together,
or having like the community sports and stuff just to
keep each other in shape and keep our communities healthy.
All of this stuff is stuff that exists beyond the contract.
We're currently emphasizing the contract because that's what we are
at the moment seeking, because the contract helps this feel

(01:58:34):
more real for people who aren't quite on board with
the idea of humanization yet. But unionization at a workplace
gets you much more than just a better contract with
your employer. And you can enact changes at your workplace
faster if you work together with your coworkers and organize

(01:58:56):
your coworkers. Hell yeah, anything to add renee.

Speaker 17 (01:59:00):
And the union is very aware, you know, regarding their
respective capacities to help what they can, you know, and
cannot do their limits. And I think just after you know,
working together enough, everything marries in a very effective way.

(01:59:21):
And and yeah, even just like like all of these
sort of direct actions that that Luna was naming are
just came out of our meetings, just ideas that people
think might be fun to do, or or you know,
people sharing their hobbies and and want to share them
with other people. Yeah, and so yeah, it really is

(01:59:44):
just sort of a fun hangout. I don't want to
trivialize it. But but it's like, you know, extreme hang
hanging out.

Speaker 12 (01:59:54):
It's well, yeah, I think it touches on something that's
really important about all of this, which is, you know,
people will in the abstract talk about unions as like
social institutions, but like what that actually means is this, Like, yeah,
it's a place where you and your friends and the
people you work with go and do stuff together. And

(02:00:16):
you know, I guess, I guess I want to wrap
up on like, if you want a way out of
the stultifying boredom and isolation and crushing poverty of the
Wadern capitalist experience, you too can't create You can create
a union and resist all of those things simultaneously.

Speaker 6 (02:00:35):
Yeah, yeah, welcome to It could happen here a show
about things falling apart, the thing falling apart the past
few years, the Democratic Party that's foot we're going to

(02:00:59):
be talking about to I am joined by Sophie Ray Lichterman.

Speaker 1 (02:01:05):
Hello, Hi, I'm not excited about this.

Speaker 6 (02:01:09):
This is great. Last time we were on an episode together,
we were talking about our two favorite Democrats, Bill and
Hillary Clinton. Ah.

Speaker 10 (02:01:16):
Yes, they gave me COVID at the DNC. I'll never
forgive them.

Speaker 6 (02:01:20):
Not talking about them today, but we are talking about
the DNC. The other DNC, the one who puts on
the DNC, the Democratic National Committee. So we're gonna be
talking about the DNC autopsy. Oh boy. First, some background. Yes,
after Democrats lost the House, the Senate, and the presidency
in twenty twenty four, if I'm reading that correctly, including

(02:01:43):
losing the popular vote, something that has not happened in
twenty years. The Democratic National Committee, the DNC, wondered why
did that happen? So the DNC commission to report on
what happened with the twenty twenty four election, and this
report came to be known as the twenty twenty four Autopsy.
The newly elected DNC chair Ken Martin pledged to make

(02:02:04):
the upcoming report public, announcing after his chair election quote,
there has to be some lessons that we glean on
that so we can operationalize it, not just here in DC,
but through all the fifty seven state parties. We have
to look backwards and look forward at the same time.

(02:02:24):
The twenty twenty four election autopsy was commissioned in early
twenty twenty five and was supposed to come out later
that spring, but got pushed back to the end of summer,
and then the fall, and finally, in December of twenty
twenty five, Ken Martin announced that the DNC would not
in fact be releasing the autopsy report. In Martin's brief

(02:02:46):
statement explaining or rather not explaining why he's backpedaling on
his promise to make the report public, he claimed that
the committee is quote already putting our learnings into motion.

Speaker 10 (02:02:57):
Who votes Ken martin In to be the chair because
I know his careerer is basically Minnesota guy, yes in
turning government jobs, vice president chair, And then.

Speaker 6 (02:03:10):
Basically around four hundred members of state party chapters are
chosen to be members of the Democratic National Committee, who
then in turn vote on national party leadership and decide
how primaries operate, though if a sitting president is a Democrat,
the president can effectively choose the chair. Sn End reported

(02:03:31):
that DNC officials had concerns that the report would quote
inflame ongoing tensions within the party at a time they
felt they had begun to generate winning momentum quote, and
the committee officials decided that it would be a quote
unquote strategic failure on the part of the DNC to
publicly look backward. That was their reasons for not releasing

(02:03:55):
the report. We're already winning elections in twenty twenty five,
so there's actually no point in just looking back at
why we lost to twenty twenty four. And this was
alluded to in Ken Martin's statement announcing that he would
not be releasing the report. Quote, we are aligned on
what's important, and that's learning from the past and winning
the future. Here's our north star. Does this help us win?

(02:04:16):
If the answer is no, it's a distraction from the
core mission. So the report would just be a distraction
from letting us currently win going forward.

Speaker 1 (02:04:26):
For the DNC chair, that logic is ridiculous.

Speaker 6 (02:04:31):
No, because that's not the real reason why the report
wasn't released. We will get to why the report wasn't
okay very soon.

Speaker 10 (02:04:39):
That sounds like a majorly half assed reason, So okay,
say more, say more.

Speaker 1 (02:04:45):
I'm listening.

Speaker 6 (02:04:46):
As the public release of the autopsy was continuously delayed
in twenty twenty five and then just eventually canceled, the
speculation about the contents of the report grew that the
DNC must be hiding the report because it's f findings
on why the Dems lost so bad in twenty twenty
four must run contrary to the interests of party elites.

(02:05:07):
So by burying the report, the DNC must be trying
to protect the future political prospects of Kamala Harris, obscure
the misuse of massive funds donated to the DNC and
election campaigns. Or the report must actually definitively prove the
Bidenhairs administration's failure to act on the genocide of Palestinians
while aiding in a betting Israel must have played a

(02:05:28):
significant factor in the election, possibly the determining factor. So
if the report found such things, then the DNC might
want to suppress the report to not have that information
be public. But now we know that's not the reason
the report was not released. The autopsy finding that the

(02:05:51):
Democrats pro Israel position cost in the election was not
the reason the report was buried, because last month the
DNZ begrudgingly released and incomplete version of the election autopsy,
which actually does not contain a single mention of Israel,
Palestine or Gaza. It is not discussed in any way
in a one hundred and ninety two page report.

Speaker 1 (02:06:13):
And what is in this report huh.

Speaker 6 (02:06:16):
We will also be getting into what's in the report. Okay, Yeah,
a lot of bad statistics, for one, unsourced graphs and
discussions on whether you should spend more money on digital
ads or TV ads is really really the bulk of
the report, honestly. But before we get more into the

(02:06:38):
report's findings, let's discuss the circumstances that led to the
publishing of the unfinished autopsy and nearly a year after
the finished version was supposed to come out. So this
autopsy was authored by a guy named Paul Rivieria. There's
a long time Democratic strategist and personal friend of DNC
chair Ken Martin. Vira has not worked on a presidential

(02:07:02):
campaign since two thousand and four.

Speaker 1 (02:07:05):
Oh wow.

Speaker 6 (02:07:05):
And despite being the sole person like tasked with running
the report, and it's unclear how many people actually worked
on it, but it was led by Riviera and it
seems to be mostly be done by him. And despite that,
Riviera only worked on it haart time while managing other
contracts with sen and reporting that Riviera would say that
he would only be available to conduct autopsy interviews before

(02:07:29):
nine am or after seven pm or on weekends. That's
when he conducted interviews for the report. Was only before
nine am in the morning or after seven pm in
the evening on week days and then also weekends.

Speaker 1 (02:07:45):
Was this weird or doing? What was his problem?

Speaker 6 (02:07:48):
Not much? Yeah? Apparently not much, sir, because yeah, this
report was like delayed almost a full year. Yeah seesh. Now,
only after his initial Spring twenty twenty five deadline did
Rivera actually reach out to state party chairs in battleground
states to interview them for the report, and he did

(02:08:11):
not contact like T. Harris campaign staff until September, and
many were not even asked to be interviewed. Portions of
the autopsy were first revealed at a DNC National Finance
Committee retreat for top donors held at a hotel in Millburg, Virginia,
last October Percy and n At the donor retreat, Riviera

(02:08:35):
himself gave a quote our long presentation with slides in
part drawn directly from the report, in part via running
his findings through an AI engine. Unquote, there was AI
generated slides. He ran his report findings through an AI engine,
according to CNN, which also generated slides, and that was

(02:08:57):
what his presentation on the report at the donor retreat
was based on. Was that the AI's regurgitation of report findings.

Speaker 1 (02:09:07):
Hold on, Hold on a second.

Speaker 10 (02:09:09):
So he's not willing to do work after nine am
or after seven pm?

Speaker 6 (02:09:13):
Conduct please in that time.

Speaker 1 (02:09:15):
No, can't do any of that time.

Speaker 10 (02:09:16):
But yet he's just like using AI Yeah, great, DNC,
feeling really hopeful.

Speaker 1 (02:09:23):
Continue, what did CNN find?

Speaker 6 (02:09:26):
So One of the slides that Riviera presented at this
at this donor retreat attract the candidate's quote unquote area
of focus by quote unquote content slash theme see an
end notes quote. Riviera used an unclear methodology for the breakdown,
assigning percentages to ten categories of content or theme. For Trump, Harris,

(02:09:47):
and their running mates. The percentages in every column one
for each candidate added up to well over one hundred percent.
What he was trying to do here is like measure
campaign themes, like you know, how much Trump focused on
immigration compared to Harris. Right, So he had these like
ten categories of like what the campaigns were focused on.

(02:10:08):
But the percentages did not actually add up to one
hundred percent.

Speaker 1 (02:10:12):
Of course they didn't.

Speaker 6 (02:10:13):
So he's just like making this stuff up, right, like
it's it's again. They know. There's like an unclear methodology
for the breakdown the fact these add up to over
one hundred percent, Like, you cannot trust the legitimacy of
any of this research now, So, after parts of the
presentation were leaked to CNN, Scenan then obtained even more
information about the contents of the shelved autopsy. Before publishing

(02:10:33):
their findings, Scenan presented the DNC with what they knew
about the report, prompting the DNC to just release the
full report as submitted by Paul Riveria. And around this time,
donors were also threatening to withhold funds for not publishing
the report, so that probably also contributed. One of CNN's
sources said that after the autopsy was published, Ken Martin

(02:10:57):
informed DNC staff that Paul Via was no longer associated
with the committee.

Speaker 1 (02:11:03):
These people, these fucking people.

Speaker 10 (02:11:06):
I mean, I did not read the entire report intentionally
so that you could tell me about it. But the
highlights that have been spread across the internet is did
not mention Gaza, did not mention Joe Biden's age, and
did not mention when Joe Biden dropped out late effectively.

Speaker 6 (02:11:23):
So well, we'll get into some of some of those
in a little bit more detail. I think. One of
the most interesting parts about the DNC's publishing of the
unfinished report is that the published version of the autopsy
contains annotations and corrections marked and read that the DNC
added to the copy of the report as submitted by Riviera,

(02:11:43):
and these were added for its public release. Okay, At
the top of every single page, all one hundred and
ninety two pages, reads a disclaimer quote disclaimer. This document
reflects the views of the author, not the DNC. The
DNC was not provided with the underlying source, interviews, or
supporting data for many of the assertions contained herein, and

(02:12:05):
therefore cannot independently verify the claims presented unquote that is
in read at the top of every single page. Ken
Martin did issue a statement when the autopsy was published,
reading quote. When I was elected DNC chair, I commissioned
in after action review of the twenty twenty four election
that I wanted to be honest and transparent and with

(02:12:27):
actionable and specific takeaways for the future of the Democratic Party.
When I received the report late last year, it wasn't
ready for prime time, not even close, and because no
source material was provided, it would have meant starting over
I could not in good faith put the DNC's stamp
of approval on the report that was produced after last

(02:12:48):
November's massive Democratic wins. I didn't want to create a distraction,
but by not putting the report out, I ended up
creating an even bigger distraction. For that, I sincerely apologize
for full transparency. I am release sing the report as
we received it in its entirety, unedited and unabridged. It
does not meet my standards and it won't meet your standards.
But I'm doing this because people need to be able

(02:13:10):
to trust the Democratic Party and trust our word unquote.

Speaker 10 (02:13:15):
I don't know, man, that doesn't really sound very trustworthy. Brouh,
sounds pretty bad.

Speaker 1 (02:13:20):
Sounds pretty bad. Here's a half asked report.

Speaker 10 (02:13:23):
It's not very good, and I've delayed it for over
a year, but yeah, I.

Speaker 1 (02:13:29):
Guess here it is. No, it doesn't include any of
the big issue things. Enjoy.

Speaker 6 (02:13:34):
It's a stunning sequence of events that kind of highlights
all of the issues that everyone already has with it
with the Democratic Party. Like the guy who was chosen
to do the autopsy just happens to be a personal
friend of the DNC chair, and said friend then fails
to interrogate the institutional bias of the party. It is

(02:13:55):
such a condensed, condensed, little version of why the party
has had so many, so many troubles, and the report
has published seems unwilling to actually be able to learn
from successes that have been happening since the twenty twenty
four election. Effectively, what the support actually is is a
poorly sourced opinion piece that's dressed up as an election autopsy.

(02:14:18):
It misspells names, it has typos, factual and statistical errors,
and unsourced claims. Multiple key sections are left completely blank
because Riviera never submitted them. The report is less interested
in collecting data and interviews to inform analysis, but rather
starts with certain assumptions and then cherry picks data to

(02:14:38):
support this assumptions. But it doesn't even do that well
because the included data is often inaccurate, and at times
the analysis contradicts itself. Jesus Christ, a state party chair,
told CNN quote it was very clear that it felt
like Ken's theory of the case for the future of
the party through the lens of twenty twenty four as

(02:15:00):
opposed to a quote unquote autopsy, and after reading the report,
I agree this is very much a report that's designed
to fit in with what Ken Martin wants the message
of the last election to be, and it tries to
squeeze that into these like very rough shape of like
an after election report, but it's really not.

Speaker 1 (02:15:24):
It's just like reeks of like lazy AI work.

Speaker 6 (02:15:28):
But all the like.

Speaker 10 (02:15:29):
Left out sections that the things that don't add up,
the misspellings.

Speaker 6 (02:15:34):
Specifically the statistical and like factual errors, yeah, are really confusing,
and it feels like someone's getting if not the actual writing,
but it feels like the research was like AI assistant
and in the way that you know AIS will shoot
out different answers for the same question. Sure, so it
feels like that in a few areas, and like like
you've already mentioned, right, the report never brings up Biden's

(02:15:55):
age or mental state as a factor contributing to the election.
And inasmuch as the criticizes Biden, it critiques the Biden
administration's failure to adequately prepare Harris to be a viable candidate.
Does it discuss the debate?

Speaker 10 (02:16:12):
No, it doesn't bring up the debate where now we
know that like from an interview from doctor Joe Biden
from a few weeks ago that she legitimately thought that
Joe was having a stroke on stage during that debate
with Donald Trump.

Speaker 6 (02:16:26):
Even though she took him on to a different stage
afterwards to tell him how good he did. And then
they went to a waffle house. I mean, the things
your due. You after you believe your husband has had
a stroke.

Speaker 10 (02:16:39):
When shit has hit the fan, Garrett, you go to
waffle house.

Speaker 6 (02:16:43):
Maybe maybe the waffle house actually is the move.

Speaker 10 (02:16:46):
I'm saying the waffle house is the least shocking of
the entire situation.

Speaker 1 (02:16:50):
But that's not mentioned in there at all.

Speaker 6 (02:16:53):
No, it says, quote, the White House did not effectively
support Vice President Harris over three and a half years
to improve her standing before the candidates switch unquote. That's
all it says about about switching from Biden to Harris.
That's all it says.

Speaker 10 (02:17:11):
I don't I don't disagree with that statement, because you
know the amount of people that we spoke to when
we went to both political conventions. One of the common
things that they said about Kamala Harris is like how
ineffective she spent and how they don't use her and
how can we trust her when they don't even trust
her to do basic things for the administration, which was

(02:17:31):
one of the main Republican talking points about her, is
like she has no skills, which is not true, but
that was a position that was against her. Is not
utilizing her enough? And then you know they're like, bibbity
bobby boo, she's your candidate without a primary. Do they

(02:17:51):
mention anything about their not being a primary?

Speaker 8 (02:17:54):
No, okay.

Speaker 6 (02:17:55):
The port never interrogets her, considers Biden's decision to run
for reelection, or lay blame on those who encouraged and
enabled that decision, nor does it identify the lack of
a legitimate primary as a contributing factor leading to the
results of the twenty twenty four election.

Speaker 8 (02:18:10):
We're going to take a quick.

Speaker 10 (02:18:11):
Break while I have, you know, an attack of my mind,
your ads.

Speaker 1 (02:18:30):
And we're bad.

Speaker 6 (02:18:35):
Let's now pivot to how the report describes its own
research methodology. This is quoting from the start of the
autopsy quote. The report analyzes a range of publicly and
commercially available data to identify actual investments, actions, and eventual
voter behavior. The annalysis also includes qualitative data obtained in

(02:18:57):
the form of in person and virtual interviews with more
than three hundred organizations and individuals. After this sentence, the
DNC has highlighted and annotated a little note that reads,
no source material or data provided. Unsourced claims cannot be
independently verified. So despite claiming that three hundred people or

(02:19:17):
organizations were interviewed, which may be true, the report never
says who these people are, nor does it allude to
their relevant expertise.

Speaker 1 (02:19:28):
This is just an obed.

Speaker 6 (02:19:31):
A source that the DNC told CNN that Riviera did
not even provide a list of names of the people
he spoke to to the DNC, nor did he submit
interview notes or recording. So there's no record that we
have of like who these people are or why they
were interviewed or what they actually said. And it's not
like he's like quoting from people like with quotation marks.

(02:19:54):
It's like regurgitating maybe portions of interviews into different text.
Rivera also failed to provide data that he said was
given to him by senior campaign leadership that he says
is influencing the report, but we don't see it, and
he did not provide it to the DNC, so like
they don't know. It's just some guy saying trust me, bro,

(02:20:16):
that's what it sounds like. So after the introduction to
the report is a section called the executive Summary. This
section was not provided by the author. This section is
completely missing.

Speaker 10 (02:20:27):
Great.

Speaker 6 (02:20:29):
After the missing executive summary section, the report moves on
to the electoral landscape, which has just very basic stuff. Quote.
Millions of Americans are suffering from poor access to health care,
manufacturing of job losses, and failing infrastructure, yet continued to
be persuaded to vote against their best interests because they
do not see themselves reflected in the America of the

(02:20:49):
Democratic Party unquote. Just really basic stuff, very like average
a ten year old can say this. Next, the report
talks about how the Democratic part already rebuilt itself in
the nineties, how after three consecutive presidential losses, the Democrats
embraced a new strategy which got Clinton elected in nineteen
ninety two, and we all know how well that went.

(02:21:11):
Then there's seven pages of summarizing party history from two
thousand and eight to twenty twenty four. I don't know
if he was getting paid by the word, but that's just,
like said, it's just seven pages that just don't need
to be there. And then the report reads quote, we
must be careful to draw the right lessons from this
experience and not miss opportunities to identify and build upon

(02:21:35):
some of the positives of the twenty twenty four cycle.
We must acknowledge how close the margins actually were. The
report then goes on to misstate how close the margins were,
but on the other hand, it goes on to say
that in the past sixteen years quote, Democrats have lost
ground at every level of government. This remains true even
in the face of the blue wave in the most

(02:21:55):
recent elections twenty twenty five. Gobernatorial and mayoral wins in Virginia,
New Jersey, New York City, Detroit, and elsewhere may lead
to a false sense of security and a belief the
Democratic Party has again found ways to bring voters back
to the booth with their messaging. While these wins are
welcome and point to optimism entrenched in the major party strategy,

(02:22:18):
a dive into details shows some of these elections were
tighter than Democrats should be comfortable with and points to
room for improvement in future efforts. Unquote. It never gives
this dive into the details, so we don't even know
what it's taking There and to me, this paragraph just
demonstrates an unwillingness to understand why some of these elections

(02:22:40):
went the way they did, especially the one in New
York City. Doesn't want to acknowledge why someone like Zoron
ran such a successful campaign and claiming that the margins
were tighter than what Democrats should be comfortable with. Also
ignores the fact that Zorn's biggest opponent in both the
primary and general election was another Democrat who ran and
is an independent, someone who was associated with the Democratic establishment.

(02:23:04):
It's a bizarre little tidbit that they throw in there.

Speaker 1 (02:23:07):
This is so weird, just like a highly unnecessary tangent.

Speaker 6 (02:23:12):
And it just shows this like uncomfortableness, and you know,
on one side being uncomfortable, on the other side, just
you know, also being incurious about why those elections have
gone the way they did and what you can actually
learn from them.

Speaker 1 (02:23:27):
This baffling.

Speaker 6 (02:23:29):
I'm not going to go over every single section of
the report because there's a lot and the way the
DNC annotated it gets interesting because at a certain point
they stop actually trying to address or annotate specific claims
and instead just to annotate the titles of entire sections,
writing no sourcing provided for several claims in this section,

(02:23:51):
and no evidence provided for many claims in this section.
Public reporting and data contradict several claims.

Speaker 1 (02:23:57):
Wow.

Speaker 6 (02:23:58):
The introduction for the what Happened Electoral Overview section is
also completely missing, as well as the national review section.
These are just not included. The author did not provide
those sections. The next section, the one on battleground state outcomes,
contains very basic factual errors. In just the second sentence, quote,

(02:24:23):
states which had consistently and reliably voted for Democratic candidates,
including Pennsylvania, Michigan, and Wisconsin, voted for Trump. Unquote. All
these three states voted for Trump in twenty sixteen. I
don't know if Rivera has a different definition of consistent
or reliable, but these are notably swing states, and swing

(02:24:45):
states have voted for Trump in twenty sixteen. Yeah, just
like a lot of little details like that just don't
make sense. And later on in this section and beyond,
it gets dates wrong, It gets the percentage of votes wrong.
It falsely claims that a Capitol police off was beaten
to death by insurrectionists on January sixth. That's not true.
That did not happen. An officer killed himself a few

(02:25:09):
days later, but he was not beaten to death on
site at January sixth. The report uses the word gaslighting,
which I think is funny.

Speaker 10 (02:25:17):
I just kind of wonder if you, like uploaded this
to one of the like AI softwares to tell you
if it's AI or tell you if it was you know,
plagiarized and those kinds of things, how much of it
would be flagged?

Speaker 11 (02:25:31):
Yeah?

Speaker 6 (02:25:32):
Who knows, right, Like those sorts of tools aren't the
most accurate themselves.

Speaker 1 (02:25:36):
No, but it's just crazy.

Speaker 6 (02:25:37):
But the level of errors is shocking.

Speaker 1 (02:25:41):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (02:25:42):
Like, for instance, the report claims that in the twenty
twenty four election, Democrats netted two seats in the House,
flipping ten seats from Republicans while losing eight. This is
not true. This is just not a true claim. Democrats
netted one seat rather than two, flipping nine Republican health
seats while losing eight Democrat seats. It's like, there's just

(02:26:05):
small little errors like that that I'm like, how how.

Speaker 3 (02:26:08):
Did you do this?

Speaker 1 (02:26:10):
Unbelievable.

Speaker 6 (02:26:12):
There's also a bunch of just unfounded claims about the
intentions or assumptions coming from the Harris campaign, which may
be true, but they're not supported in the actual report,
Like you're not providing evidence, you're not providing citations for
some of the claims about what the Harris Party intended

(02:26:32):
in some of their messaging or stances. But I want
to move on to one of the biggest takeaways that
the report had. It argues that anti Trump sentiment was
assumed by Democratic campaigns and that campaign ads should have
hit Trump harder to remind voters of how bad he
is quote. The national campaign did not effectively drive Trump's negatives,

(02:26:56):
the retrospective job approval for Trump was too high, and
the Camp Pagin and allies failed to remind voters of
his incompetence. The idea of Trump's negatives were quote unquote
baked in is a major failure of analysis and reality,
given how his favorability has cratered less than a year
into this term unquote. The DNC notes that no evidence

(02:27:19):
was provided for these claims, and that this claim contradicts
claims elsewhere in the report because a lot of the
report also criticizes Harris for only defining herself as not
being Trump, as focusing too much on Trump and not
defining herself. So the report kind of tries to have
it both ways here. The campaigns did not hit Trump

(02:27:42):
hard enough, but were also too focused on Trump, never
illuminating what attacks against Trump should have looked like.

Speaker 10 (02:27:50):
Exactly is there any mention in these reports about Epstein?

Speaker 6 (02:27:59):
No? No, oh no, yeah, no, absolutely not.

Speaker 1 (02:28:02):
Yeah, because it.

Speaker 10 (02:28:03):
Was baffling to me that because they needed to have
Bill Clinton make the worst speech at the DNC, that
they didn't target Trump over his relationship with Epstein at
all during the campaign.

Speaker 1 (02:28:15):
So you know, of course it's not in there.

Speaker 6 (02:28:18):
I mean, yeah, there's a lot of a lot of
things that you could hit Trump on, and a lot
of yeah, Democratic ads like did maybe not in ways
that people found convincing. You know, like when we were
at the DNC, A lot of the anti Trump stuff
was based around like the horror of January sixth, Yeah,
not his regular failures as president, right, like, like like

(02:28:41):
the day to day incompetence that he showed as president.
It was like Trump is threat to democracy, which just
did not turn out to be a compelling enough reason
to vote against Trump.

Speaker 1 (02:28:52):
Oh my goodness.

Speaker 6 (02:28:53):
The report claims that Harris struggled with defining herself beyond
not being Trump and just framing the race as prosecutor
versus felon. Report notes quote the truncated campaign timeline didn't help,
but the campaign did not quickly resolve on how to
tag Trump and define Harris. The report says that the

(02:29:14):
enthusiasm gap was predictable, that Trump just generated more enthusiasm
than Harris. Does not provide evidence to support this claim,
though some people may believe this to be true, but
this claim is not supported in the actual report, and
it reads quote anti Trump sentiment alone was insufficient to
motivate voters. The Harris campaign appears to have relied on

(02:29:37):
Trump being unacceptable rather than building an affirmative case for
Harris base voters and needed reasons to vote for Harris
as well as vote against Trump. DNC notes no evidence
provided for these claims, So I kind of agree with
portions of this. I think, yeah, you do need reasons

(02:29:57):
to vote for Harris. You cannot be justified as not
being Trump. This does contradict the previous takeaway that anti
Trump's sediment was not driven hard enough into voters. So
perhaps this claim isn't necessarily wrong, but it is armchair analysis.
It's not actually attempting to substantiate its claims. It's lazy
and sloppy, and it ignores that there were also reasons

(02:30:20):
to not vote for Harris. It's not just that the
campaign needed to generate reasons to vote for Harris, but
it also should have addressed or changed its course to
address the reasons that people might not want to vote
for Harris, which we will get to at the end
of this episode. In terms of the election analysis included

(02:30:41):
in this report, a lot of it is focused on
comparing Harris's performance to state level races where Democratic candidates
outperformed her, but also where she outperformed them, and the
analysis often conflates the two. It reiterates that quote lower
profile rate needed affirmative cases to vote for candidates, not

(02:31:03):
just opposition to Trump, and it credits successful state campaigns
to local name recognition and digital presence, things that Harris
was not necessarily lacking in. Harris spent a decent amount
of money on digital presence, and as vice president, had
a degree of name recognition. There's more odd errors here.

(02:31:26):
The report gets the number of twenty twenty four gobnatorial
races wrong. It forgets that Delaware had a governatorial race,
and it focuses much of this section of the report
on Josh Stein of North Carolina, who's the governor. Yeah. Quote.
While Stein was able to keep the governor's office under
democratic control, it is concerning how Robinson was able to

(02:31:47):
capture forty five percent of the state's vote even after
his repudiation of equal rights for everyone and proudly and
loudly asserting he was a black Nazi unquote.

Speaker 10 (02:31:58):
Man, I forgot about that guy. I'm mad that you
brought him up. I forgot he existed.

Speaker 6 (02:32:06):
A lot of the section of this report is actually
praising Josh Stein for how well he ran his campaign,
while also finding it concerning of how much the vote
Robinson was able to still get, except it gets the
number wrong. Robinson did not get forty five percent of
the vote. He got just over forty percent, And later
in the report it says he got forty two point

(02:32:28):
seven percent, which is also wrong. So it has two
different numbers. The report says forty five and forty two
point seven, neither of which are correct. The correct number
is forty people. This is a lot of stuff like this.
There's just kind of baffling, and it's even more baffling
because of how much of a load bearing section this

(02:32:49):
Josh Stein bit is right. It writes about how Josh
Stein ran almost eight points ahead of Harris, and it
says that quote Stein didn't just win by default. He
addressed the exact problems Harris did not. But it never
actually explains what those are. It doesn't actually explain this,

(02:33:09):
It just says it. In a sentence later on, it
says that, based on the North Carolina governor's race, Democrats
should quote focus less on abstract issues and identity politics
and connect with voters on the issues they say matter most,
including the economy, disaster relief, and addressing housing affordability. Unquote,
but the Harris's campaign was not actually focused on abstract

(02:33:32):
issues and identity politics. They were trying to address these things,
often inadequately, especially on the economy because of how much
Harris had tied herself to Biden. But she did address
housing affordability for like a decent bit of the campaign.
Whether voters actually knew that, that's a whole other question, right.
It's whether they were successful in communicating her platform on

(02:33:54):
housing affordability is a different question, But not that Stein's
success was focused on this. As a post to focusing
on abstract issues, which is not really what the Harris
campaign was actually focused on. The report continues, quote Harris
saw dramatic drops in support among young Latino men and
young Black men compared to Biden's twenty twenty performance. However,

(02:34:16):
Stein recovered significant ground with both groups, suggesting his campaign
found effective ways to reach these voters. Stein's result suggests
it's possible to win women and compete with men with
the right approach. Unquote. Does it explain how Stein did this? No, No,
it doesn't.

Speaker 1 (02:34:36):
Of course it doesn't.

Speaker 6 (02:34:37):
He doesn't say now. The report also praises Washington Governor
Bob Ferguson, who was elected in twenty twenty four. Quote.
Running on a platform of housing affordability, reducing costs for
families throughout the state, and improving public safety allowed him
to easily capture the governor's office. His message resonated with
voters concerned about how bidonomics failed to lower the cost

(02:34:59):
of a and how the Trump administration would gut avenues
of education and upward mobility. Stein and Ferguson, notably both
then incumbent attorneys general for their states, had a definitive
strategy to approach voters. Their wins provide a blueprint for
candidates in other states seeking to align themselves with their

(02:35:19):
voters unquote. So Ferguson's win in Washington State is presented
as a blueprint for candidates as compared to Harris's failed strategy,
but in fact, Ferguson ran almost four points behind Harris.
Harris did better in Washington than Ferguson did, but the
report promotes Ferguson's strategy, or its its opinion on Ferguson's strategy,

(02:35:42):
as the winning blueprint, despite it doing worse in Washington.
So that's what I mean in terms of there being
lots of self contradictory claims.

Speaker 10 (02:35:50):
Yeah, did nobody proofread or edit or peer review?

Speaker 6 (02:35:55):
Well no, I think that is a big part of this, right,
is that once the DNC received this, they saw how
bad it was, and it was like, we don't even
want to prove freedom edit this, Like this is just
so bad, we just don't even want to deal with
it anymore. Like it's just done right, We're just putting
on the shelf.

Speaker 1 (02:36:09):
But dude released it anyways.

Speaker 6 (02:36:11):
Well, I mean they released it after public pressure because
of you know, accusations that they were hiding certain findings
that were damaging to the Democratic Party or the interests
of party elites.

Speaker 10 (02:36:22):
No, it's just it's just that somebody did a bad.

Speaker 6 (02:36:26):
Job, when in fact it's just like, oh, this was
just like a massive suck up, Like that's that's why
you're hiding it, right right, Like this this this section
that I just like read and the section on like Stein. Yeah,
that's the only time where the word cost is used
in relation to prices. Sick. This is this is the
only mention of affordability.

Speaker 1 (02:36:44):
Oh my god.

Speaker 6 (02:36:46):
The report does not a single time mentioned inflation, Oh
my god, except in adjusting like donation numbers for inflation. Like,
it doesn't. It doesn't mention inflation as an issue. It
does not mention the causes of inflation, messaging around inflation
and how that may have been a factor contributing to

(02:37:06):
the results of the election. The economy only gets mentioned
six times.

Speaker 10 (02:37:10):
Okay, just thinking back to when we were at the RNC,
and I'm sure you had the conversations with you know,
newly eligible voters, young males. Yeah, and you ask them,
you know, why they were voting for Donald Trump. They
would always say the economy it's the first thing.

Speaker 6 (02:37:31):
It's the first thing. Yeah, and that's the core of
Trump's ad strategy.

Speaker 1 (02:37:37):
How are they not understanding that, you know, bringing out
Oprah at the DNC instead of talking about how you're
going to lower the price of milk and eggs and
gas and help people get jobs, Like, how are they
not realizing that you're not reaching normal human connection?

Speaker 6 (02:37:55):
And this like continues to be a problem now, right, Yeah,
people will look at macro economic fact sure and be like,
by some accounts, the unum is actually not doing terrible,
But those sorts of statements don't reflect the reality of
Americans who are dealing with rising prices and may not
be experiencing the same wage growth that some statistics show

(02:38:16):
in the macro sense, and specifically the way that there's
this like a condescending messaging around macroeconomics that really like
polarizes people against you because they're having a very hard time,
they don't have a lot of hope for the future,
and just asserting that actually, on a macro's level, the
economy is doing well, it feels like you're gas lighting them, right, Yeah,

(02:38:38):
So you see this in like the discussion of like,
you know, the vibe session. Yeah, which I mean I
have a lot of opinions on but that's another episode.
And right now we're going to go to ads. Oh boy, okay,

(02:39:03):
we are back. So after this section talking about the
gubernatorial races and stuff, it has a list of strategic
implications for Democrats based on these state level races, and
these implications are quote, anti Trump sentiment has its limits. Oh,
regular voters are swing voters Canada. Definition is essential. Clear,

(02:39:27):
accomplishments and concrete plans matter more than vibes. State parties matter.
Voters are sophisticated. The eight to ten percent who split
tickets are decisive. They evaluate candidates individually. Geographic formula is
non negotiable. Strong urban plus competitive suburbs plus limited rural losses.

(02:39:48):
You need all three. Yeah, no shit. In order to
win elections, you must win elections. Yeah, that's what this
is saying, is that in order to win elections, you
have to win the election. Yeah, we know, we know.

Speaker 10 (02:40:04):
Yeah, there's this there's this announcer in the NBA that
got slammed many years back for stating, well, you know,
the team with the most points at the end of
the game wins, and that's exactly what this is. They're like, hey,
if you get more votes than the other guy.

Speaker 4 (02:40:20):
You'll win it.

Speaker 10 (02:40:22):
It's crazy, it's lazy that this whole, this whole thing
reeks of just like, yes, lacksadaisical, insufferable laziness.

Speaker 6 (02:40:31):
Yes, And I want to mention two other strategic implications please. One,
Elections remain winnable with the right candidates and strategies, even
in difficult environments. Demographics are tendencies, not destiny. And voter
support is impacted good and bad through campaign choices.

Speaker 1 (02:40:51):
Unquote, wow, thank you so much for saying that.

Speaker 10 (02:40:55):
If people genius, if people believe in and like the candidate,
maybe the vote for them.

Speaker 1 (02:41:01):
Wow.

Speaker 6 (02:41:02):
Voter support is impacted through campaign choices.

Speaker 1 (02:41:06):
Just just ah, my goodness.

Speaker 6 (02:41:09):
So that's obviously laughable. Yes, this last one is more interesting.
Male voters require direct engagement. The gender gap can be narrowed.
Deploy male messagers address economic concerns, and don't assume identity
politics will hold male voters of color, men hate women,

(02:41:30):
men hate It's not the messenger. It's not the messenger,
it's the message. It's not about who the messenger is.
It's the message itself. And they can't grasp that.

Speaker 1 (02:41:40):
Why is that their take?

Speaker 6 (02:41:42):
They're doing the same identity politics that is like trying
to critique. It's like, no, we need men to talk
to male voters. That's the only way. That's also identity politics.
You don't understand that. It's not about who's giving the message,
it's about what the message actually is. How did white
dudes for Harris work out? You literally tried this. You

(02:42:04):
literally tried to do this. It did not work.

Speaker 1 (02:42:07):
Garrison.

Speaker 10 (02:42:08):
Once again, I did block that out of my brain.
I did not like hearing it. Yeah, their take is sorry,
if you want to talk to the boys, you also
have to be a boy.

Speaker 6 (02:42:21):
It's crazy.

Speaker 1 (02:42:22):
What it's lazy, it's stupid. God, all right, what else
hit me there? I know that you're saving some of
the worst for the end.

Speaker 6 (02:42:32):
Yeah, I am saving some of the bad stuff for last.
There's a few other small errors I want to go through, Like,
let's do it like it claims that tens of thousands
of voters and a handful of states are who sent
Trump back to the White House. That's that's accurate. That's
just that's just not inaccurate. And the DNC notesic what
happened at all okay an. Out of thirty four senate races,

(02:42:53):
the report only reviews six of them, which it attempts
to extrapolate a pattern from, and it does not review Wisconsin,
a key swing state. And the author also just did
not include this section on house races. This section is
completely blank. It's also missing. Cool now, it does have
a list of, you know, lessons that we can learn

(02:43:15):
from senate level and state level races. The positive ones
are that Democrats should maintain a year around presence. We
should kind of always be campaigning, don't just wait till
the end, just to always keep a level of engagement.
And that engagement should be community oriented. It should be
grassroots in nature. You should be establishing partnerships with local

(02:43:35):
community organizations and groups in working class communities, because member
to member outreach is more effective. Rather than having strangers
do door knocking, you should have people from that neighborhood
be door knocking in their own neighborhoods, and their messaging
should be bilingual and culturally competent. So like all the
stuff is like yeah, like I su this is like

(02:43:57):
I kind of agree, right, this is like yeah, very
very basic, but yes, this is this is a good idea.
You should strengthen your connections in Latino neighborhoods and with unions,
and you should lean on those to help win elections. Yep,
that's how politics works.

Speaker 1 (02:44:14):
You learn very young stranger danger.

Speaker 10 (02:44:16):
And so it's like, if you are someone like me
who has cameras at their house and you see a
strange person coming to your door, you're not necessarily going
to answer that.

Speaker 6 (02:44:25):
No, someone with a clipboard is going to approach me.
It's like, Oh, no way, I'm not having not doing it.

Speaker 1 (02:44:30):
I can't. You're I'm already over stimulated. Please leave me on.

Speaker 10 (02:44:34):
But if it's like, oh, hey, it's my neighbor, I'm
going to open the door for them and hear them out,
that's I fear. That's just common sense. I don't think
that was necessarily needed in this report. That's common sense,
but it's something I don't disagree with for like the
first time. And all these things that you said.

Speaker 6 (02:44:51):
Now, the sort of negative things that the Democrats can
learn from, yeah, include what the report calls the leadership
voter gap, the fact that the Democratic Party leadership seems
increasingly alienated from the priorities of voters and voters may
still support their local Democrat on the state level or
local races, but maybe we'll vote for Trump because he's

(02:45:15):
offering an alternative to the stagnating corpse of the Democratic Party,
even if that alternative turns out to be also terrible
and in some ways worse. So this is what they
call the leadership voter gap. They also identify late engagement,
doing the bulk of your campaigning from like September to November,
seating the entire summer for the Republicans to establish kind

(02:45:38):
of the territory of the race, like what the issues are,
the report mentions, messaging, misalignment. This is similar to the
leadership voter gap, where there's tensions between the leadership of
the party or the concerns of the president and what
working class Americans are concerned about. Quote. The Bidenomics framing

(02:46:01):
emphasized macro statistics rather than the microrealities voters experienced daily,
and specifically tied President Biden by name to actual economic anxiety. Unquote.
I think that's completely fair. Another of the key challenges
is Republican in roads with working class of voters. This
section has a typo, so it's kind of hard to read,

(02:46:22):
but it essentially.

Speaker 1 (02:46:23):
States there there's so many typos, but.

Speaker 6 (02:46:26):
It essentially states that the Trump campaign targeted working class
households with populas messaging which distracted from his anti worker record,
and working class men, particularly manufacturing and construction, saw Trump
as more aligned with their cultural values than Democratic candidates.
To Kanezi's down, Democrats need to have a year round presence,

(02:46:47):
more economic messaging, and address cost of living concerns that
resonate more than quote unquote identity politics. This is kind
of where the actual election analysis portion of the docum ends.
The rest of the document is on how to more
effectively spend campaign funds, debating door knocking versus text and

(02:47:09):
phone banking, addressing dropping voter registration rates, comparing media and ads,
spending digital versus TV ads.

Speaker 1 (02:47:17):
Is there anything interesting in those findings?

Speaker 6 (02:47:19):
No, not really, Okay, it's filling the page count. Like
the Democrats got a lot of money. The problem isn't
the funds. We have the funds. It's that there's small
ways that you can use them better. And sure, yeah,
but all of this is just treating the symptom, not
the problem. The problem wasn't that you were spending more

(02:47:41):
on digital and not enough on broadcast. The problem was
the candidate and the message, not differences in ad spending.

Speaker 10 (02:47:49):
It's not that you you had ads running, it's that
the ads you had running weren't connecting with the people.

Speaker 1 (02:47:56):
Whose votes you needed, the people that were going to
vote for you already, that's who those ads were targeting to,
as opposed to bringing in voters who were like, oh man,
I'm really not sure.

Speaker 10 (02:48:09):
Trump was pretty bad last time, I'm on the fence here,
or just for first time voters.

Speaker 6 (02:48:15):
The first time voter registration was was down significantly.

Speaker 10 (02:48:19):
Yeah, the fact that you ran ads in certain places,
that was not the problem. No, you weren't advertising to
the people that needed to be advertised too. Your messaging
was wrong.

Speaker 6 (02:48:29):
And there's yeah, there's this more core issue that people
did not get to actually pick the Democratic nominee, and
the Democratic nominee had a lot of issues and direct
ties to the many failures of the Biden administration, which
brings us to our final section.

Speaker 1 (02:48:44):
Here, I'm afraid.

Speaker 6 (02:48:46):
Based on three polling studies, the campaign pollsters concluded that
it was quote important for the vice president to find
separation from the status quo. They recognized voters were looking
for change and felt it was necessary to find ways
to demonstrate how a Harris Wall's administration would be more
effective in addressing American needs. The pollsters acknowledged the loyalty

(02:49:09):
demonstrated by the Vice president, but also suggested it was
contrary to strong signals in their data about how even
measured breaks would help position the vice president to win unquote,
and the Vice President Harris did not do these measured breaks.
She remained extremely loyal to the legacy of the Biden

(02:49:31):
administration while she was vice president and while she was
campaigning for president in twenty twenty four. Now. These campaign
posters were also part of discussions on how to respond
to Trump attack ads. Quote. In particular, the attack ad
focused on the Vice president's prior statements on transgendered Americans.
You can't call them that, bro. They all recognized the

(02:49:54):
attack as very effective and felt that campaign was boxed in.
The ad was a video of her set saying what
she said, and it was framed as an attack on
her economic priorities. If the Vice president would not change
her position, and she did not, then there was nothing
which would have worked as a response quote. The polling

(02:50:15):
sections also missing its conclusion but let's get into that
a little bit more. Okay, Before the autopsy was released,
Rob Flattery, I'm gonna say flattery. I don't know what
it actually is, but I'm calling it flattery. He was
Harris's deputy campaign manager, and he wrote an article in
The Bulwark about what he said in his autopsy interview,

(02:50:36):
also noting he was one of the few Harris staffers
who was actually interviewed. Flattery argued the main issue the
twenty twenty four campaign was branding, and he clarified that
the Kamala Is for the Them ad was not actually
the most effective attack ad according to campaign data. It
was the Trump ad from July twenty twenty four, with

(02:50:56):
clips of Harris saying that quote unquote, biden is working.
Flattery wrote that quote The brilliance of the Trump team's
ad strategy was that everything was a proof point that
leveled up to a core narrative. She cares about liberal shit,
not you, her position on immigrants. She's focused on the
wrong thing, Harris talking about transprisoners, focused on the wrong thing,

(02:51:20):
says Bidenomics is working. Focused on the wrong stuff. It
was brands, not messages. The Trans ad worked because of
what it implied, not what it's said. Unquote. Rob Flattery,
like the autopsy, insists that there was no way to
directly respond to the Kamala is for the them Trump
is for you ad, claiming that they tested five to

(02:51:42):
six response ads against ads about the economy, and the
economy ones tested better. Quote. So, not wanting to make
the fight about an issue we were losing, we talked
about the economy more a literal rebuttal would have been
a loser. I absolutely stand by this decision. Look at
the twenty time twenty five elections in Virginia, where Republicans
made trans issues the core of their advertising strategy. It

(02:52:05):
failed because voters didn't find it relevant. Except that's exactly
what Trump did with the they them ad. That was
a big part of his ad strategy as well. So
there's this sort of learned helplessness with how to address
both like the trans issues, as well as the Israel
Palestine stuff, which we'll get to in one second. Like

(02:52:28):
Harris not seriously addressing that they them add also did
not seem to help. And you don't need to run
an ad directly opposing that slop, but through media appearances
you can pull the old uno reverso while affirming that
you'll stand up for the rights of all Americans, no
matter their gender or race, and that includes making health

(02:52:50):
care more affordable and more accessible. And it's Trump and
the Republicans who are focusing on bullying a disadvantage small
minority of Americans to distract from the fact that they
have no real economic plan. You can talk about the
economy while still standing up for trans people. It doesn't
need to be the focus of your campaign, but it's
sure as hell was a key focus of Trump's campaign,

(02:53:13):
and you not addressing it did not help and contributed
to real harm and negative polarization against trans people.

Speaker 10 (02:53:21):
Yeah, I mean a trans person did not speak at
the twenty twenty four DNC, which was weird and not normal.
Trans people have spoken at many DNC conventions in the past,
but in the twenty twenty four nope, and trans issues
were barely even mentioned, largely absent.

Speaker 6 (02:53:40):
And like, it doesn't need to be a key issue,
but the fact that Republicans made it a key issue
means that it is worth addressing in some way and
affirming that you will actually stand up for the rights
of trans people beyond making very kind of vague, confusing
statements like Commula made that she'll follow the law, which
just does not make sense to anyone. This sort of

(02:54:03):
learned helplessness around like not being able to address these issues.
This is the same thing with Palestine. Yes, altering course
is simply not considered possible, and in part with Palestine,
because Harris was the vice president, Flattery wrote quote. Given
the Biden administration's position, Gaza was an impossible issue to

(02:54:23):
communicate around. Protesters drove coverage away from campaign events, Digital
creators or even supporters were afraid to say anything nice
about Biden because their comments sections would get rocked. For
many voters, watching the horrific, painful footage out of Gaza,
it became a moral question one we didn't have a
good answer for in ways that may not be reflected

(02:54:46):
in a poll. It meaningfully reduced enthusiasm. As one person
from the campaign told me, we spent the entire election
with a giant rotting fish around our necks.

Speaker 1 (02:54:57):
Is Joe Biden the giant rotting.

Speaker 6 (02:55:00):
Well no, I mean it's in part, yes, But like
the genocide in Gaza, like like this, like you know,
well documented mass death.

Speaker 10 (02:55:08):
They didn't let a Palestinian person speak at the DNC
either they had. They had one panel on it which
I attended. It was phenomenal. It was the largest attended
panel of the convention. And then they refuse to let
a Palestinian person speak.

Speaker 6 (02:55:23):
I mean, and even beyond just letting people speak, it's
like there was no real plan to actually stop this
from happening. Like you can you can cut off a Israel.
You can't do serious things. You can you cannot send
them weapons, you can take away weapons. You can do
more things. As you've seen, America is not afraid to
occupy territories in that region. You could literally invade and

(02:55:45):
be like, no, you have to stop. But like the
not being able to even consider that, you could have
an answer for this moral question, you could just change
your position, not being able to even consider that. The
compounding difficulty of Harris being the VP role made this
the giant rotting fish around the campaign's neck. Yeah, and

(02:56:09):
the fact that the autopsy does not actually address this
question and flattery does, I think is another damning indictment
against the autopsy and its sheering competence of the deputy
campaign manager himself acknowledging that this was a serious, a
serious issue that meaningfully reduced enthusiasm. And like the whole

(02:56:29):
deal in this Bulwark article is that politics is now
about brands, not messages. And this is kind of silly, right,
because these two things are related. Yeah, but the brand
of the Harris campaign was largely defined as not being
Trump and just being more of the same, which in
twenty twenty four wasn't exactly great. No, another of Trump's

(02:56:50):
main ads featured a clip of Harris saying that she
wouldn't have done anything different from Biden. So the branding
issue certainly wasn't helped by the campaign's unwillingness to sever
ties with Biden and criticize his policy. No Flattery argues
that would have been hard, if not impossible, because of
Kamala's position as sitting vice president. If she doesn't go

(02:57:11):
against Biden's policy, it puts fractures within the party and
the White House itself. But also it would demonstrate how
she effectively held no power as vice president. So there
is these issues. But if you actually have principles that
would not actually be an issue. You could just blaze
through that. You could actually take the real correct stance
on issues like Palestine, and acknowledged the massive failures that

(02:57:34):
the administration had, and you are now going against the
status quo of the administration despite being the vice president. Right,
that could have been an option one that was just
never actually considered for whatever reason.

Speaker 10 (02:57:47):
Right, I mean, statistically speaking, at that time, Joe Biden
had a very low approval rating. And so you know,
Kamala running as the pro Joe candidate doesn't really resonate
with voters because they're unhappy.

Speaker 6 (02:58:02):
Yeah, exactly right. And if your message is just more
of the same, then it seems pretty easy for your
opponents to define what your brand is.

Speaker 10 (02:58:11):
And whenever she tried to say, you know, I'm going
to change this, I'm going to change that, they were like,
but you're in office now.

Speaker 6 (02:58:19):
Like Harris herself did not actually campaign on like progressive
immigration policies, She did not campaign on trends rights, she
didn't campaign on identity politics. No, but in absence of
a real message, it's all too easy to associate the
campaign with the concerns of like liberal elites disconnected from

(02:58:39):
the economic realities of most Americans, and her previous statements
on Bidenomics and how she wouldn't have done anything differently
absolutely compounded this. Flattery wrote that the campaign underestimated just
how disillusioned people were and the widespread degree of anti institutionalism.
But unlike the autopsy, he at least acknowledges Biden should

(02:59:02):
have never have run for reelection in the first place,
and that Democrats should have run a real primary, which
would have provided an opportunity to actually address all of
these issues about feeling tied to the death worshiping aspects
of the Biden administration with Kamala being the VP. Yeah. Now,
speaking of the autopsy, let's get to the final sections

(02:59:24):
of the autopsy. Yeah. Near the end of the report,
a paragraph reads, building to win requires new thinking, and
building to last requires thinking about more than the next election.
It requires finding the best way to connect with the
right voters in the right places. And twenty twenty four
has proven anything. There is enough money to do it

(02:59:46):
all the right way. And that's kind of the end.
That's not the conclusion of the report because the final
conclusion section is left blank. Super it's missing as well,
So that sentence is kind of the last piece of
analysis because it actually has no conclusion. I think that's
the perfect the perfect representation of what this report is

(03:00:10):
is that it does not have a conclusion. It's literally
missing the conclusion. There is very little you can actually
take away from this report positively to improve election strategy
going forward, because there is no conclusion anyway. That's the
twenty twenty four autopsy that turns out was real, but
was just really bad.

Speaker 1 (03:00:30):
And didn't address anything real.

Speaker 6 (03:00:34):
No, did not address what I would argue were the
key issues affecting the campaign, Biden's decision to run again,
his age, the lack of a primary, and Israel Palestine.

Speaker 10 (03:00:47):
Yeah, that and honestly, people like to choose their candidate
in a democracy.

Speaker 1 (03:00:53):
Really, and this entire thing really.

Speaker 10 (03:00:58):
Is very frustrating because who knows when a nonsense male
who will be the candidate again after that?

Speaker 6 (03:01:08):
Yeah, I mean, at this point, I think anyone who
can address serious economic as well as these moral issues
read like imperialism in the US military, it's going to
serve a better chance. Yeah, because that is the situation
we have we have found ourselves in.

Speaker 10 (03:01:26):
Yeah, the Democratic National Committee, it's a bummer.

Speaker 11 (03:01:44):
Hello everyone, and welcome to it could happen here. My
name is Daniel Kurd. I'm a researcher and analyst of
Arab and Tastinian politics, and today I'm joined by doctor Nagarazavi.
She is a political anthropologist at the I'm going to
get this right Massavar Rahmani Center for Iran and Persian
Gulf Studies at Princeton University, and her work is on
the role of think tanks in shaping US security policies towards.

Speaker 8 (03:02:07):
The Middle East and Iran specifically.

Speaker 11 (03:02:09):
And I've recently had the pleasure of being at a
symposium with doctor Rosavi, and I thought she would be
a really welcome viewpoint for our audience.

Speaker 8 (03:02:19):
Thank you for joining us, Thanks so much for having me.

Speaker 11 (03:02:22):
So, I think in regards to the war on Iran,
there's been such a focus on the straight up her
moves and the economic impact of that that conditions on
the ground have really slipped from our radars. Like I
don't see it as often, and I think I'm a
very well plugged in person.

Speaker 8 (03:02:38):
So can we start there.

Speaker 11 (03:02:39):
Can you tell us more about the situation and what
it's like for like the average Iranian right now?

Speaker 18 (03:02:44):
Yeah, thank you so much for leading with that, because
I do think that is absolutely missing in not only
mainstream media but in much of the policy discussions that
both of us follow closely. It's very bad on like
around for ordinary Iranians on all fronts. Economically, it is

(03:03:07):
very dire at the moment. Inflation is now at unbelievably
high rates. The level of damage that happened to the country,
the physical damage cause a lot of people to lose
their jobs, if not their lives, because they hit hospitals,
they hit schools, they hit factories. These are places where

(03:03:27):
people work, So now all of those.

Speaker 8 (03:03:30):
People are without a job.

Speaker 18 (03:03:31):
The cost of living again has skyrocketed. People who dependent
on the internet somehow to do their work are also
now out of a job because it's been the longest
internet shut down in Iran's history at this point. So
that's the economic aspect that implicates every single person inside

(03:03:52):
iron at the moment. And we're hearing that even people
can't exchange the dollar, so things are really really bad
at this point. And then you add on the layer
of the number of people who have been killed. By
the latest count I think I saw seventeen hundred civilians
have been killed. Three point five million Iranians were displaced,

(03:04:12):
and this was mainly people trying to escape major city
centers they went to areas that were very under resource
and so they were also suffering from lack of water
and electricity wherever they were going. Those people have now
slowly been coming back to the major cities. Many more
thousands of people were injured or Maine. And then of

(03:04:34):
course the entire population has been terrorized by this war
and the uncertainty of whether it's going to start again.
I mean, the threats that Trump has given up until
just a few hours ago, was at any moment the
bombings could start again. And then lastly, I want to
say in terms of I touched on the infrastructure, but

(03:04:57):
they hit desalination plants, they hit hospitals, they hit oil depots.
People's quality of life right now inside Iran is pretty bad.

Speaker 2 (03:05:06):
And then you.

Speaker 18 (03:05:07):
Layer onto that a now even more repressive government that
has been executing people they accuse of being traders at
unbelievable rates, a total clamp down on levels we haven't
seen previously. So again, short story, it's very bad inside
of Iran right now.

Speaker 11 (03:05:26):
Yeah, I really wanted to make sure that people got
that full scope. You know, we forget that there's an
internet blackout, We forget that Iranians have already dealt with
such a repressive crackdown right before the war started. You know,
like I want people to make the connection that like
conditions are super super dire. You know, since you did

(03:05:47):
mention that point, maybe we can elaborate a little bit.
How do you think the Iranian regime is using this moment?
I know, short term they are utilizing it to just
crack down on any dissent, but how do you think
it'll be used kind of medium and long term?

Speaker 18 (03:06:04):
Yeah, so, you know, in our line of work, it's
always hard to make predictions, but we can use past
experiences as a somewhat of a guide here. So just
to remind your listeners, in January there was a major
uprising of Iranians against their government and there was one
of the most massive crackdowns since the nineteen eighties when

(03:06:27):
there was massacre against political dissidents, and so going into this.

Speaker 19 (03:06:32):
War, there was already one of the most brutal crackdowns happening.

Speaker 18 (03:06:37):
And then what people who are much more knowledgeable about
irans domestic politics are telling me is that the people
who are essentially replacing the leaders that were killed by
US Israeli strikes are more hardliner and are more aligned
with the hard line factions of the IRGC Islamic Revolutionary

(03:07:01):
Guard Corps, which is one branch of the military in
Iran that is very, very powerful and is loyal to
the Supreme Leader, who is now the son of the
previous Supreme Leader who was killed on the first day
of the war actually, and so using the last time
Iran was at a war, which was in the Iran
Iraq War, repression is going to get so much worse

(03:07:24):
under war conditions because anyone who they don't like or
who anyone who speaks out can then be made a
trader and an enemy of the Iranian people, and so
they can use warfare as the grounds to essentially go
even further in their oppression. And that's what a lot
of human rights activists and people on the ground are

(03:07:46):
worried about.

Speaker 11 (03:07:48):
Yeah, I also read a really interesting article I'll put
in the show notes about the popular mobilization that the
Iranian regime has like really fostered over many years to
revert ways, whether it's through inserting you know, their forces
in universities or through particular kinds of cultural practices around
like martyrs and things like that. So, like the Iranian

(03:08:10):
regime is also kind of mobilizing its supporters in a
way that I mean, obviously for people who like want
democracy and freedom like this is this is the worst
case scenario we as in the United States.

Speaker 8 (03:08:21):
I shouldn't take responsibility for that at all, but neither
of us should. Yeah, neither really it's not.

Speaker 11 (03:08:25):
It's not our fault, but we really have you know,
given the worst actors a huge victory.

Speaker 19 (03:08:32):
And also to that point, if you don't mind me jumping.

Speaker 8 (03:08:34):
In, yeah, yeah, of course, it's also you.

Speaker 19 (03:08:36):
Know, triggered nationalism among segments of the population. The war
has made.

Speaker 18 (03:08:41):
Many people who were even protesting in January against the
government now coming out and defending at least not the
sovereignty of their country or the integrity of their country.

Speaker 8 (03:08:51):
I mean, makes sense.

Speaker 18 (03:08:52):
Yeah, So there's all these strange now alliances forming, and
the government is actually playing some parts of it smartly,
where you'll see them having women without hit job coming
to pro government rallies and having a Lebanese woman singer's
voice at their rallies, which, for those of you who

(03:09:13):
don't know, women are not allowed to sing as solo
artists in Iran.

Speaker 19 (03:09:17):
They can be part of a chorus.

Speaker 18 (03:09:19):
So they're also playing this interesting imaging game where they
want to also show, look, we can also be open
and inclusive at the same time that they're executing people
at the highest rates since the nineteen eighties.

Speaker 8 (03:09:35):
Yeah, I'm going to have to look for that video
of the Lebanese singer. So we participated, both.

Speaker 11 (03:09:51):
Of us in a symposium at Princeton I think was
titled like the Long Arch of Fascism. Very interesting set
of presentations, and your presentation was about the different kind
of political strands that facilitated this war underund So I
just wanted to just start off with could you outline
the argument of your presentation for our listeners.

Speaker 6 (03:10:10):
Yes.

Speaker 18 (03:10:10):
What I argued in the conference, which was fantastic and
I really learned so much from your presentation as well,
was the idea that this war was made possible in
a sense because several different strands of fascism have come
together in this moment. And I called it converging fascisms,

(03:10:31):
just to go quickly through it, because I don't want
to droll on and on. But the idea is that
one of the core strands has been this growing anti
Muslim sentiment that really goes across so many different fascist
movements that we see, whether it's the far right in
Europe here in the United States, Islamophobia is so central,

(03:10:53):
and of course the shootings at the mosque in San
Diego is just the latest of long string of violence
the Hindutfa in India, anti Muslim sentiments racisms is central
to the fascism that we see there. And then of
course in Israel that's been a core element of their

(03:11:13):
anti Palestinian racism generally, but also specifically anti Muslim racism.
So that's kind of the big strand that I identified
as coming together. And within that there's an inflection of
anti Shia sentiment.

Speaker 19 (03:11:27):
And there's lots of scholars who have talked about.

Speaker 18 (03:11:29):
How really the anti Muslim project starts with the seventy
nine Revolution, this like modern manifestation of it, and so
it's always had this anti Shia sentiment to it.

Speaker 19 (03:11:42):
Inflection, Yeah, inflection, thank you.

Speaker 18 (03:11:45):
The second strand that I wanted to highlight was this
white supremacy and aryanism, which is interesting because it actually
loops in the far right of Iran in actors and
Iranian diasporic actors in particular, those that are tied to

(03:12:06):
the former Shah of Iran's son, Riza Pahavi.

Speaker 19 (03:12:10):
Who are really linking they're wanting to overthrow the regime
in Iran to restoring this Aryan nation that existed before
and this is their word, it's not mine.

Speaker 18 (03:12:23):
The Arab invasion of Islam, and this is really important
for the far right movement that supported this invasion was
this idea that they're going to save Iran from Islam,
which again the Islamophobia, but also the racialized violence against
Arabs in the region and particularly against Palestinians. There's this

(03:12:45):
very strong anti Palestinian current in this movement that I'm
talking about.

Speaker 19 (03:12:51):
Where they are actively recruiting.

Speaker 18 (03:12:53):
And aligning themselves with Israel in the genocide, which is
so horrible. The third strand that I wanted to talk
about was settler colonialism and nativism. And I think your
listeners probably know enough about this, but this is essentially
the bringing together of both the settler colonial violence that

(03:13:14):
we see in Israel, the United States, Australia, et cetera,
with the anti immigrant sentiment that has swept across much
of the world, including places like South Africa. Then the
next brand that I talk about is nostalgic paternalism.

Speaker 11 (03:13:30):
I call it that you always need a little bit
of pictriarchy, right right, Yeah.

Speaker 18 (03:13:35):
And it's basically like the people who call Trump daddy.
You know, this idea that we need some strong man
in our lives, and like.

Speaker 19 (03:13:45):
Egyptians have this with CC.

Speaker 18 (03:13:47):
You know this this idea that we just need this
strong man to guide us forward is so dominant in
a lot of these fascist groups.

Speaker 19 (03:13:58):
Mody is somebody's you know, paternal figure.

Speaker 18 (03:14:01):
And again, Razapadavi, the self proclaimed leader of the Iranian
opposition in exile, has numerous times called himself the father
of the Iranian people, and he's used really cringe language
around how Iran is this abused woman and he's going
to come in and save it, and completely out of

(03:14:23):
touch with this amazing feminist movement that came out of
Iran organically in twenty twenty two called the woman Like
Freedom movement. He's put himself in direct opposition against that movement,
which is wild to think about. And then the last
kind of fascist strand that I identified, and this really
also links to Naomi Klein's work, who was also at

(03:14:45):
the conference, are these techno fascists and that's like the pallinteers,
the anthropic dystopian future that a lot of these techno
bros want to impose on the world that is very
anti and so all of these strands come together at
this very particular moment to justify and advance a war

(03:15:09):
that some actors have wanted for a long time.

Speaker 6 (03:15:12):
And I say that it's.

Speaker 18 (03:15:13):
Kind of the blending of these at this particular moment
that enabled this war.

Speaker 11 (03:15:18):
Yeah, I think the convergence is an apt description. And
yet especially the patriarchal stuff, like cringe is the right word,
Like it's extremely cringe, but also you know, dangerous that
all of these things are coming together to facilitate this
kind of violence, and then the war in Iran is

(03:15:38):
facilitating the expansion of fascism here and vice versa. I
wanted to just kind of get your opinion of something.
I read this article by most of a by Umi
in The Guardian about how in the United States what
actually drives Islamophobia is at its root Antipastinian racism. I mean,
and you certainly you know in your presentation talked about

(03:15:59):
that and as well in the Iranian context, is the
anti Palestinian racism kind of tangential to the kind of broader,
racialized a Islamophobia.

Speaker 8 (03:16:10):
Yeah, how would you see that?

Speaker 18 (03:16:11):
Yeah, No, I agree to a large extent of it.
Biomi is saying, I think anti Palestinian racism is central
to how the opposition in Iran views itself. This hasn't
been helped by the fact that the Iranian government, the
current Iranian government has been at least materially and ideologically

(03:16:35):
one of the biggest supporters of Palestinian liberation and has
used the issue as many other dictators in the region have,
by the way, has used the issue to actually suppress
and oppress their own people. And so for a long
time there was this sentiment inside Iran that the Iranian
government is sending its resources, sending its weapons, making Uran

(03:16:59):
an isolated rogue state on behalf of the Palestinians, while we,
the Iranian people suffer, And so this created this people
the people tension where anti Palestinian sentiment grew inside Iran
and outside Iran obviously in these in these fascist movements,

(03:17:19):
and then that feeds back into the Islamophobia is idea
that we have nothing in common with the Palestinians because
they're part of a religion that has also oppressed us,
or a part of a ethnic group that has oppressed us.

Speaker 19 (03:17:34):
So it's its feedback loop. That's pretty horrible.

Speaker 11 (03:17:37):
Yeah, yeah, Yeah, that's good that we outline kind of
the different mechanisms there. And it's really you know, it's
it's so unfortunate because like you see polling of like Palestinians,
and Palestinians were very much against what the Iranian regime
did in Syria for example. Yeah, but like you said,
there's a weaponization of these these different causes, just like

(03:17:58):
the United States weaponizes the woman life freedom movement.

Speaker 8 (03:18:01):
You know, every regime uses things for its benefit.

Speaker 18 (03:18:05):
Just to add, like a slightly hopeful note is that
I actually think the experience of this war has actually
made more thoughtful Iranians see more of themselves now in
the struggle of Palestinians. Interesting because they are actually seeing
the hollowness and hypocrisy of what the US and Israel

(03:18:26):
say and do, and so now I think there's been
a little bit of a shift back in the direction
of solidarity with the Palestinians.

Speaker 8 (03:18:35):
Oh that's excellent to hear.

Speaker 11 (03:18:39):
You know, we could talk about this all day, Like
there's such a disconnect between diasporas and what happens on
the ground.

Speaker 8 (03:18:44):
And this is not specific to the Iranians.

Speaker 11 (03:18:46):
But I imagine even if you lean that way, but
you're in Iran being bombed by Israel, that's going to
change your opinion in a way that like if you're
in Los Angeles waving is Reelly flag, it's.

Speaker 8 (03:18:57):
A little bit different. Solutely, there's kind of stakes there.

Speaker 18 (03:19:00):
Yeah, yeah, you're like, who's the one dropping the bombs exactly?

Speaker 19 (03:19:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 11 (03:19:04):
Yeah, that is actually a very hopeful note before I
turn into a less hopeful one. So your research is on,
as I said earlier, like kind of the think tank
landscape in DC. I remember, by the way, finding out

(03:19:25):
about you back in the heydays of Twitter and being
like somebody's studying think tanks, Like that's so cool, that's
so clever, Like, yes, we should be studying them in
this way. And basically, like your research is like the
types of knowledge and the sources of knowledge that become
hegemonic in these spaces, and then that of course impact
American policy. So could you I know this is kind

(03:19:46):
of a hard ask, but could you tell us like
some basic findings of of your research the past couple
of years.

Speaker 18 (03:19:51):
Yeah, so thanks for that setup, because I actually have
a book coming out on this and it's called The
Geopolitics of Expertise, and that's one of the central findings
of the book is that this think tank landscape needs
to be understood as a transnational space. That's one of
the key findings in which a lot of actors and stakeholders,

(03:20:14):
especially from the Middle East or Swana region, are invested
in shaping the narrative from the inside out. And this
is something that I think traditional models of understanding US Empire,
for example, failed in understanding, which is that you know,
when you have Arab Gulf States, or Turkey or Morocco

(03:20:36):
or Israel invested in ensuring the debate in Washington is
shaped in a particular way that meets their interest, which
is not always aligned with the US. They're going to
throw millions of dollars into think tanks to essentially shape
what I call the common sense on any number of issues,

(03:20:58):
and so they are co constructing the imperial imagination and
this is one of the key findings. And then when
it comes to Iran in particular, they paradoxically want to
ensure that Iran remains an unknowable enemy.

Speaker 19 (03:21:13):
That's the other key piece of the book.

Speaker 18 (03:21:16):
It's just that this constructed unknowability is key to ensuring
that the US maintains a posture of confrontation with Iran.
And that means that you want to have this enemy
that you can never fully figure out, or this enemy
that's always unpredictable, this enemy that.

Speaker 4 (03:21:33):
Never follows the rules.

Speaker 18 (03:21:35):
Because if you had a predictable, rational enemy, you'd eventually
have to make some type of peace with them, because
that's actually the rational course of action. But when you
have weapons manufacturers, when you have foreign governments, when you
have all kinds of interests shaping the debate in Washington,

(03:21:56):
you don't actually do what's quote unquote the rational policy
for US national security interests as narrowly defined. So sorry
if that was too rambly of an explanation of the book.

Speaker 8 (03:22:08):
But no, not at all.

Speaker 11 (03:22:10):
I mean it's interesting because we come at it from
different disciplines. You know, I'm a political scientist, and in
the international relations landscape, there was you know, well, first
and foremost, like American Empire is not really recognized in
like American political science, but there was this argument that
percolated and like I remember going to grad school and
learning this is that, like the United States is hegemonic

(03:22:32):
and we can like study hierarchy, and there have been
more political scientists who have studied like global hierarchies. But
it's a liberal hegemon and it can't be considered an
empire because it does provide these voice opportunities for our
subordinates essentially to come and shape policy interest and so
it's an interesting not a flip on its head, but

(03:22:53):
it's like a kind of a nuancing of that argument
here is like yeah, they are here and they are
shape policy and shaping kind of US empire, which I think,
you know, poses some questions about like the agency of
these actors of course, but also like what is the
broader project of US empire? Like, yeah, we don't need

(03:23:14):
to think of it all the time. Is like kind
of top down in.

Speaker 19 (03:23:16):
A way, exactly.

Speaker 11 (03:23:17):
There's lots of actors implicated or coherent.

Speaker 18 (03:23:21):
Or you right or right or you know, even the
Iran war is a clear example, right, there's been winners
and losers, as people in DC like to say.

Speaker 8 (03:23:29):
Of this war.

Speaker 18 (03:23:30):
Oil companies are reaping the greatest profits of like the
last decade because of this war, because of the shortages
coming through the strait of hormones. Weapons manufacturers are doing
really well right now. Private equity and AI are doing well.
But the damages that we are now seeing coming out

(03:23:52):
of the production side across the Gulf, including inside Iran,
is going to have very long term detrimental effects for
all of these same industries. Paradoxically, but in the short
term they're winning. Meanwhile everybody else is losing. Food prices
are going up, gas prices are going up. I have
a friend who works in research with helium. There's no

(03:24:13):
helium in the world right now. So if you want
to go get an MRI, good luck, because there's not
much healium.

Speaker 19 (03:24:19):
Most of it comes out of this one facility in Kutar.

Speaker 11 (03:24:22):
And I was just reading an article about how Tata
has lost so many billions of dollars as a result
of this war, as a result of the attacks on
some of its facilities.

Speaker 8 (03:24:31):
And it's like doh has a ghost town.

Speaker 11 (03:24:33):
And I used to live in Doha, and for anybody
who has you know, been there or whatever, I mean,
like at its best is a ghost town. Like often
it is a ghost town. If it's not like a
busy season. So, like, what even does it mean that
these places? I can't even fathom what's going to happen
long term given the impact of this war.

Speaker 8 (03:24:50):
And that was with just sixty days of war, right, Yeah,
so we don't.

Speaker 19 (03:24:53):
Know it's in such a short amount of time. The
amount of damage it caused is unbelievable.

Speaker 11 (03:24:58):
Yeah, Like you said, it's good to start to disentangle
who's benefiting in service of which actors?

Speaker 8 (03:25:07):
Here are we attacking Iran?

Speaker 11 (03:25:09):
Yeah, and this is like the most corrupt administration imaginable.
It really is like kind of breathtaking the level of corruption.
So yeah, hopefully, you know, historians and political scientists and
political anthropologists will have years and years of research to
study this moment. All right, Well, is there anything else
you think people should keep an eye on when it

(03:25:30):
comes to the situation in Iran moving forward?

Speaker 19 (03:25:32):
I think we need to be much more critical about
who is shaping the narrative on Iran moving forward. A
lot of the figures who are now disavowing the war
in these thing tanks and saying, you know, war was
such a bad idea. Trump fumbled it and this was
a terrible idea. Had essentially been i say, hedging.

Speaker 18 (03:25:55):
For this war for a long time, which is that
by constructing Iran as this enemy, you can't negotiate with
an enemy that.

Speaker 19 (03:26:02):
You can never predict.

Speaker 18 (03:26:04):
You can never negotiate with an enemy that lies about everything.
These are the narratives that these Iran experts have been
advancing for years, and now we're expected to go and
turn back to that same group to get us out
of this mess. And that's what I'm going to urge
all of the listeners is be much more critical about
who is analyzing Iran in such a moment. Look at

(03:26:25):
who they work for, look at what types of analysis
they've done in the past, How do they access the Iran,
How do they know what they know about Iran? It
sometimes takes five extra minutes when you're reading a New
York Times piece to just go through and highlight who
they're quoting as experts.

Speaker 19 (03:26:42):
For example, and New York Times says all kinds of problems, but.

Speaker 18 (03:26:45):
Pick whatever Wall Street Journal, Foreign Affairs, foreign policies, and
just do five minutes of due diligence on who that
piece is citing as an expert on Iran.

Speaker 19 (03:26:56):
And that's my key takeaway for people.

Speaker 8 (03:26:59):
Yeah, that's such a good takeaway.

Speaker 11 (03:27:02):
I mean, I think there's so many aspects of our
politics in which people are trying to convince us the
same people who got us into these messes are like
all we have like Democratic party operatives that like led
us to Trump exactly are the ones like now pretending
they really dislike the genocide and Gaza and whatever. And
it's the same thing these Iranian experts. They're not even Iranian.

(03:27:23):
Sometimes it's just Iran experts claiming expertise. And it's like
the way that you have shaped this discussion is why
we're at this point. So yeah, that's a very good takeaway.
I appreciate that. Yeah, thank you so much, Naggar. This
has been really enriching.

Speaker 19 (03:27:39):
Thank you so much, Danna.

Speaker 11 (03:27:40):
I will put all of the things we talked about
in the show notes. Does your book have a publication
date yet?

Speaker 2 (03:27:45):
Nobody?

Speaker 18 (03:27:46):
I signed the contract, so oka good good, So people
be on the lookout.

Speaker 19 (03:27:50):
It will be with Stanford University Press, so.

Speaker 11 (03:27:53):
Yeah, excellent, excellent, So I will make sure to note
that and flag that.

Speaker 8 (03:27:57):
Thank you.

Speaker 19 (03:27:58):
Thanks so much for having me. I really appreciate it.

Speaker 6 (03:28:00):
Of course.

Speaker 2 (03:28:15):
Welcome back to Executive dysfunction could happen here?

Speaker 9 (03:28:20):
No?

Speaker 2 (03:28:21):
Is that all right? Garrison? I thought we were. It
was pretty close.

Speaker 6 (03:28:23):
There's another like show or column called Executive Dysfunction.

Speaker 2 (03:28:27):
Now, oh is there? Ye sons of bitches? They stole
it from us.

Speaker 6 (03:28:31):
That covers like legal issues relating to the Trump administration.

Speaker 3 (03:28:34):
So okay, well that brings us neatly into a first store,
or did it?

Speaker 6 (03:28:39):
This is defen here Executive Disorder, our weekly newscast covering
what's happening the White House, the crumpling world, and what
it means for you. I'm Garrison Davis today, joined by
James Stout, Robert Evans, Mia Wong, and Sophie Licktterman. We're
a covering the week of May twenty seventh to June third.

Speaker 2 (03:28:54):
Let's talk about intellectual property lawsuits.

Speaker 3 (03:28:56):
Let's right right off the bat. One who is in
any capacity using ed or unnoticed It is going to
be us against the Viagara people. I'm talking today about Patagonia,
the brand suing Fatigonia, the drag queen.

Speaker 2 (03:29:14):
God damn, this is God.

Speaker 3 (03:29:16):
Yeah, I've successfully walked you into my little world. This
is a situation very reminiscent of people. Remember the north
Face's lawsuit against the South But.

Speaker 2 (03:29:26):
I would argue it's actually kind of different. But okay,
I get what you're saying.

Speaker 3 (03:29:30):
The self but lawsuit was funny. If people an't familiar,
it's really funny. They were bound to arbitration. They arbitrated
the settle, and then the guy turned around and launched
the butt face like a few weeks later and they
sued him again.

Speaker 2 (03:29:43):
That was a beautiful case of somebody trying to troll
a company and also like trolling the concept of like
intellectual property laws in like a really creative way, which
is which is different from what's happening.

Speaker 3 (03:29:54):
Yeah, Yes, what is happening here is that when Wiley,
who dragged persona is Patagonia, right, does a lot of
fundraising for outdoors causes, environmental causes, public lands, that kind
of thing, has attempted to trademark their use of Patigonia
for clothing. Patagonia is suing Wiley to protect its trademark

(03:30:17):
on its logo because some of the logos that Patigonia
has used are very obviously like the mirrored Patagonia logos.

Speaker 2 (03:30:25):
Yeah, she's trying to get a trademark for her Patagonia logo,
which is just Patagonia instead of Patagonia in the company
logo for Patagonia.

Speaker 3 (03:30:35):
Yeah, I'm not sure she tried to tried to trademark,
like the it's a Sarah Fitzroy right, like it's about
scape or she just tried to trademark Patigonia. It looked
like it.

Speaker 2 (03:30:43):
Well I'll double check that right now.

Speaker 3 (03:30:45):
Yeah, because I think what she has offered as a
settlement right now is to stop using the logo but
continue using the name.

Speaker 10 (03:30:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:30:50):
The second is whether Patagonia should be entitled a trademark
registration and at least they have a picture in the
trademark application of her Patagonia logo.

Speaker 12 (03:30:58):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:30:58):
Yeah, and they've claimed it's usingly similar.

Speaker 10 (03:31:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:31:01):
And you made you made a good point when we
were talking about this earlier, James, that I hadn't thought of,
because you are a better mind than I am in
this way, which is that it is because my initial
thinking on this was like when I saw that she
was trying to trademark, just like her version of the
Patagonia logo, was like, well, you just took their logo
and put your name on, Like that is fucked up.
But you pointed out well, Patagonia's logo includes this, like

(03:31:22):
actual mountain range that she includes, and Patagonia doesn't really
have the right to trademark that's sillowette of a mountain range.
It is a little more nuanced than I thought initially.

Speaker 3 (03:31:32):
Yeah, yeah, there are a couple of things of stake
care that people prep ton't understand. One like, I'm in
a moral level, not illegal one, folks, but yes, but yeah, morally,
I think we should be asking the question is it
okay for a company that grossest one point four billion
a year to own the rights to a skyline? Like
I think we should be asking that. I think alsotinly,
people maybe should look a little bit deeper into I've

(03:31:54):
written about this a bunch and a bunch of outlets,
But Patagonia has millions daughters of military contracts that they
don't like to talk about, and they did through a
different company called Lost Arrow, And like the people just
need to stop seeing a giant company like this is
woke that like the companies ain't going to save us.
The sustainable shorts aren't going to save us. Like buying
a fancy fleece is not the way that you're going

(03:32:15):
to make the better world that you want to live in.
That's my take.

Speaker 2 (03:32:18):
Yeah, I feel like Patty was kind of poking the
bear here. Yeah, one hundred percent, like in a massive way.
Really yeah yeah yeah yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:32:26):
No, clearly she knew what she was going for here.

Speaker 2 (03:32:28):
Yeah, and Pagony clearly doesn't want to be fighting this lawsuit.

Speaker 6 (03:32:32):
Where are you seeing this stuff? Is this like a
blue Skydews story? Where are you seeing this? No?

Speaker 2 (03:32:37):
This is like a big this is I came into it,
like I saw it first on Reddit, but it's also
just been pushed into my news feed like I've never
heard a five different article. It's it's a big story
right now.

Speaker 3 (03:32:47):
Unfortunately I followed her just like generally been aware of
her for probably six or seven years, six seven.

Speaker 2 (03:32:54):
The New York Times has a feature that's just on
this right now. It's a sizable tale.

Speaker 6 (03:32:59):
Interesting.

Speaker 3 (03:33:01):
I did note that most of her merch has sold out,
so the striking effect it's in full force here.

Speaker 6 (03:33:06):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:33:07):
Like, if you wanted to find a way to sell
as many Patagonia stick as it look like the Patagonia
logo as possible, you would sue her.

Speaker 2 (03:33:14):
This is the way to do it.

Speaker 3 (03:33:15):
Yeah, they're starting her for one dollar plus legal fees.
People don't seem to have grasped. That doesn't mean that
all that is at stake is a bug here. The
fees will be very substantial.

Speaker 2 (03:33:25):
Yes, yeah, although the fees will be substantial. That said,
this is clearly a fight Patty wanted to have. Ye, So, like,
I am not in a situation where, like I feel
particularly angry or disturbed about this lawsuit, like this is
something that any company would have done some version of
this in response, it's not good that Pedagonia is doing this.

(03:33:47):
It's just what any corporation would do that has a
fiduciary duty to its shareholders. And that shouldn't change your
opinion of Patagonia from what it was previously. But your
opinion of Patagonia shouldnt ever have been that it's like
an altruistic entity, right right, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:34:04):
Two percent of its shares are held by its Purpose Trust,
which are all the voting shares, and ninety eight percent
if it's shares are help by the hold Fast Collective,
which is a five oh one C four. So like,
I think people see that as like, you know, they'd
like to say the Earth is our only shareholder, but
like the purpose trust is, as you say, Robert, duty
bound to make a profit to give to the C four.
This is not the same thing as like activism. It's different.

(03:34:28):
It's a company. It's a company that has to make profit,
like you said, Robert, And I think people need to
grasp that.

Speaker 2 (03:34:32):
Yes, and if they I mean literally, if they were not,
if they were to not fight what she's doing here
like this could cause serious issues for Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:34:41):
Yeah, I think someone tried to put their logo on
a gun or I've heard. I couldn't find reporting on this,
but a couple of people have mentioned it to me
and obviously they'd suit about that and they got you know,
so if they didn't, if they hadn't done this one,
they couldn't.

Speaker 6 (03:34:52):
Do that right.

Speaker 2 (03:34:53):
And it's again, this should not I'm not you shouldn't
be like, well, patagone isn't the right And but also
you shouldn't be like, wow, I completely changed my opinion
about this company.

Speaker 10 (03:35:02):
You know.

Speaker 3 (03:35:02):
Yeah, yeah, it's just that they're doing what they do.

Speaker 10 (03:35:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (03:35:06):
I think the underlying structural thing here is something we've
talked about on this show at some length, is just
the underlying violence of the intellectual property system, like irrespective
of this case. This is a kind of silly case
of it. But you know, like there are a lot
of people in the world who are dead right now
because a bunch of a bunch of corporations get to
hold like patents on vaccines, for example, Yeah, or insulin.

(03:35:30):
This has always been an extremely violent regime that is
enforced by quite like one of the most powerful international
bodies that has ever existed. And yeah, if you want
to hear more about this, friend of the show, Vicky
Ostrowhil released a book called The Extended Universe about how
Disney pioneered a whole bunch of this that, yeah, you

(03:35:51):
should read about because the entire system is just pure
violence and always has been.

Speaker 3 (03:35:58):
Yeah, we have some episodes from you. It is good
that I made about drug ip and a a greening
as well. Yeah, that's a very good point. Mare moving on,
we learned this week that the F fifteen E pilot
who was shut down over Iran in April had been
shot down the week before over Q eight.

Speaker 2 (03:36:14):
What horrible, horrible week. Think you've had a bad week
at work.

Speaker 12 (03:36:25):
Versus joining just the list of all timers, like that
guy who got nuked at both Roschaman and Nagasaki. There's
that guy who had sunk on four consecutive ships.

Speaker 2 (03:36:32):
Is there such thing as a reverse ace? Like if
this guy gets shot down three more times like an
anti as.

Speaker 3 (03:36:39):
If he gets shut down three more times, he ain't
gonna be able to reach the controls of the plane,
Like he's already compressed his spine show much.

Speaker 2 (03:36:46):
Yeah, I'm surprised. I didn't think they would let them.
I didn't think period after getting shot down and ejecting,
you would be allowed to fly a plane at all,
Like yeah, quickly, I know.

Speaker 6 (03:36:58):
I was not a lad.

Speaker 2 (03:36:59):
That was my understanding is you're not normally supposed to Like,
I don't think this is how normally things would be done,
which kind of suggests that there was like they didn't
have enough pilots.

Speaker 3 (03:37:09):
Yeah, right, it's kind of remarkable that they were able
to get him another at fifteen quickly, I guess. But yeah, yeah,
he probably not flying any more planes for a while,
I would imagine not Yeah, I mean, who knows, maybe
maybe the F fifteen to free I found.

Speaker 2 (03:37:23):
Yeah, it sounds like it's just feeding F fifteen.

Speaker 3 (03:37:29):
He must Yeah, the desert God's demand an F fifteen
sacrifice every six days. Marco Rubio in the House has
claimed that Afrikaners, we spoke quite this first week right,
they're raising the cap to admit Africanas as refugees. Africantisu
may admitted and others not because they quote have a
high likelihood of assimilation.

Speaker 20 (03:37:50):
We have gauged that there is real interest from a
unique subset who would be interested to coming in the
United States and who we assess have a high likelihood
of rapid assimilation and success in our society, and hence
this program was created. Now, that's not a program that's
going to exist in perpetuity. It's a program that's designed
to the fact that we are seeing the demand. We
are seeing applications from South Africa. People will enter the

(03:38:12):
United States, and we think this is a group of
potential refugees.

Speaker 21 (03:38:15):
Our Afghan allies are refugees. They have been vetted eleven
hundred versus this new seventeen thousand.

Speaker 20 (03:38:25):
But it's more than just vetting. We're also trying to
determine against the immigration policy the United States. Like everything
we do, has to be geared by the national interest,
and it is in our national interest if we are
allowing people in our country be people that can quickly
assimilate into society and be successful.

Speaker 21 (03:38:40):
I can't they assimilate into society. A background been to
their centers in my district in Queens they have assimilated
and contribute and pay taxes.

Speaker 20 (03:38:51):
Yeah, but we've already assumed a lot of Afghan refugees,
as you said, you have them in your district. We've
already assumed the large number in the past. The point
is that the general policy has been to limit the
injury of refugees from all over the world and then
to create the special track because of a unique circumstance
and the short term of a high demand from a
number of immigrants that we have determined if they passed
the vetting and the checking, we very quickly assimilate and

(03:39:13):
contribute to our society.

Speaker 3 (03:39:15):
I think it's really interesting. It's one of the more
clear elucidations is the way they see immigration that we've had. Yeah,
like you said, it's not about vetting, it's not about
background checks. It's specifically about people who can quote unquote assimilate.

Speaker 6 (03:39:30):
I wonder what the economic strata of the Africander is
getting getting refugee status are.

Speaker 12 (03:39:36):
I mean it's in terms of the way that Rubio
is looking at it. Their economic strata is white, which yeah,
well I wonder what I wonder what their actual economic
strata is. That is an interesting aspect, Like South Africa
is a place where that maps on very very cleanly.

Speaker 6 (03:39:50):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (03:39:50):
Ways, right, it's That's what I'm saying, like, definitely a lot.

Speaker 3 (03:39:56):
Yeah, and I think just having the means to apply
for this.

Speaker 11 (03:39:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (03:40:00):
And that's clearly like Rubio saying, like he's doing this
because there is a demand. Let me tell you, there
is a demand all over the world, Like I have
seen demand to live in the United States in every
continent on the planet apart from the ones that are
covered in ice. This is as clear as you're going
to get to them saying these folks are white, They're
coming to America and we're going to lock out the

(03:40:20):
folks who are not. Like I thought, it was very
interesting to see him go right up to that line. Next,
I have Medicaid work requirements. Work study of volunteering requirements
of eighty hours a month will be imposed by the
first of January for the forty States to expanded the
program under the Affordable Care Act. This is according to

(03:40:41):
a notice published today in the Federal Register today being Wednesday,
this will impact millions of Americans, and the speed at
which this is being done will also be very hard
for state bureaucracies to keep up with. Right, we have
less than six months for massive change, and like the

(03:41:02):
requirement for states to monitor this, it's going to be
very difficult for them to retain the stability and pivot
to this and that's going to impact people, whether or
not they are working. Yeah, which sucks.

Speaker 12 (03:41:16):
This is something that like particularly impacts trans people because
they're a very shit tone of trans people on Medicaide
and a lot of those people are also disabled and
that's just been an absolute nightmare for them. If you
are in a position where you can hire someone for
I think the work, what's the word is like thirty

(03:41:38):
hours a week? I think is the requirement?

Speaker 3 (03:41:39):
Eighty hours a month? Is eight hours twenty ish a week.

Speaker 12 (03:41:43):
Yeah, Like, if you're in a position to just hire
someone for that, you should do it because that's the
difference between these people like having food and not having food.

Speaker 3 (03:41:54):
Yeah, this is a potential and this will kill people. Yeah,
like just just the fuck ups in the bureaucracy. Even
if people are able to find the work of volunteer
or study or whatever. Yeah, but the delay so that
will cause will kill people.

Speaker 12 (03:42:06):
This is also a thing, by the way, that some
unions have historically done with WW has done this, which
is like getting people positions to be able to do volunteering.
And if that's the thing you can do, you should
do this because this is a unfathomable humanitarian crisis for
a bunch of the most vulnerable people in the US.
And yeah, it's real bad.

Speaker 3 (03:42:30):
Yeah it's not good to all. I think that is
a good point mere that, Like, if you're in a
place to help people coordinate their volunteering and document that, like,
that's a good thing to start thinking about. Garrison, you
got any small things?

Speaker 6 (03:42:42):
A few more small things. Trump signed an executive order
to expand AI cybersecurity capabilities and protections, and last Friday,
Chelsey Gabbard resigned as Director of National Intelligence citing her
husband's recent cancer diagnosis. Trump has elect and Bill Poulti,
head of the Federal Housing Finance Agency, to serve as

(03:43:04):
acting Director of National Intelligence. Pulte is a Trump loyalist
with no intelligence background, and even Republican senators don't seem
too keen on this choice. Senate Majority leader John Thune
told reporters, quote, well, we don't need a weaponized DNI,
we need professionals there. If he's somebody they wanted that
position permanently, he's got, as you know, a lengthy road

(03:43:27):
ahead of him.

Speaker 3 (03:43:29):
Let's catch up with the war in Iran. It ran
this week hit a commercial vessel with an anti ship
cruise missile in the Persian Gulf, as well as firing
at US facilities and hitting the international airport in Qit.
But they've killed at least one person there. This comes
as talks are continuing to fail to reach a resolution,

(03:43:49):
at least in part because Israel refuses to stop attacking
Lebanon and committing war crimes. Axios is reporting that Trump said,
in a call to Nettinyahuo, quote your fucking crazy. You'd
be in prison if it weren't for me. I'm saving
your ass. Everybody hates you now, everybody hates Israel because
of this. Sure In recent days, the IDF has explicitly

(03:44:12):
threatened bit route and further expanded its ground campaign again
right like, this war is now becoming very much a
regional thing. Has been a regional thing since it started,
but like the peace deal, is also a regional thing,
and the fact that Israel refuses to do anything other
than exactly what it wants, which seems to be killing

(03:44:33):
more and more people in its neighboring countries, means that
it's going to be very hard for this water come
to an end, which is going to have long term
economic consequences for the whole world. NBC has also reported,
talking of the whole world, that it was a Chinese
man pads shot down the fifteen E. That's for the
second time in April that such equipment, along with long

(03:44:55):
range radar was possibly supplied to Iran in the early
days of the conflict by China. Obviously, this makes any
kind of tent with the US and China more difficult,
right and it's not clear if the particular actual manpad's
man portable air defense system people aren't familiar if the

(03:45:15):
particular serbs to MSR used had arrived recently or have
been into doock pals for some time, But it appears
that China, at least right before or early on in
the conflict, was perhaps supplying some air defenses to it Ran.
Maybe this can explain just a little bit about how
the bombing campaign has been relatively unsuccessful in its objectives

(03:45:37):
in many ways.

Speaker 6 (03:45:38):
Let's go on a break and then we can talk
about the California elections and the Supreme Court. Okay, elections

(03:45:59):
in California. Why is California like that? What is going
on over there?

Speaker 1 (03:46:04):
It's because I left. It's my fault.

Speaker 3 (03:46:06):
Yeah, grieving Sophie.

Speaker 2 (03:46:09):
That was the last thing holding it together there.

Speaker 1 (03:46:11):
I'm sorry, I'm sorry.

Speaker 6 (03:46:14):
Let's start with the La mayoral race.

Speaker 10 (03:46:18):
I want to talk about it. It's my duty to
talk about this. I would like to talk a bit
about Spencer Pratt.

Speaker 6 (03:46:25):
Who may may be advancing, who.

Speaker 1 (03:46:27):
May be advancing, That's what I'm saying.

Speaker 10 (03:46:29):
At time of recording, which is Wednesday, June third, at
around three thirty pm Pacific time, Pratt is currently in
second place with thirty percent of the votes. Bass is
at thirty five percent and has already been guaranteed to
move forward, and I THEE Raman is in third with
twenty two percent. And like I said, there's sixty percent
of the votes counted. So why the fuck is Spencer

(03:46:49):
Pratt a former reality TV cast member. I'm not even
gonna give him star running for mayor. Pratt grew up
in the Pacific Halisad's neighborhood and live there until the
fires happened and he and his parents' houses were unfortunately
burned down, and he started making videos on TikTok, was

(03:47:11):
getting a lot of attention for it, and decided that
it was his destiny to it was his According to
his website, his mission to run for mayor her his
own campaign website. Pratt is a media entrepreneur, questionable, outspoken
advocate depends on who you're talking about, and an emerging
political leader. He does have a political science degree from

(03:47:35):
USC I will say that, but he does claim to
be Karen Bass's worst nightmare. Now, if you're not a
millennial who had television in the late two thousands, you're
probably unaware of how unhinged Spencer Pratt is.

Speaker 1 (03:47:48):
Here are some highlights listeners.

Speaker 2 (03:47:50):
We apologize for what Sophie's about to make you experience.

Speaker 6 (03:47:53):
This is a lot of audio, Sophie, we need all
of it.

Speaker 2 (03:47:58):
Oh god, it Garrison, just copyright.

Speaker 1 (03:48:03):
We'll just do it.

Speaker 6 (03:48:03):
Just do it for me. That was the best.

Speaker 13 (03:48:06):
Like, I was proud of myself for not doing what
I wanted to do to you, because what I wanted
to do and say to you, dear, I didn't because
I was praying, praying like I do every day, to
not say the things that I want to say to you,
to your mom. I know I'm not. Do you see
how I'm not saying them? Yeah, I'm very proud of myself.

Speaker 19 (03:48:26):
Take your heads about to explode.

Speaker 13 (03:48:27):
So I am sorry if I disrespected you. But I'm
very emotional these days, very very so I say things
that I feel.

Speaker 11 (03:48:36):
I was the one that wanted to kill anybody that
would ever talk like that about.

Speaker 19 (03:48:39):
My sister, and I still would.

Speaker 16 (03:48:41):
But that goes through my mom too, and as a family,
that's how we all should be.

Speaker 13 (03:48:45):
Well, I didn't say anything negative aout your mom. Your
mom is just the vagina that made Heidi come on
to earth. Your mom is not Jesus or God or
the Creator. So why can't I say that?

Speaker 6 (03:48:55):
So why can't I say that?

Speaker 2 (03:48:56):
Why can't I say that?

Speaker 9 (03:48:58):
No, it's not it's my opinion, preacher, preacher, this isn't
Bible study, this is no one's preaching, No one's preaching,
No one is preaching here. You're not her sister.

Speaker 6 (03:49:14):
You're not her friend. Liar, walk away from.

Speaker 13 (03:49:16):
These lives because she's gonna sit here and keep eying you.
You're the biggest poser in this town. You know what
you're going to burn.

Speaker 2 (03:49:24):
I go back to the real estate job.

Speaker 19 (03:49:29):
Liar.

Speaker 10 (03:49:32):
Yeah, that was Spencer talking to his sister in law
about his mother in law.

Speaker 6 (03:49:37):
All this is fake, this is all acting like this,
this is I don't know this. This doesn't move me
at all.

Speaker 1 (03:49:42):
Half of this is acting. Half of this is not acting.

Speaker 10 (03:49:45):
Yeah, yes, that is he here, he is talking to
his own sister.

Speaker 3 (03:49:50):
Godkay, no, we've already cathlog this ship.

Speaker 10 (03:49:55):
I'm gonna leave.

Speaker 8 (03:49:56):
But I didn't get to say, Hi, are you guys good?
How are you.

Speaker 11 (03:50:02):
Excellent?

Speaker 6 (03:50:02):
How are you.

Speaker 13 (03:50:05):
When?

Speaker 1 (03:50:06):
When?

Speaker 13 (03:50:06):
When?

Speaker 3 (03:50:07):
What are you crying about?

Speaker 13 (03:50:08):
Seventy? Are you crying about that? That's why you're not
in my life, you crazy bitch, because you come to
barbecues and just start crying. I was just enjoying myself
and my wife, and I get crying sisters in front
of me.

Speaker 9 (03:50:20):
She just wanted to say, but that gets a crying away.

Speaker 6 (03:50:23):
What the do I need to do to you? Drama?

Speaker 3 (03:50:28):
He didn't just ignoring me at the party. Mar What
just happened?

Speaker 20 (03:50:37):
We were having a little conversation and then all of
a sudden, I got people storming out of here.

Speaker 8 (03:50:41):
I'm talking now. You know it's your brother, but she's
off his rocker.

Speaker 12 (03:50:45):
I don't know what's talking with her.

Speaker 9 (03:50:47):
You know what, I'm talking about, my little sister who's
not relevant to my life.

Speaker 6 (03:50:53):
Oh god?

Speaker 12 (03:50:54):
Oh you know? Okay?

Speaker 10 (03:50:57):
Oh, and just to say, just to say, she has
told people not to vote for her brother in modern times.

Speaker 2 (03:51:04):
Just a shacking, shocking stuff.

Speaker 3 (03:51:06):
Yeah, he seems like he's an even tempered guy.

Speaker 10 (03:51:09):
Yeah, one less clip, just because I'll I never want
to talk about him again.

Speaker 1 (03:51:12):
So I'm going to get all that.

Speaker 10 (03:51:14):
I am the managing executive producer of this podcast. Let
me have this.

Speaker 8 (03:51:19):
Thank you.

Speaker 1 (03:51:20):
You're on this club, dude, relaxed, bro, Look at hell's.

Speaker 10 (03:51:25):
Wrong with me?

Speaker 2 (03:51:26):
I hate that pitch.

Speaker 6 (03:51:27):
Excuse my French.

Speaker 19 (03:51:28):
Hey, you're crazy.

Speaker 2 (03:51:29):
You're looking me in a weirdo.

Speaker 6 (03:51:31):
Bro.

Speaker 13 (03:51:31):
They just yelled at me very knowledge. I'm so loud
as somebody's yelled in my face for three years.

Speaker 6 (03:51:36):
I'm over you.

Speaker 2 (03:51:37):
I don't want to hear anything together.

Speaker 6 (03:51:38):
Tell me y'all in my day.

Speaker 13 (03:51:39):
Son walked away from me before we have a problem.

Speaker 12 (03:51:43):
Walk them away.

Speaker 6 (03:51:46):
God, you bo don't know how nazor science.

Speaker 13 (03:51:52):
Like I just really outed, like oh myself smashing his
head off, you know, like.

Speaker 4 (03:51:58):
My pieces, Like.

Speaker 6 (03:52:02):
All right, so this is so this is like if
like Clovicular run, like ran for office in like ten
years yeah right, twenty years.

Speaker 10 (03:52:10):
Yeah yeah, And you know it's a reality TV show.
You're right, there's parts of it that are scripted. There's
parts of it that are enhanced, there's parts of it,
but you can't you can't fake that fucking vein popping
out of his head.

Speaker 2 (03:52:23):
A lot of it scripted, but you don't get passed,
so to speak, to be that kind of character if
you're not already a giant asshole, right, I.

Speaker 6 (03:52:31):
Mean yeah, it's in some ways less explicitly scripted than
like WWE, but you you fall into certain roles because
that's what you are getting paid to, Like that is
your job is contingent on performing this kind of real
not real thing. And I honestly, you know, like the
sort of like like iol streamer thing is is a
very similar version of that for the contemporary age. And

(03:52:52):
I think so it really there was there was one
specific like like line there that really reminded me of
like one of one of clivioculars, like on cam Her meltdowns.
I'm like, oh, this is really just if What if
you had a guy like that just run for office
for like the mayor of whatever city in like twenty years. Yeah.

Speaker 10 (03:53:08):
Yeah, well I want to talk a little bit about
his campaign style. He shared this video on X the
Everything app, and it got millions and millions of views,
with people saying it's the best campaign video of all time,
and so we're gonna play it for you now.

Speaker 3 (03:53:22):
No, it's more of him than I've ever seen.

Speaker 6 (03:53:26):
This is the Batman one.

Speaker 3 (03:53:28):
I haven't seen this.

Speaker 5 (03:53:30):
She was there.

Speaker 6 (03:53:30):
He did not make this video.

Speaker 10 (03:53:32):
He did not make this. He shared it and he
he's big on the AI sharing video trend.

Speaker 1 (03:53:38):
Yes, his website is filled with it.

Speaker 3 (03:53:40):
Yeah, there have been a lot of AI videos in
LA races time.

Speaker 6 (03:53:44):
There's been a lot of these LA election like Batman videos. Yes, yes,
let's I guess. Let's watch this one.

Speaker 10 (03:53:52):
Sure until we get bored with it.

Speaker 3 (03:53:54):
Yeah, wait, hang on, just break that down.

Speaker 6 (03:54:01):
Yeah, I think this makes sense to watch a little bit.

Speaker 2 (03:54:04):
Yeah. Yeah, we have to explain first. We start with
the entire Hollywood sign of flame.

Speaker 7 (03:54:12):
You see is these these goons dressed in all black
tactical gear with the white that says DSA, which is.

Speaker 6 (03:54:23):
One of the best things I've ever seen. That one
of my favorite part about this game.

Speaker 2 (03:54:27):
Yes, the paramilitary DSA forces in Los.

Speaker 6 (03:54:30):
Angeles, and then it goes into this sort of dark
Knight rises like courtroom.

Speaker 8 (03:54:35):
Yeah, Karen Bass in the.

Speaker 6 (03:54:36):
Middle, except Karen Bass has joker makeup and.

Speaker 10 (03:54:39):
Kamala Harris is I think drinking alcohol on one side
and that's now.

Speaker 3 (03:54:43):
Oh yeah, she's just like straight from the bottle too.
Is that all say too?

Speaker 2 (03:54:46):
I think there's a little bit of district fucking Hunger Games,
the Hunger Games, the Hunger Games Capital in that design too, anyway.

Speaker 6 (03:54:55):
Yeah, and uh, Gavin Newsom's and likes, you know, like yeah,
a wrist acratic garb.

Speaker 3 (03:55:01):
Yeah, okay, that's Gavin.

Speaker 6 (03:55:02):
Okay, please, I'm begging you.

Speaker 10 (03:55:08):
There's homeless drug addicts in front of the schools.

Speaker 8 (03:55:10):
My children aren't safe.

Speaker 20 (03:55:14):
Look, if you were a transgender migrant, I could get
you a free pussy all right.

Speaker 3 (03:55:18):
Wow, Wow, I know, holy shit, holy shit, I'm fascinated
by what we've got amazing.

Speaker 6 (03:55:28):
James, have you not seen this before?

Speaker 3 (03:55:30):
Absolutely not.

Speaker 12 (03:55:31):
No, I haven't seen this either.

Speaker 6 (03:55:33):
I shared this video in our work chat like like
a month and a half, like.

Speaker 12 (03:55:36):
Yeah, oh wait, no, shit, I have seen it.

Speaker 2 (03:55:39):
Oh god, I didn't watch.

Speaker 3 (03:55:40):
I've got to control my exposure to this shit. It's
made me very angry. So we now have a marionette
off like a Latina.

Speaker 2 (03:55:48):
Okay, god, yeah that makes sense.

Speaker 6 (03:55:51):
But there's like, d you say people? Do you say?
Thugs and tact ol Gary, Plus they.

Speaker 2 (03:55:56):
Throw the woman on the ground who's complaining about Yeah
that the homeless drug addicts. I think we're good.

Speaker 6 (03:56:01):
It's it's it's all that kind of stuff. It's yeah, whatever.

Speaker 10 (03:56:04):
There's like a fake Batman scene. They asked for Spencer
Spencer and a fake Batman costume. Blah blah blah.

Speaker 6 (03:56:11):
Yeah, I mean, yeah, Spencer prattis Batman. That's that's Spencer
Pratt's Batman.

Speaker 1 (03:56:15):
Yes, you know, that's the kind of stuff they's sharing.

Speaker 10 (03:56:18):
And you know, one of the biggest things he's run
on is that his house was burned down and he
was didn't have a place to live, and he claimed
that he was living in a trailer on the property
where his house used to be. And then it turned
out that he was actually not staying in that trailer,
but he was staying at the hotel bel Air, which
is one of the nicest hotels in Los Angeles.

Speaker 6 (03:56:38):
Yeah, oh yeah.

Speaker 10 (03:56:40):
And in response to to that, he made this video.

Speaker 13 (03:56:46):
Now, this is a story all about how my life
got certain upside down.

Speaker 2 (03:56:54):
The prince of itself called bel Air.

Speaker 3 (03:56:56):
Wow.

Speaker 2 (03:56:56):
Oh god, oh, I don't know. I don't want to
get me no, no, no, millions.

Speaker 1 (03:57:04):
Of views, millions of views.

Speaker 2 (03:57:07):
Yeah, and this like weird.

Speaker 10 (03:57:09):
Rogue, no qualification political candidate thing is working. People are like,
we need to change and I'm prott the BBC. In
terms of fundraising during the race, Pratt has blown away
the other two. He raised two point seven million dollars
between April nineteenth and May sixteenth. That's nearly ten times

(03:57:30):
what Bass, a longtime politician, raised in the same period,
and approximately seven times what Nathio Raman raised.

Speaker 3 (03:57:37):
I mean, no one likes Bass, right, it's the other thing, Right,
the Democrats have doubled down on doing exactly the same
shit they've been doing for decades across California.

Speaker 6 (03:57:47):
Yeah, it's this like feckless moderate liberalism.

Speaker 3 (03:57:49):
Yeah, like cost oral libs will be how I describe
the Democrats.

Speaker 10 (03:57:53):
Yeah, and just to say, like Nithia Rahm did enter
the race late and she is far far left from Karen,
So we're seeing that. But the thing that's really interesting
to me about this is there's nine point six nine
million people in La County, and you know, I'm comparing
it to what I think will probably be about what
it'll be for.

Speaker 1 (03:58:14):
Twenty twenty six.

Speaker 10 (03:58:15):
But in twenty twenty two, you know, Karen Bass got
two hundred and seventy eight thousand votes, Rick Caruso only
got two hundred and thirty two thousand votes, and Kevin
dalone only got fifty thousand votes out of nine point
six nine million people. That's the amount of people that
actually voted in the primary in twenty twenty two. It's
and it's looking to be very similar for twenty twenty six.

Speaker 6 (03:58:36):
Yeah, maybe even a little bit lower.

Speaker 10 (03:58:37):
I mean, I agree, I think it might be a
little bit lower.

Speaker 6 (03:58:39):
That only has one hundred and fifty thousand votes, but
he's in second place.

Speaker 10 (03:58:43):
He's in second place. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (03:58:44):
Again, this is interesting because you're seeing higher than in
a lot of places, higher than average turnout, And I
think part of why is just because most people voting
know that, like with both the California mayor and gubernatorial elections,
the likeliest outcome is like someone who isn't the worst
possible choice, but isn't going to like make things better

(03:59:05):
like Ella, He's not going to have a good mayre.
Most people are fairly confident of that, and so there's
just not a lot of there's not I don't think
people are very motivated because they feel like, what the
fuck is the point of caring about?

Speaker 1 (03:59:16):
Sure this?

Speaker 2 (03:59:17):
You know, and I don't. I'm not saying that's the
right way to look at it. I'm just saying that
that's what I think is part of what's going on here.

Speaker 3 (03:59:23):
Yeah, Like I know, like just from the discourse around
San Diego, like people they're tired of being shamed into
vote for like some medio care asque candidate who will
just give all the money to the cops like the
last five Mays have done.

Speaker 10 (03:59:37):
Yeah, We're going to keep seeing these kind of candidates.
It's going to become a regular thing. We even have,
you know, Jersey Shore star Mike the situation, Sarantino saying
he's thinking about running for a New Jersey governor. I
hate this trend. This trend sucks. And in the words
of Louren Conrad, he's a sucky person. He's a sucky person.
I hate Spencer. I'm never gonna like Spencer. Please don't

(03:59:58):
make him your mayor. Los Angeles do better. He's awful,
he's horrific, he hates unhouse people. Terrible person, no bad shame.

Speaker 1 (04:00:08):
I'm done.

Speaker 10 (04:00:09):
I hope to never to have to talk about this
person ever again.

Speaker 3 (04:00:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (04:00:14):
So, in case people don't know, the two top winners
of the LA mayoral primary advance to a runoff. So
Bath is going to be there. She is in the
lead and right now is between Pratt and Raman and Presley.
The second place has been sliding as more and more
votes come in, but as of Wednesday afternoon, he's still

(04:00:34):
in second. As for governor, Yeah, Steve Hilton, Republican is
in the number one spot with one point three almost
one point four million votes as of Wednesday afternoon. Sarah's
in number two with twenty five percent of the vote.
Tom Steyer is in number three with almost twenty percent

(04:00:56):
of the vote, and this is about fifty five percent
of the vote in Sero's former Biden Cabinet member, Health
and Human Services secretary. Yeah, so more of kind of
moderate liberal stire stire, the more progressive candidate. But it
seems because he is a billionaire, that did in some
ways effect like enthusiasm to vote for him. On the

(04:01:17):
Democratic side, yeah, there's another Republican candidate who's in fourth
place with over half a million votes.

Speaker 10 (04:01:23):
But again, the amount of votes that are actually happening
compared to the amount of people is insane.

Speaker 4 (04:01:31):
It's so low.

Speaker 2 (04:01:32):
Yeah, it's really bad.

Speaker 3 (04:01:34):
There's a massive field of candidates, but that no one
really captured the imagination of people here. No one would
enthusiastic for this. No, I guess so I can cover
a couple of small San Diego things quickly. San Diego
Measure a missa A was a tax on second homes
defined as unoccupied the majority of the year. Tear Yeah

(04:01:54):
it it looks like it's going.

Speaker 6 (04:01:56):
Moving the nation. Oh it's not super sorry it's not yet.

Speaker 3 (04:02:00):
Yeah and voviously not like it's I mean, there is
nothing that unite San die against more than hating tourists.
But I think you have this interesting alliance of like
Boomer homeowners thinking this will mess with their property prices
and generally not wanting to pay taxes. Yeah, and people
who understand that any money we give to our city
is just going to go directly to the cops.

Speaker 6 (04:02:20):
Where do you get that idea from that? That is
a sentiment among the people who voted for this, Like
is this like demonstrated anywhere?

Speaker 3 (04:02:27):
Yeah, Like if you go if you look on social media, right,
like let's say San Diego, next Door, Reddit, et cetera. Right,
and then from meetings like we've had discussions within unions
I'm part of. Like, so if you look at what
our city is doing right now, it's slashing the arts budget,
it's slashing the park's budget. Yeah, it's slashing everything apart
from the police budget, which is continuing to increase. Right

(04:02:50):
Most notably in San Diego, they have started to try
and charge for parking at the park and at the
beach and on major thoroughfares, which, like charging sandy against
go to the beach, is the most radicalizing thing that
any politician could ever do. It's incredibly stupid as a
revenue generating measure, Like people have people have vandalized parking

(04:03:10):
machines in very boushy neighborhoods because this is just like
so offensive to people, and I think there's like just
a growing disgust with our mayor. And then like the
idea that giving them any more money would result in
better outcomes for people just doesn't kind of fly anymore,
if that makes sense, Like they've they've done all these

(04:03:30):
revenue generating measures.

Speaker 6 (04:03:32):
It's it's like a lost loss in faith that any
revenue will actually just go towards each things. They're like
cenrible thing.

Speaker 3 (04:03:38):
Our city spent I think one hundred million on a
building filled with asbestos, which is worth less money than
the land would be if the building wasn't on it,
and from years and years tried to kind of play
political football with the fact that they bought a cancer tower, Like, yeah,
there's a reason that San Diego is sometimes referred to
as Enron by the Sea, and I think folks are

(04:04:00):
folks are kind of having enough of it, reissuing under
the perfect son for folks who want to read more
about San Diego politics.

Speaker 6 (04:04:07):
This sort of an alliance between like small capital, you know,
people who don't want to pay for a tax on
the second home. That alliance with people who like lost
faith in city services, right, who are going to oppose
funding because they don't think it's actually like worthwhile. That's
an interesting coalition of the modern moment.

Speaker 3 (04:04:24):
Right, Yeah. Yeah, And it's definitely like a creation of
like specifically in California, right, this idea that we don't
get to choose basically we're going to get a Democrat,
and that Democrat will just do whatever they want. It's
made that position very appealing to people, I guess maybe
go from California. I do want to mention just briefly
that Sam Forstag won the Democrat primary from Montana's House district.

(04:04:45):
This is really interesting. He's a progressive union organizer. He
used to be a smoke jumper for a service firefighter.
He is one of those folks who was, like I
guess his entry into national politics came from Doge was
cutting all these guys like GS two people right, people
at the Forest Service, people at these big public lands

(04:05:06):
management agencies who are making barely making a living. Yeah,
and anson who have struggled for a long time in
places like Bozeman, right, where the second homeowners have driven
out the pricing significantly. That sort of pathway to progressive
politics is one that's very interesting to me and when
I want to do a lot more reporting on. But
I thought it was a positive sign to see him

(04:05:26):
winning that primary.

Speaker 6 (04:05:27):
Speaking of elections, before we go on break, I do
want to talk about the Supreme Court, following up on
a story from last week. Last week, our final segment
on the show was on the five year battle in
Alabama over two different house maps, or technically three, but
the Republican ones were very similar. It was about these
Republican drawn maps that have only one black majority district

(04:05:49):
and a court ordered map that has two, following the
Supreme Court's weakening of Section two, the Voilting Rights Actor
earlier this year. Late last month, a federal district court
ruled that the up drawn map in Alabama intentionally discriminated
based on race and diluted the voting power of black
Alabama's So they placed an injunction on that map and
ordered the state to use the court approved map that

(04:06:12):
was already in use in previous elections for the upcoming primaries.
This ruling was appealed to the Supreme Court, who on
Tuesday night overruled a district court issuing a four page
unsigned shadow docket ruling allowing Alabama to use the GOP
map that eliminates a black majority or a black opportunity.
District Supreme Court said that the state is likely to

(04:06:35):
succeed on the merits of its claims quote. At this
preliminary stage, the state has shown that it is entitled
to interim relief from the District Court's injunction. So this
is the first time the Supreme Court has evaluated another
court's interpretation of their Louisiana ruling, and in this case,
the Supreme Court is saying the District Court got it wrong.

(04:06:58):
In the updated rules for Section two is a part
of the Louisiana ruling. In order to succeed in arguing
a Section two violation, plaintiffs have to submit an alternative
map that must quote meet all the states legitimate districting
objectives just as well as the state's own map, including

(04:07:19):
quote unquote the states specified political goals and any other
goal not prohibited by the Constitution. So the alternative map
that plaintiffs need to submit when challenging them at based
on Section two has to have the same like partisan
goals represented. Is what these updated rules in the Louisiana

(04:07:40):
ruling instead, and Supreme Court said that this was not
followed by the District Court's ruling. Section two challenges must
also quote provide an analysis that controls for party affiliation
and quote show that voters engage in racial block voting
that cannot be explained by partisan affiliation. So, basically, the

(04:08:02):
Supreme Court claimed that the district court ordered map fails
to do all this by not maintaining the state's quote
constitutionally permissible community of interest on the Gulf Coast by
cutting into a section of the Gulf Coast in the
Black Opportunity District, also failing to avoid contests between incumbents.

(04:08:24):
The Supreme Court said that the District Court's ruling quote unquote,
departed from the updated standards set in the Louisiana ruling.
Quote as to intentional vote dilution, the District Court did
not heed the presumption of legislative good faith because it
interpreted the state's legal disagreement with the court's earlier remedial

(04:08:45):
order as proof of discriminatory animus unquote. Scotus is basically
saying that just because it was definitively demonstrated to Alabama
Republicans that their map had a discriminatory effect, and then
they pass it anyway, that itself does not qualify as intent.

(04:09:05):
So showing quote unquote intent is effectively impossible, like at
this point, because we maps can be sliced uff like crazy,
and they can just do that based on party. And
this is what the Supreme Court is saying, quote. The
District Court also failed to follow our instructions that the
mere fact that voters of different races vote for different

(04:09:25):
parties is not relevant to proving racially polarized voting patterns unquote.
And this was specifically the thing I was most curious
about is if this idea that the District Court wrote,
if this idea that showing someone that their map is
doing discrimination, if you show someone that and then they

(04:09:46):
pass it anyway, does that prove that that person then
had intent because they knew it was discriminatory. And the
Supreme Court is saying, no, that does not That does
not actually show intent. That is the main way that
the Supreme Court has overruled the district court ruling. They
also argue that the district Court meddled in the state
election too close to the primary, even though it's actually

(04:10:07):
the Supreme Court ruling that is green lighting with this
redistricting midway through the primary process. But that's kind of
the added on at the very end of the of
the four page on sign shadow docket ruling.

Speaker 12 (04:10:19):
The macro level implication of this is that the Voting
Breich's Tract is unenforceable, like the parts of the Voting
Right DAC that are supposed to protect from literally this
specific thing, this specific thing of intentionally deluding black people's
votes so that they can't elect candidates was the Jim
Crow practice. At this part YEP of the Voting Right

(04:10:40):
track was specifically designed to do, and you can't do
it anymore. It is just the Supreme Court has decided
that this part of the Voting Right Zack doesn't exist. Yeah,
And and they've decided this because they want to they want
to do racist Jerry Manderin's Republicans can win elections. And
that's I don't know, I mean, like arguably the death
of multiracial like any semblance of multi racial democracy in

(04:11:02):
the US, which is not great. Yeah, I don't know,
it's it's really really bad.

Speaker 2 (04:11:10):
Yeah, I mean, it's it's what they've been working for
for decades, right, It's what the Yarban's always talking about right,
it's repealing the twentieth century, you know, like that has
been the goal for a very long time, and they
see this as one of the most important steps towards
doing that.

Speaker 3 (04:11:24):
Yes, he's pretty devastating.

Speaker 6 (04:11:27):
I think there is a way to do. I think
some more in depth analysis, like on this topic that
might have to be in the future.

Speaker 12 (04:11:34):
Yeah, I mean I did a full episode on this,
like a couple of weeks ago.

Speaker 6 (04:11:38):
I mean specifically the way that the interpretation in the
shadow Dotocket ruling, how it clarifies certain things, like, you know,
just because statistically different races may vote for different parties,
that does not actually prove racially polarized voting powdern like's
there's certain things here that we can do a lot
more analysis of, and like in terms of proving an intent,

(04:12:00):
a lot of states don't even need to do like
mustache twirling, I'm going to look at race maps and
draw it based on race maps. They can just draw
based on party affiliation, and that is going to get
the party the actual effect right, because these maps are
passed by the party that's in control of the state
legislature and they want to maintain power with their party,

(04:12:21):
So that's going to be the most effective way to
do that. And if they just do that, then there
leaves very little ground for these maps to be challenged
on any sorts of racial grounds, even if there is
racial discrimination as an effect. Right, And this was the
biggest change of the Supreme Court ruling in Louisiana. It
was a Ledo right who technically wrote that one. Yeah, yeah,
but being like, like, we are in a different place,

(04:12:43):
we are in a different social place now than when
the Voterarts Act was passed, and so therefore we are
going to update these rules accordingly. Even though literally, you know,
three years ago the Supreme Court was ruling in the
opposite way in Alabama in a very similar situation. The
change in those few years is very stark. And this
is all goes downstream from the ruling in twenty nineteen

(04:13:06):
that specifically allows partisan jerrymandering, because there's no law in
the United States disallowing that. So like the Supreme Court
is like, we cannot make a new law by saying
this isn't allowed, because there's just no law in the books.
So if if legislation wants to pass laws against that,
then they can but we cannot disallowed partisan jerry manoring
in the courts effectively because there's no law preventing it.

Speaker 12 (04:13:27):
Yeah, and it's worth keeping in mind that the specific
standard in the Voting Rights Act literally says effects, which
was just specifically an effects based test and not an
interpretation or like not a like proving intent test. And
the Supreme Court was just like, no, fuck you. So
that's sort of just where we are now legally, is
that they're just making up what they think the test

(04:13:50):
should be and making everyone else follow that.

Speaker 6 (04:13:54):
Yeah, I mean three three justices did dissent in this
recent ruling, sort of aur Kagan and Jackson, they wrote,
quote before the Court are two paths. Down one lies
an orderly election held under a tried and tested congressional
map that protects black Alabama's right to vote and with
which all voters, election officials, and candidates alike are familiar.

(04:14:15):
Down the other lies a chaotic election held under a
never before use congressional map that intentionally discriminates against Black
Alabama's that Alabama adopted in unabashed defiance of a prior
court order directly affirmed by this Court, and that will
require official to change the voter registrations of hundreds of
thousands of voters in just days at best, a task

(04:14:37):
Alabama previously represented would take months. The majority chooses the
second path and disregards both democratic values and the rule
of law. I respectfully dissent. We'll go on a break
now and conclude with one more section of the.

Speaker 1 (04:15:06):
And we are back.

Speaker 12 (04:15:09):
So, all right, we need to talk about a fairly
obscure bureaucratic rule change that is being rushed out by
the Office of Management and Budget OMB, which is where
it's the management bureaucracy office that's currently headed by one
of the guys who wrote Project twenty twenty five. This

(04:15:32):
change that they are proposing right now is effectively the
formalization of all of the sort of DOGE cuts and
then sort of post DOGE departmental cuts of grants from
the US government. The way this is largely being covered
right now, and I understand why we're going to run

(04:15:54):
through that one first, is that this is effectively the
death of American science. Because one of the things that
this does, it's like a four hundred page document. One
of the early sessions of it is that instead of
the current system where grants for scientific projects go before
a peer review committee of scientists that are usually independent,

(04:16:18):
and then those scientists give their recommendations to the department
on whether or not this is a good use of funds,
and then department executes those recommendations. Right, so grants are
determined by scientific by a scientific peer review process. This
kills that and says that instead of agent the way
that it has worked, which is that agencies adopt the

(04:16:38):
recommendations of it. This has not been how it works formally, like,
it hasn't been a legal stipulation that this is how
it works. But this is just literally how all science
has worked since World War Two, basically, with the exception
of the McCarthy era, is that these independent committees do
the review of the grants and then the federal agencies
submit the grants. Instead of that, the heads of federal

(04:17:00):
agencies will appoint one person who will individually look through
every single grant and approve or deny them. So this
is the formalization of the DOGE process. This is the
administration basically centralizing control of the entire scientific grant process.
And this actually turns out, it turns out is for
all grants, which we'll get to in a second. But

(04:17:22):
what this means is that instead of again like scientific
peer review being the thing that decides what science gets funding,
it's now political appointees, and specifically Trump administration political appointees.
There are a whole in this ruling. There are a
whole bunch of absolutely or not other's really the pros change.
There is just a bunch of just absolutely unhinged creeds

(04:17:45):
about the US anti AIDS programs turning into woke left
mobs in Africa that support like gender politics and stuff.
I've found very incoherent explaining that, I swear to God,
I am more coherent than actually reading out the quote.
It's just it's completely unhinged, like weird right wing conspiracy

(04:18:09):
stuff for like half of it, and half of it
is like extremely technical budget change stuff.

Speaker 6 (04:18:13):
I know that in the Doge stuff this has been
talking about like, you know, sexual health clinics in like
a country in Africa that's supported by the US government.

Speaker 12 (04:18:20):
Right, yeah, yeah, they're they're they're pulling all these examples
and then just like screaming stuff about how they're like
abortion centers and you know, like doing like genital mutilation
or whatever. There's been some good reporting on this by
Elizabeth Janexi, who used to do like program reviews for
the NIH before a lot of things, including this administration,

(04:18:41):
took over. This is effectively the centralization of all of
the grants given up by the US government. Right, And
if you remember, if we think back to like the
early days of DOGE, right, well you'd find these giant
lists of grant that they've gone through and just cut
and they had apps no legal authority to do that,
they just did it. This is the formalization of that process.

Speaker 10 (04:19:05):
Right.

Speaker 12 (04:19:06):
This is setting up to bureaucratic apparatus to allow just
one random groper they've like hired and stashed off at
a room and like benih or something, to just go
through and cut whatever grants they want. They also have
the power to terminate grants that have already been given
out at will. There's other even weirder things where they're

(04:19:26):
also very paranoid about, like scientific collaboration with other countries,
which is just the basis of how all science is done.
There's like restricted countries effectively where you can't collaborate with
scientists from those countries, which even by US standards, is
like not how things work. That's like messed up by

(04:19:48):
the standards of like American foreign policy. And then also
if you are doing any collaboration with any scientists from
another country and there's money involved in it, that grant
has to be individually approved by like this person that
they've set up. So this makes scientific collaboration effectively impossible,
right because most of those things aren't going to happen,

(04:20:10):
because this is going to reproduce the sort of doge
bottle decks that we saw where suddenly all these grants
are disappearing, even ones that would eventually get approved. The
people who were supposed to be getting them are completely
screwed because their reliance on that grant coming in order
to do their research, and the pivot in control of

(04:20:30):
how these grants are being given out from people who
are at the very least scientists to you know, just
the people who are currently running the NIH who are
like RFK Junior, Right, it's those kind of people who
are going to be running these kinds of grants, and
they are going to be able to do damage to

(04:20:51):
this that is quite frankly incalculable. This is the destruction
of the entire system of American science, like almost like vast,
vast percentages of all the science in the US is
done off of government grants. Either it's either it's done
by the NIH or like by by government institutions or

(04:21:13):
not entirely all, but a huge portion of science that's
done at research universities, which is again how like most
science happens, is also supported by these grants. And if
we're in this situation now where all of these grants
are again going through one person who is like solely
motivated by political factors as to whether Arthur going to
approved this, which is what the system Maaey're attempting is

(04:21:34):
set up. This is the death of American science. And
it's worse than that too, because and this is the
thing where I'm going to do a full episode about
this next week because there are a lot more implications.
But the section of rules that's being changed here by
the Office of Management and Budget, this is not the
session for the grant allocation for science, right, this is

(04:21:55):
the section for all grants given out by the US
by the US government. So for example, medicaid, Yeah, so
all of that is now subject to this stuff, right,
like disaster aid, you know, like any money the government
is giving out right, that this is going through the
grant system is now going through this process. Yeah, there's

(04:22:18):
I think public comment on this ends July seventh, So
I guess if you want to scream at them, that's
technically possible. It's really not clear if democratic politicians are
going to actually try to substantively do something to stop this,
which there's no direct legal mechanism for them to stop this.
They could do another government shutdown or something. But yeah,

(04:22:42):
this is just sort of the state of things, which
is that a lot and a lot of this stuff
has already been happening. It's worth saying, right, like a
lot of these funding for everything from like vaccine programs
to like the very small amount of help research that
was going in the trans healthcare or like Queer healthcare
in general, Like those grants are as gone. And you know,
we've already seen a whole bunch of chaos from the

(04:23:04):
interruption of the grant system on the sort of university
level for scientists. But this is all just going to
get significantly worse as this rule change rolls out.

Speaker 3 (04:23:13):
Yeah.

Speaker 12 (04:23:14):
Yeah, So on that happy note.

Speaker 3 (04:23:17):
Last week, the former chief patrol agent for the El
Centro sector and also Commander of Voy Patrols Operation at Large,
Gregory Bovino took to X the Everything app to announce
that he was on his way to Delaney Hall. Wasn't
exactly clear why, because Pavino is no longer a serving

(04:23:39):
law enforcement officer. In fact, he was en route to
a remigration summit in Portugal. That the conference, Baveno joined
politicians from Fox and Afteray they spoke sort of behind
closed doors. Journalists who wanted to cover the event had
to stay in a car park outside, where they were
harassed by a drone. He's not listed on the website,

(04:23:59):
but it's like a sort of mystery speaker, and I'm
guessing that that that was him, right, remigration people, I'm familiar.
We're going to do a whole episode on this next week.
But the website for the conference sets it out as
a set of fiscal, cultural, economic, social, political, and logistical
policies whose objective is to prevent population and replacement through
the reversal of migratory flows. It is very explicitly about undocumented, documented,

(04:24:22):
and naturalized people. It's not about following the law. It
is explicitly racial. It's about race, nicity, religion, and the
idea of national purity and cleansing the nation of people
who it considers not to be pure. If you think
this is something that has maybe happened before in European history,
you would not be alone. Greg Bavino took the chance
to compare himself to rommel in one interview. Free also

(04:24:45):
compared himself to T Lawrence and pattern, which is a
fairly remarkable set of yes, yeah, right, without without skipping
a bee. Maybe he's one of those guys who's like
a clean ver guy. He also sort of it was interesting,
Like I said, I'm going to break this down more

(04:25:05):
next week. I think what was more interesting than like
Greg Bavino talks to Nazis about Nazi shit, which that
come on, what does one expect is the way he
talked about stuff in terms of like the role he
sees Border Patrol having. He referred to them. He said
they are often referred to as a federal law enforcement
marine corps. The Border Patrol can operate anywhere in the

(04:25:27):
United States and associated territories and simultaneously fulfill all enforcement missions.
It goes on. He goes on to talk about them.
He says that they are the only organization capable of
planning and executing this type of operation.

Speaker 2 (04:25:40):
He's not wrong.

Speaker 3 (04:25:41):
They are the only agency that could do something like
a mass deportation campaign like we're seeing. But like this,
this Marine Corps, of the Internal Marine Corps is interesting, right,
that is how they have been used, especially by the
Trump administration. Right, think of Portland in twenty twenty, right,
Like these are the government's goons. Like when they need
a hit squad to fuck people up, this is who

(04:26:01):
they go to. Yeah, and that identity is something that
Baveno out have clearly embraced. Right, But Brevna was in Bortach.
Not not extremely recently, but he has points in his
career been in Bortech. He also kind of tried to
set distance between BP and ICE, which is interesting. He
called them. He said, the New York fiasco last night
in New Jersey illustrates what happens when untrained investigators are

(04:26:24):
sent to handle a situation that is the responsibility of
uniform specialists. He's there suggesting that the ICE employees lacked
the necessary training to do what I guess they would
call crowd control.

Speaker 12 (04:26:38):
Which which is really funny because that's also the Democrats line.

Speaker 6 (04:26:44):
It's like, oh, well enough, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:26:47):
Well his line is therefore like turn it over to
the people who are well trained enough so we can
suck them up, which I guess is also kind of
what the Democrats are. It's not a million miles part.
Butveno has also been doing some right wing podcast want
on the border Hawk podcast, where he appeared seemingly from
his office behind him, he had a shadow box. Does

(04:27:07):
anyone want to hazard a guess what was in the
shadow box? Military memorabilia of a certain kind. Yeah? Is
it German Nazi cross? No, it is. It is contemporary,
it pertains to his career. That's good.

Speaker 2 (04:27:21):
Is it his one of his challenge coins that he
got from fucking Chicago or wherever.

Speaker 3 (04:27:26):
They're probably smart enough not to put their challenge coins
on public display anywhere.

Speaker 19 (04:27:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:27:31):
No, it's a bunch of left lisal grenades. Ah okay,
of course, like the thing with which I guess he
wishes to be associated.

Speaker 2 (04:27:38):
I have a lot of those in my house too,
he used once.

Speaker 3 (04:27:42):
It's just like taking pride in being the guy who
stamped down harder on the First Amendment than anyone has
in recent history.

Speaker 6 (04:27:48):
Cool.

Speaker 3 (04:27:49):
He's also been very critical of current DHS leadership, right
after Buffino and Nome took to the national media to
lie about Alex pretty in the hours to Alex Pretti Guide,
they both became too toxic even for this administration, and
he clearly has some hard feelings about this.

Speaker 14 (04:28:06):
He mentioned the twenty million figure. My figures one hundred million.
His is twenty million. Now, let's take a look at
that number. Dan, So we've got, by Tom Holman's estimate,
twenty million illegal aliens. If that's the case, then he's
already arrested one tenth of all illegal aliens present in
the United States. Do you see that with your eyes

(04:28:29):
on the streets? Do I see that with my eyes
on the streets? If it's really going that good? A
tenth of all illegal aliens and they're all legal aliens,
they're not immigrants or anything else, illegal aliens A tenth.
If there were a tenth already deported, the rest would
be buttoned up tighter than you can imagine. Those lines
southbound for self deportation would be out the door.

Speaker 19 (04:28:52):
That's not happening.

Speaker 6 (04:28:53):
This is really interesting.

Speaker 3 (04:28:55):
Yeah, we'll go into this specific episode. The way he
arrives at that number is through the number of traffic
delays in Charlotte, North Carolina, during the border patrol operation there.
What this is the evidence he cites? Yeah, wow, Okay,
it's fascinating. Like he talks about how he thinks a
number is higher because of his time at border patrol rate.

Speaker 6 (04:29:16):
He may think there is like one hundred million illegal immigrants.

Speaker 3 (04:29:19):
So he believes this in his yeah, like deep down
in Yeah, Like he's interesting. Yeah, this is a one hundred
what he believes, and he wants to deport that many people.

Speaker 2 (04:29:29):
Yeah. I don't know if it's that he believes there's
that many people who are illegal in the way, Yeah,
he doesn't differentiate or he's just considering everyone who is
not you know, white here.

Speaker 6 (04:29:39):
Yeah, well, I mean he he did differentiate in this video, well,
which is interesting.

Speaker 2 (04:29:44):
He did. No, no, no, that's not what that meant.
But yeah, yeah, he was making the case that anyone
border patrol goes after as an illegal alien I think, I.

Speaker 6 (04:29:54):
Mean, but that's not what he said.

Speaker 2 (04:29:56):
Well, I mean what he said was the term that
you should use for these people is illegal alien. It's
not migrants or something like. He does not like that.
A lot of folks think it's wrong to refer to
a human being as illegal. That's specifically what he's saying,
Like he's not making a deeper point than that, but
I do think his belief is that that one hundred
million number includes a lot of people who were for example,

(04:30:16):
naturalized or who were made citizens through like juice solely,
which we've seen, like he thinks should go away, and
so does the administration.

Speaker 3 (04:30:23):
Yeah, or indeed like people on thesis right, yes, well,
but I.

Speaker 12 (04:30:27):
Mean more like like if you're if you want to
get you one hundred million, you're you're deporting people who
are just non white, like you can't there aren't a
hundred million like natural like.

Speaker 6 (04:30:37):
But it's it sounds like he just believes there is
like way more undocumented immigrants in the United States than
what there actually is, like that is in this short clip,
but that is what he's like referring to.

Speaker 2 (04:30:47):
In part because he believes a lot of people who
everyone else would consider legally immigrating have not like that
is part of why he's saying. And now there's also
a belief that like the number that the government's lying
to you about how many of them there are, the
vastly more. But part of it is he does not
believe a lot of the ways that people become citizens
who are not white are legitimate, Like that is an

(04:31:08):
aspect of what he's saying.

Speaker 3 (04:31:09):
Yeah, he spoke about this at length in his interview. Right,
he was saying how many people he'd seen. He talks
about whole villages in Mexico coming across the border. He
loves It is fairly familiar rhetoric, right, I can. I'm
just scrotting down here if I can find his one hundred
million claim. One hundred million pure researchers figure hasn't changed

(04:31:30):
since the nineteen seventies, he said. He says thirty years ago,
illegal immigrants were absent from large portions of American territory.
I don't know where he's getting that information. He said.
He began seriously examining these numbers in two thousand and eight.
He then says that around two thousand and six he
found some information from bear Stearns. That's a bank. They're

(04:31:52):
like an investment bank. I think. He claims that drove
his number. He saw an uninterrupted flow of illegal immigrants
across the border without any internalation capable of producing mass
expulsions from two thousand and six to twenty twenty six,
Our borders were nothing but speed bunks. Illegals and smugglers
knew that once across the border, they were virtually saved
from any consequences. Of course, that does include Trump's first term.

(04:32:14):
But then he goes on to cite these bizarre statistics
like I'll just I'll give you the Charlotte traffic example.
One of the indicators away looking at is commuting times.
For these times to be considered quote unquote good, between
fifteen and twenty percent of commuters must be taken off
the road. In Charlotte, there a one hundred and fifty
three thousand commuters per day. Approximately as soon as we
launched operations, Charlotte's web travel times did not move into

(04:32:37):
the good category. They moved into the excellent category. Estimates
indicated that thirty percent or more of commuters were no
longer traveling. This means that at least thirty percent of
them were most likely legal immigrants. That is a logical yeah,
across the grand canyon of logic.

Speaker 2 (04:32:52):
Jesus ChRI Christ, I'd read that that's how he's calculator,
which you know, cuts out a lot of obvious reasons
people might not drive during this who are legal, like
the fact that ICE has undeniably deported citizens and taken
people into custody for long periods of time it were citizens,
you know, Yeah.

Speaker 3 (04:33:09):
That they've pulled random brown people out of cause that
they've shot and killed people, Like yes, yeah, this happened
also in late November of twenty twenty five, a time
where people travel, a time when people get sick. Yeah,
commutes generally go down in late November. Commuters fluctuate.

Speaker 6 (04:33:25):
Yeah like that.

Speaker 12 (04:33:26):
Yeah, it's just gibberish.

Speaker 2 (04:33:27):
It's an insane way to draw the conclusion he's drawn.

Speaker 3 (04:33:30):
Yeah, yeah, it's it's bunkers.

Speaker 12 (04:33:32):
It's also it's also this thing where it's like in
order to like think this is what's going on, Like
one of the premises of this is like, oh, it's
like the illegal aliens that are like making every single
problem bad, Like you see this with yeah, like the
people who support this on lines who are like, oh,
the housing crisis would end if we just deported everyone,
and it's like yeah, yeah, yeah, obviously no, But like
they're coming at it from the motivated reasoning of I

(04:33:53):
want to do an ethnic cleansing, and then they're sort
of post hawk creating justifications for it.

Speaker 3 (04:33:56):
This is what fascism does, right. It blames yeah yeah,
all the pro blooms of the chosen group on the scapegroat.

Speaker 6 (04:34:01):
Claims these economic problems.

Speaker 3 (04:34:03):
Yeah yeah, yes, like they've seen in Quannata fascism and
it's very core. Is this, This the idea of a
chrosen group and a scapegoat group, and escapegoat group are
responsible for the decline of the chosen group and if
they can be removed, the chosen group will return to
its former glory. Like that is yeah, fascism in five minutes,
and that's what we're seeing, right, unsurprisingly given that he's

(04:34:25):
at a conference with straight up Nazis. But I think
this one hundred million number is interesting, and like what's
interesting is him talking in a way that he didn't
talk to the press when he was in charge of
Border Patrol, but he probably did, believe, but Vino is
popular among Border Patrol agents, right. There are a number

(04:34:46):
of them who feel that he was the leader that
they needed. He showed up in the field, right, He
had the support of agents because he was there with them,
and like him believing this tells us a lot about
the agency, And I think that's something I want to
dive deeper into next week. Okay, and email us with
your news tips cool Zone Tips at proton dot me.

Speaker 12 (04:35:09):
Yeah, put a transcroll on your couch.

Speaker 2 (04:35:11):
Well, friends, that's going to be it from all of
us at It could Happen Here ed this week. We'll
be back with more episodes on the normal schedule that
we put out episodes, and you should keep listening to
them because we love you and we reported the news.

Speaker 1 (04:35:27):
We reported the news.

Speaker 9 (04:35:30):
We reported the news.

Speaker 2 (04:35:36):
Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
from now until the heat death of the Universe.

Speaker 22 (04:35:42):
It Could Happen Here is a production of cool Zone Media.
For more podcasts from cool Zone Media, visit our website
coolzonmedia dot com, or check us out on the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can
now find sources for It Could Happen Here listened directly
in episode descriptions.

Speaker 1 (04:35:59):
Thanks for listening.

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