It Could Happen Here Weekly 212

Episode Transcript
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Speaker 1 (00:01):
Cool Zone Media.

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

Speaker 3 (00:28):
Hello everyone, this is Dan el Kurt for it could
happen here. Today's episode will be focused on Arab Israelian normalization,
Arab Israeli peace deals, and Arab Israeli relations more generally.
The reason that this is an important topic to discuss
is because a few weeks ago, the Washington Post published
this PowerPoint presentation originating in the Trump administration titled The

(00:52):
Great Trust From a demolished Iranian proxy to a prosperous
Abrahamic ally. And this presentation is about God, the US
and Israeli vision for what Gaza's quote unquote reconstruction will
look like. And the word great itself is an acronym
that stands for Gaza reconstitution, economic acceleration, and transformation. Now,

(01:16):
this presentation has so much in it that horrifies any
normal human being, but essentially it outlines this vision for
how Gaza is going to be reconstructed, and throughout the
entire document, it's very clear that whatever remains of Gaza's
population will not have any political rights. There is some

(01:37):
gesturing at some point about handing over some governance to
quote vetted Palestinians, but there's also a repeated discussion within
this presentation, within this document of how they want to
incentivize a significant segment of Gaza's population to leave Gaza
altogether and not return, and they want to financially incentivize

(02:00):
them to do that. I think the entire presentation is
worth looking at. I'll put it in the show notes
because it really outlines what they think Gaza is going
to look like and what they plan for the Pileestinians.
More generally, the reason why Arab is really a normalization
is important to discuss given this presentation. Given what's happening
in Gaza after ceasefire is present very much in this document.

(02:22):
It's very clear from the presentation that the US and
Israel envision a particular role for Arab governments in this
reconstruction and in this new Middle East that they hope
to achieve a Middle East where Gaza is this economic zone,
connecting it to Saudi Arabia, connecting it to other parts
of the Middle East, opening up investment opportunities for different
Middle Eastern governments and companies in the Global North as well.

(02:45):
And it really is just an astounding vision to behold.
Referring to Gaza as a demolished Iranian proxy that they
want to turn into an Abrahamic ally is also interesting
here because we've seen this kind of language in the
last couple years, especially during the first Trump administration with
the Abraham Accords. Now the Abraham Accords, as this episode

(03:08):
will outline in detail, were agreements signed between Israel and
the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain and eventually Morocco and
a part of Sudan. And these agreements were billed as
this new era of peace between Arabs and Israel under
this kind of religious language and religious framing of Abraham

(03:28):
as the father of both Jews and Arabs, Jews and Muslims.
So to discuss this entire framework, what it means, what
it office gates today, I'm joined by Ben Schumann Stohler
and Matan Kammoner, who have created a new podcast series
called Bad Cousins. This is published by Colomdia in partnership

(03:49):
with the Diasporust and they recently had an event in
Berlin debuting their first episode, which full disclosure I'm on.
But essentially they tackle this question of why are the
ab Tim Accords named after Abraham? What was that intended
to denote? And why is Arab Israelian normalization such a
big piece of the puzzle in understanding both Israeli Pasdidian

(04:10):
conflict right now as well as the vision for the
Israeli Pastidian conflict from the American and Israeli perspective. So
please enjoy this interview with Ben and Mattan. I wanted
to give you guys a chance to introduce yourselves to
the audience, So the time would you.

Speaker 4 (04:26):
Like to start?

Speaker 5 (04:27):
Sure?

Speaker 6 (04:27):
I'm an anthropologist. I work at Queen Mary University in London.
My main research is on migration from Thailand to Israel
for agricultural work. But this project is something of a
side project that's blossomed together with Ben, who have been
good friends with for I think.

Speaker 5 (04:43):
Over a decade.

Speaker 3 (04:43):
Now, all right, Yeah, I remember that first book on
the time migrants, but you have also published extensively on
the Arab is really Normalization questions, So yeah, we'll get
into it.

Speaker 7 (04:53):
Ben Yeah, I'm Benjamin Sohler. I'm a founder and owner
of Colo Media here in Berlin, Germany. We're an audio publisher.
We have audiobooks and shows and documentaries in English and German.
And yeah, I'm excited to be here. Thanks for having us.

Speaker 8 (05:07):
Awesome.

Speaker 3 (05:08):
All right, So the listeners I'm sure are going to
be a little bit aware, but let's kind of just
define terms at the top of this. When we say
Arab is really normalization? Well, what do we mean by that?

Speaker 5 (05:21):
So it's a long, long process, it's not new.

Speaker 6 (05:23):
One of the interesting things that I found out when
researching this, the article that this podcast came out of,
is that more than one hundred years ago, Heine White
Span who was head of the Zionist organization, and King
Faisal were in very very close communication about an agreement
that it seems a lot like a progenitor of the
Arab courts.

Speaker 5 (05:40):
Today, we had a very sort of.

Speaker 6 (05:42):
Strong pro Western orientation on both sides, pro imperialists. If
you like use that language. We had a disdain for
the Palestinians as people who were not supposedly an important
factor in the politics of the area, and we had
framing of Arabs and Jews use as relatives as kin,

(06:02):
which is one that we trace back in the show
to the sort of Abrahamic concept that has really come
to the foe with the naming of the Abraham courts.
Of course, there's a long long history since then, with
the big landmarks being the Egyptian is rarely normalization in
the late nineteen seventies seventy nine, I think, and of
course Jordanian is really normalization in nineteen ninety four, which

(06:23):
came very very tightly knit with the Osloochords and the
initiation of so called peace talks between the Palestines and
the Israelis. So the Palestinans war, of course, do play
a central role here, whether as present or as a
present absentees as Israelis like to call them sometimes today.
Of course, we fast forward to the twenty twenties. The

(06:46):
abraham Acords were assigned between Israel, Bahrain, the UAE, Morocco
and one of the warring factions in Sudan. Back in
twenty twenty, and of course there's a kind of live
project led by the under Trump as well as Biden
to extend normalization between Israel and not only Arab countries,

(07:07):
but other.

Speaker 5 (07:07):
So called Islamic countries like Kazakhstan. Kazakhstan, yes, which has.

Speaker 8 (07:12):
Had diplomatic relations since nineteen ninety two.

Speaker 5 (07:14):
But we'll get into that.

Speaker 6 (07:15):
Yeah, yeah, But those other ones, of course that are
on the table. I think Indonesia has been spoken about.
Pakistan is always some harring in the background, the big
fishes in Saudi Arabia.

Speaker 5 (07:24):
And we can talk about that.

Speaker 3 (07:25):
As well, right, Yeah, And when we say normalization, usually
people are referring to the formal normalization of diplomatic ties,
because a lot of these countries, a lot of the
Arab countries had a position reiterated in the Arab Peace
Initiative of two thousand.

Speaker 8 (07:41):
And two that they would not have normal.

Speaker 3 (07:44):
Ties with the State of Israel until a resolution of
the Israeli Palestinian conflict, and the Abraham Accords was a
step away from that kind of breaking of that precedent.
But if we think about kind of under the table normalization,
of course, there are so many ways in which these
Arab country trees have had under the table normalization to
varying degrees with the state of Israel. Ben, maybe you
could tell us about what the Abraham Accords were, how

(08:09):
are they build and what did they include.

Speaker 7 (08:12):
You have to make sure my the precision of my
language is on point. But there's two agreements, right, There's
two things that were actually signed. So one is the framework, right,
which which which discusses like Abraham Accords as this unit,
the decoration of principles, the Declaration of Principles, And the
other one is a peace treaty, right, the peace treaty
between Israel and the UE and in other countries.

Speaker 9 (08:32):
Right.

Speaker 7 (08:33):
So essentially that's what it is. It's these two signings.
But I think when you when you talk about how
it was presented, it's supposed to mean it's supposed to
be like a vehicle conduit for travel, for security, for economics,
for deals, for cultural interchange, for a new way to

(08:56):
be seen. It's like a massive pr exercise jumping and
with the specifics.

Speaker 6 (09:02):
Yeah, absolutely, I mean what we're kind of honing in
on here is the sort of sort of cultural or
ideological aspects. If you want to be more stern about it,
and I think, you know, that's that's the real interest
of the show is in how this sort of mythical
framework that I refer to already, and specifically the figure
of Abraham is really really central to this kind of
ideological framing of their course. Like Foer is written extensively

(09:24):
about how toleration and tolerance have become sort of ideological tools,
and Abraham is kind of a figurehead for that. He
does listen in to two different ways that I think
are interesting for listeners to sort of follow on. The
first is as the progenitor or the kind of a figure.

Speaker 5 (09:38):
Out of Monotheism.

Speaker 6 (09:39):
So Jews, Christians, and Muslims all all have a stake
in Abraham, and of course this concept of the Abrahamic
religions that's very central here. But another one, and we
already mentioned this as well, is this the sort of
language of kinship of Jews and Arabs as being related
to one another, as.

Speaker 5 (09:53):
Being specifically cousins or so is called bad cousins.

Speaker 6 (09:56):
Because we're kind of exploring the various modalities or the
various kind of shades of meaning and mood that this
this idea of cousins can have it can be very positive.

Speaker 5 (10:04):
Of course, you know a lot of people.

Speaker 6 (10:05):
Say, oh Abraham, that's so, he's a wonderful figure of peace,
of hospitality, et cetera.

Speaker 5 (10:09):
But they are also really dark sides to it.

Speaker 6 (10:11):
The dark size that we really get into are the
sort of misogyny that's very, very central in the Abraham myth,
the underpinnings of slavery versus freedom that are that are
really really present there, and maybe most prominent and most
important to me, maybe as somebody who also studies migration
to the area, is xenophobia. So something that you don't
have written about, you know, the similarities between the UE,

(10:31):
for example, and Israel that aren't really considered, that aren't
thought about much. One that's always stood out to me
is the way that migrant workers are treated.

Speaker 5 (10:37):
In both these countries.

Speaker 6 (10:39):
The Golf States, including including to Ae, are huge obviously
users of non citizen migrant labor. Israel is not as big,
So it's not as big as phenomenal in Israel there,
but it's growing a lot, especially since since since October seventh,
when pastina workers have been shut out of the Israeli market.
And so I think Israel is like the Golf states
in a lot of these ways, and it's also getting

(10:59):
more getting to be more like them, and Abraham is
kind of a prism or figuring through which we start
to explore all these issues.

Speaker 3 (11:07):
So in my mind, when the Abraham Accords were you know,
whispered about and then we saw them happen, and you know,
I've been writing about Arab's really normalization since before the
Abraham Accords in smaller ways. But in my mind, when
I kind of heard that terminology being used and that
framing being used, to me, it felt deceptive that they

(11:32):
were using this term of like the Abraham Accords denoting
and hearkening back to like the idea of the Abrahamic
tradition and that we're kin and all of these things
for listeners who are bad at religion as I am.

Speaker 8 (11:45):
Abraham had two sons, presumed, you know.

Speaker 3 (11:48):
Apparently, and one of those sons is the ancestor of
Jews and the other one is the ancestor of Arabs,
if you believe that. So anyway, I'm not gonna blespheme
on this podcast, but.

Speaker 5 (11:59):
I think the story is important.

Speaker 6 (12:00):
I mean, it is a deception. I totally agree with
you on that, but it's important to unpack how the
deception works, right right, right, it's so effective because the
story is so well known to people in the region.

Speaker 3 (12:09):
No, absolutely, absolutely, But to me, like the deception lay
in the framing of Arab and Israeli animosity through a
religious perspective, as if the conflict was a religious one.
So to me it felt kind of very shallow. But
then as you start to unpack not only the impacts
of the Abraham Accords immediately so immediately repression increases in

(12:32):
these countries that sign the agreement, But then you start
to unpack, like what are these accords actually serving for
the Arab countries that are signing Why are they signing
with Israel.

Speaker 8 (12:42):
Well, they're re engineering.

Speaker 3 (12:43):
They're attempting to re engineer society. A lot of that
tolerance language has to do with that. It's they don't
want societies that are politically active. They want them to
be interested in consumerism, they want them to be maybe
slightly socially liberal, tolerate the Israelis, tolerate more crimes and
you know, kumbaya, and never ever have the ability to

(13:08):
question the political leadership or the political.

Speaker 8 (13:10):
Status quo in any of these countries. Or in the
region as a whole.

Speaker 6 (13:13):
Yeah, I think it's all that, but I think it's
also a global power move.

Speaker 10 (13:15):
Right.

Speaker 6 (13:16):
The golf countries, including Qatar, which has a different politics,
are all really trying to make a name for themselves
to become really really huge global players. They're basically all
trying to transform this gigantic oil wealth that they have
into soft power, into diplomatic power, into cultural power. You
know this, This this brings us into the comedy festival
in Saudi Arabia as well, right, And I think I

(13:37):
think part of the framework here is we're part of
this larger global story which is about freedom, piece and
friendship through religion.

Speaker 5 (13:43):
Now, what's the deception here?

Speaker 6 (13:44):
The deception is this sort of and I think been
A this is one of one of his favorite points,
so he can he can expand on this. There's a
sort of like a switcheroo game in which something else
is brought into view and the Palestinians are hidden.

Speaker 7 (13:56):
Right.

Speaker 6 (13:56):
The crux of the conflict, the crux of what is
basically brought is real to go wild on the entire
region attacking seven different countries simultaneously, is the Palestinians, and
it's always has been the Palestinians is always going to
be the Palestinians there is, and you've written about this
as well. There is a segment of verb society, especially
ever believes, especially in the Gulf, who want nothing to
do with the Palestinians and our andopy would be happy

(14:17):
to get rid of them.

Speaker 5 (14:18):
But this isn't the case with the vast majority of Arabs.

Speaker 6 (14:21):
It's also not the case with the vast majority of
global South, I think, and even the vast majority of
the global North right. We've seen very very clear majorities
against Israel's genocide in Gaza, even in the United States,
you know, in.

Speaker 5 (14:32):
Israel's biggest, biggest stally ebroad.

Speaker 6 (14:34):
So there's in order to not have to talk about this,
it's always good to be able to talk about something else.
One of the many ways, and I'm not saying this
is the only one, one of the many ways in
which the subject has changed is by talking about Abraham.

Speaker 5 (14:46):
So we're doing well.

Speaker 6 (14:46):
I mean, our show has a little bit of a
it's it's it's kind of a difficult to move to
make because we were trying to talk about an excuse
but also impact why that excuse is so powerful.

Speaker 7 (15:06):
You know, there's like a lot of violence in this
peace framing. And if you look at I think it's
point eighteen of the peace framework that Trump talks about
the Trump presented on Gaza. I think it's eighteen. I
have the quote here, but number it's you know, an
interfaith dialogue process will be established based on the values
of tolerance and peaceful coexistence to try and change mindsets.

(15:26):
I mean, this is like to try and change mindsets
and narratives of Palestinians and Israelis by emphasizing the benefits
that can be derived from peace. I mean, it's like
mafia talk, right, It's like you better do it exactly,
you better you're going to love this piece so much
or else kind of thing. I cut up some audio
from the episodes and from the interview with you, Donna
at the live event that we had here in Berlin
a couple weeks ago. This topic is so feels so

(15:48):
urgent and relevant to so many people that like more
than fifty people came out in the rain in November
in Berlin, and one of the things I played was
was exactly when you called it an obfliscation, Like there's
this paradox where all these things are under the table
are coming up and are now explicit, these secret deals
with gold states, this normalization that you know, you two
had known about, you know, in your research, but people
like me wouldn't know about if they're not following, if

(16:10):
they're not academics, if they're not following this closely. And
yet the Abramccords brought this all up. Okay, now we're
now everyone knows right now, we know that like this
is about Iran, this is about security, this is about
you know, these material issues, right, But at the same
time that that that it's playing on this kind of
clarity and this openness, right, and this moderation, it's also

(16:30):
creating a whole new obfiscation, a whole new myth. And
you know, people love love this quote. Like there was
a lot of like nodding heads in the audience when
I played what you said, Donald, which was like as if, right,
like as if this is about religion, it's about land
and it's about sovereignty, and and that's clear, but these
aren't called the land and Sovereignty accords.

Speaker 8 (16:51):
I mean, like you said, like you said, it's very violent.

Speaker 3 (16:54):
I mean, I've been describing normalization under these terms as
well as the Abraham Accords in particular as authoritarian conflict management,
because it maintains structural violence. It's not attempting to solve
the underlying, you know, motivations for that violence, which, as
you said, is Israeli Palestinian conflict, which is the land,
which is the the war crimes. And I think also

(17:15):
I want to just emphasize for listeners that the tolerance
framing in particular, there's like the flip side to it,
which is you better like this piece or else. And
we're calling it peace and it's Abrahamic, So like, if
you don't like it, what does that say about you?
Are you intolerant? Are you an anti Semite? Are you
you know, like, it's just how could you be against peace?

(17:36):
The piece is in the name, but it's a very
particular type of piece.

Speaker 5 (17:40):
It's a liberal I think.

Speaker 6 (17:41):
I think authoritarian conflict management is a very good way
of putting it.

Speaker 5 (17:44):
But also it's also very helpful.

Speaker 6 (17:46):
To help to explain why the Abraham myth is so
useful in that regard. Can we can just go over
the story real, real, real quick for listeners who aren't
that familiar, Yes, please, so Abraham, who was known as
in all the so called Abrahamic religions, as the first
one to to explicitly reject idolatry. Right, So there are
there are other righteous men in the Bible before him,
but he's the first one who becomes what is in

(18:09):
Islam is known as the friend of God, right, so Khalid.

Speaker 5 (18:12):
And he also.

Speaker 6 (18:14):
In addition to having this very very intimate relationship with God,
he also has a family.

Speaker 7 (18:18):
Right.

Speaker 6 (18:18):
And in this family he has he has a wife
and a maid servant. The wife is named Sarah, and
and the maid servant is named Hagar. Now we're gonna
do this quick.

Speaker 5 (18:26):
Don't worry.

Speaker 6 (18:27):
Sarah is barren, she can't have children. And she says
to she says to Abraham, I have an idea. Why
don't you have a child with with a maid servant
with Agar, and it'll be my child. So already, already
I think we can see authoritarianism. We can see uh,
we can see authoritarian conflict management already as kind of
the seed that's that's planted in the story, Hagar has
a child. That child is named Ishmael, and Ishmael is

(18:50):
beloved by his father. It's the Old Testament says, so,
it's very very clear, right. But then Sarah gets jealous.
She says, well, you know this, this this son is
going to and his mother are going to be basically
the pushing me out of my of my status within
the family.

Speaker 5 (19:03):
YadA YadA, yadah. There's a lot of other stuff.

Speaker 6 (19:05):
That goes on, very very interesting and very fascinating, and
lots of it very well known, like so called.

Speaker 5 (19:09):
Sacrifice of Isaac.

Speaker 6 (19:10):
She miraculously has the child, right that child's named Isaac.
Everyone agrees within these scriptural traditions that Isaac is the
father of the Jews and Ishmael is the father of
the Arabs. This is central to both Jewish theology and
Islamic theology, and the Christians in so far as they're
involved in the story, they're also in on. Now, then
the question becomes which one of them is the blessed son,
which one of the which is one of the ones
is the one who's supposed to inherit the land that

(19:31):
is the Holy land, wherever that's defined, and that's a
little bit vague as well. The Jews say it's Isaac
and the muslim to say it's Ishmael. So we have
a we have a story what my dissertation advisor, Andrew
Triia are called a community of disagreement. There are people
who disagree on something, but they don't disagree on the frame. Right,
the frame in which all that that the entire story
is inserted is one in which there's no disagreement. Everybody

(19:51):
agrees that Abraham had two kids. Everybody agrees that the
women are basically you know that the women this part
in the story is predicated on their sons, on whether
their sons succeed. Is is what makes the women succeed
or not? And then the question becomes which one is
the favorite son? Which one is the one that the
father loves and the big father up above also loves.
Right Now, this is in itself, I think, at least
in the way that it's framed in Abrahamical courts, a

(20:14):
form of what do you call it, authoritarian crisis management? Right,
that's what it is. Now, that doesn't mean and I
think that this is also important. This is also one
of the reasons that we made the podcast that there's
no other ways of reading the story.

Speaker 5 (20:25):
How else could we read the story?

Speaker 6 (20:26):
For example, we could point out we could note that
the person who has the most intimate contact with the
God in this entire story is Hagar.

Speaker 5 (20:32):
She's the first and only person in the Bible to
give God a name.

Speaker 6 (20:34):
She calls him Ellroy, the God who has seen me.
She has at least two miracles done to her. In Islam,
of course, her story, in Ishmael's story becomes the story
of Mecca. All the traditions of the Hajj are based
around the story of Hagar and Ishmael. So she's a
central central figure. And she is a slave woman. She's
an Egyptian, She's the one who's cast out into the desert.

Speaker 5 (20:52):
She's a migrant. Her name Hagar or Hajar in Arabic
means migrant or migration.

Speaker 6 (20:57):
Right, there's all these powerful undercurrents in the story, as
there are in every powerful myth, that mean that they
can be read differently, and some people are reading it differently.
So I don't think the story itself is the problem.
The problem is that the story is used in a
very particular way, in a way which facilitates again what
you call it, conflictual.

Speaker 5 (21:12):
Sorry, authority and conflict conflict management.

Speaker 8 (21:15):
Yeah, I mean it's a it's a mouthful.

Speaker 3 (21:18):
Maybe that helps us to get to what the podcast does,
Like who do you speak to?

Speaker 8 (21:25):
I know I'm on one of the episodes, but who
else do you speak to? And like what trends were
surprising to you? How did your kind of thinking shift
over time?

Speaker 7 (21:34):
I mean, let me start at least because one thing
we talked a lot about at the live event, there
was a panel and there was a discussion with the audience,
and one thing that's become excessively clear, like we heard
my time explain the story I'm not from the Middle East, right,
and also in this Berlin audience, like the relevance of
the story as a Bible story. I know I've heard
of the story, but it doesn't have that much impact

(21:55):
for me, like on my life or on how I
understand the world. It's a story, It's a Bible story.
And we felt this from the European audience, right. We
heard people say something like like, okay, this is a myth,
but are these the myths that are worth exploring right now?
You know, maybe with like looking at the at other
myths of more like material issues, and I think what
we're trying to do with the show is also explained well.

(22:17):
But these do affect people's lives in the Middle East,
like this is something. In fact, episode two, which comes
in a couple of weeks, we have all these vox
pop interviews from the Old City of Jerusalem where we
talk to people on the street and just ask like,
why do you think Jews and Arabs are cousins? And
what does that mean? And what does that mean with
the Abraham Accords? And immediately everybody had different Israelis and
the Arabs that you talked to Himtan had different understandings

(22:38):
of the Abraham Acords good and bad. But if you said,
why is it called the Abraham Accords, every single one
of them are like, oh, yeah, because we're cousins. So
start there, right. So so episode one was about the
kind of geopolitics, but that's why you were on Donna
episode two explaining this kind of what does that mean?
Then that if everybody can agree that the Jews in
the Arabs are cousins, but the Abraham Accords are seen

(22:58):
with all of these we already started talking about, you know,
all these obfuscating kind of nasty, hidden, violent undertones, but
also kind of like sick, you know, we can fly
there or whatever, like all this tourism and and high
fiving and entrepreneurship and you know, the biggest satyr of
whatever UAE history or whatever that was, you know, So

(23:21):
like so we start there and then and and the
idea is to really like then turn this whole thing
around and look at the myths and look at the
stories and try and understand from all these different sides
we go into, you know, medieval Islamic stories and texts,
and the idea of hospitality and the idea of of
cousinage and what does cousins mean? And I mean my time,

(23:43):
you can you can go further here, but the idea
of the show really starts from there, right, And that's
how we're going to like start at the geopolitics and
end up hopefully and turning the whole Abraham idea thing
in such a such a somersault that it lands right
on its head or right on its butt or something,
and and not only we kind of dismantle it or
understand it and take it apart, but then maybe like

(24:04):
reclaim it in a different way and maybe even use
it for some kind of positive progressive purposes, even radical ones.
That I mean Matan and his activism and his research,
you've you know, you've matan you say, you've already seen
and kind of he has to make the case to me.
You know, that's kind of the framing of the podcast, like.

Speaker 5 (24:20):
I'm eternally making the case. But that's okay.

Speaker 6 (24:22):
I think I think it's it's it's it's kind of
a it's kind of a difficult case to make.

Speaker 5 (24:25):
And and and.

Speaker 6 (24:26):
The fact that people keep challenging me on it, I
think is very is very productive. Well, one other thing
that came up in Berlin, and I think it was
really interesting, is that Ben sort of touched on this
at the beginning of what he was saying just now,
the way that framing this as the Abrahamic course, framing
it as the abraham story tends to make it easier
for people from Europe or from the United States to
North America to see themselves as outside of this story.

Speaker 5 (24:46):
Right, So this is Donna, you also.

Speaker 11 (24:48):
Alluded to this.

Speaker 5 (24:49):
There's this idea that this is like an age old conflict,
you know, between these these.

Speaker 6 (24:55):
These relatives who are always quarreling between themselves and oh,
it's so difficult.

Speaker 5 (24:58):
To primitive people over there.

Speaker 6 (25:00):
Yeah yeah, Q like oriental music right in the background,
and and hence that we rational outsiders, we Westerners, we Christians,
et cetera, all these sort of vaguely linked identities that
so called outsiders have. We are sort of neutral and
rational outsiders who can play a mediating role and bring
this this, this, this whole ancient mess to an end.

Speaker 12 (25:21):
Right.

Speaker 6 (25:22):
But the funny thing about this is that it's also
a religious kind of there's also a religious undertone here.
There is this idea, you know, a lot a lot
of scholars have written about how so called secularism, so
called enlightenment, you know, in the West, actually is a secularized.

Speaker 5 (25:35):
Form of Christianity in a lot of ways.

Speaker 6 (25:37):
And this is really actually very very clear in this
Abrahamic framing, because there is this idea that Christianity is
superior to these other two religions. Right, this is this
is this is the actual universal religion. This is the
one that is able to encompass and sort of transcend
the other ones. And hence, I think maybe this was
controversial few years ago, but nowadays, I think it's quite
clear that the US sees itself as a as a
as a Christian state, right, even sees itself as a

(25:58):
crusader state.

Speaker 8 (25:59):
I mean, they stayed pretty clearly with.

Speaker 6 (26:00):
The Secretary of Defense having deis volt tattoos on his chest, right,
so this is this is no longer they're saying the
quiet part out loud. This this in this context as well,
and they think that they can come in, you know,
and as these sort of outsiders solve things, But they're
actually deeply implicated in the story themselves for much much
earlier than the nineteenth century.

Speaker 5 (26:17):
We could but go back to the Crusades if we want.

Speaker 6 (26:18):
Europe has always been involved in the Middle East, right,
and the Middle East has been involved in Europe. For us,
these are near foreigners, right, So there's no innocence here, right,
there's no there's nobody who's outside the story and Abrahamic framework.
One of the I think sort of pernicious ways in
which it's acting in this in this current conjuncture, in
this current day and age, is as this sort of
framing that neutralizes the Western influence.

Speaker 5 (26:41):
It makes it seem objective and.

Speaker 7 (26:42):
Rational, and also I think allows the Golf States to
claim that. Right, there's like some interesting stuff in the
Facult book that I didn't quite put together about the
you know, sort of elite Amarathi perspectives as liberal and
anti democratic. But if you're pro business in a certain way,

(27:03):
then you can claim this kind of you know, like
Donnatan you Tube have written about moderation a lot, but
this idea for me of like, if you can claim
you know, the business forward thinking, then you're also modern.
Then you're also considered you know, more above, Like you
have a different elevation and a different sort of legitimacy

(27:23):
according to this worldview than somebody that would care about
such things as the Jews in the Arabs. What an ancient,
old fashioned kind of passe, you know, the Palestinian issue,
you knowugh kind of thing. But you know what's cool,
like artificial intelligence and like shipping deals in the Indian
Ocean that's new. You know, golf, Yeah, that's sick, Like yeah,

(27:43):
golf and like virtual reality watching people play golf like
that would be awesome. Yeah, And it's sort of data
that's sort of invited.

Speaker 5 (27:51):
The bichocolate, I could go on.

Speaker 7 (27:53):
It's I still think the sator, like the biggest ator
in Memoradi history or whatever is my favorite anecdote. But
the way that it invite this space so like it's
almost like a genius, like maybe it was like Jared
Kushner's great genius was to see this, like, you know,
ability to let other people claim the same Christian elevation
right the same like I'm on the shaky ground here now,

(28:15):
so I'll stop.

Speaker 5 (28:16):
Yeah, I don't know. If I don't know genius, I
don't I might dispute, you know what I mean.

Speaker 6 (28:20):
In a way, it's in a way, it's kind of obvious, right,
like they were they were always going to call these
Abraham McCords.

Speaker 5 (28:25):
When they did them. In a way, right, Jared Kushner,
I don't know he was. He's the right guy. He's
the right guy in the right place at the right time,
more than anything else.

Speaker 7 (28:32):
But do you understand what I mean that, like this
invitation into this perpector that you were saying, which is
kind of like Christian you know, in the in our
event to Berlin, someone said something like, even without the
Jewish Muslim context, we have this problem, we have this
problem in this region, and the abramccords allows the conversation
to happen on this level of let's talk about chips,

(28:52):
let's talk about fighter jets, you know, let's talk about drones.

Speaker 5 (28:57):
Yeah, dronesveillance Yeah.

Speaker 6 (29:00):
One of the things that I think is really important
is it's sort of normalis is this idea that there
is a place for everybody and the people shouldn't be mixed,
and there's rarely extreme right, the religious extreme right in Israel.
There is this notion of the distancing of Ishmael for
his correction, right, what's the idea here is that the Ishmaelites,
that is the Arabs, that is the muslim that is,
the Palestinians, they have their place in the world. It's
not that that place isn't here, It's somewhere else, in

(29:21):
a place called Arabia, right, And therefore that's why we
can be friends with them aratis because their Martis or
Arabs in the right place in Arabia. The Palestinians, however,
they are a problems because they are Arabs who don't
realize what the.

Speaker 5 (29:32):
Right place is.

Speaker 6 (29:33):
They can stay here if they accept total subjugation basically,
you know Themutrich's plan is sort of a secular.

Speaker 5 (29:39):
Raization decisive plan.

Speaker 6 (29:40):
Yeah, his decisiveness plan or whatever that's called is is
is a sort of secularization of things that Kahana was saying.

Speaker 5 (29:47):
The so called rabbi may Or Kahana was saying in
the nineteen eighties.

Speaker 6 (29:50):
The sort of spiritual father that Israeli extreme, right, they
can stay here if they if they're willing to be
our slaves, basically, if not, they can go to Arabia.
And once they're in Arabia they can be they can
be our best friends. And this is really, I think,
very very closely connected to the animosity towards migrants.

Speaker 7 (30:05):
Right.

Speaker 5 (30:05):
That brings me back to the figure of or Haja.

Speaker 6 (30:07):
Right, she is a migrant, and because she is a migrant,
because she's not in the right place, that's why she's denigrated,
That's why she's exploited, that's why she's cast out into
the desert. So it's not just about the Palestinians in
that regard. We can see how this sort of myth
also plays into the hyper.

Speaker 5 (30:20):
Exploitation of migrants in the Gulf.

Speaker 6 (30:22):
We can see how it plays into the racist treatment
that the refugees from Sub Saharan Africa are receiving in
North Africa.

Speaker 11 (30:28):
Right.

Speaker 5 (30:29):
We literally saw.

Speaker 6 (30:29):
People a couple of years ago in Tunia being cast
out into the desert the way the Hagar and Ishmael was.

Speaker 5 (30:34):
And of course this is all.

Speaker 6 (30:35):
This is all closely related again to Europe, to global
imperial kind of processes, to capitalism.

Speaker 5 (30:40):
You know what Ben was talking about, hecial hierarchy, special hierarchy.

Speaker 7 (30:43):
Right.

Speaker 6 (30:43):
So one of the reasons that I think we need
to keep our eye on this ideology is that in
some ways it's different from what we're used to, right.
It's not, for example, white supremacy. Right, We're used to
think about white supremacy as this sort of globally dominant
racial ideology. But this is something different. This is not
about people being better because they're white. It's about people
being better because they're in their right place. And that's actually,
I think something that's really coming up very very strong
on the global far right, on the far right globally,

(31:05):
this idea that you know, oh you'll see like in
New York, for example. It's not that we have anything
against black people or Arabs or Asians or anything else.
They just need to stay in their own countries as
so long as everybody stays in their own countries, that's fine.

Speaker 5 (31:16):
And you know, with climate change, with.

Speaker 6 (31:18):
All these catastrophica ecological changes that are happening in the world,
people are going to be moving and we already we
already see people in masses moving from place to place,
but that's going to be larger and larger movements as
in the coming decades. And you know, the basic test
of humanity is going to be the test of hospitality,
whether people are allowed to into new places that they
have to go to in order to survive. And this
sort of ideology I think is already sort of primed.

(31:40):
It's primed to deny that and to say no, you've
got to just stay in your own space, right, So
against that, Abraham I would like to place Huggar. I
think she's She's the answer.

Speaker 8 (31:59):
So, I mean, that's fascinating.

Speaker 3 (32:00):
I've never really kind of thought about I've never really
thought too hard about this story because as a Muslim
and Arab child, it upset me. But I do want
to say, like there is as as you mentioned, like
there is a general trending towards ethno nationalism all over
the world, but the Gulf States cannot manage ethno nationalism.

(32:24):
Saudi Arabia is kind of a little bit of a
different story. But the ones that signed, they are minorities
in their countries. On top of that, to their own
citizens to IMMORTI citizens to buy any citizens.

Speaker 8 (32:37):
They are illegitimate. They are only legitimate.

Speaker 3 (32:40):
By virtue of providing economic opportunities. You know, those cracks
have already been showing up.

Speaker 13 (32:45):
So the way in.

Speaker 3 (32:47):
Which these countries can build legitimacy for themselves offset possible
public pressure, offset any kind of accountability for their regional role.
People forget that the United Arab Emirates is deeply implicated
in the genocide in Sudan. That connect with what is
I think inherently white supremacist and things like this, But
of course they're not white, is what ya seen of

(33:07):
hash Salda Hassyrian theorist calls the ideology of modernism. He
was writing about the promise and the discourse of the
Asaid regime when Bashada Usaid came to power. But when
I read it, I was like, this sounds a lot
like the ideology of these Gulf states.

Speaker 8 (33:22):
And so he says it has three traits.

Speaker 3 (33:25):
It entirely neglects issues of values such as freedom, equality,
human dignity, mutual respect among people, in favor of morally
amorphous categories such as secularism, enlightenment, and modernism itself. It
neglects fundamental social issues related to poverty, unemployment, marginalization, life conditions,
gender relations, et cetera. And the advocates of this modernism

(33:46):
are politically conservative, I mean, just to.

Speaker 5 (33:48):
A t Yeah, that's the Abraham Accords and a unchill.

Speaker 8 (33:50):
Right there, exactly.

Speaker 3 (33:51):
Yeah, And I you know, I wrote about this in
the context of the Abraham Accords in a paper I
published in twenty twenty three, but Yasin Hashsala had like
kind of nailed it back in twenty eleven that this
was the trend.

Speaker 9 (34:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 6 (34:03):
I think Syrians saw a lot of things earlier than
the rest of us.

Speaker 8 (34:06):
Yeah, definitely, And so this is their vision for the world.
And I think this is the vision of a lot.

Speaker 3 (34:13):
Of essentially the right in the world, even in America.

Speaker 8 (34:17):
Likely they don't care about democracy. They want this.

Speaker 3 (34:21):
They want you to be prosperous and in your place,
and yeah, everybody stays separate.

Speaker 6 (34:26):
Yeah, there's a sort of like callousness around all of it,
which I think is it's actually a draw for some people,
because you know, cynicism is a big thing in the world,
and people are I think one of the reasons that
people attracted to Trump, for example, is because it's clear
that he's a completely cynical actor, you know, who's only
out for his own sake, and people are sort of,
you know, for better or worse, sick of the.

Speaker 5 (34:46):
Of liberal hypocrisy, so they gravitate towards that. And it's funny.

Speaker 6 (34:50):
I mean, you would think that wouldn't go hand in
hand with religion or these mythical stories, but.

Speaker 5 (34:54):
It actually does.

Speaker 6 (34:55):
You know, speaking of prosperity, for example, there's in Evangelicalism
there's a very strong str of what's called like the
prosperity gospel, this idea and this has you know, very
very old roots in Calvinism as well. If you make
it in the world, if you're rich, if you make
if you make a lot of money, that means that
God loves you. That's like a proof, right, And so
there again we shouldn't think about religion too narrowly. Religion
is really infused in all these sorts of social ideologies,

(35:17):
among which are this, and I think this is very
very prominent in the abraham A story.

Speaker 5 (35:21):
In the Abrahamics story.

Speaker 6 (35:23):
Is that well, you know, if they have oil, if
they have riches, if they've managed to sort of manipulate
the global economy to their own advantage. Then more power
to them. Right, And that's attractive. That's that's something that
you want to that's a train that you want to
get on. Maybe they'll give you a plane too, Right.
That was the Kataris. That wasn't ue, So we shouldn't
get them mixed up. But I think it's kind of
the same story.

Speaker 5 (35:42):
Yeah, no, I completely agree.

Speaker 3 (35:44):
So, I mean I started this discussion by talking about
the plants for reconstruction in Gaza mm hm. And you've
already mentioned that, like the big whale for the Trump
administration is Saudi Arabia. They want Saudi Arabia to normalize
with Israel. What are some things we should watch for
in the near future? What do you where do you

(36:05):
think this arab is really a normalization is going to go.

Speaker 6 (36:07):
I'm always hesitant to to make predictions. I think it's
a it's it's an extremely volatile moment. This ceasefiring guys
that we God knows if it's going to hold or
if there are just going to go back in and.

Speaker 5 (36:17):
Start genociding again.

Speaker 6 (36:19):
I think we're also seeing these really really rapid movements
throughout the region with I mean, we keep.

Speaker 5 (36:24):
We've kept we've kept alluding to Cutter, but Cutter and Turkey.

Speaker 6 (36:26):
Are really playing a really much bigger role now than
the than they were until recently. And that's with American blessing.
So that's also going to change. I think the sort
of calculus that that that Saudi makes. But broadly speaking,
I think one thing that we really need to keep
an eye on is this iMac Corridor, this idea of that.
Basically Biden administration was starting up, but but Trump is
really sort of put into into hyperdrive, which is this

(36:48):
idea of connecting India, the Gulf, Israel, and Europe through
a sort of alternative to China's Belton Road initiative. It
revolves around oil and gas, but it also revolves around
data centers and AI so sort of geopolitically and and
and geoeconomically. I think that's that's that's the big plan
that the Americans have hatched for for the region, and
that basically means turning Gaza into some sort of concentration

(37:09):
camp slash as Easy especially economic zone. Right there are
really really really frightening plans to ethnically clans about half
of the Guns in population, and to uh and to
sort of turn the rest of them into into well
basically slaves, you know, basically uh, unfree workers in these
in in this so called the especially economic zone that
the that they're that they're trying to to set up. Now,

(37:31):
whether any of this is going to actually happen, I
think it's anybody's it's anybody's guess at this point. But
it's it's it's very clear. And I just saw a
physiata speaking about this at the Historical Materialism conference in London.
It's very clear that it's their plan, right, that's the
planet's out there. It's it's I don't know if it's
even been leaked or just publicly released, that this is
what the the Americans, Israeli's Saudis and immioralties are are

(37:52):
planning for the region. It's a it's a really kind
of nightmarish vision that they're not even they're they're broadcasting
out loud. They're not they're not even pretending to disown
it or anything. So so you know, we should take
them at their word, and we should be very very
clear that this is something totally unacceptable. And I mean,
as you started out saying, and I think we've always
agreed on this. The question for the region is the

(38:12):
Palestinian question. If the Palestinians don't have sovereignty, if they
don't have freedom, if they don't have equality, if they
don't have the right of return, then things are not
going to are not going to calm down in the region.
It's just going to be more and more, more and
more violence, more and more of this help for everybody.

Speaker 5 (38:30):
And you know, these have been hellish years for all
of us. I'm not, of course making any sort of comparison.
I think it's clear that the things that have been.

Speaker 6 (38:37):
Happening in Gaza are beyond any sort of any sort
of description in terms of how hard the genocide has been.
But you know, as in ISRAELI who's currently not living
in Israel and I would like to return at some point.
I really hope that everybody in the region can come
to this very very clear conclusion. You know, whether you
phrase it in religious terms or not. And I don't
think there's a problem with framing it in religious terms.

(38:57):
There are ways of framing it in religious terms when
we can talk a little bit about that more. If
you want, just the fact that that that the indigenous
people of Palestine. The Palestinians need to need to have
the rights to respected and fulfilled. And that's the only
the only way that we can that we can bring peace.
That we can bring you know, these these really beautiful
biblical prophecies about the wolf and the and the sheep
lying down and the cutting down of swords into the

(39:18):
plowshires to make those reality. So some people might call
that messianic, but I think there's also good, good forms
of missionism.

Speaker 8 (39:24):
Then, do you have any thing to add pop that?

Speaker 7 (39:29):
My hope the past year two years has been that
if the Abraham Accords elevated you know, countries like the
AE two a certain like volume, like gave them a
certain audience that maybe they didn't have before internationally, that
then uh, what Israel has done could be criticized more

(39:50):
obviously and that they would actually have some leverage. So
my hope still is that as like normal partners, they
can normal threaten and normal criticize and normal check the
power of their you know, quote whatever partners Israel. And
so I'm keeping an eye on hopefully that that that

(40:12):
will start happening. More of what we do see is
that like trade continues to go up, and that doesn't
seem to have an impact. And I find that very disappointing.
And also at the same time, I see the polling,
and Donna, you know more about this than I do,
but the polling shows increasing criticism of normalization with Israel. So,

(40:33):
you know, the idealist to me thinks that like civil
society will win out eventually, that this is just untenable,
and that what October seventh showed was that and the
and the wars since then, that without dealing with the
central cause in the region, which is the Palacinian cause,
like there will be no possible safe you know, entrepreneurial

(40:57):
dream land of a rich future, that that their claiming
is going to happen. So that's my old but and
I keep an eye out for that. I hope that
they use China and Russia as good countermeasures and counter
threats to the American agenda, and I keep my eye
out for that.

Speaker 3 (41:12):
Yeah, I think, uh, I think really that's the That's
the open question moving forward is like will the political
elites went out, will they be able to sidestep the
Palestinian question, sidestep their own publics, who, as you mentioned,
are extremely critical of normalization, extremely supportive of the Palestinian cause.

(41:34):
I think the Americans think that they can. I keep
mentioning this on this podcast, but I was on a
panel with Stanley McCrystal, General and commander of the Joint
what is it, the Joint Armed Forces or whatever in
I Rock in Afghanistan, and he was like, Oh, you know,
the Arabs really want to move past the Palestinians, like
it's a thing of the past. If October seventh hadn't happened,

(41:55):
like you know, we would have just moved past the Palestinians.

Speaker 8 (41:57):
And I was like, what the hell you're talking about.

Speaker 3 (41:59):
That's you only say that because you think that you
can continue to crush air publics. Yeah, like you are
predicating your entire strategy on authoritarianism. And it's it's not
a Middle East problem. It's a civil society all over
the world has to fight back against authoritarianism or this
is our reality.

Speaker 6 (42:18):
Yeah, this is I think this is the moment now,
and this is one of the ways in which the
rest of the world is becoming more likely our world
in some ways. As we mentioned, we have large majorities
almost everywhere in the world. I think maybe every country
in the world except for Israel. We have a majority
of people who are now supporting past ten more than
support Israel, who are against the genocide, who say, you know,
who answer the polls in a way that that makes
it clear that they're that they're against what's going on, right,

(42:39):
and they're against their government supporting it. But most governments
in the world, most governments in the world, including ones
that aren't considered very pro pro us are are are
basically letting this happen.

Speaker 7 (42:48):
Right.

Speaker 6 (42:49):
That means that there's no effective democracy anywhere in the
world really, except maybe in a few places where you
can say, okay, I don't know, Spain, some countries.

Speaker 5 (42:56):
Are Island, Yeah, yeah, where even even.

Speaker 6 (42:59):
Those countries, I don't think they're they're doing it as
much as as as their populations we would like them
to do.

Speaker 5 (43:03):
Right.

Speaker 6 (43:04):
So, again, this idea that the that the that the
West is somehow essentially different from these other countries, it's
also kind of a lot and it's also something it's
it's also it's also bogus, and we need to we
need we need to call bullshit on that as well. Yea,
many people have already have already made various arguments, and
there's various ways of making this argument that the Palestinian question,
the question of gods, or the question of the genocide

(43:25):
is kind of the global question of our time. I
don't think just because there's a ceasefire that that's going
to go away in any way. Every everything that caused
the explosion in the first place is still there, right,
And I think we're going to keep seeing mobilizations around
this issue.

Speaker 5 (43:38):
I'm sure we are.

Speaker 6 (43:39):
The crucial question for me is how we connect this
to other issues, How we connect this to the question
of democracy. Can we connect this to the question of
rights for migrants, How we connect this to the questions
of of of climate change, right.

Speaker 5 (43:49):
And and and various people are already doing that.

Speaker 6 (43:51):
So I'm I'm not saying this is something that people
aren't working on, but this is this is this is
kind of the challenge for our for our time, and
this podcast, this project is is you know, just just
you know, one small part of that mosaic, which is
looking into the ideology that framed them the Chords after
Abraham and again thinking about how we can not just
debunk that ideology and say, oh, this is it's not
about this, it's about that but also about how we

(44:13):
can read those stories in a different way and sort
of yeah, exactly, to subvert it intimate and to read
those stories in a way that that that makes progressive sense.

Speaker 3 (44:20):
Now, that's I'm really looking forward to listening to the
other episodes, not just my own.

Speaker 6 (44:24):
So, yeah, you sound a little more convinced now than
you did after we interviewed in.

Speaker 5 (44:29):
You I'm being really nice.

Speaker 6 (44:32):
No, I'm just you're being hospitable like Abraham exactly.

Speaker 5 (44:36):
It's in my blood.

Speaker 7 (44:37):
When we played it live, someone came up to me
afterwards and was like, you know, I agree with Dona, right,
And I was like, no, I think we all agree.
Like that's kind of the point. I think we all
agree on the basics here. The other part is just
sitting in the cringe, as Madan says, oh.

Speaker 14 (44:50):
Nice, yeah, basting basting in the cringe, yeah, basing in
the cringe here, and trying to find our way out
of like a bad mushroom trip hallucination where you can
do things pretend that the Palestinians don't exist.

Speaker 7 (45:02):
Yeah, you know, that's that's We're trying to be the
orange juice that's supposed to get you out of the
you know of a bad munchers.

Speaker 3 (45:08):
How do they hangover whatever? Yeah, the trip? Yeah, sorry,
don't I don't do drugs. I don't understand anyway. Thank
you all so much. This has been a very interesting episode.
And yeah, I'll link in the show notes for for
listeners all of the things we mentioned.

Speaker 5 (45:22):
But yeah, more soon.

Speaker 6 (45:23):
Yeah, episode episode one is already out by the time
your listeners hear this, I think episode two might already
be out as well. Okay, in episode two, we kind
of go into the into the into the backstory. Episode
one was was with you and we talked about about
the chords themselves. Episode two we start digging into those
into those warm holes of the Abraham story. Interesting and
we when we talked to people in Jerusalem again Ben

(45:44):
mentioned this, both Palestinians and Israelis. We went and we
went out and asked them what they thought about Abraham
Accords and why they thought it was named after Abraham.

Speaker 3 (45:52):
Yeah, I'm really excited to listen to that.

Speaker 8 (45:53):
Thank you all right, thanks guys, thanks for having us on.

Speaker 5 (45:57):
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (45:58):
Take care.

Speaker 4 (46:00):
The last week, two major news networks, CNN and CNBC,
partnered with the so called prediction market Calshi, an online

(46:22):
political betting platform to use Calshi's real time betting data
in TV news segments, online news content, and, as Calshi
announced on X the Everything app quote, to integrate prediction
markets into CNN's global newsroom, with Calshi threatening, quote, a
new era of media is here. This is it could

(46:46):
happen here. I'm Garrison Davis. Regular CNN viewers may have
noticed this integration has already been happening for some time.
This past election cycle, news anchors used betting odds in
place of an addition to polling data to weigh the
likelihood of candidates winning elections. CNN's chief data analyst, Harry

(47:09):
Enton Nate Silver Protege, who used to work for five
point thirty eight trailblazed the use of political gambling data
in news stories earlier this year. How she praised Entin
by name in their announcement of the CNN partnership.

Speaker 5 (47:23):
Quote.

Speaker 4 (47:24):
Enton is an expert at translating what data and polling
are saying on any given issue, and through this integration,
he can tap into real time prediction markets data to
better inform and fact check his reporting.

Speaker 7 (47:37):
Unquote.

Speaker 4 (47:38):
Here's an example of this reporting in a CNN segment
from October twenty twenty five.

Speaker 15 (47:44):
If you go back six months ago, you go back
to April K Baldwin. What were we looking at, Well,
we were looking at the Democrats with a very clear
shot of taking control of the US House of Representatives.
According to the Calshi Prediction Market odds, we saw him
in an eighty three percent chance. But those odds have
gone par vomiting down. Now we're talking about just a
sixty three percent chance, while the gopiece chances up like

(48:06):
a rocket up like gold, up from seventeen percent to
now a thirty seven percent chance. So we'll look like
a pretty clear Demo likely Democratic win in the House
come next year has become much closer to toss up
at this point, although still slightly leading Democratic.

Speaker 4 (48:21):
Harry Enton never clarifies how these quote unquote odds are
formed or what they really are. To a viewer who
just tuned in or maybe isn't paying that much attention,
it would be very unclear that these numbers are actually
from a gambling website. They're just big percentages displayed on

(48:41):
screen the way you would see polling data or legitimate
information used in a newsroom. This short section using the
Calshi prediction market odds was then followed by three minutes
of analysis using selective mid term voting data from twenty
seventeen to twenty to support the movement in these gambling odds.

(49:04):
The gambling ods themselves were a load bearing piece of
information in this piece. Calshi's main competitor, another so called
prediction market called poly Market, partnered with x the Everything
app and Yahoo Finance earlier this year to integrate their
prediction data into online news content. Time Magazine and Sports

(49:26):
Illustrated have also both launched deals with the prediction market
platform Galactic. So what exactly are these prediction markets and
how do they function? On poly Market and Calshi, users
can bet yes or no on the outcome of a
question relating to world events, which is called a market.

(49:47):
As more money is wagered on either side, the odds
of the outcome change. Currently, top questions include various predictions
for Time Person of the Year, will the US strike
Venezuela before the end of the year, the release of
the Epstein files, and who will be the next president.
Kalshi has Trump's chances at six percent. Here's Polymarket CEO

(50:10):
Shane Copelan explaining on sixty minutes, you.

Speaker 9 (50:13):
Make money if you're right, you lose money if you're wrong,
and as a result, it creates this information that's really
isful for people.

Speaker 4 (50:20):
These companies would like you to believe that the ratio
of people betting yes or no on a certain outcome
of world events is somehow useful or reliable information for
the general public to forecast the future, whether that's through
betting on the likelihood of an upcoming recession, the winner

(50:40):
of a sports game, which days of the week Israel
will bonb Gaza, or what movie will win Best Picture.
Almost fifty million dollars is currently being wagered over a
potential Russia Ukraine ceasefire in twenty twenty five. Production markets
currently have three billion dollars in weekly trading volume. I

(51:02):
do need to note these companies argue that hedging outcomes
of world events legally is not gambling, because that would
be illegal. Payments through unauthorized gambling sites are illegal under
the Unlawful Internet Gambling Enforcement Act of two thousand and six,
which suppressed the early prediction markets of the two thousands.

(51:23):
But CALSHI is regulated as a platform for trading financial
derivatives rather than securities trading or straight up legalized gambling,
and this determines what entity they have to register with
and what regulations they're subject to. CALSHI launched in twenty
twenty one with a federal license from the Commodity Futures
Trading Commission, and after a year's long battle, in October

(51:47):
twenty twenty four, a federal appeals court ruled in favor
of CALSHI, allowing online prediction market betting on US elections,
rejecting claims by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission that the
practice was illegal gambling and their concerns that prediction market
betting could undermine election integrity. Former CFDC chairman Rostam Benham

(52:11):
misstatement in May of twenty twenty four, reading quote contracts
involving political events ultimately commoditize and degrade the integrity of
the uniquely American experience of participating in the democratic electoral process.
Allowing these contracts would push the CFTC, a financial market regulator,
into a position far beyond its congressional mandate and expertise.

(52:35):
A week before his dad took office in January twenty
twenty five, Donald Trump Junior became a strategic advisor at
Calshie Hoolymarket launched in twenty twenty without registering with the
Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and was fined one point four
million dollars by the CFTC in twenty twenty two for

(52:56):
operating as an unregulated exchange and was held forth prohibited
from allowing bets from US based users, though the poly
Market CEO sees it a little different.

Speaker 16 (53:08):
It was at one point four million dollars fine and
also was a settlement and you could not have customers
in the United States.

Speaker 9 (53:14):
Yeah, we had to go in geoblock trading in the
US and move certain operations offshore. And it wasn't hey
you're banned from trading the US. It's like until you're licensed.

Speaker 16 (53:22):
I mean it was breaking the law.

Speaker 9 (53:23):
I mean people say breaking the law. It's like which
law you know? So if anything it's incompatible.

Speaker 16 (53:28):
It's incompatible with the law.

Speaker 9 (53:30):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (53:30):
With the regulatory matrix that existed.

Speaker 4 (53:33):
The past two years, Polymarket has found to be facilitating
illegal gambling and subsequently banned in the countries of Switzerland, France,
the UK, Poland, Singapore, Belgium, Romania and Australia. Most of
these bands just required geoblocking users, which can be easily
circumvented through the use of a VPN, and since the

(53:56):
financial transactions on poly market are all done through crypt currency,
it's not clear that polymarket is taking any steps to
enforce these bans beyond geo blocking. In the midst of
facing regulatory hurdles and bands from across the globe, Polymarket
still exploded in popularity last year, attracting investment from Peter

(54:18):
Thiel's venture capital firm and hundreds of thousands of new users,
primarily driven by betting on the US presidential election, speculation
on whether Biden would drop out of the race and
who Trump would pick as vice president, all despite the
platform technically being banned in the United States after the

(54:38):
first presidential debate in July twenty twenty four, around the
attempted assassination of Trump and the RNC, Polymarket gained sixty
thousand new accounts. The year prior, polymarket averaged two thousand,
three hundred new accounts per month. August twenty twenty four
saw seventy thousand new accounts, September ninety thousand, October three

(55:01):
hundred thousand. The month after Trump's second inauguration four hundred thousand. Currently,
polymarket has over sixty thousand daily active traders and hundreds
of thousands of monthly traders since October twenty twenty four.
To give another example of their recent growth, in April
twenty twenty three, Polymarket's monthly volume was about three million dollars.

(55:26):
A year later, it was thirty nine million. In November
twenty twenty four, it was two point five billion. Last month,
it was three point seven billion. In summer twenty twenty five,

(55:52):
cash Ptel's, FBI and the CFTC under Trump dropped investigations
into whether polymarket was illegally allowing US users to place
betts using VPNs. Shortly thereafter, Donald Trump Junior's venture capital
firm invested in the platform, and Trump Junior himself joined

(56:12):
Polymarket's advisory board. Curiously, a few days after Trump Junior
joined Polymarket, the Commodity Futures Training Commission announced it was
going to allow poly market to operate in the United
States after acquiring another company that held a US license.
This past October, Trump's own truth Social announced it was

(56:35):
partnering with Crypto dot Com to launch truth predict Quote,
a revolutionary prediction market backed by President Trump for enhanced
decision making unquote. When Barry Weiss's Sixty Minutes did a
puff piece on Polymarket with its CEO last week, Anderson

(56:55):
Cooper inquired about the risk of insider trading markets, CEO
Shane Kaplan seem to think that a little bit of
insider trading might be good.

Speaker 16 (57:06):
Actually, good predictive markets do rely on someone having some
inside information.

Speaker 9 (57:13):
Yeah, I think that people going and having an edge
to the market is a good thing. Obviously, you need
to curate them, and you need to be really clear
and strengen on where the line is drawn and like
sort of ethics, and we spend a lot of time
on that. But it's sort of an inevitability that this
will happen and there's a lot of benefits from it
and people will adapt.

Speaker 4 (57:32):
The CEO did not elaborate on what poly markets practice
of curating insider trading looks like and where their quote
unquote stringent line is drawn, because in reality it doesn't
seem this line exists. They essentially encourage insider trading through
these vague statements and lack of clear enforcement. From the

(57:55):
point of view of these platforms, insider trading makes their
prediction markets more accurate, so it's a net positive, and
if it fucks over some users on the other side
of a bet, that's just the cost of business. Last week,
an alleged insider trader won over a million dollars for
bets on Google's twenty twenty five year in search rankings

(58:17):
listing twenty two out of twenty three in the correct order.
This user has made a series of early bets related
to Google the past year, like the exact release date
of Google's Gemini three point zero, which they won one
hundred and fifty thousand dollars on. But because this polymarket
user isn't trading stock, there's no clear regulatory mechanism to

(58:42):
stop this behavior, and polymarket can't reverse these trades because
they run through the blockchain, not that they would even
necessarily want to. Professional gambler, political data analyst and poly
market advisor Nate Silver was also asked about insider trading
on the China Talk podcast two months ago.

Speaker 17 (59:02):
Are you worried about insider trading with this uh, with
all this political betting, I mean there's an aspect of like, look,
these are all crypto Uh, you know you get on
these markets with crypto and like, like there were markets
like which way is Suzanne Collins going to vote? And
you know the sort of the like you know, like

(59:23):
the tail outcomes for like a legislative assistant in her office?
Are you know you can make ten times your salary?
And like a minute, right, what's your what's your think
think on this?

Speaker 13 (59:36):
For sure?

Speaker 18 (59:38):
I mean, look, I think there are a couple of
qualifications though, Like, first of all, I think people on
the inside often aren't as well as a formed as
they think, and or there are some downsides having an
inside view and not an outside of you. You might
drink the kool aid, so to speak, right, you might
be in a bubble.

Speaker 17 (59:56):
Yeah, look, I mean I mean there are ones where
it's like you can literally I mean there's been a
lots of group chats people talking about like very very
sketchy trades and one way bets that are being made
in the stock market of like what's.

Speaker 2 (01:00:08):
Going to happen with a trade deal?

Speaker 17 (01:00:10):
I mean you can literally be the person who decides
right and be vetting on the side if weird.

Speaker 18 (01:00:17):
If there are incentives to make money in a world
of eight million people, many of them are very competitive,
and all of whom and on all of them, most
of them acts to the Internet.

Speaker 13 (01:00:25):
Right, people are going to find a way a way
to do it.

Speaker 4 (01:00:27):
Right, Let's pause here for a sec. What do you
think Nick goes on to list as a comparison to
political insider trading as like an unfortunate but somewhat inevitable
consequence of our evolving system of finance.

Speaker 18 (01:00:45):
Like in the crypto space, we've seen an increasing number
of like crypto kidnappings. Right, Well, I mean, that's one
of the consequences if people are worth vast amounts of
wealth that isn't very secure it it's just gonna gonna
happen until you up security or a better or whatever else.
And so like, you know, I don't think there's necessarily
anymore or less insider creating on like polymarket than there

(01:01:07):
might be for in sports betting sites. We've seen a
lot of sports betting scandals or for regular equities. You know,
I believe the literature says that like members of Congress
achieve abnormal returns from their stock portfolios.

Speaker 13 (01:01:21):
I have to do I'm sure there's some debate about that.
I have to like to double check that, right.

Speaker 4 (01:01:25):
It's fine, Bros. It's just like cryptocurrency kidnapping. It's fine.

Speaker 5 (01:01:29):
Actually.

Speaker 4 (01:01:31):
So Nay goes on to say that prediction market insider
trading isn't that different from congressmen doing insider trading on
the stock market, or like rigged sports betting, but he
really neglects to emphasize that those things are also bad
and should be aggressively clamped down on. That shouldn't be allowed,

(01:01:54):
and prediction markets intentionally skirch regulation. They currently have far
less legal protections for users against unfair practices, and with
crypto they can be pretty anonymized, enabling bad actors. And
now news companies are legitimizing turning everyone's phone into a
corrupt casino for world events, whether that's Israel starving Palestine

(01:02:18):
or how many tweets Elon Musk is going to publish
this week. The day before CALSH announced their partnership agreement
with CNN and NCNBC, CBS aired a sixty minutes puff
piece on polymarket, anchored by Anderson Cooper.

Speaker 16 (01:02:34):
When we met with Copeland last month, more than three
point six million dollars had been wagered on whether or
not Venezuela's president Nicholas Muduro would be out of power
by the end of the year. Polymarket users didn't think,
so they gave it only a twenty three percent chance.
And if you buy no on that and you're buying
it at seventy eight cents and at the end of

(01:02:57):
the year he's still.

Speaker 5 (01:02:58):
In power, yeah, you get a dollar.

Speaker 16 (01:03:00):
So you've made a profit of.

Speaker 5 (01:03:01):
Twenty two cents for share.

Speaker 16 (01:03:03):
I wudn't see why this would be I mean, I
don't want to use a term addictive, but it would
be compelling. I mean, maybe it is a tick fier, well,
certainly compelling.

Speaker 5 (01:03:11):
This is how I see it.

Speaker 9 (01:03:12):
If you are into geopolitics, this creates an incentive for
you to dig in to what's going on in Venezuela
and try and get an edge.

Speaker 4 (01:03:21):
Anderson Cooper, who both works for the newly Calshi partnered
CNN as well as CBS's Sixty Minutes, is so hesitant
to call this clearly addictive practice addictive, quote unquote compelling.
Here's how Polymarket CEO Shane Copelan explained the platform earlier

(01:03:42):
in this piece.

Speaker 9 (01:03:43):
It's a site where you can basically bet on current events,
some sort of question about the future like an election,
and as a result, when a ton of people are betting,
you get the betting odds, which basically tell you how
likely each outcome is and how.

Speaker 16 (01:03:59):
Accurate it is.

Speaker 9 (01:03:59):
It's the most accurate thing we have as mankind right now,
until someone else creates some sort of super crystal ball.

Speaker 4 (01:04:07):
Anderson Cooper responds with narration that the CEO quote may
be prone to hyperbole, but he's definitely onto something unquote.
In explaining how poly market users attempt to seek truth
and gain an edge, Copeland told the story of how
in twenty twenty four, an anonymous French user made over

(01:04:28):
eighty million dollars on poly market by betting on Trump
winning the presidential election, and to bolster his bets, he
contracted you goov to conduct private polls in swing states.

Speaker 9 (01:04:39):
People thought he'd just liked Trump, and he had actually
commissioned a ton of private polls. He did something called
neighbor polling, which is you ask people who they think
their neighbors.

Speaker 5 (01:04:48):
Are likely to vote for.

Speaker 9 (01:04:49):
Four scenarios for an election where there's a stigma to
saying you're going to vote for somebody, and people feel
some sort of social awkwardness and What he noticed was
there was huge discrepancy in the neighbor polling versus the
normal pole, and the neighbor polling favored Trump enormously.

Speaker 5 (01:05:03):
He thought Trump was undervalued.

Speaker 9 (01:05:05):
If this guy was not able to make eighty million,
but rather able to make eighty thousand dollars, he would
have never gone through the hassle. But when you get
markets that are big enough, you create this incentive for
people to go above and beyond to try and find truth.

Speaker 4 (01:05:17):
What the CEO is arguing here is that the sheer
scale of money being wagered creates incentive to quote unquote
find truth. In media discussions of prediction markets, there's this
specter of objectivity around the gambled odds, which obviously the
CEO of Polymarket has a personal incentive to encourage. But

(01:05:39):
Anderson Cooper here doesn't challenge this notion of capital t
truth even though Donald Trump was way ahead in prediction
market odds back during the twenty twenty election, which had
his chances of winning that election far higher than what
pure polling models showed. Well, she claims that prediction markets

(01:06:01):
can help journalists quote unquote fact check, but doesn't explain
how fact can be determined from speculative gambling markets. Where
is the fact in gambling, Well, we will find out
after these ads. To quote from poly market advisor Nate

(01:06:32):
Silver's blog The Silver Bulletin quote, It's basically good when
people are more exposed to probabilities and they become more normalized.
But of course I also analyze poles and build probabilistic
models myself in that capacity, I strongly disagree with the
notion that prediction markets can serve as a good substitute

(01:06:53):
for poles. These sorts of claims are sometimes advanced by
the prediction market companies themselves, including Polymarket. To be fair,
one minor pet peeve is that both reporters and readers
often confuse probabilities for poll results unquote, As Nate goes
on to explain, if Trump is up fifty five to

(01:07:15):
forty five over Kamala Harris on a prediction market, that's
not saying that Trump is expected to win by ten points.
It means that ten percent more users on the website
favor Trump winning, which is pretty close to a toss up.
This confusion is a huge problem which is bolstered in

(01:07:36):
both how prediction market companies market their platform but also
how journalists use gambling data in news stories. If you
see a social media post, an advertisement, or a random
news segment showing percentages tied to pictures of two politicians
in a race without context, those betting numbers could be
interpreted in a number of ways and influence someone's percent

(01:08:00):
exception of an election, and maybe even their choice on
who to vote for or even whether to vote at all.
In an October speech, Zora Mumdani reference to Calshi billboards
predicting a Cuomo victory in the Democratic primary.

Speaker 19 (01:08:15):
When I walked the length of Manhattan just a few
days before the election, hundreds of New Yorkers marched alongside me.

Speaker 13 (01:08:26):
And when we strolled.

Speaker 19 (01:08:27):
Into Times Square under a billboard with betting odds that
showed Cuomo's chances of winning at nearly eighty percent, we
knew that the so called experts were set to get
it wrong yet again. Andrew Cuomo was supposed to be inevitable.
When you see the Calshi odds that have our chances

(01:08:50):
of victory in the nineties, know this. You are reading
the same things that Andrew Cuomo read when he went
to sleep each night in June, believing that his victory
was promised. We cannot allow complacency to infiltrate this movement.

Speaker 4 (01:09:10):
Cal She excitedly shared the latter half of that clip,
proclaiming breaking zoron Mamdani references his Calci odds on stage,
Calshi is mainstream unquote despite this clip demonstrating how prediction
markets often suffer from inaccurate bias. Last week, Discount Steve Kornaki,

(01:09:33):
former five point thirty eight analyst and now CNN's data expert,
Harry Enton shared this segment about the Tennessee District seven
special election on x the Everything app with the caption
odds are Dems will come within ten points of a win,
if not outright win.

Speaker 20 (01:09:51):
I would say, if you had to look at the
congressional map any district that Donald Trump won by twenty
two points, you would say, you know, you've got like
nearly a one one hundred percent chance of winning if
you're running for Congress there.

Speaker 13 (01:10:02):
But what are the prediction markets saying right now?

Speaker 15 (01:10:04):
You know, what are we talking about in terms of
the prediction market? Us, Look, the Democrat has a fifteen
percent chance of winning in that race, Okay, a fifteen
percent chance, which ain't nothing in a district that Donald
Trump won by twenty two points. But here I think
is the key nugget on this side of the of
the ledger, and that is a GOP win by under
ten points. There's a sixty eight percent chance of that.

(01:10:24):
So there is a more than two thirds chance that
the Republican candidate, Yes, they win, but they win by
a significantly lower margin than Donald Trump. We're talking about
double digits, smaller. We're talking about a huge, huge shift.

Speaker 13 (01:10:39):
To the left.

Speaker 15 (01:10:40):
We're talking about when you add these two together, we're
talking about a more than eighty percent chance that there
is a clear double digit shift to the left, and
a fifteen percent chance the Democrat actually wins in a
district that Donald Trump won by twenty two points. That
just shows you how bad the environment is for Republicans
right now, that the Democrat has any sort of a chance,
and this.

Speaker 4 (01:10:59):
They talk to you about this, he's just authoritatively rattling
off complete speculation on a Democrat victory. As big screens
display percentages in huge text with source Calci in tiny
text the bottom of the screen. Ordinary polling showed that
this was a close race that leaned red by two

(01:11:21):
to eight points, and the Republican did end up winning
by nine points. To quote the broken clock Nate silver quote.
Without having polls to look at, the prediction markets would
probably kind of suck at making election forecasts. Translating poles
into probabilities is considerably more complicated when there are many

(01:11:43):
correlated races at once, such as in the battle for
the electoral College or control of Congress. Prediction markets had
a strong twenty twenty four in this regard. They leaned
toward Trump when our model had it at fifty to fifty.
I don't think this was because of any special modeling
insight per se, but because they incorporated some sort of

(01:12:05):
prior intuition that Trump would overperform his polls. Again, so
give the markets credit for that. These sorts of soft
quote unquote intangible intuitions can be valuable, though you'd need
a lot of data to determine whether they add or
subtract value in the long run unquote, As Nate himself acknowledges,

(01:12:29):
someone like Andrew Cuomo had much higher betting odds throughout
the entire New York mayoral race than a purely statistical
model would show. A contention. I have with Nate. One
of many is though I call prediction market numbers gambling odds.
They are not actual probabilities. These odds aren't based on objective,

(01:12:53):
mathematical principles like flipping a coin, the three door problem,
or even something like blackjack. These odds are created whole
cloth through guessing, sometimes educated or data informed guessing, but
still primarily through people's intuition, which is susceptible to group impulses.

(01:13:14):
Many random world events lack a reliable basis of continuous
controlled data that's needed to form a probability, like that
which is applied to legalized sports betting. This is quite
evident in the betting odds around the Last People Conclave,
which had very little relevant data to use for informed predictions.

(01:13:34):
There was no existing probability to support the election of
an American pope, a first time occurrence. With prediction markets,
people can still do research to make an informed bet,
but it's not really the case that X candidate is
mathematically expected to win an election. Eighty out of one
hundred instances a hive mind of users have formed that

(01:13:57):
statistical division through the power of money, eighty percent of
users are betting that a certain result is likely to occur.
So the problem isn't just that, like Nate says, people
are confusing probabilities for polls. It's that they're confusing prediction
market betting odds for mathematical probabilities. It's this difference that

(01:14:21):
allows betting on sports outcomes via Calshian poly market, even
in states that ban typical sports betting, because you're not
actually betting on fixed odds, you're betting against other investors.
And now news companies are not just manufacturing consent and
normalizing political gambling, but are actively encouraging the use of

(01:14:45):
these platforms and endorsing the predictive capacity of these gambling markets.
Anderson Cooper calls it the quote unquote wisdom of crowds.
But we already have methods for learning group consensus, which
may have problems, but frankly far fewer problems than gambling

(01:15:05):
on world events. Beyond the moral qualms of betting money
on human suffering, prediction markets are susceptible to not just
personal bias, but group bias based on the current ratio
of odds. This in group consensus can be influenced by
short lived trending topics, and these platforms cater to a

(01:15:25):
hyper online point of view. Prediction market users provide a
very non representational sample variety pulling from a very specific
type of guy who regularly uses these platforms. To quote
from Calsh's CNN Partnership announcement quote, cal she has become

(01:15:46):
the definitive source for staying informed about the future and
is used by reporters, politicians, pundits, Wall Street and Main
Street get recently called the New York City mayoral election
eight minutes after polls closed, hours before the media. It's
because of this accuracy that calci's data will serve as
a powerful compliment to CNN's reporting. Journalists can more easily

(01:16:07):
surface credible information to their audiences about the real time
probabilities of future cultural and political events unquote. In practice,
this reporting mixes gambling data and actually reputable or credible
pulls in a confusing way, like this recent CNN segment
which cites CALCI odds on whether Trump will send tariff

(01:16:30):
stimulus checks as well as CBS you gov polling data
on if tarif's lower prices back to back in the
same segment, do they.

Speaker 15 (01:16:41):
Think that the tariffs that these rebate checks are actually coming?

Speaker 13 (01:16:44):
And at this point.

Speaker 15 (01:16:46):
No, No, I mean chance Trump tariff, the tariff stimulus
checks are sent to Americans by August of twenty twenty six.
It's a twenty five percent chance. That's one in four.
So that's not nothing. But the American people right now
are craving, craving some relief, and at this point it
doesn't look like it is coming. Although I will note

(01:17:06):
John Berman, this twenty five percent, it is greater than
this six percent who say that tars decrease prices, or
that five percent back in March, which are just you
never see one, two, three, four, five percent. So look,
twenty five percent ain't nothing, but at this point it's low.

Speaker 20 (01:17:23):
Yeah, it's interesting the prediction markets think they only one
in four chance that will actually happen.

Speaker 4 (01:17:27):
There is this really what the future of political forecasting
is going to be? Maybe, maybe not, but there are
four horsemen of this political gambling apocalypse. Nate Silver via
his gamification of election predictions based on his time as
a professional gambler. Sports betting, especially since the Supreme Court

(01:17:49):
struck down a federal law banning sports betting outside of
Nevada in twenty eighteen, resulting in almost forty states subsequently
legalizing some form of sports betting, which has facilitated because
of gambling to grow dramatically across the country in the
past ten years through the spread of online sports betting apps.
The third horseman is Trump for the Trump administration through

(01:18:10):
their removal of regulatory hurdles facing prediction markets. And finally
that CNN guy Harry Enton, a Nate Silver protege who
trailblazed the use of political gambling data in news stories
the past year. These four horsemen, Nate Silver, sports betting, Trump,
and Harry Enton have created the cultural and political conditions

(01:18:33):
for political gambling to spread. Like wildfire, which, hey, is
also something you can bet on. During the LA Fires
prediction market, users could bet on how many acres would burn.
So what is the endgame of this, this gambling apocalypse
that seems to be inching its way closer and closer

(01:18:53):
To answer that, Here's a clip from Calshi co founder
and CEO Derek Manser.

Speaker 12 (01:19:00):
Long term vision is to financialize everything and create a
tradable asset out of any difference in opinion. We are
living in a word where like we have an abundance
of information, but there's a lot of noise, and like
we don't really understand what's real from what's not. Our
prediction markets are an antidote to that. They do a
very very good job at distilling information and surfacing truth
to people. And you're seeing the sort of massive shift

(01:19:20):
where like people are using them whenever they think about
questions about the future, you know, whenever they're debating about anything.
And I think that trajectory is going to keep going.
That's a new consumer habit that I don't think is
going to be undone.

Speaker 4 (01:19:31):
This is the demon child of crypto and sports betting,
this financialization of everything to form a tradable asset out
of any difference in opinion, creating new addictive consumer habits.
These companies want to apply the logic of smartphone sports
betting to everything, where everyone gets to be their own

(01:19:54):
little Nate Silver while carrying around their own digital casino
in their pocket, getting addicted to gambling on speculation of
world suffering. And CNN is complicit in this. CNN and
others have decided to partner with platforms that enable the
people who decide when to drop bombs around the world
to win millions of dollars by betting money on the

(01:20:16):
choices they themselves are making at the expense of the
rest of the world, and these companies think this is
a good thing because the betting odds can serve as
a potential heads up that something is likely to happen.
Simple consumer protections for users, which currently are non existent,
are just not enough. Congress needs to be far more

(01:20:39):
involved in regulating online betting, and in the case of
political events, it should just be completely banned. It is
detrimental to a healthy society. It incentivizes corruption, cruelty, and
erodes public trust. Gambling doesn't need to go away entirely,
but it should return to being time and location locked.

(01:20:59):
Go to Las Vegas like a fucking adult. Currently, there
is no existing mechanism for individual states to regulate prediction markets.
Only the federal government can, and Trump's federal government certainly
seems like it's not going to considering the President's Sun

(01:21:19):
works for both of the main platforms, Klshi and poly market,
and while news companies are legitimizing this, these platforms are
now working as their own news aggregators, specifically Polymarket's social
media account, which is acting as a news aggregation account.
Because that drives traffic back to their website, where people

(01:21:41):
can bet on the news stories that poly market is sharing,
even if those news stories are speculative or completely made up.
On December fifth, Polymarket posted quote just in suspected J.
Six pipe Bomber's legal council projected to argue he was
included in Trump's pardon of those involved in January sixth unquote.

(01:22:03):
This claim subsequently spread all around the Internet, parroted by
people of a variety of political orientations. But if you
read closely, the original post says suspected J six Pipe
Bomber's legal council projected to argue he was included in
Trump's pardon, polymarket is just spreading gambling information as if

(01:22:27):
it is news content. Quote unquote. Projected just means that
polymarket users are betting on this, But these projected posts
are mixed in with other posts just aggregating the day's news.
So unless you are paying super close attention, which rarely
people on the Internet are, this becomes a trojan horse

(01:22:48):
of disinformation. When news companies use the term projected on
election night, usually that indicates with pretty clear mathematical certainty
that an event is going to happen. When Polymarket uses
projected in news tweets, It only indicates that Internet gamblers
are swinging around money in an effort to create truth

(01:23:12):
with once legitimate news companies not just complicit but active
participants in this process. That doesn't for us today at
it could happen here. See you on the other side.

Speaker 11 (01:23:37):
Hello, and welcome to Achnapan Here. I'm Andrew's age also
known as Andreism, and I'm joined once again by That's.

Speaker 13 (01:23:49):
A q mea Wong girl who was really really the
first time was like I Am not going to miss
my cue this time, and then this time I was like, oh,
I'm waiting for the queue, and then it was like shit,
that's the cue. And it took my brain like several
seconds to be like, oh no, it would be very

(01:24:09):
funny if the editors just edited out the pause so
everyone has no idea what I'm talking about.

Speaker 11 (01:24:14):
That's that would be hilarious actually, But there was unaware
that was like a ten second pause before me I
came in.

Speaker 13 (01:24:24):
No really truly, this is mia on like three hours
of sleep brain. I was like, oh, yeah, right, the
cue is going to come. But then it things going
great for BeO Loong, the other person who's on the show.
You know who I am statistically if you're listening to
the show who, of course?

Speaker 11 (01:24:46):
I mean speaking of seconds. By the way, in those
ten seconds that you were waiting for your queue that
had already passed, hundreds of people were born, you know,
every second where someone is being born. Like other animals,
humans have this tendency to multiply. But should they That

(01:25:09):
is the question of the day. This is the last
episode I was on. We spoke about the worries surrounding populasia.
You know, whether we have too many people or too
few people. But the question of making people or not
making them has been the subject of a few ideological classes.
There's a whole movement of thinkers who argue that bringing

(01:25:31):
new life into the world is a big mistake. These
are the anti natilists. And on the other side you
have those who say that having children is good and essential.
That's the pro natalist camp. So in this episode will
be getting into that tug of war philosophically and weighing
the issues with both. Because I'm not going to make

(01:25:52):
it a secret, I'm not a fan of either of them.
I don't know how do you feel.

Speaker 13 (01:25:57):
About Yeah, this is the one good Stalin quote. They're
both worse, So we have to pick among those twos.
Let's start with the anti natilists.

Speaker 11 (01:26:08):
I don't what's the kind of gut reaction or impression
you get from those those folks.

Speaker 5 (01:26:15):
I don't know.

Speaker 13 (01:26:15):
I think there's a combination of stuff that's largely harmless
and sometimes is funny. Like you get protested people pulling
up signs that are like I didn't ask to be
born or didn't consent to be born. It's like, sure,
but then then there's also people just doing masshootings about it.
So it's great, it's it's a good time. It's a
very normal time for politics.

Speaker 11 (01:26:37):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. I mean when I think of them,
I tend to think cringe and Reddit. But they actually
have a philosophy outside of Reddit forums. So, according to
the Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, anti natilism is the view
that it is either always or usually morally impermissible to Brookery. Now,

(01:27:01):
most of us grew up with the idea that life
is inherently valuable, right, but anti natilists disagree. They see
life as a bruden rather than a gift. Very edgy,
very read it but you know, it's something that has
been around since before the Internet. While not himself an
anti natalist, the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer, who lived in

(01:27:23):
the nineteenth century, is taught by some anti natalists as
a contributor to their philosophical foundations. In his descriptions of
life as constant, striving, frustration and pain. In the twentieth century,
the Romanian writer Emil Choran argued that non existence is
the ultimate form of peace. His philosophical pessimism regarded individual

(01:27:47):
life and human history as a whole as a record
of error, illusion and futility, and most famously, South African
philosopher David Bennetta laid out one of the main anti
natilists are in his book Better Never to Have been
the harm of coming into existence. It's a bang a siteo.
Though now you can find theoretical contributions to anti natilists

(01:28:12):
thought in Buddhism's idea that life is suffering or incidant
interpretations of it rather or incident gnostic traditions that sow
the material world itself as a kind of cosmic mistake. Now,
there are a lot of reasons that anti natilists put
forward for their stance. There are philanthropic and misanthropic arguments
of antinautilism. You know, the philanthropic ones focus on harm

(01:28:35):
to the individual who is brought into existence, while the
misanthropic arguments tend to focus on the harm that new
people cause to the will. So there's the consent argument
that Mia would have mentioned. You know, basically a child
that cannot consent to be inborn, so by creating them,
you're forcing them into life. They didn't ask for a
life that will inevitably include suffering. Another argument is in

(01:28:58):
that sort of negative utilityanism camp. It's the idea that
our moral priority should be reducing suffering, not increase in happiness.
In fact, they don't see the potential or actuality of
pleasure as an offset to suffering at all. You know,
under their view, even a single unit of suffering is unacceptable,

(01:29:19):
and since every new life will include suffering, not creating
life is the surest way to reduce it. If Benetta
had the famous asymmetry argument, which is that the presence
of pain is bad, the presence of pleasure is good,
but the absence of pain is always good. Even if
no one appreciates that good and the absence of pleasure

(01:29:40):
isn't bad unless there's someone missing out. So put simply,
according to the argument, by not having a child, you
avoid guaranteed suffering without depriving any person of joy because
that person doesn't exist. So that equation is probably one
of the main pillars i'd say of the ant i
need lists as a movement. You know, you might be

(01:30:13):
thinking to yourself, Oh, but I'm glad to be alive. No,
you're not. According according to Bennetta and the anti natalists,
you're deluded to think.

Speaker 21 (01:30:24):
So.

Speaker 11 (01:30:24):
The Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy calls it the deluded gladness argument. Basically,
your positive view of your own life is unreliable. Better
argues that we have cognitive biases like optimism and selective
memory and so on, which distort how viciously we assess
our own suffering. So many good life reports, even if

(01:30:47):
you think you have a good life or a decent life,
you're deceiving yourself, according to him, Do you think people
are deceiving themselves when they say that they enjoy their lives?

Speaker 13 (01:30:56):
You know, this entire line of argument is just making
me be like, you need to do less philosophy and
like go outside and live. Like it's just.

Speaker 11 (01:31:09):
Like, yeah, I mean I get the whole thing about
you know, all mental bias towards optimism and that kind
of thing, but that doesn't invalidate the joy of people
appreciating their life.

Speaker 13 (01:31:21):
Yeah, it's like this. This sounds like the exact script
you get in your head when you're really depressed. It's like, okay,
like have you considered getting your depression managed and getting
help for it instead of like doing philosophy about it.

Speaker 11 (01:31:39):
I feel like you would be an antenatilist.

Speaker 13 (01:31:41):
Oh you're yeah.

Speaker 11 (01:31:45):
Another thing murders well.

Speaker 13 (01:31:46):
And it's also frustrating because it's like the most compelling
version of this argument is about like this world right
now is absolutely dog shit and I can't justify bringing
someone into it. But that's like too grounded. It's all
these people are like, no, no, no, no, Actually, here's like
this philosophy that proves that that life bad.

Speaker 11 (01:32:09):
And it's like, uh, I mean there are antonielists arguments
that do get into that more grounded Oh yeah, definitely, yeah,
thing you know that they have one argument about multiplying suffering, right,
because every child you bring into the bull is in
just one pouson. You know, they have the potential to
have truer themselves and grandchildren and so on, multiplying the

(01:32:30):
chances of pain, disease, loss suffering down the generations.

Speaker 13 (01:32:34):
It's like, this is like long termism. Shit, it's just
like instead of like actually analyzing the world, we're going
to build unbelievably complicated and completely meaningless, like abstract models
of it and try to base our things off of that.

Speaker 7 (01:32:51):
Yeah.

Speaker 11 (01:32:51):
Yeah, I mean it's it's destally ridiculous. Now I understand.
You know, our truck record isn't the best. You know,
they have their plagues and slavery and genocide, environmental the strut,
and some of them say, well that's the best thing.
The best thing we could do is to voluntarily go extinct,
you know, to step off the stage of the earth.
And that connects with the general misanthropy, and I think

(01:33:12):
the misanthropic argument that humans are some kind of blight
on the world. Yeah, and they're antilists who take it
a step further as well, And they're not just antilists
for humans, they're universal antiists. So they believe that not
just human births are problematic, but existence itself. Sentient beings
across the board, human or animal are better off never

(01:33:34):
being brought into life at all.

Speaker 13 (01:33:37):
Really, truly, at this point, brother, this is a you problem.
You just don't like existing, Like we can work on that.
But this is not a philosophical thake, like you're just depressed, Like,
come on, what are we doing here?

Speaker 9 (01:33:52):
Yeah?

Speaker 11 (01:33:52):
I mean, antonism is making some very heavy claims and
they're obviously going to be coming to arguments because people
are going to roll over with the kind of as
solutions that it makes. The most intuitive anser I would
give is that yes, life involves suffering, but it also
includes pleasure and joy and creativity and achievements, and for

(01:34:13):
most people, those positives outweigh the negatives. And if you're
a radical, you recognize that some of the negatives of
life are not inevitable. The famines, the wars, the suffering,
the poverty, it's not inevitable. It's a product of economic
and political systems that we have the power to change.
And yes, there will always be suffering. They may always

(01:34:35):
be some diseases, there will always be death, right, but
that doesn't mean that existence is worse than non existence.
I'm glad to exist me, I feel like you're probably
glad to exist. I'm glad you.

Speaker 13 (01:34:49):
Exist, yeah, most of the time. Like this is a
distinct improvement for positions I have been in. But like, yeah,
it's nice. Yes, you know, like even even in the
middle of like the hell world, it's nice.

Speaker 11 (01:35:04):
Yeah, And yeah, the biases may skew our perspective, but
the fact that we overwhelmingly choose life itself is a
reason too not throw it out, you know, whis people
are given the choice do you want to live right now?
And I mostly people want to say they're going to live,
you know. Yeah, and yes, we don't consent to be inborn,

(01:35:27):
but there are other things that we don't consent to
that we still benefit from. You know, in funds, don't
consent to be vaccinated, but it's it's something that benefits them,
you know. We educate in funds, we restrain them from danger.
We don't ask their permission necessarily to do these things,
but it's just for their well being, for their benefit.

(01:35:47):
And I don't think while consent is an important factor
in the way that we engage as others, I don't
think consent is the only factor for a framework of
determining what is moral and immoral. You know, you can't
use consent to determine whether it's moral or not to exist.
I don't feel like those two pieces mashed together very well.

Speaker 5 (01:36:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 13 (01:36:10):
Well, and also I think like there are so many
other things that we didn't consent to, you know, like
this is another thing that's talking. It is like we
never consented to die. On a less metaphysical level, I
don't know, like I didn't consent to like to live
under this state, yeah, where you know they're like doing
helicopter raids on apartment buildings and like dragging naked children

(01:36:32):
screaming away from their parents in the middle of the night,
Like you know that, And that's a thing that you
can actually actively do something about that you didn't consent to.
That is actively harming you and everyone else around you
versus like being born and making that the thing that
you're doing is like okay, like we didn't get to
live in or capitalism. We didn't we didn't get sent

(01:36:53):
to colonialism, Like we didn't geet to any of the shit,
and that's something you could, you know, make not happen
versus you being born, which there is nothing you can
do to change the fact that you were born. And
it's like, oh, well, focus the next generation. Yeah, you
want you want to focus on like reducing the amount
of suffering the next generation will create in the world.
Have you considered like climate change?

Speaker 11 (01:37:15):
Yeah? Yeah, I also think that on a broader level, right,
I think it's good to be questioned some of the
intuitions that we may have, you know, even if they're
our deepest moral intuitions. I think it's good to maybe
consider them or to be thoughtful about them. But also,
as the incent Encyclopedia of Philosophy argues, if a theory

(01:37:39):
implies that the creation of all human life is a
moral mistake, that conclusion itself might be reason to doubt
the theory. This is something called the repugnant conclusion objection.
I mean, because it's it's repugnant. It's intuitively repugnant to
most people to hear that existence is a mistake. Nobody

(01:38:01):
should be alive.

Speaker 7 (01:38:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 13 (01:38:03):
I was like, well, no, absolutely not.

Speaker 11 (01:38:07):
Get your shit worked out exactly.

Speaker 13 (01:38:10):
Betray to logic here, not great.

Speaker 11 (01:38:12):
Like you were saying, Yeah, there'll be a lot of
things in the world that suck right now that cause suffering,
and there's a lot of present joy is alongside that
present suffering. But there's also the value to be had
in that potential joy. You know, the potential possibilities have value.
If potential suffering has value, potential joys should also have value.

(01:38:35):
The potential of creating a batter world, each new child
bringing the potential for greater love, for incredible arts and crafts,
for scientific breakthrough, is for reshaping the world in a
positive direction. You know, the potential for the unique goods
that each individual life can bring, I believe justifies the

(01:38:57):
risk of suffering because the world without those future goods
would be worse than a world with them. And yes,
humanity can cause harm. Where we are also capable of
extraordinary good we can change, we can reduce suffering over time,
new generations are going to be part of that solution,

(01:39:18):
I will say, though two anti nationalists credit. One of
the points of the Internet and Psychlopedia of Philosophy points
out is that the debate of what anti natialism is theoretical.
You know, this is stuffy philosophers sitting around exchanging notes
and writing books. Right, Most of its advocates are not

(01:39:39):
actually putting forward policies that are restricting people's ability to
create life. But the same cannot be said for the
other side of the coin, the pro natalists. Yep. So,

(01:40:02):
in broad terms, pronatalism or just natalism is the belief
that reproduction is a societal good or even the society
needs more children. This movement is getting louder and louder
these days. It's shaping policy debates in the US, in Europe,
in Asia and beyond, because, as I mentioned in the
previous episode, fertility rates are falling almost everywhere. Countries like

(01:40:25):
South Korea, Italy, Japan, and the US are seeing fewer
booths than needed to sustain their current populations. So you're
going to be seeing pronatalism in various forms, shown up
in politics and even in tech circles, especially in those
ways texicles. Now, pronatalism is a broad umbrella. You know,
you can have the mild position of supporting families with policies,

(01:40:47):
and most people are not opposed to that, but you
also have the strong pronatalist stands which is actually urging
or incentivizing or mandating both for cultural, economic, or ideological reasons.
Pronatalism was motivated by a few different reasons. You know,
there's the economic anxiety of a shrink in population meaning

(01:41:08):
fewer workers, more retirees, and strained pension systems. There's a
nationalistic argument of worries about cultural continuity which tend to
tita into the reactionary directions, and the pronatalism today is
very much political as a result. In the US, Republicans
have been leaning into it, framing the low booth rates

(01:41:29):
as a national crisis. And in Europe you have countries
like Hungary under Victor Auburn which have made pronatalism a
signature policy. It's very in effectiveness. The religious motivations of
pronatalism are also pretty interesting. You know, you have the
being fruitful and multiply directive in the Bible, which some
take as far as the quiver full movement, which is

(01:41:52):
the whole thing about having children by like the dozen
no more.

Speaker 13 (01:41:57):
Yeah.

Speaker 11 (01:41:58):
Then you have the tech elite circles pronatalism because it
connected with the ideas of human progress. One of the
prontalists who most famously practices what he preaches mostly for
worse is he on Musk. Yep, right, he's He's a
big Nazi about it. For one, because of us, we'll

(01:42:18):
worry about white facility rates but he also thinks that
globoth rates as a whole or a bigger threat than
climate change. So I mean it seems like he's single
handedly trying to fix that with his seed is spreading. Yeah,
is his assembly line of children with the accompanying product
barcodes for names, And I just feel bad for them, honestly,

(01:42:42):
to have that as a father.

Speaker 13 (01:42:44):
No, it sucks. Yeah, it's not great.

Speaker 7 (01:42:47):
It's not good.

Speaker 11 (01:42:48):
And so he and his billionairem bodies of the belief
that civilization will collapse if we don't make more babies.
Silicon Valley circles a fund in pronatalist think tanks and
embryo optimization projects. A lot of policies are also coming
out of the pronates list camp. Unlike the anti natalists historically,
countries like the Soviet Union hand their off medals like

(01:43:11):
Mother Heroine for women with large families, and the Russia
of today has revived similar awards recently, alongside like I
mentioned in the previous episode, banning anti natalist propaganda. Now
some countries are offering tax incentives for booths and even
proposing baby bonuses of thousands of dollars paid for each booth.

(01:43:32):
Thousands of dollars per birth is kind of a spit
in the face because that's not even going to last
the first couple months of a child being born. Let's
be real, children are extremely expensive.

Speaker 13 (01:43:43):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 11 (01:43:44):
Proniceists also tend to push things like expanded family benefits,
child allowances or holes and subsidies for pearents. These, I
would say, are the more liberal minded or progressive minded
pronac lists as much as you can be a progressive
and a pronac list, because they actually considering the ways
that they can make actually bearing children and raising children

(01:44:06):
a bit easier for the people who have to do it.
That sort of support also includes things like expanding IVF access,
subsidized and fertility treatments, you know, improving embryo screening, that
sort of thing. Places like Scandinavia also have generous leave policies,
which are often cited as a model of soft pronatalism
because it makes it easier for people to balance work

(01:44:29):
and child. Are it. But you don't tend to hear
these policies coming out of the much louder pronatalist conservative camp. Right,
What do you get from them and from their pronatalism
tends to be restrictions and women restrictions and abortion and
body autonomy policies that conflict with the goals of reproductive
justice and gender equality, sometimes putting women's health at risk.

(01:44:53):
And also conservatives push lots of narrative with their pronatalism,
large families, sense of valories. They frame childbearing as a
civic duty. You know, they appeal to legacy and culture
and identity when you get into that white supremacist camp,
and you also get the whole eugenics of it, you know,
the tech elite, praiselest wing. They're pushing for things like

(01:45:15):
gene editing, embryo selection, and the sort of stuff that
Musk is talking about with his racial replacement anxieties. In
any case, the effectiveness of even the few positive policies
has been pretty mixed. Countries have tried pumping billions into subsidies,
and often fertility rates have barely budged deep structural issues

(01:45:39):
like the cost of living, cultural norms around gender, career paths,
health concerns. All these often ugwe the incentives of a
couple of thousand dollars or extended opportunity leaves. You know,
if people don't want to have babies, they're not gonna
have babies. If they're not confident in their ability to
have children raising environment that they feel is best for them,

(01:46:03):
they're not going to have children. You know, people, more
than ever have that choice. And unfortunately, a lot of
the pronatalist policies don't care about making child bearing easier,
you know, easing the path to make that choice. They
just want to pressure people to have children. Yep, you know,
the loose straight back to massogyny, a reaction against women's freedom,

(01:46:26):
pushing them back into the kitchen, pushing them back into
that subservient position in society. So, after looking at both sides, right,
you have the anti natalists and the pronatalists. Don't create
life to avoid suffering, or you must create life to
preserve society. I guess you could call me a centrist.
The anti natalists repulse me, and the pronatalists equally repulse me.

(01:46:52):
You know, I'm wary of anyone claiming that you must
have children or you must not have children. I'm weary
of a world where these kinds of choices are coerced
by others. You know, as an anarchist, I'm a firm
believer in autronomy, in personal freedom and the ability to
decide one's own life. That's what matters to me. You know,
I don't intend to have children myself. I do like

(01:47:13):
children a lot. I was once a child myself, and
I look forward to being an uncle, a godfather and
all that. But that's my choice. You know, Let your
choice be your choice and my choice be my choice.
Make choices freely, resist the pressure from either camp, and
keep the agency intact. That's all I have to say
on it.

Speaker 13 (01:47:32):
Honestly, Yeah, I mean honestly, that covers my stuff.

Speaker 5 (01:47:34):
I was gonna say so.

Speaker 11 (01:47:36):
Yeah, I mean with that if speaking rapid Yeah, all
power to all the people. This has been It could
happen here, Peace.

Speaker 22 (01:47:59):
Hello, and welcome back to it could happen here. I
am your occasional host, Molly Conger, and today I have
exactly the kind of story you probably expect when you
hear my voice on this feed. A white nationalist has
gone and done something we all wish that he was
not doing. If you listen to my show Weird Little Guys,

(01:48:21):
you already know a little bit about this particular guy.
On that show, I talk about white nationalists, neo Nazis,
right wing extremists, aspiring terrorists, things of that nature. My
domain is mostly guys you've never heard of because they
failed to live up to their goal of becoming the
next Hitler or whatever. It's funnier than it sounds, I swear,

(01:48:45):
But unfortunately for all of us, sometimes one of those
guys breaches containment. The guy we're talking about today wants
to be more than just one of the weird little
guys trying to make a name for himself on the
fringes of the white nationalist movement. He wants to be
a congressman. He's trying to make himself everybody's problem, and

(01:49:09):
that makes him part of what is happening here. Back
in August, Representative Nancy Mace announced that she wouldn't seek
re election in South Carolina's first congressional district and she
would instead focus on making a run for governor. And
that announcement opened the floodgates. All but one of the

(01:49:30):
ten Republicans vying for the nomination to replace her filed
their paperwork after the announcement. I don't pay a ton
of attention to this sort of thing. It's not really
my wheelhouse. But last month a man named Tyler Dikes
joined the race, filing paperwork as a congressional candidate in
Mace's district. Now, like I said, it's a crowded field.

(01:49:54):
There are ten people in this primary, and it's Nancy
Mace's district, So being a little bit of a conspiracy
theorist with an extremely right wing policy platform doesn't really
set you apart. They all kind of blend together most years.
I probably couldn't tell you a whole lot about every
primary candidate in my own district, let alone won two

(01:50:17):
states away. So on the surface, he's just another carbon
copy America first zelot trying to fit this particular mold.
He's created an image for his campaign that's not unlike
Nancy Mace's, and I guess that makes sense, right. These
people voted for her, so maybe that's what works here.

(01:50:40):
Tyler Diykes's campaign website is pretty similar to Nancy Mace's.
They both emphasize their personal connection to military service. Nancy
Mace graduated from the Citadel Military College and Tyler Diykes
features photos of himself and his Marine Corps dress blues.
They both describe themselves as entrepreneurs and business owners, and

(01:51:03):
they both hate immigrants so much that their lust for
mass deportation isn't even confined only to the pages devoted
to their position on the issue. It's in their candidate biographies,
and they frame themselves as fighters. There's a lot of
fight based language, fighting for America, fighting for Christ, and

(01:51:25):
they both really position their devotion to God as something
they have to fight for and fight against the christ
hating whardes on the left to keep like this is
something someone's trying to take from them. Their platforms are
pretty similar to America First, South Carolina first, law and order,

(01:51:48):
tough on crime, deport millions of people. Nancy Mace is
running for governor on eliminating the state income tax and
if he gets to Congress, Tyler Diyke says he wants
to slash taxes two but of the five main policy
ideas on his congressional campaign website, the one that's about
taxes the tax that he will cut as a congressman.

(01:52:09):
He wrote that he will end property taxes. Now, regardless
of how you feel about property taxes, those are imposed
by your state and local government. The federal government doesn't
tax your property. So I guess he's got that Republican
tax cut spirit. But he's a little confused, but overall

(01:52:33):
just another far right America First candidate trying to elbow
his way into this attention economy. It's distasteful, it's bigoted,
it's chrysto fascist, enophobic, poorly articulated, economically unsound, but it's
not unique or interesting. These guys are a dime a dozen,
and they'll mostly be gone by the time the primaries end.

(01:52:55):
But there is one really weird thing about Tyler's campaign messaging.
He keeps bringing up that he's not a Nazi. He
wants you to know that no one's asking him this.
He's bringing it up preemptively. I am not a Nazi.
Letters that he mailed to the homes of hundreds of

(01:53:18):
voters in his district are starting to raise questions he
thinks are already answered in those letters.

Speaker 11 (01:53:24):
And here's the thing.

Speaker 5 (01:53:25):
They still call me a Nazi to this lick.

Speaker 21 (01:53:26):
They still random me is all these evil, horrific things.
But let me tell you this what makes me a Nazi.
I love Christ, I love God. I love my country.
I love my state, my family, and my community and
the entirety of the Low Country area. And that's why
I live here.

Speaker 14 (01:53:46):
Because I love you so much.

Speaker 21 (01:53:49):
So does that make me a Nazi? Does love in
your family? Does loving God? Does love in your country?
Does that make you a Nazi? That makes you a nazi? Sophet?

Speaker 22 (01:54:00):
Oh, wow, he's just another tragic victim of cancel culture.
He's being attacked by the woke mobs who hate good
Christian men and that's why they're calling him nazi.

Speaker 4 (01:54:13):
Right?

Speaker 22 (01:54:14):
Is there another reason that this keeps coming up? Or
is it just because he loves his family so much?

Speaker 13 (01:54:21):
So it's quite interesting.

Speaker 5 (01:54:22):
You know, my experience is anily six.

Speaker 23 (01:54:24):
For example, my brand is the neo Nazi domestic terrorists
because hwave.

Speaker 22 (01:54:29):
Oh, it's not just because he loves his family. It's
because he's a peaceful, patriotic supporter of Donald Trump who
visited the Capitol Building and the communists who run the
mainstream media are unfairly showing a photograph of him where
he was simply waving hello to a friend. And that's
why they're calling him nazi because he loves America too

(01:54:52):
much and he waved Helloa to a friend while on
a sightseeing trip to the Capitol Building. It probably won't
surprise you to know that that is not the whole story.
He's getting closer. It's definitely a little bit more about
what specifically he was doing with his right arm at
the top of the east stairs of the Capitol Building

(01:55:12):
a little after two pm on January sixth, twenty twenty one.
It's more about that than it is about his love
of his family. He's getting warmer.

Speaker 6 (01:55:34):
See.

Speaker 22 (01:55:35):
The reason he keeps bringing up that he doesn't want
to be called a Nazi is because there are Nazi allegations.
But these allegations aren't just lies from the evil left
wing media. It's something he's been asked about by the
FBI and by the DOJ, and the Marine Corps and

(01:55:57):
police in multiple jurisdictions across several states. A lot of
people are asking him about the Nazi thing, So it
makes sense that he'd want to get out ahead of
it and assure the voters that there's a good explanation
when he brings up that innocent wave that's being taken
out of context to smear him as a Nazi. He's

(01:56:19):
talking about a photograph, a particular photograph and one of
many that federal prosecutors included in their sentencing memorandum. After
Tyler Dykes accepted a plea agreement in federal court. He
pleaded guilty to two counts of assaulting an officer during
the breach of the Capitol on January sixth, twenty twenty one.
In exchange for his cooperation, the government dropped the other

(01:56:42):
eight counts on the indictment. So in that sentencing memorandum,
there's a picture. It's a still frame that was taken
from a video, but obviously you can't put a video
on paper, so it's just a still frame, and it
shows a mass of people making their way up the
east steps of the Capitol Building on the afternoon of

(01:57:02):
January sixth. Whoever's taking the video was standing at the
bottom of the stairs, so you're just seeing the backs
of the people in this crowd who are walking up
the stairs, except for the figure in the center. In
the center of the picture, at the top of the stairs,
a very tall man in a black jacket and a
gray mask has turned around so he's facing the plaza below,

(01:57:27):
and he's sort of squared up facing down the stairs,
and his right arm is completely extended at about a
forty five degree angle elbow straight wrists, straight, fingers together.
The government's caption reads still from video showing Dikes performing

(01:57:47):
what appears to be the see Kyle's salute after he
arrives on the landing in front of the East Rotunda doors.
He maintains that he was waving to a friend. For
what it's worth, I've seen a lot of these waves,
and I know what it looks like to me, and
regardless of what it looks like to you in this photograph,

(01:58:08):
I have a video of him doing the exact same
wave at a Nazi rally, so it's not just a picture.
He only served three of the fifty seven months he
was sentenced to spend in prison before he was released
in January of twenty twenty five as a result of
Trump's blanket pardons for the nearly sixteen hundred January sixth defendants.

(01:58:30):
But that's not the issue here. He's not ashamed of
being a January sixth defendant. That's a badge of honor.
That's not a problem. If he can spin this Nazi
thing into a story that reinforces this narrative of brave
January sixth patriots who are being persecuted by communists and

(01:58:50):
liberals and the woke mob, it stops being a problem
for the people whose attention and votes and donations he wants.
His story is pretty simple. All the people calling him
a Nazi are lying. They're taking a single photograph out
of context. It's not a Nazi salute, it's a wave.

(01:59:11):
And all of this, all of this Nazi talk, it's
all just about this one single incident, this one picture,
this one wave, and the government, the government is preventing
him from proving that.

Speaker 23 (01:59:23):
To you, and then the honorable judge that I had
denied me being able to get that evidence and being
able to show that people, and so a lot of
these people, unfortunately, because of a lot of the news
media and because of the outforts of the Biden administration,
they see me as an enemy and as a terrorist.

Speaker 22 (01:59:39):
That's Tyler Dyke's in mid October of this year telling
a local TV news crew in Hiltonhead that the media
is complicit in spreading these lies the government told about
him in court. When he was interviewed last month by
a conspiracy theorist and right wing podcaster named Anne Vandersteele,
she was on his side, She was earnest, and she

(01:59:59):
won to get to the bottom of this. He told
her that the government's entire case was lie after lie,
and there's proof that he never did any of those
things on January sixth. And she's excited to hear this,
and she wants to see these videos because she would
love to see proof that the government is persecuting our
brave January sixth patriots. But there's one little problem.

Speaker 5 (02:00:22):
Well, you know, that's a very funny thing.

Speaker 10 (02:00:24):
The honorable judge in my case actually put out a
gaggle order banning me from being able to have any
of the discovery evidence for me to be able to
defend myself from the force that is in the dockets.

Speaker 22 (02:00:38):
Oh, it's in the dockets. It's in the dockets. Phenomenal.
I can look at the dockets. We can look at
that together. That's easy. And I do see here that
there is a protective order filed in this case. Shortly
after he was first arrested, the judge entered an order
prohibiting the public dissemination of certain discovery materials. If you

(02:00:59):
look at enough J six cases, this kind of protective
order was almost universal. The government didn't want to publicly
release stuff like the names of confidential informants, security footage
from inside certain secure government areas, personal information about witnesses,
just a laundry list of kinds of evidence that was

(02:01:20):
likely to be produced in these cases that would be sensitive.
So they're not saying they can't turn it over to
the defense in discovery. They're just saying this stays between us, right,
This doesn't get released to the public. This was normal
and it was routine, and it was agreed to by
everyone involved. The defense council agreed to this. So okay,

(02:01:43):
off to a good start. I do see a protective
order on the docket. But if you skip down a
year down to the bottom of the docket, to the
end of the case. After the guilty plea, the government
filed their exhibit list for the sentencing hearing, and in
that document, the federal prosecutor wrote, the government does not
object to any photo or video evidence being released.

Speaker 8 (02:02:07):
To the public.

Speaker 22 (02:02:08):
So of the exhibits they planned to show in court
at sentencing, they said, it's okay if everyone sees these,
the media can have these. And so the judge in
turn asked defense counsel how they felt about that, and
the defense replied, defendant Tyler Bradley Dyke's by and through
his attorneys, does not object to the video and photo

(02:02:30):
evidence identified and the government's noticed ECF number forty four
being made publicly available. Defendant does subject to any public
disclosure of his military records identified in Exhibit nineteen, and
so the judge signed an order the exhibits that the
government identified for the sentencing hearing, which the file names

(02:02:51):
are in that document. It includes the video of the wave,
the video of him grabbing the policeman's shield, the things
he's saying he can't get yet. Based on the file names,
those videos can absolutely be requested from the court. These
aren't under seal. There's not a gag order. He can
request these, and I think he should do that. There

(02:03:14):
are a lot of videos on that exhibit list, and
I'm sure people would like to decide for themselves if
he's describing them faithfully. The only exhibit on that list

(02:03:34):
for the defense objected to making publicly available, the only
one that remains sealed and isn't available for public access,
are his military records. Those military records are specifically the
ones related to the other than honorable discharge he received
from the Marines. See those campaign flyers, the ones he

(02:03:56):
was mailing to people's houses. They're all signed at the
bottom Tyler Dykes, US Marine Corps veteran business owner, pardoned
J six's patriot On November tenth, the Marine Corps birthday.
He posted a photo of himself in his dress blues
on the campaign's Instagram account. Being a Marine Corps veteran
is as big a part of his campaign identity as

(02:04:20):
talking about how he's not a Nazi. These are kind
of the top two things. He's a Marine, and he
really wants you to know that Nazi stuff isn't true.
And he was a Marine. That's true. He definitely was
in the Marine Corps. But those military records that he
doesn't want released would really undermine his narrative about being

(02:04:43):
a proud, honorable veteran who definitely isn't a Nazi, because
they would show that he received an other than honorable
discharge for participating in prohibited extremist activity on November eighth,
twenty twenty. And that's in the file. I know that
specifically is in that sealed file because in other documents

(02:05:06):
that refer to it, that's all it says. I don't
know what else is in that record. All I know
for sure is that the stated reason for his other
than honorable discharge is something that happened on November eighth,
twenty twenty. Now, luckily for us, I know that on
November eighth, twenty twenty, a security camera in Sumter County,

(02:05:30):
South Carolina recorded footage of two men. One of the
men looked exactly like Tyler Diykes. Even his father had
to agree it kind of did. And the men were
putting up flyers with swastikas on them outside local businesses.
I don't know if his military discharge records include anything else.

(02:05:52):
Was it really just the flyers, just the one time
with the swastika flyers and that was it. I don't
know if the military was a where that he'd been
attending things like a paramilitary training weekend at a compound
in Michigan hosted by members of the neo Nazi group
the Base. I don't know if there's a memo in
there about the time in January of twenty nineteen that

(02:06:14):
an FBI agent from the Joint Terrorism Task Force questioned
him about his possible connections to domestic extremist groups. I
don't know if the Marine Corps knew that he was
one of just a handful of white nationalists who attended
the Unite the Right to the flop of a Nazi
rally held in Washington, d C. In twenty eighteen to

(02:06:36):
commemorate the deadly rally that had happened a year earlier,
and along that same line of thought. I don't know
if the Marine Corps knew back then the Tyler Dykes
had attended the Unite the Right rally in Charlesville in
twenty seventeen. I don't know if they saw the videos
of him marching with a tiki torch or the videos
of him punching wildly at counter protesters that he'd helped

(02:06:57):
trap in that sea of flames. And with the exception
of the United the Right rally in twenty seventeen, which
was before he enlisted, all of the rest of that
conduct occurred while Tyler Dykes was a Marine. He went
to Nazi rallies, he joined Nazi groups, he put up
Nazi flyers, he went to Nazi training camps to prepare

(02:07:19):
for the race war, and he fought his way into
the Capitol Building on January sixth. So, okay, yeah, he
was a United States Marine. He can post that picture
in his uniform on his campaign website. I don't care
I'm not personally offended about him being a stain on
the honor of the US military or whatever, but I

(02:07:41):
think a lot of voters would feel like this isn't
quite honest. By the time Tyler Dykes was arrested in
twenty twenty three and extradited back to Virginia to face
charges for menacing those counter protesters with a lit torch,
he'd already been kicked out of the Marines. He had
apparently hidden that from his parents, and there was a

(02:08:02):
lot they didn't know about their son. The day he
was arrested in twenty twenty three, he'd been out with
other members of a group called the Southern Son's Active Club,
a sort of white supremacist fight club for friendless young men.
They were trying to hang Nazi banners from a highway overpass,
but Tyler Dykes was bitten by a dog and had

(02:08:22):
to go to the hospital instead. He eventually pleaded guilty
to that felony charge in Almarle County, Virginia, related to
the torch march, and he spent a few months in
the local jail. On the day he was supposed to
go home, he was picked up by a federal Marshal.
The DOJ had waited until the last day of his
sentence here to unseal the charges against him for January sixth,

(02:08:47):
and after that he spent a year out on pre
trial bond in that case. And then he eventually pleaded
guilty to those charges in the summer of twenty twenty four,
and he finally reported to federal prison in October of
twenty twenty four to be there for almost five years,
but he was released a few months later in January
of this year after receiving a federal pardon, and now

(02:09:12):
he wants to go back to the Capitol Building, not
as a rioter this time, but as a congressman. The
campaign is barely a month old. He's using a right
wing crowdfunding site for campaign donations, so you can see
that he hasn't cracked two hundred dollars yet. The only
photo of his launch party is so tightly cropped that

(02:09:33):
you can only see the candidate himself standing in an
empty field in a public park. I don't think there's
a lot of grassroots excitement for Tyler Diykes in South
Carolina's first district. But if he does keep making the rounds,
and if he ever ends up in front of a
real reporter, I hope they'll ask him why doesn't he
just produce those exhibits. The videos he's claiming are being

(02:09:56):
kept from him under seal aren't. And if he so
against any exhibits being held back from the court of
public opinion, he could go ahead and release the one
he actually has in his own possession, the only one
that is sealed. He has his own discharge records show
him to us. I'm dying to know how many of

(02:10:19):
those Nazi rallies the Marine Corps knew about before they
finally kicked him out. If you're interested in hearing more
about this particular weird little Guy, there are two episodes
available right now over on the Weird Little Guy's feed.
Let's say Cool Zone Media show you can listen to
wherever you get your podcasts. If you're in the Charleston area,
or more importantly, if your conservative boomer parents are, it

(02:10:42):
can't hurt to let folks know that one of your
local candidates isn't being entirely forthcoming about why people are
calling him a Nazi and wherever your conservative parents live.
Maybe this is a useful example of the kind of
thing you might find when you start at least scratching
the surface of these America First candidates.

Speaker 2 (02:11:18):
All right, everybody, this is an emergency episode of it
could happen here. We're dropping everything else for the most
important breaking news in the country. Andy Dick has overdosed
in public in the city of Los Angeles. Thankfully, in
preparation for this, we've had our entire team deployed to
the areas around Andy Dick's home. James, do you have

(02:11:39):
any updates on the situation.

Speaker 24 (02:11:41):
No, I'm not sure who Andy Dick is. It's just
like a public figure in a bout.

Speaker 2 (02:11:45):
I couldn't planned this out better. Andy Dick is America's
sweetheart and he's going through some troubled times. But it's okay.
They narcandem in public. No, it's Andy Dick's fault. This
is entirely on Andy Dick. Ye on the person who
had not Kerry Narkan.

Speaker 21 (02:12:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:12:02):
No, one should never feel sorry for Andy Dick. I
feel bad for the narcan.

Speaker 4 (02:12:07):
This is it could happen here. Executive Disorder, our weekly
newscast covering what's happening in the White House, the crumbling world,
and Andy Dick. I'm Garrison Davis. This episode, I'm joined
by do.

Speaker 25 (02:12:19):
We've refer to someone the first time we only used
the last name Garrison.

Speaker 4 (02:12:22):
Yeah, I'm joined by being James Shout, Robert Evans, and
Sophy Lechter. We are covering the week of December fourth,
December tenth.

Speaker 2 (02:12:31):
So one of the big stories of the last week
or so is something that would seem would be unequivocally
a bad thing in any other political climate, which is
Netflix buying Warner Brothers and contributing to the shrinking ever
further of like America's like the number of people who
actually own all of the media that Americans consume.

Speaker 4 (02:12:51):
Yeah, monopolization is obviously bad.

Speaker 2 (02:12:53):
But in this case, I mean it's it's it's bad
that on that end, it's probably better that Netflix buy
it than Paramount. Yes, so I guess I'm like, well, okay,
it's gonna be work creditor.

Speaker 13 (02:13:03):
Versus alien situation.

Speaker 4 (02:13:05):
It's a really a weird situation, right, because a lot
of people are really dooming about you know, Netflix acquiring
Warner Brothers and what that'll mean for like, you know,
art and the you know, theatrical model of film distribution,
and then not realizing that Paramount's counterbid based on Saudi money. Yeah,
would place Warner Brothers in the control of one of

(02:13:28):
the most Trump aligned like media enterprises in the United States,
right now, Yeah.

Speaker 13 (02:13:33):
Yeah, So let's let's let's roll back a second and
look at what is actually going on here. And it's
actually very important to note this is being recorded on Wednesdays,
Zeber tenth. This whole situation is changing extremely quickly. There
could be some another unhinged thing could have happened by
the time you're listening to this. But the basics here
is that Paramount which was recently acquired by sky Dance,

(02:13:56):
Which is.

Speaker 4 (02:13:57):
Which direction did that acquisition go?

Speaker 13 (02:13:59):
I mean, technically speaking was a merger, but it was
really but it was Skydance taking control of Paramount. Skydance
had been run by Larry Ellison's son, David Ellison.

Speaker 5 (02:14:09):
David.

Speaker 13 (02:14:10):
Yeah. So and this is this is this is this
is the regime that sort of imposed Barry Weiss on CBS,
which has become increasingly right wing under her quote unquote leadership.
We're going to do a full episode about this, I
think on Monday.

Speaker 4 (02:14:24):
We're gonna be tuning into the Charlie Kirka Erica kirktown
Hall on CBS this Saturday.

Speaker 13 (02:14:30):
Oh God, they can't make me. I will have recorded
this episode before they did this. I'm going to be
tuning in because it looks phenomenal, so it's worth putting out.
So Larry Ellison, who is the father of David Ellison,
is one of the most terrifying of all of the
right wing billionaires. Yeah, he's kind of more quiet than
someone like Andresen or Elon Musk about being a unhinged

(02:14:54):
right wing fanatic. But he's one of Trust's biggest supporters.
He has a whole thing about how everyone's inevitably going
to be under total cont surveillalists that will make everyone
behave Well, we'll cover this more later, but the Ellison's
the father son Ellison duo and paramounts backed by the Saudis,
Abu Dhabi and Catter.

Speaker 2 (02:15:11):
They want Bugs Bunny desperately because he keeps My sources
are saying he keeps pranking Mohammed Ben Salmon.

Speaker 4 (02:15:17):
By cross dressing. Yeah, and it's really.

Speaker 2 (02:15:19):
Yeah, the entire Saudi military is incapable of stopping bugs Bunny,
I mean, bet for taking him down.

Speaker 4 (02:15:26):
Well, I think what's what's an interesting fact in these
various bids for control of Warner Brothers. The Netflix deal
does not include CNN. The Paramount deal does.

Speaker 13 (02:15:38):
Yeah, before we get intoff, should we should say what
Paramount is doing now, which is Paramounts on Monday began
to try to just do a hostile takeover by just
straight up buying out the shares at what they're claiming
is the higher share price. There's a whole lot of
complicated stuff yeah about share pricing here that you don't
really care about.

Speaker 2 (02:15:56):
And there have been so many dishonest headlines, like one
being like Paramount lost the bid by just eventy five
cents and seventy five cents to share. That's like hundreds
and hundreds of millions of dollars.

Speaker 13 (02:16:03):
Gags, And that's not even it's it's all, it's all ridiculous. Yeah,
the Wall Street Journal has been getting a lot of
the information about this. We've gotten to a point on
Wednesday where investors are going to the Wall Street Journal
and being like, there's gonna be a bidding war. There's
gonna be a bidding war. But the Wall Street Journal
points out, and I think this is an interesting thing
here that's important to say, these hostile takeover attempts almost

(02:16:24):
never work. It's like thirty percent of the time. Yeah,
and it's like sub thirty percent that these that these
things kind of work. But the other card that the
father's son Ellison duo have is claiming that Trump is
more likely to back Paramount's buyout than the Netflix one
because Trump can sort of stop this through anti trust yeah,

(02:16:45):
or quote unquote anti trust stuff. Per Axios, Jared Kushner's
consultancy firm is part of Paramount's buyout plan, and per
Wall Street Journal, David Ellison met with TRUP with Trump
administration officials in quote recent days, yeah, and has offered
to you know this this comes back to what Garrison
was saying about CNN being part about the part of

(02:17:05):
this package they have been offering to effectively do to
CNA what they did to CBS, which is put it
under the control of the right wing fanatic and turn
it into a propaganda pure propaganda outlet. This is you know,
obviously corruption of a sort of mind blowing yeah, yeah,
and a broad to the fact that like our quote
unquote free press is literally just for sale. Amazingly, this

(02:17:28):
is not this doesn't seem to be working.

Speaker 4 (02:17:30):
No, I mean, and Trump has spoken positively about Netflix
and the Netflix CEO the past two days.

Speaker 13 (02:17:36):
But he's also speaking negatively about both of them.

Speaker 2 (02:17:39):
Yeah, both the Netflix's negatively about Ellison recently. And there's
a there's a quote from an article I found uh
in the Wall Street Journal. Trump is so far avoided
publicly backing a bitterer. None of them are particularly great
friends of mine, he said at a White House round
table on Monday. A person close to Trump said the
President will want Paramount and Netflix to compete for his
approval of a deal, which does sound very Trump.

Speaker 13 (02:18:02):
Yeah, and apparently the specific think he's mad at Paramount
about is for having mergery Taylor Creen on CBSS.

Speaker 4 (02:18:09):
Yeah funny.

Speaker 2 (02:18:10):
Oh, he's so really funny.

Speaker 13 (02:18:12):
There is no amount of sort of ass kissing that
you can do to actually make Trump consistently be on
your side. It's really hideous. This is all disgusting.

Speaker 4 (02:18:20):
Unless unless you give him the FIFO World Peace Prize trophy.

Speaker 2 (02:18:25):
Yeah, he'll die for FIFA now. Yeah, can I just
say fuck me? He's actually renaming American football to soccer.

Speaker 11 (02:18:33):
God.

Speaker 4 (02:18:34):
I love the FIFA trophy because it looks disgusting trophy.

Speaker 2 (02:18:39):
Yes, I have fifteen minutes on that.

Speaker 4 (02:18:43):
It's just all all those hands grasping that ball.

Speaker 13 (02:18:46):
Ohh my god.

Speaker 21 (02:18:47):
Yeah.

Speaker 25 (02:18:47):
Really genuinely one of the one of the most impressive
actors sports sick fantasy since nineteen thirty three.

Speaker 4 (02:18:54):
But but yeah, it doesn't seem like Trump is as
keen to back Paramount's bit as what some of the
Paramount people thought he might be. The Netflix deal might
just end up actually going through.

Speaker 13 (02:19:07):
Yeah, yeah, and we'll see about this. This is all
gonna change probably by the time you're reading this or
listening to this. That's that's the one that you do.
But it's so cool that we live in an economy
where your two options are Netflix destroys Film Forever and
the Nazis gained control of CNN. It's great, great system. Yeah, no, no, no, no.

Speaker 4 (02:19:28):
Notes, And what what would really be damaging if if
Paramount's able to buy Warner Brothers is that then they
would be in charge of Nathan Fielder's rehearsal, which which
does which does target the fascistic Paramount regime. Yeah, James,
what's some what's some small news stories we can uh,
we can go with here before our first break.

Speaker 25 (02:19:49):
Yeah, okay, I'm operating on a couple of computers here,
so this is gonna I'm gonna have to work around
some constraints.

Speaker 4 (02:19:56):
Fam good thing you're wearing your five eleven uniform to
help maintain the discipline necessary.

Speaker 5 (02:20:01):
Girls.

Speaker 25 (02:20:02):
And this is not five eleven, my friend, this is
five dot one dot one. Yeah, you can all get
this ship outside of Syria and Iraq, and I fucking
love it.

Speaker 2 (02:20:10):
Yeah yeah. I still have my knockoff Timberland shirt which
just says fixing gand and looks honestly, the label looks
like an AI slop tried to put the Timberland logo.
It's amazing.

Speaker 25 (02:20:20):
My favorite is the one that just says sixteen five
plus eleven. I love fake five eleven.

Speaker 24 (02:20:26):
Shit.

Speaker 25 (02:20:26):
If you have fake five eleven ship, I have a
collection of it. Send it to me. I will retire
and make a museum one day. I cannot get enough
of it. I love that it started as a rock
climbing brand in New Smite and now it is a
lifestyle brand in Syria.

Speaker 24 (02:20:39):
It's perfect.

Speaker 2 (02:20:40):
I tell you, I missed my Adodus tracksuit that I got.

Speaker 24 (02:20:43):
A I got some I got some merle boots as well.
Yeah I love that ship.

Speaker 25 (02:20:50):
I got a fake Gerban knife graber that that yeah.

Speaker 24 (02:20:57):
Yeah, bullshit knives. Yeah, one of my.

Speaker 13 (02:21:02):
Face putting out women's hats very soon.

Speaker 24 (02:21:05):
Yeah yeah.

Speaker 25 (02:21:06):
Okay, let's talk about the news. So this is a
fun one. Schroding does permit, We're going to call it.
In Pensacola, somebody participating in Food not Bombs was arrested
Following that, at a press conference, the city announced that
a person was arrested for being in a park too late, right,
I guess in Florida, of course, yeah, this is this
is the most serious crime, yes, and also giving food

(02:21:28):
to poor people, which is probably like a felony in Florida.
So the city then announced issue have been resolved because
there had been there was a permit issued to Food
not Bombs for them to.

Speaker 24 (02:21:39):
Be in the park late and give people food.

Speaker 25 (02:21:42):
Food not Bombs did not apply for the permit, nor
do they want the permit, right, there's no kind of
That's not how Food on Bombs works. Food not Bombs
is an is an action, not an entity, right like
it is a protest action. The city is now reviewing
if the permit is releasable under public records law, so
someone can find out who attempted to white Knight food

(02:22:03):
not bombs.

Speaker 10 (02:22:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 25 (02:22:06):
Some of the suggestions is as a guy who runs
some kind of we will cooperate with the cops to
get people off fentanyl charity, which uses some incredible AI
imagery on its Instagram page.

Speaker 2 (02:22:17):
Yeah, that sounds good.

Speaker 25 (02:22:18):
Yeah, so I will keep you updated on this, this
Florida story.

Speaker 2 (02:22:22):
Yeah, thanks for that.

Speaker 7 (02:22:23):
James.

Speaker 25 (02:22:24):
In the Oregon versus Trump case regarding National Guard deployment,
Judge J. Biby, not normally a guy associated with WOKE,
a George W. Bush appointee, has penned an extensive opinion
I think of sixty four pages on the domestic violence
Clause at the Constitution and how it ought to restrain
the use of the Guard. So it's like a different
argument than we've seen previously, right in discussions about the

(02:22:46):
National Guards, because.

Speaker 4 (02:22:47):
Yeah, I've read the other judge opinion pieces, but not
this one.

Speaker 24 (02:22:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 25 (02:22:53):
So Biby's been been in it for a while, and ye,
like he's been someone who has previously not really been
in a post of what I might see as of
overreach in terms of state power and violence.

Speaker 24 (02:23:04):
But yeah, using this.

Speaker 25 (02:23:05):
This is a different close at a constitution, right, So
it's now moving along in that discussion. Yesterday as we're
recording this, so that would be on Tuesday. At the
ninth the Democrats held they buy cameral shadow quote unquote
shadow hearing on the detention of US citizens by DHS
that doesn't really have the power to do much. And
I have not had time to listen to the entire

(02:23:26):
recording because it was only streamed on Facebook. I love
that we have an opposition in this country.

Speaker 4 (02:23:31):
God, I love the Democrats.

Speaker 2 (02:23:33):
Yeah, they're really I like how together they've got it,
like after a rough patch, they're really firing out.

Speaker 25 (02:23:39):
Yeah, like a phoenix from the ashes of an absolute
ass for being in the election.

Speaker 2 (02:23:44):
Yeah, yeah, like an ass phoenix exactly.

Speaker 25 (02:23:47):
Yeah, ass phoenix. That's that's my band. Actually, I can't
believe that you plugged us on there.

Speaker 24 (02:23:51):
Thank you. Okay.

Speaker 25 (02:23:53):
Trump's ongoing barrage of hate about Somali people has been
met with some incredible posting. People who are not on
x dot com will have miss this, but like genuinely
some of the funniest response to some of the most
hateful shit. Like Trump and Miller have both been on
a and I guess Fox News. Fox News went to
Minneapolis and heard a call to prayer and had a

(02:24:16):
meltdown about it. But this is this campaign, I guess
by Trump and Miller is very much ongoing. We spoke
about that last week with a TPS and people an't familiar.
They can check that out last week. Yeah, Aileen Higgins
won the Miami mayoral election. Do I want to make
a pit bull joke?

Speaker 5 (02:24:33):
The dog you're talking about, mister worldwide?

Speaker 25 (02:24:35):
Well, we could do. Margat is a major issue. I'm
just trying to work on that acronym.

Speaker 2 (02:24:39):
Oh God, because I'm always thinking about mister worldwide James's
He's never a far from my thoughts.

Speaker 25 (02:24:45):
No, I often think about Pitbull and how he and
Hillary Clinton often were exactly the same thing.

Speaker 2 (02:24:50):
That's right, they have a lot in common. Actually, the
primary thing is.

Speaker 4 (02:24:59):
Yeah, yeah, I don't know, yes, but this is the
first time a Democrat has won the mayoral office in
Miami in almost thirty years, which is and it is
wild significant.

Speaker 13 (02:25:09):
This is astonishing.

Speaker 7 (02:25:10):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:25:10):
Yeah, this was like a pretty decent win. This was
a runoff election, but it's still a pretty pretty substantial win.

Speaker 13 (02:25:16):
Yeah, And I think there's there's There's a few important
notes here. One is that even the Miami Cuba demographics
swung massively towards the Democrats, which is sort of apocalyptic
news for the Republicans, really really bad. If you're losing
the Miami Cuban population.

Speaker 2 (02:25:30):
If you have got Miami Cubans to think critically about politics,
things are dire. Yeah.

Speaker 13 (02:25:39):
And and the other thing here too is that the
Florida Democratic Party, like I would compare them to clowns,
but like these these motherfuckers make Bobo the Clown look
like fucking Napoleon. These are the most some of the
most incompetent people the entire history of politics, and the
Republicans are losing to them. That's astonished.

Speaker 4 (02:26:00):
There were a couple of other results like this, Yeah,
this week, Democrats flipped a Georgia State House seat. The
seat moved blue by twenty two points.

Speaker 5 (02:26:10):
Geez yep.

Speaker 13 (02:26:12):
They flipped Albuquerque City council. There's all of these little results,
and this has been happening basically since we got the
first special elections of the Trump administration, where the Republicans
are losing like ar plus twenty two districts. They're getting
destroyed in places that it shouldn't be possible for them
to lose. And this is another major confirmation of the
media everyone hates them theory. Every day it gets more

(02:26:34):
and more validated. Everyone can hate them.

Speaker 4 (02:26:38):
Yeah, last a small news story that I think is
worth mentioning because it's a I think pretty important. Actually,
conservative podcaster Benny Johnson is threatening to sue Milo Iianopolis
for alleging that he is gay. So we're gonna be
keeping up with this story pretty close. I know this
has a lot of ramifications for listeners.

Speaker 26 (02:26:57):
Yeah, great, cool, we should do ads.

Speaker 2 (02:27:15):
We're back and we're talking about the January sixth pipe
bomb guy suspect.

Speaker 10 (02:27:21):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:27:22):
Well, I mean, we know there's a person. We don't
know that it was a guy. We know someone planted
those pipe bombs. I'm going to talk about the suspect.

Speaker 4 (02:27:28):
Ye.

Speaker 2 (02:27:29):
I want to start just for a little bit by
again talking about the degree to which I really hope
this is apocalyptic for the Blaze. Yeah, what they did
is a case study and what you should never do
as a publication. It was unethical, it was idiotic, and
it was deeply dangerous. And if the Capitol police officer

(02:27:52):
does not sue them. I don't know what kind of
advice she's getting other than maybe just sheer terror at
the number of death threats she's already received. But like ma'am,
getting all of Glennbeck's money is the only thing that
will keep you safe right now. Please do it now.

Speaker 4 (02:28:04):
Yeah, So you were out last week when we got
some the very first reporting on the pipe bomb arrest.

Speaker 2 (02:28:11):
Yeah, I know, is the only thing I regret about
my vacation.

Speaker 4 (02:28:15):
Yeah, but very little information was out last week, and
we have more information now regarding the alleged January sixth
pipe bomber, or technically January fifth pipe bomber, who is
now charged with transporting an explosive device with attempt to kill,
injure or damaged property, and attempted malicious destruction by means
of fire and explosive materials. According to court records, the

(02:28:36):
FBI identified the suspect through cell tower records, license plate readers,
and purchases of potential bomb making materials, including the pipes,
the cap ends, the wires, steel, and nine volt batteries.
It doesn't appear that they gained possession of new information,
but by changing the agents looking at the information they

(02:28:59):
were able to piece piece this together to actually make
inaction on it, leading to the arrest.

Speaker 2 (02:29:05):
So it's a classic FBI story of they had all
the information they needed to have caught this guy very
long ago and did not yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:29:12):
Right, or lack the ability to like put the piece
together in a way that makes them able to do arrest.

Speaker 2 (02:29:17):
But as is always the case, this was not an
issue if they didn't have enough access to information. There
was too much encryptied there, you know, they need more power. No,
they had everything they needed. They just didn't think right,
That's what it was. They weren't thinking right, you know.

Speaker 4 (02:29:30):
Still, very little has come out officially about the alleged
bomber's potential motivation.

Speaker 2 (02:29:36):
Who may be innocent, let's be clear, Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:29:39):
There's nothing alluding to his motivation in the charging documents
besides just an interest, a year's long interest in bombmaking,
starting in twenty nineteen and continuing into like twenty twenty one. Now,
NBC has reported based on sources inside the law enforcement
investigation team, but Embassy's reported that before for the suspect

(02:30:00):
acquired an attorney, he confessed to investigators and told the
FBI that he believed in twenty twenty election conspiracy theories.
But some new information from the New York Post, which
I have verified, may have actually cracked this story wide open.
They have learned that the suspect is a Brony. My

(02:30:23):
Little Pony fan draws a lot of actually relatively good
quality My Little Pony fan art and writes fins my
Little Pony fan fiction. I could read some here.

Speaker 2 (02:30:33):
Garrison, what is the quality of their fan fiction? Yeah's
just just give us like fifteen minutes.

Speaker 4 (02:30:38):
I'll read a paragraph. Quote Apple Bloom's eyes. It snapped
open and she sat up in her bed, hinting heavily
and sweat dripping from her red mane. It was another
bad dream about that village she had discovered back in
the ever Free Forest sunny Town. At first, it seemed
like a normal, peaceful little village, kind of like Ponyville.
What was strange was that none of the inhabitants had

(02:31:00):
qut marks. In fact, they hadn't the slightest clue as
to what a qutie mark was.

Speaker 2 (02:31:05):
So could you send me that link?

Speaker 7 (02:31:08):
Yeah?

Speaker 3 (02:31:08):
Thank you.

Speaker 4 (02:31:09):
H I'll actually I'll send this to the entire team chat.

Speaker 13 (02:31:12):
I'm demanding Hazard pay at the next union negotiations hazard pay.

Speaker 4 (02:31:18):
Actually like this is very standard but relatively good quality.
My Little Pony broni activity non sexual entirely Like. I've
looked at a lot of this guy's art. It's fairly clear, pros,
fairly high quality. My Little Pony fan are in a
variety of styles from different eras oft the show not
like a sexually fetishistic depiction.

Speaker 2 (02:31:38):
Can't wait to see the headlines from this. Yeah, cool
Zone host defends Capital bipe bombers pros.

Speaker 13 (02:31:45):
But no like.

Speaker 4 (02:31:46):
A high school classmate told Washington Post that he was
bullied for having My Little Pony backpack in school.

Speaker 2 (02:31:52):
Yeah, that makes sense.

Speaker 4 (02:31:53):
He's had this interest for quite a while, kind of
kind of tapered off a few years before before the bombing,
But for a while this was like kind of one
of his main hobbies. On a Tumblr profile, he lists
his interest as quote hardcore music, video games, mainly horror drawing,
improving myself philosophically, and anime. Unquote. Well, his grandmother has

(02:32:17):
described him as quote almost autistic, like because he doesn't
understand a lot of stuff.

Speaker 5 (02:32:22):
Unquote.

Speaker 4 (02:32:23):
He's only ever worked for the family bail bond business.

Speaker 2 (02:32:26):
Yeah, well, I mean, look, I'll say this, he wasn't bad,
Like he could have had a future in a private
security or something like that, like not bad ops as
it turned out. Yeah, but I don't know.

Speaker 4 (02:32:39):
A funny slash a dark thing is that in the
right wace just desperate effort to make everything about trans people.
They have turned this Brony thing into like a you
know the trans people also like my little pony and
like Bronie and like like quotes from like psychologists in
some of these articles about how how how Bronie is
like play with like gender boundaries by by being fans

(02:33:04):
of like a girl's, like a propery that's usually enjoyed
by girls. So this was like a slight attempt to
try to kind of paint this and like in like
a pseudo translate, but that's not getting much traction because
like people know what Bronie's are, and like, come on,
I think this, this whole strategy is is on the
out in some ways.

Speaker 2 (02:33:22):
Yeah, am I am I incorrect here because I had
just caught this, but I didn't. Actually this is like
while I was on vacation, I had heard that he
expressed a belief that the twenty twenty election was stolen
from Trump.

Speaker 24 (02:33:31):
Yeah, that's see.

Speaker 2 (02:33:32):
Do we know if that's accurate? Okay, Okay, so he
does seem that's been.

Speaker 4 (02:33:35):
Reported by the NBC that that he told investigators that
he believed in like twenty twenty election conspiracy theories. Okay,
the ones that were spread by Trump.

Speaker 2 (02:33:46):
So, I mean it seems like, from what we have,
one of the more predictable ones. And like it's not
if this is like a weird right wing you know, Bronie.
This is not the first time right wing Bronie has
done something violent.

Speaker 4 (02:33:58):
He doesn't seem super politic in my opinion, like none
of his owne activity points towards a deep interest in politics.

Speaker 2 (02:34:07):
No, but if he said he thought the election was stolen,
then that makes sense as being a contributing fact.

Speaker 4 (02:34:12):
Yeah, a factor perhaps, but not a huge like online
presence that revolves around politics. Like a lot of people
who aren't super into politics maybe thought the election was
like stolen or like rigged.

Speaker 2 (02:34:24):
I mean, as we try to point out periodically, the
vast majority of people who will carry out a shooting
or other act of mass public violence in the US
are going to have more in common with other people
who do that than anyone specifically, just in political terms
for the most part, because most of them are you know,
there's their shooter stands there, they're they're that sort of thing,

(02:34:46):
like this is their special interest bombings or whatever.

Speaker 4 (02:34:49):
He does seem to have, Like it's a lot of
special interests, right. It used to be my little ponies,
then it became bomb making that just seemed to be
a special interest of his for like three or four years.
Was just like the practice of bomb making. This is
just just something he got like into, And I think
that's more of a motivating force and like a specific
partisan political motivation. And I think it's really funny, like

(02:35:09):
reflecting on a statement that that that law enforcement leaked
last week saying that he had like anarchist like leanings,
which is very very amusing now in light of in
light of all of that, for a long.

Speaker 25 (02:35:21):
Time, they have used anarchism to mean like a predilection
for violence or chaos.

Speaker 2 (02:35:26):
Doesn't less like the government, right, Like yeah, yeah, part
of this is just the way people tend to use
the term anarchism. When I was doing my research for
like the nuclear Doomstate device episodes, there's a bunch of
otherwise great pieces that are like and then in the
in the wake of a global nuclear war, society will
collapse and all that will be left is anarchy. It's like, guys, like,
it's not anarchy. That's that's going to be the problem

(02:35:48):
that like, like you realize that the cause of a
nuclear war is like, yeah, all of this, Yeah, it's
it is not an anarchy as opposed to nuclear war.
I'm worried about, for example, Yeah, yeah, then yeah, I'm
worried about like democracy, fucking authoritarianism. I'm worried about all

(02:36:11):
of those things. Anarchists would never have built the nuclear
doom sdat of fights.

Speaker 24 (02:36:15):
Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 25 (02:36:17):
It's why I used left libertarian sometimes in my academic writing,
because it was just the term. It's just not comprehensible,
especially someone coming having been raised on US media.

Speaker 2 (02:36:27):
And in the wake of a global nuclear war, you'll
be lucky to get some anarchy because it probably means
someone's found some food and it's cooking it for you.

Speaker 25 (02:36:34):
Yeah yeah, yeah, yeah. Food no bombs on like food off.
They've rebranded, but that's still going food common.

Speaker 2 (02:36:41):
Yeah, bomb is actually done with bombs.

Speaker 13 (02:36:48):
We did it.

Speaker 7 (02:36:49):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (02:36:51):
Food One other update. I'll squeeze in here quick.

Speaker 2 (02:36:55):
It's short.

Speaker 12 (02:36:55):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (02:36:56):
Last week, the Supreme Court ruled that Texas can use
its newly on congressional map in the upcoming twenty twenty
six midterms, likely adding five Republican seats.

Speaker 5 (02:37:06):
The lower court order, which.

Speaker 4 (02:37:07):
Found the new map was racially jerry mannered intentionally, has
been stayed indefinitely as the Supreme Court prepares to consider
whether to overturn the lower court's ruling entirely, a process
which could take months go well into the midterm cycle.
So the Supreme Court is authorized the use of that
new map for this next election.

Speaker 25 (02:37:29):
Talking of fan fiction and covers of things, here is
a song that was originally the worst song by the
Clash and now it's about tariffs.

Speaker 27 (02:37:43):
Jazz right jazz Bo Sorry, Locking jazz Bomb, Locking jazz Bob.

Speaker 4 (02:37:55):
I think the cover is of a similar quality as
the alleged Bombers fan art in my opinion, Dear God,
there's a lot of good twilight sparkle stuff that he
was draw in.

Speaker 5 (02:38:05):
Come sorry, So all right.

Speaker 13 (02:38:09):
China is technically once again buying American soybeans. Is part
of the sort of giant trade deal that Chi Jinping
and Trump negotiated, but come it is not buying soybeans
at the rate that the White House said it would
in the fact sheet that was released by the White
House about the negotiations. This is a huge problem because

(02:38:32):
farmers are still not being able to sell enough soybeans
to not get completely fucked, and the White House is
now putting out a bunch of statements saying, oh no,
we actually screwed up the fact sheet. They said that
they would buy the soybeans not before the end of
the year, before they at the end of like the
growing season.

Speaker 24 (02:38:50):
That's good, that's good.

Speaker 13 (02:38:52):
Yeah. So and his other solution to this has been
a twelve billion dollar farmer bail which is funny because
he did a twelve billion dollar farm bailout in his
first term when exactly the same thing happened and it
didn't really do anything.

Speaker 4 (02:39:07):
Well, at least we're not bailing out let's say Argentina.

Speaker 24 (02:39:09):
Funny example, Garston, what makes you choose that one?

Speaker 13 (02:39:12):
Oh god? Yeah.

Speaker 9 (02:39:13):
So.

Speaker 13 (02:39:14):
The issue with this farmer's bailout is, and this is
something that farmers have been saying through all of the
trade press, any regular press. They can get access to,
every local media outlet. Every single farmer who anyone has
interviewed has gone, we don't want to bail out. We
want to be able to sell our blasted soybeans, and

(02:39:34):
they still can't. And this is, you know, a becoming
a real problem for this administration that even after their
giant negotiations to get tried out of by soybeans, they
still can't do it. And farmers are continuing to be
very very pissed off about this. Where are my beans? Yeah,
they're sitting in the silos, They're still there. They can't

(02:39:54):
sell them.

Speaker 25 (02:39:55):
How am I going to keep up my soy consumption
and going to be for us to become a known
the vegan Ocean era some other kind of boy, I guess.

Speaker 13 (02:40:02):
Yeah, Well, we'll just have to get it from Brazil.

Speaker 5 (02:40:04):
Ands that Brazil mentioned.

Speaker 2 (02:40:06):
Everyone cheer, Hey, they're doing good these days.

Speaker 4 (02:40:09):
Oh yeah, hasn't there been some Bolsonnaro news recently?

Speaker 5 (02:40:12):
I feel like.

Speaker 2 (02:40:13):
There has been. Let's roll to ads and then we'll
talk about it.

Speaker 13 (02:40:16):
Okay, this has been ur talk.

Speaker 2 (02:40:30):
We're back, and you know who's not free to listen
to podcasts? Hear Bolsonnaro. We can hope after trying to
cut off his ankle monitor. He has been taken into
custody for attempting or probably trying to escape. Trump had
made comments about it, expecting to see him soon. Yeah,

(02:40:52):
I don't think. I think he's going to die in prison.
He's not doing well. I will say one thing we
got to do. You know, back when he got stabbed,
I think everyone's opinion on it was like, oh, fuck,
you've just you know, you've made him a martyr. You
got to look cool and seem like a bad ass.
This has done nothing but empower him.

Speaker 24 (02:41:09):
Yeah, no, it cares.

Speaker 7 (02:41:10):
No.

Speaker 2 (02:41:10):
Actually that stab did a lot of damage, Like that
ruined his life, low key.

Speaker 27 (02:41:15):
Ye.

Speaker 2 (02:41:15):
So thoughts and prayers to that guy wherever he is.
You know, we just didn't realize the level of game
that you had, my man.

Speaker 4 (02:41:23):
No, I mean it's it's it's tough. I mean we
used to have the two like of the world sickest men,
Bolsonaro and Stephen Crowder just fighting it out to see
who would stay sicker for a long But.

Speaker 24 (02:41:32):
Jordan Peterson that seems like erasia.

Speaker 4 (02:41:34):
Yeah, he's taking the spot because he's still vanished from
the Daily Wire because of his like.

Speaker 2 (02:41:40):
Bizarre His daughter says he's basically dead.

Speaker 25 (02:41:43):
Yeah, he's like patient zero for CWD and humans or something.

Speaker 4 (02:41:46):
Right, Like the Daily Wire still is acting like Peterson's
is like still a person.

Speaker 2 (02:41:51):
Yeah, it turns out Cold Turkey quitting Benzos via a
fucking coma in Russia is a bad call.

Speaker 4 (02:41:58):
Speaking of Crowder, I did watch the two hours Stephen
Crowder Nick Fuente's interview this week. Oh god, and it
was really uncomfortable.

Speaker 2 (02:42:08):
Yeah, I'll bet I can imagine.

Speaker 5 (02:42:10):
They were just like jerking each other off for two hours.

Speaker 4 (02:42:13):
Nick was trying to be nice and like not act
like Steven's this like like totally irrelevant like boomer, and
Stephen was trying to make Nick think he was cool,
and it was so painful to watch.

Speaker 5 (02:42:24):
The entire time.

Speaker 13 (02:42:25):
Sat Yeah, it was.

Speaker 4 (02:42:28):
It was bad. There was nothing else notable from that.
I guess let's actually move to some notable notable stories
to close this episode.

Speaker 25 (02:42:36):
Yeah, so I want to talk about the case of
Faustino Pablo Pablo. A US District court in El Paso,
Texas has grown too Mister Pablo Pablo a tentative restraining
order directing the government to return him to the United
States by the twelfth of this month, which will be
the day that you were.

Speaker 24 (02:42:53):
Hearing this episode. Mister Pablo Pablo enter the USA in twenty.

Speaker 25 (02:42:57):
Twelve and was found removal by However, that judge granted
his application for withholding of removal under the Convention against
Torture because he would likely be tortured if he was
returned to Guatemala, which is where he's from. In theory,
he was removable therefore to a place where he would
not likely be tortured. Right, this is what we've seen

(02:43:19):
the US government doing more and more in the last year. Really,
he spent more than a decade. He moved to California,
attended his ICE check ins until he was detained at
an ICE check in on the fifth of November. Mister
Pablo Pablo's lawyer filed a habeas petition and asked the
court to enjoin ICE from removing him from the Western
District of Texas, which is where they took him on

(02:43:40):
the seventeenth of November. Right, so he was detained on
the fifth. People who listened to my immigration series a
couple of weeks ago will be familiar with this. Right,
people were detained in La ferried all around California and
then sent to Texas.

Speaker 24 (02:43:53):
This is what happened in his case.

Speaker 25 (02:43:55):
He wouldn't have been sent to the same place for
people of my serious work, because that's for family detention.
By the time the court ordered the government not to
remove him, they had already sent him back to Guatemala,
just to cover There is one country in the world
that he has with holding of removal to because he
will be tortured there most likely, and that is where
they sent him. The government conceded that they had made

(02:44:16):
a mistake and said they quote tentatively scheduled a flight
for the fourth of December. He did not take that flight.
As far as we know, he is dolling Gatemalae. He's
in hiding and the court has ordered that the government
facilitate his return by the twelfth of this month, so
we'll probably update you on that in next week's ed.

Speaker 4 (02:44:34):
I'm going to talk about an expansion of social media monitoring,
which we've already seen for visa applicants, but now expanding
out to tourists as well. Customs of Border Protection and
DHS have posted a sixty day notice for a proposal
to revise the electronics system for travel Authorization Application, which
is a waiver that some foreign tourists can use to

(02:44:57):
avoid getting a tourist visa. The proposal is to add
mandatory social media collection for all foreign tourists using the
ESTA visa waiver. This proposal would require that applicants provide
the social media information from the past five years, citing

(02:45:18):
a January Executive order quote protecting the United States from
foreign terrorists and other national security and public safety threats unquote.
This would match the sort of social media monitoring we've
seen applied to some visa applicants and immigrants, just now
extending out to tourists using the ESTA application, and to

(02:45:39):
comply with this January Executive order. CBP is also planning
to add quote several high value data fields to the
ESTA application when feasible unquote. This would include quote telephone
numbers used in the last five years, email address is
used in the last ten year, IP addresses, and metadata

(02:46:02):
from electronically submitted photos. Family member names, parents, spouse, siblings, children,
family telephone numbers used in the last five years, family
member dates of birth, family member places of birth, family
member residences, biometric face, fingerprint, DNA and IRIS, business telephone

(02:46:23):
numbers used in the last five years and business email
addresses used in the last ten years unquote.

Speaker 25 (02:46:30):
Yeah, this is a wild amount of data. I mean
they can flash some of this like really quickly again
against like quote unquote watch lists, right, Yeah, but some
of this A like to gather this data to gather
biometric data, that's not possible with like you say, you're
applying on your cell phone or your your home computer, right,
so this might require an appointment.

Speaker 4 (02:46:51):
Yeah, for some of the fingerprint stuff. Part of the
proposal is also requiring selfie be submitted with this application,
separate from what iver is on the ID that is
being used, and so they can extract some like facial
biometrics from that. Yeah, but they can also they can
also collect that stuff like at the airport reports of entry.
They have fingerprint scanners now at a lot of these

(02:47:13):
like entry kiosks.

Speaker 9 (02:47:14):
Yeah.

Speaker 25 (02:47:15):
Yeah, the selfie isn't just a selfie, it's what's called
a facial liveness scan, which is what we've spoken about
before with CBP one right that like notoriously was very
poor at capturing black faces. Generally, you sort of have
to like move the phone around your face to check
that It's like, it's not me holding up a life
sized copy of Garrison, it's actually Garrison.

Speaker 5 (02:47:35):
A three D Garrison.

Speaker 25 (02:47:37):
Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly, the Garrison mannequin that we all
got for Christmas last year.

Speaker 4 (02:47:42):
Can you can excuse that one to me?

Speaker 24 (02:47:44):
Sorry, it's not legal in New York.

Speaker 25 (02:47:46):
Yeah, this will make it a lot harder for people
to apply forest divisas. It's going to create a massive,
like dragnet of data for people applying forest visas. Yes,
seeing that kind of is the goal already, right, So,
like if you live in these countries, you don't always

(02:48:08):
qualify for an esther. There are certain things you could
have done, certain countries you could have been to, certain
like if you have a criminal record, et cetera, where
there you wouldn't be able to get an esther. So
this is kind of already a something of a like
a pre vetted group and countries who from which systems
can apply for esters?

Speaker 24 (02:48:26):
Is that in itself? It's like a tea, right, Not
everyone in the world can apply for an esther.

Speaker 4 (02:48:32):
Yeah, it's already a semi exclusive waiver with like a
cost burden as well.

Speaker 25 (02:48:38):
Yes, yeah, yeah, it creates a massive data data mind
which I'm guessing might be what they what they're going for.

Speaker 4 (02:48:47):
Yeah, I mean, just the normalization of this sort of
like social media scetting to identify, you know, undesirable political
beliefs that Mark Rubio in the Department in the Department
of State or DHS seems is like a national security threat.

Speaker 7 (02:49:02):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:49:02):
Yeah, I also have kind of my fringe fears that
this will be used to train but yeah, we'll say, yeah,
how is this not going to be catastrophic for any
business that relies on tourism, any state that relies on tourism, Like.

Speaker 24 (02:49:21):
Like yeah, Florida.

Speaker 2 (02:49:23):
Yeah, I know that's not the top risk, but like
it just seems again they're they're they're going out of
their way to fuck over every single demographic in the country,
which I don't think is going to work out.

Speaker 5 (02:49:36):
For them in the long term.

Speaker 25 (02:49:38):
Yeah, it's a uh, this is yeah, this is a
weird one for me because it's the Yeah, the economic
cost is so obvious.

Speaker 2 (02:49:46):
It's a it's a catastrophe, And there's a part of
me that's like, maybe this is a good thing, just
because it's part of like, right, we've always known and
have been trying to say for years every single aspect,
like they these people are bad for everybody. There's like
one hundred and fifty people in the country who benefit
from the policies that like the most extreme parts of

(02:50:06):
the right wants to push, and everyone else is going
to be completely fucked over by it, and we might
as well just take the mask off. And maybe that's
some of what we're seeing in the collapse of Trump's
approval is people realizing, like, oh my god, these guys
really just want to destroy everything good about life like that.
That is conservatism in a nutshell.

Speaker 5 (02:50:25):
We hate life and ourselves.

Speaker 2 (02:50:27):
Yeah yeah, well yeah, that's that was the Democratic Party
in that symptoms garrison.

Speaker 25 (02:50:31):
But we want what's worse for everybody there that's yes, yeah,
you got it. Yeah yeah, talking of worse for everybody.
Do we want to talk about the National Security Strategy
document that the Trump administration releases.

Speaker 5 (02:50:45):
Go for it.

Speaker 2 (02:50:46):
Yeah, we should do a dedicated episode about that, but
we could talk briefly about it.

Speaker 4 (02:50:50):
We have fifteen minutes.

Speaker 2 (02:50:51):
That's not you saw fifteen Yeah.

Speaker 25 (02:50:53):
I've pulled a lot of quotations from it, and we're
not gonna be able to discus sort of the mare.
I think we will have to discuss this probably next
year when we do the whole episode on it. It
is one of the more like especially in terms of
like foreign relations, one of the more like sort. This
is our ideology, this is our outlook, and these are
our goals documents that I've seen from this administration. Right,

(02:51:17):
they talk about how I'll just quote from it here.
American strategy since the end of the Cold War have
fallen short. They have been laundry lists of wishes or
desired end states, and have not clearly defined what we want,
instead stated vague platitudes and have often misjudged what we
should want. They talk about how they are going to
retain soft power. Soft power people now familiar is a

(02:51:41):
theory that Joseph Nye had an international relations It's a
power to compel or persuade rather than to force. Right,
the United States has been hemorrhaging soft power like someone
with their artery cut, like in the last twelve months,
like seft power is a fraction of what it was
a year ago. I find it very odd to see
them even mentioning that, to be honest, when like I mean,

(02:52:02):
they have soft power of your victor orban talking of
orban there's this incredible stuff about Europe. Here quote we
want to support our allies in preserving the freelom and
security of Europe while restoring Europe's civilizational self confidence and
Western identity ha riste.

Speaker 24 (02:52:20):
Another quote that's good, this is wild.

Speaker 25 (02:52:23):
The larger issues facing Europe include the activities of the
European Union, other transnational bodies undermine political liberty and sovereignty,
migration policies that are transforming the continent and creating strife,
censorship of free speech and suppression of political opposition, creatoring
birth rates, and the loss of national identities and self confidence.
Should present trends continue, the continent will be unrecognizable in

(02:52:47):
twenty years or less, and then a missing skipping of
it here. We want Europe to remain European.

Speaker 4 (02:52:52):
This just sounds like your average like white nationalists like
Twitter posts.

Speaker 25 (02:52:56):
Yeah no, yes, it comes from Twitter, right, this is
just the Twitter.

Speaker 4 (02:52:59):
Replies, like very twitter brained like types of politics.

Speaker 13 (02:53:04):
Yeah yeah, this guy has like a Greek statue avatar exactly.

Speaker 4 (02:53:08):
I think it's really fun to think of Europe being like,
I'm Europe. I have a lot of self confidence issues.
I can't really speak up for myself in in in
big groups like the European Union, Like come on, what
do you mean self confidence to grow up?

Speaker 24 (02:53:26):
Yeah, it's wild.

Speaker 25 (02:53:27):
They're like, you know, they're they're saying that, like what
European people don't have enough, like like what European pride?

Speaker 4 (02:53:33):
People don't respect my Western identity Like okay, yeah.

Speaker 25 (02:53:38):
Notably, like for instance, the country of France, a country
which lacks self confidence and pride in this identity.

Speaker 24 (02:53:43):
This is this has been an issue for a long time.

Speaker 4 (02:53:46):
It's it's very funny to have this in like a
this is like a US foreign policy or national security documentary.

Speaker 25 (02:53:52):
Yeah, this is like these are the guiding principles of
our foreign policy going forward.

Speaker 4 (02:53:56):
And they're like jerking off about like Europe remaining European.

Speaker 25 (02:54:00):
Yeah yeah, it's just like shit talking an entire continent.

Speaker 4 (02:54:04):
No, America should think Europe is gay and we should
stay away from it. That's what our national security party
should be is Europe is gay. We don't want to
deal with whatever Europe is doing. We're America.

Speaker 24 (02:54:14):
Yeah, leave us alone.

Speaker 2 (02:54:15):
Yeah that ended really well for us in the theory.

Speaker 13 (02:54:18):
Yeah.

Speaker 25 (02:54:19):
Well, there's almost like a like a like an early
twentieth century vibe to this document. They talk about the
Monroe doctrine, Yeah, they do, and they talk about the
Trump corrollary to the Monroe doctrine, which they define as quote,
we will deny non hemispheric competitors the ability to position
forces or other threatening capabilities, or to own or control

(02:54:39):
strategically vital assets in our hemisphere. Which the people aren't
familiar with the Monroe doctrine. It's the US sort of
has a right and obligation to exercise some control over
the outcome to the entire Western hemisphere, like say Venezuela. Yes,
that would be one example, Keraton.

Speaker 4 (02:54:56):
Yeah, see, it's totally different from Iraq because this is
on our ham So it's good intervention actually mm hmm.

Speaker 7 (02:55:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 25 (02:55:03):
Manifest destiny has given us the right to all of
the Americas, and so we can we can intervene in
outcomes there. There's a lot about the nation state in here,
and like the idea that they quote unquote nation state
should prioritize its own interests. I wonder what they're talking
about there, because like we have many nations that are

(02:55:24):
exclude different states all around the world, right, like the
Kurds being one example, Right, like they are they saying
that nations and states should always align, whilst like their
special envoyage Syria is saying that he said this week
the decentralization has never succeeded in the Middle East, which
is a wild statement to be saying in a place

(02:55:45):
where like you can drive in a single day to
the sites of three different genocides from northeastern Syria, right,
you can see how the place where the Armenian genocide happened,
the u CD genocide, and the Anphal Like you can
do that driving a day if you don't get hung
up at the border.

Speaker 2 (02:55:59):
Yeah, I mean, honestly before now if we're counting some
of what was done against the White Yeah, yeah, that's
a little unclear at the moment, but yeah, sure yeah.

Speaker 25 (02:56:09):
Like to say that centralization is the only way from
the Middle East is a wild statement. So I don't
know how some of this pans out. There's also a
lot here on border security as national security, right, sure,
I'm just going to read one. They use the word
nation a lot. Nationalism was a sub field of by PhD.
So obviously, like I'm interested in the exact understanding of

(02:56:32):
nation they have here because there are several, but throughout history,
sovereign nations prohibited uncontrolled migration a grated citizenship only rarely
to foreigners who also had to meet demanding criteria. The
West experience over the past decades vindicates this enduring wisdom
in country throughout the world, mass migration as strained domestic resources,

(02:56:52):
increased violence out of the crime, weakened social cohesion, distorted
labor markets, and undermined national security. The era of mass
migration must end. Border security is the primary element of
national security.

Speaker 4 (02:57:07):
Great, this is the only terrain they have left because
they've abandoned class interests and like exploitation. So the only
thing they can actually focus this on, and they focus
focus the economy on, is through nationalist immigration policies. This
is like the last refuge for the right once they're
still trying to appeal to some sort of populism but
don't actually want to address real class conditions.

Speaker 25 (02:57:29):
Yeah, and for a lot of the right, when they
talk about nationalism, they are talking about ethno nationalism, right.
The people, you know, the people are the nation, yes, yeah, yeah, yeah,
the vulk like which is not always the bloods nationalism.
It's one type of nationalism. It's not all types of nationalism, right, Like.

Speaker 4 (02:57:45):
That's the cool thing about the United States, And this
is the one country, one of the only countries where
this that principle has been like opposed in variy degrees
since the country is founding.

Speaker 25 (02:57:55):
Yeah, like it's supposed to be the example maybe along
with France, right of like subscriptive now where nationalism was
not an ethnic quality, it was subscribing to a set
of values and belief philosophical idea. Yeah, that does not
seem to be the vibe I'm picking up. There's a
lot more in this document. They spend a decent part

(02:58:15):
of its ship talking other document, other previous national security strategies. Yea,
these are always good for both. But we're going to
keep it brief and then off they go. But yeah,
I think it's it's worth us maybe doing the whole
episode on because I think it's one of the more
like coherent statements of believery. Not not a lot of

(02:58:36):
this stuff is new. We knew that's how they thought
about immigration. Yeah, you hear them talk about it on
Fox on News Max. Like any Stephen Miller like public
statement is you know, it's going to talk about talk
about how immigration is changing, you know, the economic makeup
of the country, and like the core identity of the
country is changing wei to defend Western identity, that sort

(02:58:56):
of stuff. Yes, seeing it all written in document together,
I think is where this has value totally. And I think, yeah,
seeing that all laid out, seeing that, you know, the
way these things play into their view of the world.
And then as I following what's actually happening in the world,
and like you know clearly that when they're talking, they're
talking about.

Speaker 24 (02:59:17):
The United States.

Speaker 25 (02:59:17):
When they're talking about nations, right, they're not talking about
the Kurds, They're not talking about your Zds, the Catalans,
southern nations that don't have states.

Speaker 4 (02:59:25):
Right. It's just so funny because they lay out all
these economic things, right, straining domestic resources, violence and crime,
weakened social cohesion, and destroyed labor markets. Right, they lay
out all of these things which have direct like like
economic cause hole drivers. Yeah, and they're like, no, no, no, no,
it's actually not about these economic factors. It's just about immigration,

(02:59:48):
like they're so it's so blatant.

Speaker 25 (02:59:50):
Yeah, no, other ideology and history escape go to a
certain group for the economic disaster in the country. That's
never happened before.

Speaker 13 (02:59:57):
Yeah, it's just one for one. If you go back
to moish Postone's theory of like structural anti Semitism as
the driver of the Holocaust, it's literally just this, right,
except this is an even more blatant version of it.

Speaker 4 (03:00:10):
Seem like the Nazis, even though did try to do
some like populist economic policies as well.

Speaker 2 (03:00:16):
Yeah yeah, yeah, sure, yeah, yeah, the Strength through Joy program.

Speaker 4 (03:00:20):
Yeah, the modern American right doesn't even try to do that.
It's just the immigration. They're not even doing like a
weird like like right wing like socialized there.

Speaker 2 (03:00:29):
There's all this I'll push back. There's a little bit
of like the talk with oh, we're gonna have a
give every American thousand dollars that will be invested in that.
Like there's there they are like.

Speaker 4 (03:00:40):
They talk about it, they don't do it.

Speaker 5 (03:00:42):
They don't do it.

Speaker 25 (03:00:42):
They talk about it. Yes, sometimes, Yeah, he talked about
a tariff check. Right, Trump was going to give every
every American check. Yeah yeah, yeah. The first time they
date during COVID, Right, they threw some money around, but.

Speaker 4 (03:00:53):
There was that like, yeah, one or two stimulus checks
we got at the end of COVID. Yeah, the end
of a first you know, back of the pandemic cycle
to be more accurate.

Speaker 2 (03:01:02):
Yeah, yeah, Robert.

Speaker 4 (03:01:04):
Was there one other thing you wanted to talk about?

Speaker 24 (03:01:06):
We have time.

Speaker 2 (03:01:07):
Yeah, this is basically related to the Warner Brothers acquisition.
For whatever reason, Reddit's algorithm will periodically give me little
hints and bits of the war between Zack Snyder fans
and the rest of the world.

Speaker 4 (03:01:21):
Oh yeah, I know a lot about this. I know
a lot about this.

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

Speaker 2 (03:01:25):
I'm not a big Zack Snyder fan, you know, but
I don't care. Like I didn't feel strongly anti or
pro his his DC movies. There are some crazy people
out there who believe and they are like reading the
tea leaves. They think the Saudis are going to like
kill his enemies.

Speaker 5 (03:01:42):
They're going to restore the Snyder for Strobert.

Speaker 4 (03:01:43):
Yeah, this is I've been following this just as like
a personal interest for you nuts.

Speaker 5 (03:01:50):
It's crazy.

Speaker 4 (03:01:51):
They're fascinating people like they're fascinating you. Unique people to study,
like the.

Speaker 2 (03:01:57):
Number of people who literally believe that it like it.
There should be people executed publicly for for not letting
Zack Snyder finish his movies. That didn't make money is.

Speaker 4 (03:02:06):
Out because well because Netflix has parted with Snyder for years,
when when if Netflix takes over, they're obviously going to
restore the Snyder Verse. James Gunn is going to be You're.

Speaker 2 (03:02:16):
Going to restore the Snyder paramount, take over the saudis.

Speaker 13 (03:02:20):
We can do it too.

Speaker 4 (03:02:21):
So it's it's really for Snyder bros. Things are looking up.
So put your money in Snyder coin right now.

Speaker 2 (03:02:27):
Well, my favorite thing about that is that like as
soon as they announced the deal, they were like and
James Gunn is staying. They talked a lot about him
on the call because like his movies are a big
part of what makes what are valuable right now? Right,
Like he's good at making money for the people that
he works for. And the level of conspiracy theories like

(03:02:47):
no they have, it's like it's great have to hide
Zack Snyder's back because they can't let people know yet,
but he's already been told.

Speaker 4 (03:02:54):
He's been doing this for like eight years.

Speaker 2 (03:02:57):
It's so funny. I had not realized how crazy they were.

Speaker 4 (03:03:01):
Yeah, I love it. It's really fun.

Speaker 2 (03:03:05):
Anyway. That that's I always enjoy encountering a new cult.
I think Zach is kind of taking advantage to them
to get his insight follower account. Yes, it's very funny
because he's like posting stuff that's like they're reading. Is
like he's messaging that it's coming back, even when guys
like Ben Affleckx like it was the worst. I hated
being Batman. I would never do that again. I don't

(03:03:26):
want to be it's I I love it. I just
love seeing deranged people be it arranged about something that's
actually harmless for once. Yeah, we could get we could
get a Snyder verse related shooting. That's not impossible.

Speaker 4 (03:03:39):
Snyder does encourage it a little bit. But yeah, Snyder
is not I think the villain of this story.

Speaker 2 (03:03:46):
And no, he's clearly friends with Gun like they're they're no, no.

Speaker 4 (03:03:49):
Yeah, yeah, and I uh. Specifically, he has dropped his plans,
which which he had for years, to do some mind
randed adaptions, which I'm bummed about because I think Snyder's
heron raand would be great and instead instead he's writing
this like this like lesbian movie with someone with yeah,

(03:04:10):
and so unfortunately we're trading iron rand for like this
like lesbian cinema slop, which I'm I.

Speaker 2 (03:04:17):
Am just lesbian I am really about because.

Speaker 4 (03:04:19):
I think I think Zack Snyder's Iron Rand would be
a much more fascinating piece of art.

Speaker 2 (03:04:23):
No, No, I want to see Ben Shapiro get one
hundred and fifty million.

Speaker 13 (03:04:28):
That's what I've got.

Speaker 10 (03:04:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (03:04:30):
No, they bought exclusive TV rights to one of the
one of the books I for I forget if I forget
if it was Funtain Head or Atlas Shrugged. But since
the Daily Wires like finances have collapsed, I do not
think they're going forward with that right now.

Speaker 2 (03:04:43):
Oh but but gare the pendragonsight it's coming out though.

Speaker 13 (03:04:46):
I'm excited, right, we got.

Speaker 2 (03:04:48):
To watch that together, but you gotta find it.

Speaker 5 (03:04:50):
We gotta.

Speaker 2 (03:04:50):
We gotta have the company pay for us to meet
in the Airbnb in a state and and just just
watch that, son of a bit.

Speaker 4 (03:04:57):
If we want to this year to plan some kind
of a cool zone convergence to to to watch uh,
to watch the pen Dragon cycle together, I would I
would hapily travel for that.

Speaker 2 (03:05:06):
I think we're ethically obligated to do that.

Speaker 13 (03:05:08):
Okay, final final closing note. Trans housing insecurity continuing to increase.
But if you have an extra room, put a transperson
in if you have a couch, put a transgirl on
your couch. This is going to be bea the message
going forward. Jesus Christ. People put a trans girl on
your couch. You can figure out how to live together.
It will be fine. People are going homeless and dying.

(03:05:32):
Please do this.

Speaker 2 (03:05:33):
Wait, is there like data on like what's what's that?
Is this just as a result of like the continuing
like people being forced out.

Speaker 24 (03:05:41):
Of their jobs?

Speaker 13 (03:05:42):
Yeah, this is this is this is this is all
this is. This is me finally talking about something I've
been tracking for a very very long time, which is
I mean I say a very long time. But you know,
even over about the past four or five years, has
been massive transmigration into places like Portland, into places like Chicago,
into places like New York.

Speaker 4 (03:05:59):
They're getting how in New York there's a lot of
a lot of transh housing in New York. I think this. Yeah,
there's there's some regional aspects of this.

Speaker 24 (03:06:07):
Don't come to San Diego.

Speaker 2 (03:06:08):
We yeah, it make it makes sense that the cities
that are safer having like a big influence and there's
a lot of people, those are also cities that do
not have great housings supply that yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah,
nearly balloon.

Speaker 13 (03:06:19):
And there's been a lot of issues with it, and
that's something that can be mitigated by just putting people
on your couch.

Speaker 4 (03:06:25):
I mean, yeah, that's as a short terms maybe I
don't honestly the couch thing freaks me out. As a
long term solution.

Speaker 13 (03:06:32):
Well, but I mean that's the thing though, it doesn't
have to be a long term.

Speaker 4 (03:06:36):
If people have connections to help other people get jobs.

Speaker 13 (03:06:39):
Yeah, so they can like just like pay.

Speaker 4 (03:06:42):
Pay a low amount of rent for like a room
that's way more solid than like this like forever couch
surfing thing that sometimes people like refer to as like
quote unquote transhusing.

Speaker 2 (03:06:53):
Yeah.

Speaker 13 (03:06:53):
Okay, but again, but the the the idea here is
that there and this is something that I have running
too extensively, is there are a bunch of people who
basically just need to get out and need like a
couple of months or a month to get back on
their feet and don't have the ability to do it
and are going homeless because of that, and it's killing
people and it fucking sucks. Yeah, and that is something
that can be mitigated with sort of cultural shifts towards

(03:07:15):
sharing space more, and we're all gonna have to do
it more because the economy's about to collapse even more so.

Speaker 2 (03:07:21):
Great fun.

Speaker 13 (03:07:23):
Yay, put a transcoll on your couch.

Speaker 25 (03:07:25):
If you would like to email us, you can do
so by emailing cool Zone Tips at proton dot me.
Many of you already have, I'm sure there are more
of you to come. If you want it to be encrypted,
you should send it from a proton mail address as well.

Speaker 4 (03:07:39):
Okay, everybody, Well, happy holidays. I think we have one
more ed episode before the end of the year. We
reported the news.

Speaker 5 (03:07:48):
We reported the news.

Speaker 2 (03:07:53):
Hey, We'll be back Monday with more episodes every week
from now until the heat death of the Universe.

Speaker 1 (03:07:59):
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.

Speaker 5 (03:08:10):
You listen to podcasts.

Speaker 1 (03:08:11):
You can now find sources for It Could Happen here,
listed directly in episode descriptions. Thanks for listening.

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