Natural Causes, an Interview with Dr. James Stout

Have you visited the Darién Gap? Ever been upset about javelina chomping around on your golf course, or wondered why thousands of people across the Midwest suddenly got explosive diarrhea? Nature is amazing -- and it's no secret that much of the Great Outdoors is in trouble. Big businesses, corrupt politicians, and a collapsing climate have all combined to endanger public lands. In tonight's interview, Ben and Matt welcome investigative journalist, author, and activist Dr. James Stout, the creator of the hit podcast Natural Causes, to learn more about the world outside.

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
From UFOs to psychic powers and government conspiracies, history is
riddled with unexplained events. You can turn back now or
learn the stuff they don't want you to know. A
production of iHeartRadio.

Speaker 2 (00:25):
Hello, welcome back to the show. My name is Matt.
Our colleague Noel is on an adventure, but we'll be
returning shortly.

Speaker 3 (00:31):
They call me Ben.

Speaker 4 (00:33):
We're joined, as always, with our super producer, Dylan, the
Tennessee pal faking. Happy birthday, Dylan. Most importantly, you are you.
You are here. That makes this the stuff they don't
want you to know. This one has been a long
time in coming, folks. We could not be more excited. Matt,
I think it's fair to say that we are big

(00:54):
fans of the outdoors. And to put it bluntly, a
lot of the great outdoors is in trouble.

Speaker 3 (00:59):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:00):
You looked around lately. You looked at the news. You
happen to live in one of those areas where, you know,
nature is being heavily affected by the things man has
chosen to do and keeps doing. And knows it's doing
it and then just keeps doing it because money, I guess.

Speaker 4 (01:17):
Or, you know, sunk cost fallacies, very strange governmental hierarchies.
The question that you're nailing there, Matt, leads us to
another thing. How do we get past the constant rush
of headlines and learn the truth about what's happening in
and to the world around us? This is a challenging question.

(01:38):
And thank goodness, folks, we are not tackling it alone.
We are thrilled to welcome the award-winning journalist, author... historian, polyglot,
and podcaster, creator of the hit new show, Natural Causes,
the legendary Dr. James Stout. James, thank you for coming by, man.

Speaker 5 (01:56):
Thank you for that intro, man. I feel like someone,
like a WWF entry kind of situation.

Speaker 2 (02:02):
James, you can't come in here rocking a couple webbies
behind you and not get that kind of intro, man.

Speaker 5 (02:07):
Come on. Yeah, you know, I just cleaned up my
shelf area.

Speaker 3 (02:11):
Yeah, took out the AVN awards and so on.

Speaker 5 (02:14):
Yeah, exactly. I moved the Pulitzer's to one side, put
the Webby's on there. That's just appropriate for the podcast medium.

Speaker 3 (02:22):
Yes.

Speaker 4 (02:22):
James, Doc, you are a phenomenally busy guy and we
have so much to ask you. So before we get
into your work and some of the more, dare we say,
conspiratorial or challenging things we want to explore with you,
We'd love to learn about your origin story because everything

(02:44):
that I've seen, and all of your previous work I've
followed shows me that you have lived a thousand lives.
You've been a border aid worker. Uh, you've been a
bike racer. People might not know about that. A reporter, uh,
you have a strong voice in academia. So could you
tell us a little bit about your provenance? How'd you
get started?

Speaker 1 (03:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (03:06):
Wow. Um, I could try. Um, uh, born in, in
the UK, uh, in rural England, both my parents are
in agriculture. So, uh, Grew up in a little tiny village,
which I always say, like, I think I was an
anarchist before I knew what anarchists were. Because when you
live in a little tiny village and there's no one
else to ask for help, you just help each other.
And that is an experience I had from a very

(03:28):
young age. Always loved being outside. We had sheep when
I was a kid. Always loved sheep. Just kind of
fun animals to be around. Really liked, you know, camping.
A lot of my dad's work involved what's called hunting here.
not called hunting in the UK. It's different. That's when
rich people on horses, but, uh, foxes and so on

(03:50):
always outside with my folks. Um, then I guess like
speed running, I, uh, became very interested in the Spanish
civil war because of punk music, like the clash and
the magic street preachers, uh, did my undergraduate history in
politics came to the U S to pursue a PhD.

(04:11):
looking specifically at building anti-fascism in Second Republic Catalonia. Even
more specifically, the anti-fascist Olympics that they held in Barcelona
in July of 1936. So 90 years ago, a couple
months ago. While I was doing that, I raced my bike,
raced all over the world, I was very lucky. Got

(04:31):
to race in Asia Tour races, America's Tour, a lot
of time in Catalonia, obviously doing my PhD there. research,
racing my bike, finished doing that, and realized that the
world of academia full-time wasn't for me. I love to teach.
I love my students in a non-problematic way. People who

(04:55):
love their students in a problematic way is a big
issue in academia, actually. And I taught at the community college,
which I really enjoyed. And I've always... written i always
like writing uh so i stayed writing and uh i've
been really fortunate to cover some things that are important

(05:17):
to me things that i care about um and uh
along the line i've written a couple of books one
is about the anti-fascist olympics one's about anarchists at war
i've been very lucky to spend time in rushava which
is uh the western part of kurdistan northeastern part of
syria uh with people fighting in the spring revolution in
myanmar and then i tried to kind of look at

(05:38):
that compared to my historical experience or experience learning reading
with the spanish civil war so i guess that's kind
of a speed run yeah i've done a lot of
i've spent a lot of time helping people at the
border obviously somewhere along there i migrated to united states
right i wasn't born here came here when i was
21 uh for a number of reasons uh not least

(05:59):
like the UK was where the US is now in
terms of jobs in 2008 when I left. And I've
been very lucky to have had a really series of
wonderful opportunities here that I think everyone should have regardless
of where they're from or what they look like. And
so I've always felt a good deep solidarity for other

(06:20):
people coming here. And let's take various forms, right? Helping
people in the migrant caravan 2018 just with their needs
right like when they were corralled there in mexico in
2023 the biden administration held people in the outdoors without
food water or shelter my friends and i gave them
food water and shelter because it seemed like the right
thing to do uh and uh i participate in water

(06:42):
drops in the desert so that people don't die on
their way here so it's been an important thing to do.

Speaker 2 (06:48):
James i want to take it back to your roots
in the uk i i had the opportunity recently to
hang out in some fairly small towns, I guess, uh, Worthing, Lansing, um,
and then heading over towards Brighton kind of in the,
on the Southern coast there of the UK. And I
was blown away by what I would describe as a

(07:08):
neighborhood mentality that I saw happening all over the place.
I wonder in your experience, you know, you were, you're
saying you're from a small town and you know, Worthing
is pretty getting bigger. Brighton is big and popular. I
just wonder, Is it normal to see that in the
UK where people are helping each other out? They're building

(07:29):
community gardens together. Even if, you know, the local government
is saying, hey, we don't support these anymore. The folks
are saying, no, we're going to keep building these and
we're going to keep them maintained and do this because
it's for us.

Speaker 5 (07:43):
Sometimes I think... maybe more to a greater extent than
it is in the United States. In some cases, not
everything is idyllic and perfect in the UK. Like, right.
We have tons of pricks who went and had their
like United Kingdom much, uh, not so long ago, but
like at least where I grew up, I did get
the sense that everyone, it's not that the state was absent.
Our state has been like decaying and being stripped for

(08:05):
parts by like extremely wealthy people for decades.

Speaker 1 (08:10):
Right.

Speaker 5 (08:10):
So we've had to step into the gaps. for a
little longer than people, not everyone in the United States, right?
The state has not shown up for many people in
the United States for decades. And when it has, it's
been hostile. Um, but like, yeah, we did get that.
Like you just, the American suburban attitude hasn't fully permeated
every part of the United Kingdom, right? Like not everyone's

(08:32):
putting up a little white fence around their shit and
telling everyone to stay away. Um, some places they are
plenty of places they are, but like, uh, I, I
have good memories of, We lived in a village where the, uh,
one person owned all the houses. It was an estate, right?
Like let's say somebody owned all the houses. They rented
them out to people who worked for them. So it's
a fairly feudal situation. Uh, but aside from like that hierarchy,

(08:57):
we all got along and helped each other, you know, like, uh, and,
and did stuff together. You know, there was like a,
it was very, very idyllic, very chocolate boxing. Then we
had a village cricket pitch where everyone went and did
that in the summertime. I can't stand crickets boring. But
it was nice to do things with people, nice to
chuck a ball at your friends. Sure. So yeah, there
was definitely a little bit of that.

Speaker 4 (09:19):
Well, folks, we're going to pause for a little game here.
We'll call it Schrodinger's Sponsor, Matt, because there may or
may not be an ad.

Speaker 3 (09:29):
Right now?

Speaker 2 (09:31):
Wait, was there an ad?

Speaker 3 (09:32):
Did it happen? All right. Help us out here, folks.
Back to the show.

Speaker 4 (09:36):
There's a powerful thematic resonance with your own story. Traveling
so widely, migrating right to so many places. One of
the peek behind the curtains, folks, one of the first
conversations we were going to have with you a while
back was about the infamous Darien Gap. And I'd love

(09:58):
for us to go there. with you because you are
one of the relatively few journalists who traveled there in person.
So if it's OK, Doc, first things first, for anyone
who hasn't heard of it, what is the Darien Gap?

Speaker 5 (10:14):
Yeah, certainly. And people should listen to your episode. So good. Uh,
there's an isthmus between North and South America. Uh, it's very,
very narrow. It's very mountainous. It's filled with jungles. Uh,
and because of the nature of the terrain and the, uh, foliage,
I guess the Pan American highway, the one that goes

(10:36):
all the way from Alaska to Argentina doesn't go through that.
It can't, um, means there are no roads, no trains.
No airports. It's a place where the state and capitalism
have failed to penetrate in quite the same way that
they have everywhere else. It was important to me, not
just because of that, but also because it is one

(10:57):
of the hardest and most dangerous parts of the migration
route north to the United States. So if you are
from a country either in South America or you're from
a country in the rest of the world, you can't
obtain a visa north of the gap. Generally, people will
fly to Brazil. brazil doesn't impose visas on countries that
don't impose visas on brazil and so for lots of

(11:17):
people that is the obvious place to go they will
ride buses all the way to columbia and then they
will walk through the mountains in the jungle it's an
incredibly dangerous walk you're never not going through the jungle
and passing a dead body um you if you do
that walk you will probably see someone die and uh

(11:40):
it is a horrific experience that people go through in
order to come here and live with us be our
neighbors and i wanted people to understand that because i
don't think most people understand the sacrifices people make to
come to this country so yeah i went down there
in september 2024 there's a.

Speaker 2 (11:57):
Oh gosh, popular show on, I want to say Apple TV,
maybe that represented the Darien gap really interestingly recently. Oh Lord,
I can't think of the name of it.

Speaker 5 (12:09):
I've been tagged in this a million times. I've never
seen it.

Speaker 2 (12:13):
Well, it was interesting to see it, you know, in
a big budget TV show and an attempt to represent
the danger involved and, you know, the length of time
it's going to take to make that trek. And, and, um,
Just all of the obstacles you would face doing it.

Speaker 5 (12:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (12:30):
But did you film it at all or is it
all audio?

Speaker 5 (12:33):
It's all audio. That's really the way I like to work.
So like if I could sort of to get there, right?
I drive till we run out of pavement. Then we
hop in a truck and we drive till we run
out of dirt road. And then we hang out for
a while at this little bay until someone comes along
with a dugout canoe. And they're coming up to sell
bananas and plantains, right? Just full of bananas and plantains.

(12:56):
would say hey can we hit you right back pay
for your gas uh dude gives us a ride back
right uh everything i needed to work is in my
backpack that's like my my i slept in a hammock
underneath this guy's house um on the outside this guy's
house um i have all my recording equipment million and

(13:18):
one batteries right anything else i need medical kit and
that makes me mobile a semi-mobile like my knees don't
like it but uh like it it also means like
i can so what i would do then is put
my voice recorders in my pockets go out there and
walk with people and uh you know be like hey
can i help you can i carry the bag can

(13:39):
i help you carry your child can i help you
through the river um and like i couldn't do that
without shoving the camera in their face i think it
like puts a barrier and not that i visual journalism
is very important and then some of the photos people
have taken of the gap really help people understand it
it's just the way i like to work And so, yeah,
I didn't do anything at all. Took a couple of
photos on my phone, but that's about it.

Speaker 2 (14:01):
Was it just you?

Speaker 5 (14:03):
Yep. Me and my fixer, Darianela Bruse, who's great. The
other thing I should add is that people are coming
that way because they're afraid of something and that something
can find them, especially in parts of Central America and
North America, right?

Speaker 1 (14:16):
Yes.

Speaker 5 (14:17):
I don't want to get anyone in trouble.

Speaker 4 (14:20):
We're going to pause here for a word from our sponsors,
and we'll be back with Dr.

Speaker 1 (14:24):
James Stout.

Speaker 4 (14:31):
And we've returned. This is something I wanted to ask
you here. When you are navigating through the gap and
you are speaking with the people who are traversing it,
did you personally ever feel that you were physically endangered
by either humans or the environment?

Speaker 5 (14:52):
It's easy to get scared, especially when other people are scared. um,
things that I moved through the world differently, right? Like
I'm people who are listening. I'm not a six foot
three white man. Um, but like, so the risks, some
of the risks to migrants are not risks to me.

Speaker 2 (15:08):
Right.

Speaker 5 (15:09):
But certainly like you get into the jungle, man, once
I wanted to get triple canopy closes over and it's
dark and you hear like the little frogs and bugs
are like, Ooh, there's this like throbbing to the jungle. Yes.
And then, It's actually little insects that will do these
like ferocious roars. You're like, that's a fucking puma. He's

(15:29):
right there. He's coming to eat me. Uh, it's not,
it's like a, it's like a small bug, but, uh,
it's hard. Like I'm, I'm a, I'm comfortable outdoors. I've
spent my life outdoors. Uh, jungle is not an environment
that I'm particularly used to. Um, so at times I
felt afraid other times, like I spent time with the
people who are indigenous to that region, right? That's their home.

(15:52):
And like, Sometimes they're worried that when we talk about
the jungle, we talk about like this kind of Conradian
heart of darkness construction, right? But also like that it's
where they have their children. It's where they fall in love.
It's where they bury their ancestors, right? It's where they
live their whole life. Their kids take their first steps
in that same jungle. That is very scary, but for them,
it's really beautiful. So I don't want to undermine that either.

(16:15):
Like I had a wonderful time in their communities and
felt so welcome and taken care of. So there's this,
this dynamic of comfort, right? Like once you're safe, once
you feel safe there, you can feel very safe there. Uh,
but yeah, also there were times and it's physically challenging.
Like I'd run an ultra marathon like three weeks before
I went to juggle and I was still on struggle

(16:38):
bus a couple of times.

Speaker 2 (16:39):
Is that because of elevation or heat or is this
a combination of all the different things?

Speaker 5 (16:44):
Yeah, it's heat, it's terrain, it's water, right? Like you're
constantly going into or through rivers and you're, so you're
constantly wet. And then you're like going through with our,
on like golf ball size rocks. Uh, like it's just
really easy to biff it. And like, you don't want
to get, you don't want to drink that water. Like

(17:04):
there's human waste in that water. There's human remains in
that water. Right. You don't want to fall and even
have a, like swallow a little bit of that stuff.
Like you really don't. Um, so you're just, you know,
that makes it difficult. But then you add like, Oh,
someone's toddler sitting on your shoulders and like using your

(17:25):
whole spine as a lever to try and throw your balance. Yeah.

Speaker 4 (17:28):
And for anybody who doesn't know, by the way, I
really appreciated that golf ball size, uh, rock reference because, uh, folks,
you will learn very quickly that James hates golf for
a reason.

Speaker 5 (17:43):
Yeah.

Speaker 3 (17:43):
Can you tell us really quickly why you hate golf?

Speaker 5 (17:45):
Yeah. And I think golf's an affront to God. Like it's,
we take these places in the Southwest, right? where we're
already encroaching into animals' habitat, we're already encroaching into wild spaces,
and then we make a bunch of grass, and then
we expect animals not to eat it, and we use
a bunch of our scarce resources, our water, chiefly our water,

(18:07):
but we're irrigating these places, which are not giving us food,
they're not giving animals habitat, they're not even giving all
of us joy. Look, I'd be fine irrigating it and
having it be a public park, Uh, and then we
wore them off when we charge people to come, we
make them dress up silly. And then like, it, it
just strikes me as one of it's a, it's a

(18:27):
massive use of land. That is completely wasteful. Uh, I
find it particularly galling when I'm out in Arizona and then,
you know, I see that people trying to keep the
Havalina off their golf courses. Cause like you, you built
this giant moist succulent, uh, structure in the Havalina habitat.

Speaker 2 (18:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (18:45):
Havalina is going to eat it. Like that's just what,
that's what you should expect. Yeah.

Speaker 2 (18:50):
But if we don't have the golf courses, James, where
did the oligarchs and barons of oil, where do they
go to have their, you know, not so secretive, quiet
discussions about who gets to turn Venezuela into just, you know,
a money pit.

Speaker 5 (19:07):
I have some suggestions, but.

Speaker 4 (19:10):
Uh, we are brought to you by Dave and busters.
So we've got, um, we, I, I mean, you know, I, I,
I know I, took us in a weird direction there,
but I think it speaks very pointedly to part of
the overall mission of natural causes, right? Which is the

(19:30):
exploration of the great outdoors, the politics, as you say,
and the practicalities of going outside in a world on fire. So, Javelina,
facts aside, which I rabbit hole too far on after
listening to the episode, they can.

Speaker 3 (19:48):
Swim, James, I found out. Okay, nice.

Speaker 4 (19:51):
So, Javelina's aside, right, peccary and golf aside, what drives
you to create the show Natural Causes?

Speaker 3 (20:03):
Why now?

Speaker 5 (20:04):
Yeah, I like... So, Outdoors has always been a really...
calming place for me like um we just released an
episode on the roadless rule right where i talk about
this but um when i came back from uh the
syrian civil war in 2023 uh i was there during
the time of intense drone warfare um and i came

(20:24):
back in the biden evidence holding these people outside right
and like my friends and i are literally like we
have hyper i had a hypothermic baby inside my jacket
trying to warm this little baby up like it was
a really, really traumatizing time for me. And I wasn't
doing well. And I talked to Sophie Hickman is my boss,
a cool zone. And I said, Hey, need to do something. Uh,

(20:45):
I think I'm just going to go camping for a bit.
And so like, I, I pick up my bag and
I off to wilderness rate and I go where no
one else is. And I find a place with water
and I just sit in nature and watch animals. And
that's always been how I've processed things. And, uh, In
the last year and a half, what are we at?
Whatever Trump 2.0, we have seen like this unprecedented attack

(21:09):
on our public lands and our world spaces, which I
guess unprecedented is the wrong word because for a long time,
capitalism has been taking these wild places away from us, right?
Because it doesn't have a way to assign value to beauty,
to nature in a way that it does to oil
and timber. And, and so. I wanted to convey that.
And I felt like when we talk about the outdoors

(21:31):
as a media, we don't talk about the fact that
like it is capitalism and the state are taking these
things away from you. There is a measured effort in
every outdoor publication to be bipartisan or apolitical. And I
don't think we should be doing either of those things.
I think we should be like upfront and serious about threats.

(21:53):
And I think we should be naming the people who
are caught, like, Mike Lee, right? It's Mike Lee, Senator
from Utah. Every f * * * ing six months,
he's trying to insert some new nefarious bulls * * *
into a bill so that he can sell off our
public lands. Like, this guy wants to take away these
places from your children, from your grandchildren, from future generations
if you don't have kids, so that he can make

(22:14):
a quick buck. We should be open about that, and
we should be pointing to the problem because we know
where it is.

Speaker 2 (22:21):
James, I just want to say, we have seen this
issue a lot on our show. We're speaking almost too
specific about an individual human being that is taking action
and then trying to break that down into whose money
is that person taking in order to, or to get
those things done, right? Why is this person motivated to

(22:43):
do something that most of us can sit here and say,
that's pretty nefarious. Why in the hell would you do that?
And I really, have you been able to track down
some of the organizations that are like doing campaign donations
to somebody that would do something like that. Can you
follow the money in any way or have you?

Speaker 3 (23:03):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (23:03):
AstroTurfing. I think it's important. When we look at conspiracies,
it can be easy to see an individual nefarious conspiracy
and not a grand overwrought conspiracy. And the big overwrought
conspiracy is capitalism. And it is capitalism in a state
that has failed. It doesn't have a mechanism to understand
the value of nature. So if we follow the money

(23:26):
at a big enough scale, we will see that it
is the system itself, right? That's why there aren't bison
outside when you guys go for a walk, right? That's
why there aren't wolves in lots of North America because
they were eating cattle and we could sell cattle. Well,
we could sell wolves for a while too with wolf pelts, right?
But we therefore eliminated them. When I look at these

(23:46):
specific things, like there were definitely interests, right? We can
see oil and gas interests.

Speaker 3 (23:52):
Sure.

Speaker 5 (23:53):
But often... there are points where you don't see the, like,
I looked at Cyclospora in one of my episodes, right?
And people, like, we looked at Taylor Farms. And yeah,
Taylor Farms have made some donations to Republicans and to
the Trump administration, and so has their CEO. But also,
Taylor Farms benefits, and as a, so the argument went,

(24:17):
as a result, the implementation of a food safety rule
was delayed. And it was a sort of, it was
cast as a quid pro quo. I think it's broader
than that. Taylor Farms benefits from being able to treat
migrant workers like sh * * and threatening to call
ICE if they unionize. Taylor Farms benefits by paying people
less in Mexico, knowing that they can't come here and
ask for more. Taylor Farms benefits much more broadly from

(24:42):
the Republican administration and, to be fair, from policies the
Democrats have also implemented. It benefits from these migration crackdowns.
in a way that's much broader than getting a quid
pro quo from its donation to the Trump administration. So
I think when I talk about like the motivations of
following the money, I want to be clear that we

(25:03):
can look at an individual level, but we, we don't
have time to do that anymore. We have to look
at a big picture level because we are losing this
stuff already. Um, and some of it isn't directly financial.
Like when I look at the recension of the roadless
rule rate, which covers um, national forests and infantry roadless areas.

(25:23):
The Trump administration currently has a proposal to remove that rule,
to allow the creation of roads in tens of thousands
of acres of natural forests, national forests, which would be like,
there's a lot of stuff to keep an eye on
with public lands at the moment, but this is a
big one. This is a one that would change the
way our wild spaces look for most of us. People
are saying, yeah, this is for logging interests. I think

(25:45):
somebody is, I think there is probably some old gray
stands that they, but people want to log. sell. But
I think a lot of it is a straight up
objection to having protections on public lands. And we see
this a lot with like, the Doug Bergen, where the
Interior Department, you can look up Bergen's record as a governor.

(26:05):
He's one of those guys who like pivoted to transphobia,
he thought it was politically successful. The that Bergen has,
they have their reinter, this is really inside baseball, but
they're reinterpreting the Taylor grazing act, to not allow the
grazing of buffalo or bison, I think buffalo is fine,
in certain plots of public land in Montana because they

(26:29):
do not consider it a productive use of land. And
that is the really, that is the big conspiracy, right?
That our land has to turn into mud.

Speaker 4 (26:40):
I think that's a beautiful point. Just to interject here
quickly because you've said something that speaks directly to us
on the show, which is that the tantalizing, temptatious thing
about a conspiracy or a conspiracy theory is that it
puts stuff in binary, black and white. It gives you

(27:02):
a single face, right? Here's a person to hate, an individual,
rather than a system, right? And I greatly appreciate the
point where you say capitalism is the conspiracy at hand.
When we're talking about, of course, everybody, you know, we
love our villains writ large and preferably in easily understandable terms.

(27:25):
So to blame everything on a logging industry, you're saying
therefore ignores multiple people. other factors in the system.

Speaker 3 (27:34):
Is that correct?

Speaker 5 (27:34):
Yeah, exactly. It's this idea that our land has to
be productive to capital, which underlies all of this, right?
This idea that we should never have protections which prevent
someone profiting to the maximum extent for whatever tiny period
they will, right? Drilling oil, cutting down old growth timber. Like, yes,
that will be productive in the short term. And we

(27:57):
don't consider what happens afterwards, right?

Speaker 2 (27:59):
Guys, just thinking about grazing, cattle of any sort grazing on, like,
federally owned land.

Speaker 1 (28:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:05):
It takes me back to 2014, and I remember Ammon Bundy.

Speaker 1 (28:11):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (28:11):
Ammon Bundy the most. Cliven Bundy was another person that
we talked about on this show. We've been doing this
one for a long time.

Speaker 5 (28:17):
Yeah. It's a throwback.

Speaker 2 (28:20):
But it was a big– there was a big discussion
there of the Bureau of Land Management here in the U.S.
and attempting to– monetize the act of grazing on lands
that aren't going to be used for anything else, just
what you're talking about, but finding a way to put
a fine on somebody who's going to allow their cattle
to graze out here. And just that concept of needing

(28:44):
a fee, a tax, something to monetize all of these
little things, including something as simple as, oh, there's a
lot of grass in this area that's not being used,
but it's owned by the U.S.

Speaker 5 (28:57):
Government.

Speaker 2 (28:58):
We have a bunch of cattle, let's make use of that.
Let's make use of the things that are available to
us that don't, they shouldn't cost anybody anything. It shouldn't
be a big deal, right? Those cattle end up becoming
part of our food source. They end up being, you know,
cycled through to actually help the human beings living in
this area and maybe even far away from this area.

(29:20):
But for some reason we have, the system itself has
to get its vig, as we say, Ben, right?

Speaker 3 (29:26):
It needs.

Speaker 2 (29:27):
It needs that little thing off the top of everything.

Speaker 3 (29:30):
How can we make this a transaction?

Speaker 2 (29:32):
Well, it is just such a weird thing with governments
across the world that have that and need that thing
because they have to generate enough funds for whatever it
is that they're going to do. And, you know, it's
not just the U.S. government.

Speaker 5 (29:44):
The U.S.

Speaker 2 (29:45):
Government has its own thing going on. But, of course,
we've privatized everything. And then, you know, the U.K. and
other places are beginning to privatize things that haven't been.

Speaker 5 (29:52):
Yeah. We privatized all our land a long time ago
in the U.K., right? We enclosed the commons and sold
it off. With the Bundys, I think you have two
things happening, right? So what they had done is not
paid their permits for grazing cattle on public land, right?
I want to point out here that there is no
such thing as government land. It's all native land, and

(30:14):
there is public land, which belongs to everyone. It is
not government land. They didn't buy it. Maybe you did,
but most of the time, they signed a treaty and
then ignored it and stole it.

Speaker 3 (30:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (30:30):
I don't think you should be able to graze your
massive mega corporation cattle on everyone's land. But I don't
think that any, like, so we used to have a
concept called the commons, right? Where like, uh, talking to
feudal relationships, you know, if you grazed half a dozen
sheep or whatever, that's a whole different situation. Right. Um,
I think in this country, we need to really have

(30:51):
a little talk with ourselves about where our food comes from.

Speaker 4 (30:53):
And maybe talk about the tragedy of the commons.

Speaker 5 (30:56):
Yeah. But I think the idea that people won't maintain
the commons because it belongs to everyone is complete bulls * * t, right?
I spent time in many places with many indigenous people
who share land, who don't own land in the same way.
In some places, indigenous people do own land, right? I

(31:16):
don't wish to paint indigenous people as a monolith. But
when we cooperatively use land, we actually all take care
of it. It doesn't mean no one takes care of it.
And I think this is one of the many lies
that capitalism has told us, right? The idea that if
we share something, no one will take care of it.
It's just not true.

Speaker 3 (31:35):
It's not.

Speaker 4 (31:36):
And also, while we're introducing lies, Doc, if we could,
let me be the voice of a corporation.

Speaker 3 (31:43):
Well, what's the big hubbub? Because we self-regulate. We're doing
voluntary regulation.

Speaker 5 (31:49):
Yeah, that's a good corporate voice. Thank you. I had
the Monopoly man in my mind palace when you were there. Yeah,
I mean, let's look at Taylor Farms, right? After the
last time they caused a bunch of people to shit themselves.
I don't want to make cyclospora semen serious because people
died from cyclospora this time. The Taylor Farms stepped in

(32:13):
and said, don't worry, we got this. We'll do voluntary self-regulation.
And what do they do? For a while, they locked
it down. And then they just backed off, right? And
now we don't have a very good mechanism to say, hey,
Taylor Farms, you have caused an outbreak of diarrhea that
is unprecedented in modern times. And we don't really have

(32:36):
a great mechanism to hold you accountable for that. right
because we've instead allowed you to take care of your
own regulation and surprise surprise tailor farms you didn't build
in a mechanism for punishment and for reimbursement and for
making people whole again after the damage you did into
your voluntary self-regulation right so we don't have a means
to restore these people people have lost people they love

(32:58):
because of this like and tailor farms will continue to
be the biggest name in cut fruit and veg they
will continue to make millions if not billions of dollars
and they will continue to pay their workers like While
I was up in Spokane to cover the fires a
couple of weeks ago, people were out there working in
the fields when the air quality was terrible and it
was hot because people want to buy a big thing

(33:21):
of salad for five bucks and Taylor Farms has got
to make two bucks on that five bucks. And what
ends up getting screwed is your health, people working in
the fields and the land that we all have to share.

Speaker 2 (33:31):
It makes me think about the proportional impact that a
lot of these decisions have on on an individual depending
on literally their class and the amount of wealth they've
accumulated and how, how you can mitigate your individual exposure
to a lot of these things that you might have

(33:54):
to deal with in life because of the way the
system has decided to do things. But man, is it
hard to get away from some of the major environmental
shifts we're seeing with climate change and the things that
are occurring because of the changing climate? Um, I, I
just wonder if you've done any exploration of folks who

(34:16):
maybe feel insulated from a lot of the terrifying parts
of life that exist out there that a lot of
people have to go through every day. But then having
some realization that, oh, this is actually coming for all
of us.

Speaker 5 (34:29):
Yeah. Yeah. It's something I'd like to approach. I'd love
to approach the idea that these super wealthy people have
climate bunkers in New Zealand where they think they're going
to escape climate change, right? Which I think comes from
being so detached from the reality of what it is
to live on the land and experience climate change. I
think you can look at the United Kingdom, right, where
I come from. We're a relatively northerly country. If you

(34:51):
don't engage with climate change as it is, but only
through the reporting you get in a tabloid newspaper, you'd
be like, oh, global warming. Well, We could do a
little bit of warming in the Arctic Kingdom for the
most part, right? Rains all the time, it's cold. But, like,
if I look at what my parents are experiencing now,
there is no denying that the land is changing, right? Like,

(35:13):
it is harder and harder to grow things when you
get less and less rain, right? It's harder and harder
to raise your animals when you've got less and less
grass to feed them because you didn't get the rain,
because it was hot all summer, right?

Speaker 3 (35:27):
We have.

Speaker 5 (35:28):
there is a street in Pershaw. It's just, I doubt
anyone's listening in Pershaw, but hi, if you are where,
like when I was younger, I was working in construction.

Speaker 2 (35:38):
Right.

Speaker 5 (35:38):
And we tore behind my whole area where I grew
up flooding. I tore out people's carpets, people's plaster, people's kitchens,
where like disgusting rank flood water come through. Right. Pretty foul.
I advise not working with wet, foul smelling carpet. If
you can avoid it. Um, that same area now has

(36:02):
wildfires in the same month of the year right like
when i was a young person the salient problem that
was too wet and now the salient problem is that
it's so dry that fires strike and run through fields
run through woodland that is within my lifetime like this
is a place where people thought oh yeah be nice

(36:23):
to go a little bit warmer i'm sure like like
we can Global warming, I think, was something people felt
a little bit insulated from in the UK. But the
closer you are to the land, the harder it is
to deny. It's why I think a really excellent way
of understanding global warming, a friend shared with me when
I was up in the Arctic, in a place called Vashreko,

(36:43):
Arctic Village, which is a village where Gwich'in people who
are indigenous to that region live. It's through the lived
experience of folks like those indigenous folks who have been
so close to land their whole life, right? Who have
seen the salmon stop running up the river, who have
seen the permafrost starting to melt, the caribou migration change.
That can be an easier way to understand it than

(37:05):
people thinking, oh, it's one or two degrees, right? But
I would still love to look at those rich weirdos
trying to do bunkers in New Zealand.

Speaker 3 (37:15):
We talk about them a lot, James.

Speaker 5 (37:17):
Yeah, I know you guys have brought them to the
world's attention. It's great.

Speaker 4 (37:23):
My friend, if you're down, we have an open call
for invitations to a bunker to check.

Speaker 3 (37:29):
It out if you want to go on a tour
with us.

Speaker 5 (37:31):
Anytime. Yeah, I love a bunker. I'm tall, so hopefully
they've built the ceilings at a suitable height.

Speaker 4 (37:36):
It's a billionaire bunker, so I'm sure they've got crown
molding and what have you. This brings us to a
huge question, though, that we have to address before we
move on. Do you feel, with the amount of work
that you have done, the investigations, the humans you've spoken with,
the experts as well, who are also humans, sorry, do

(37:58):
you feel that there will be some sort of sudden
paradigm shift, a change in the zeitgeist or the Overton
window where people, the average person, feels that this conversation
about climate change has gone beyond statistics, beyond distant lands,

(38:18):
and is now inarguably affecting them? Do you feel like
that shift is on the way?

Speaker 5 (38:24):
Yeah, I think it has to be. A few years ago,
I spent some time in the Republic of the Marshall Islands,
which people are not familiar, includes places where the United
States tested its nuclear weapons. Estimates suggest that the sea
level will rise in the RMI such that in 30
or 40 years, those islands will be uninhabitable, right? Children
born there today might not get to live their whole

(38:46):
lives there. You won't find a climate change denier in
the RMI, right? Because they've seen it firsthand. but that
is coming for all of us. Like, I think I've,
I've had the great fortune of spending a lot of
time with migrants. Many of those people are leaving because
climate change made their lives unlivable. That will come to
us too. I think that I've also seen in my
coverage of like conflict and revolutions is to, we think

(39:09):
change happens slowly because often it does.

Speaker 1 (39:13):
Right.

Speaker 5 (39:15):
But sometimes it also happens very quickly. Like if you
look at the tight difference from 2021 to 2026 in Myanmar, right. Uh,
2021 Myanmar was deeply, deeply sexist society, women were really,
of course, people look at Do Aung San Suu Kyi
and think, oh, well, this is a society where we
can have women. That's an exception, right? There's yes, she

(39:37):
was a woman and a leader, but in most cases,
women were relegated to, to like certain roles and jobs
in society. Just last week, I was watching a video
of two young women actually it's on the other, I've
got two screens up. It's over here. Um, uh, two
young women flying at flying at FPV drone into a, uh,
a bomber that the military dictatorship they've been using to

(40:00):
bomb schools and hospitals for years, right? Like they, in
that time they liberated themselves. They created a space where
young women will grow up experiencing women as equals of
everyone else. Uh, and they have fought to defend that.
And that, that happened in five years. If they are
21 now, the world has changed 180 degrees from when

(40:23):
they were 16. And like young people especially have the capacity,
I think, to change the world, to move things forward.
So I think that realization will come for all of us.
And I still have a great deal of hope that
things can change very quickly. So I'm not like hopeless
about this stuff.

Speaker 2 (40:43):
Oh, hey, let's take a second. And here's some ads.
We'll be right back. Don't worry. See, I told you
we were going to be right back. Let's jump it.
I really wish I had your optimism, James, because I
see the concept of things changing really quickly. But right now,

(41:05):
I think maybe I'm just personally stuck in the mud
when it comes to the quick change of large language
models and artificial narrow intelligence and data centers and this
massive push that in some weird way and in an
existential way, and I'm just speaking personally here, I feel

(41:27):
that like weighing humanity down and pulling us into something that,
you know, exacerbates all of these problems we're talking about.
And I'm, you know, it's tough for me to see
an escape from that when it comes to how rapid
it's occurring.

Speaker 5 (41:43):
But look at data centers. There's two things that no
one wants in their neighborhood. One is the border wall.
The other is a data center. In Texas right now,
you've got Republican sheriffs doing presses about how they don't
want the border wall built. And you go to any
state in the union where people are building data centers
and there is a very broad coalition of people who

(42:03):
are like, nah, f * * * that. Take it
somewhere else. I think the data centers are terrible, but
They have been unsuccessful in their attempt to con us
into believing that we need them. And they have spent
a lot of money trying.

Speaker 2 (42:20):
That's a good point.

Speaker 4 (42:21):
Because it also, you know, that brings us to the
idea of... James, I love that you're mentioning something we
call one of the few bipartisan.

Speaker 3 (42:31):
Issues of the era.

Speaker 4 (42:33):
Is everybody, especially in a very politically divided United States...
pretty much everybody who is not directly making money off
of the data center agrees that they're bull.

Speaker 5 (42:44):
Yeah.

Speaker 4 (42:45):
It's a, it's a weird unifying thing, but it's, it's happening.
And it reminds me of something that you've talked about in,
in your newest book against the state. You also speak
about this in several other interviews. You talk about something
called the anarchist squint, meaning the, There are people who

(43:08):
would never describe themselves as a certain way, but perhaps
they become strange bedfellows in pursuit of a common cause.
What is the anarchist squint? How does it apply to Myanmar,
to Kurdistan, to the Spanish Civil War? I'm just going
to keep adding things. Also, United States today.

Speaker 2 (43:29):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (43:31):
Yeah, so the anarchist squint is one of the many
gifts that James C. Scott gave us, right? James C. Scott,
an anthropologist, a writer, a brilliant mind, passed away a
couple of years ago. But in his writing, he talks
about using the anarchist squint to help understand things that
happen outside of the state, right? And it is as

(43:54):
he described it, right? It's using our understanding of anarchism
and ideology to understand that When people do things that
are anarchist and don't say they are anarchists, they are
still doing things that are anarchist. And I can draw
the obvious example would be with my friends in Myanmar, right?
I was talking to this young man a few years

(44:16):
ago now. Sadly, he was killed. But when they went
to fight in the mountains, they had seen power be abused, right?
And they had seen power be... taken away from people
because it was concentrated in positions. So when they went
to organize their military unit and these guys are fighting

(44:37):
with like a single shot, 22, so they made themselves
on a lathe, right? So they're like very, uh, rudimentary weapons.
They didn't want to do that. They didn't want to
replicate those systems. So they set up a way that
they would organize where if they're going to do a mission,
they sit around and if everybody agrees and they do it,
everybody doesn't agree. then they adapt and change their plan

(44:59):
until they can obtain consensus right this is a thing
that people have written whole ass books about like anarchist
consensus organizing they didn't read those books they were just
like well power has been abused we've seen it why
would we want to recreate that why don't we just
make sure anyone could die on this mission so everyone
should agree that it's a good thing to do um

(45:20):
and using my squint there i can call what that
would be called is modified consensus organizing but they probably
not use that term uh i've heard it uh referred
to as cooperative leadership as well right like they uh
they will choose someone to be in charge for a
certain operation but that doesn't mean that person is in
charge period it doesn't mean that person it sits above anyone.

Speaker 3 (45:43):
Else like their children later yes yeah.

Speaker 5 (45:46):
Yeah or their great-grandchildren uh Yeah, okay, I am pretty
sure I have a deep understanding of that. I'm just
going to go on Epstein files. Do it. They believe
that everyone's light shines brightest in different places, right? Sometimes
we can be the one light in the way, and

(46:07):
sometimes we need to follow someone else, and it would
make no sense to put one person in charge when
everybody has different strengths and weaknesses. This is a thing...
that was used throughout the revolution in Kurdistan as well, right?
Where I spoke to groups who organized this way. They
have a system called TechMill, which roughly translates as feedback,
but it's a meeting where people can give their... It

(46:31):
translates as criticism of self-criticism, which comes across a little Maoist.
That's not how it is. The idea here is that
when you love someone, you want to hold them to
the standards that they hold themselves to. When they tell
you that they want to be X... you can help
them by saying, Hey, when you do Y, it is
not commensurate with your goal of being X. And because

(46:51):
I care about you, I care about your goal of
being this thing. So I want to help you. Um, again, they,
they created this system whereby we are not held accountable
by punishment. We're not held accountable by the cops. We're
not held accountable by the state. We're held accountable by
our desires, which we shared with each other. Um, We
can see this here too. I remember in 2023, I
went on the Biden app and had people outside, me

(47:14):
and my friends, up to 1,000 people a day sometimes.
We're cooking in a pot that I could fit inside
using a canoe paddle to stir it, to make giant
things of beans to feed everyone who's entering the country
and who's not being fed by the government to which
we pay taxes. We We're out there late one night.

(47:36):
We just fed all these people. We built shelters. And
we're getting ready to do it again the next day, right?
And this person pulls up with a donation. And they
were like, who's in charge? And all of us were like, huh?
And then someone just went, I guess everyone. And this
person was like, who do I give it to? And
we're like, anyone. Like, it doesn't matter. You might just

(48:00):
take it.

Speaker 2 (48:00):
Yeah. If you're not in charge.

Speaker 3 (48:03):
Yeah, like.

Speaker 5 (48:05):
Take if you need something, give if you got something.
We didn't need to create authority to do that. And
we'd never had a discussion. We'd never sat down and
been like, what's our constitution here, folks? And we were
a very broad, diverse group of people. cross punks anarchists
quakers uh latter-day saints people from the migrant community people

(48:25):
from church groups uh some uh one day some afghan
folks came who had left afghanistan in 2021 like uh
very very very broad group of people no one had
no one had a uh a discussion it would have
been possible to have a discussion about who wants who
to be in charge because do people will constantly be
coming right so it's just easier for no one to
be in charge never want to do what they did best. Uh,

(48:49):
and I think like if we use our anarchist squint,
we can see that that's again, right. That's not, that's
horizontal organizing. It's working off consensus. If people didn't like it,
they just didn't make it just go right. We couldn't,
we couldn't force it to do anything. Um, and, and
so like when people say, Oh, we can't organize at
scale without hierarchy, like we're already doing it. We're just
not like putting it on a sticker and, and screaming

(49:11):
about it. Uh, and so I think that's what James got.
It's anarchist squint gives us.

Speaker 2 (49:15):
I want to, bring something up that's really uncomfortable for
me to even admit. But were you here during Occupy
Wall Street? Were you in the U.S. in those years?

Speaker 5 (49:23):
In between the U.S. and Catalonia.

Speaker 4 (49:27):
Okay.

Speaker 2 (49:28):
You're probably doing really good work. I was, you know,
early in my career, like two years into working with
Ben at HowStuffWorks and around that time. I... consider myself pretty,
pretty left, but, um, not maybe as far as, um,
I wish I could be in some ways. I remember

(49:50):
watching the Occupy movement as it was being reported on.
I remember walking down bend to a couple of places
in our city of Atlanta when the movement is happening
and really, really trying to get on board with some
of the organizing, some of the way, you know, the
ways it was going about. And I found myself really
off put and just not, I know I couldn't, I

(50:13):
couldn't vibe with it. I didn't, I didn't like the feeling.
I didn't like a lot of the stuff and a
lot of it, you know, is the using the mic.
I can't tell you the things right now, the things
that made me feel uncomfortable. I do wonder how much
of that is my, you know, suburban mind, right? When I,
you know, grew up in a town outside of Atlanta,

(50:34):
which was pretty Southern and very Baptist and just, you know,
that mindset that has evolved a lot over time. But
I wonder how much of us kind of is going
to struggle a little bit to see things the way
you've experienced them, like with the type of experience you've
had for a lot of people who just have never

(50:54):
seen that or even thought about it.

Speaker 5 (50:56):
Yeah. Diving in an Occupy meeting is the deep end, right?

Speaker 1 (51:00):
Yeah.

Speaker 5 (51:00):
I'm... I always want to ask, I always want to
think about what I'm doing with my hands, right? Like,
I think the way we make a better world is
doing stuff with our hands. And we could have meetings
and discuss how we're going to organize our meetings. And
we could meet for a long time, right? And there

(51:21):
is value in doing that. And there are people who
do that work. But I think at least for me,
like the way that I have been able to show
the power of organizing like that is by getting stuff done.
And there we go. Like, when anyone rolled up at us,
we were in this, uh, like, I mean, that youth
center was, uh, pretty dilapidated. Right. I remember we were,

(51:42):
we were talking on, on, uh, walkie talkies and we
wanted to put an antenna up there and, uh, someone
had shot through the window at some point. It was great.
Cause we could just run the antenna straight through the window.
We were like, yeah, it's rules, man. We're, uh, and
there was definitely a place where you could see the
foundation through the floor. Um, and the sub floor had
gone like, uh, but, um, we, if you'd rolled up there,

(52:05):
like no one was, everyone we met felt comfortable, right?
Like we had a big variety of folks. We had
folks who were truck drivers who literally looked at, you
could see one of the encampments from the freeway. So
these dudes had driven past a bunch and be like, yo, that's,
it's my day off. I'm coming up there to see
what's going on. We had folks from very different organizing traditions,

(52:26):
no organizing background at all. And like, no one could
turn up and be like, are these people aren't doing stuff.
These people are the ones doing stuff. And it's a
lot harder to be like, oh, well, you can't organize
like that. Well, we're doing it fine, right? We're making
it work. And like, if people wanted suggestions on what
they could do, we could offer them options or we
could ask where they feel like their strengths lie. We

(52:50):
know we can include them in that way. We're not
just going to be like, oh, well, you have to
decide based on your vibes. Like we tried to be
inclusive and approachable. We didn't meet and twinkle very much,
but that's okay. We were getting things done. And there's
a time for meeting and doing those things. And the
twinkling was a way of showing consensus. And consensus has value.

(53:13):
But I think we were also able to develop consensus
because we were nose to the grindstone doing stuff. And
we all wanted to push in the same direction. And
we understood that some people push best in a certain
way and we let them do it.

Speaker 4 (53:26):
And something must be done, right? United by common cause.
So this is not something where... James, part of the
reason that Matt and I were chuckling a little bit
when you said the line, we could always have meetings
about how to organize the meetings, is because that comes

(53:47):
near verbatim from an old CIA manual about how to
how to wage asymmetric, you know, sabotage warfare in the
Soviet bloc. And what I think is even more powerful
is something not from the CIA, thank goodness, but from you,

(54:08):
where you said, find something to do with your hands.
I think that that's incredibly powerful. I haven't heard it
put that succinctly. It takes us to, like, this anticipates
one of the questions that we have about Myanmar, that
we have about Kurdistan, the Darien Gap, that we have
about land use in the United States today.

Speaker 3 (54:31):
So I'm the average person, right?

Speaker 4 (54:33):
And I'm listening to this and I'm hearing all these
problems and I'm understanding the complex factors beyond the headlines here.
Let's say my first question, just like those truck drivers
driving past and seeing an encampment from the freeway. Let's
say my first question is, what can I do as
a non-billionaire non-New Zealand bunker owning individual? Like what's, what

(54:58):
are the first steps?

Speaker 5 (55:00):
Yeah, of course. Like, so maybe when I was up
in Spokane, I was, I spent some time on a reservation.
We drove from supplies up there, right? Because he, when
the fire got into the city, a lot of the
resources went away from tribal communities. And so those folks,
as they have done for generations, stepped up to look

(55:21):
after each other. And I remember seeing a sign that
said free lunch. And there's this whole like truism, right?
There's no such thing as a free lunch. But the
way that you get a free lunch is by making
sure no one is hungry. And that starts at home, right?
Like it could be as simple as talking to your neighbors,
or if you have unhoused neighbors, checking in on them,
making sure they've got the things that they need. It

(55:42):
could be that there's a little, you guys are in
the South, they have crazy ass names for this. But
in between the pavement and the road, there's a little
piece of grass. Yes. Sometimes referred to as a devil's turnpike,
I believe. I don't know how they got there, but
I love that they did. Like, you can take that
area back from, like, normally it's just city council going

(56:05):
into it, right? But, like, you can put food in it.
And you can put food that people can pick off
a plant and eat in it. Like, these might seem
like small things, but if we all start doing things
for each other, then we'll realize that we can rely
on each other. And, and like, I often give the impression,
like I, uh, I have an old truck. I work
on my truck a lot because it's an old truck. Uh,

(56:27):
this isn't like a, I'm an old truck enjoyer, so
I don't have lots of money. Uh, and so like, uh,
I'm always fixing stuff on my truck. And so when
my neighbors have issues with their cars, they know I'm
outside covered in grease often, right? So they'll be like, hey,
I need this. I need to change a tire and
I don't have a jack. I don't know how to

(56:48):
change a tire. No one's to blame for not knowing, right?
But I have tools and most of the time I'm
not using them. So why wouldn't I want to share them?
And that becomes a great experience. Now my neighbors can
help me, right? When I'm gone, I'm away all the time, right?
And I need someone to water my plants. Hey, do
you mind talking about watering tomatoes? Grab any of them

(57:09):
if they're ripe, you know, in that way we've been
able to care for each other without anybody having to
exchange cash without anybody having to like be above or
below someone else right i have chickens sometimes they lay
a bunch of eggs i could like hoard them or
i could give them to my neighbors and then when
i'm gone someone will feed my chickens but you can

(57:31):
say it's not that hard that.

Speaker 2 (57:33):
That was a huge takeaway from that episode you a
two-part episode where you cover the fires in spookay and
And you said you have a text chain with your neighbors.
And I was like, I wonder how many people in
the United States have text chains with their immediate neighbors
or like their whole neighborhood or, you know, just whatever
it is. I bet that's pretty rare. And I do

(57:57):
wish we could just yell from the rooftops and say, hey,
just get to know each other and help each other.
It's pretty cool.

Speaker 5 (58:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (58:06):
I thought that was so great, man.

Speaker 4 (58:07):
And Miles Gray had, we want to give him a
shout out, good friend of the show, co-creator of Daily Zeitgeist.
Miles spoke with you in a very powerful interview where
he is relaying his firsthand experience with some of the
very things we're talking about. And I know we mentioned

(58:31):
this a little bit off air, Doc.

Speaker 1 (58:34):
But.

Speaker 4 (58:35):
Could you, could could you tell us whether there was
some sort of positive benefit, uh, to the people who
survived these fires learning more about their community or is
that too like Pollyanna?

Speaker 5 (58:52):
No, I don't think so. Like miles was talking a
great deal about like the gratitude he felt, uh, like
that he was, even when we spoke, you could tell
how powerfully it impacted him that like his neighbors went
out with their garden hoses in the smoke right but
it's been wildfire smoke is no joke and they fought
at risk to themselves to save his house uh and

(59:13):
literally right that they weren't able to do that and
that's not their fault but like i think it does
teach you as miles spoke about right like the reason
they lived there was because that was the place they
wanted to live and part of that was being part
of that community And like the thing that miles shared
that he lost was that intentional construction of community was

(59:33):
that intentional choice to live somewhere where people show up
for each other. And so I think like after these fires,
we see it like I, um, for my house flooded,
but no kid, right. Everything on the first floor, it's
got washed away. Um, and I remember I lived in
a little village, right. So there was one house that
was uphill, maybe a hundred foot from my house. And

(59:56):
everybody in our village was at that house by the
end of the evening, right? Because everybody's house had flooded. But, like,
we made sure first that there were some older folks.
We went and checked on them, got them out of
the house, got them to the neighbors, right? And, like,
we were already close, but I think that made us closer, right?
We all knew that, like, if something happened, we had
a place to go. And, like, that bonding through trauma,

(01:00:22):
in a sense, right, can sometimes show people, like, who
will show up for you and who won't. because it
wasn't the state, right? Like the British government wasn't sending
Prince William in a fucking helicopter to come and rescue me, right?
Like it was my neighbors. You know, it was like
18 year old me filling sandbags from my neighbors, right?
Trying to sandbag their doors until it got too high

(01:00:42):
to sandbag the doors. And like, I think that could
be an instructive experience for people, right? That like what
really matters when things are really bad, it's the stuff
that's really close to you. And that is your community.
And I've seen that like all over the world. And
when I was in Kurdistan, I remember we were undergoing

(01:01:03):
these drone bombings from Turkey, right? And they had a
call for blood, blood donations. And I watched people go
to the hospital and stand in line and literally offered
to share their own blood with each other, right? Because
the US, which had asked 10,000 people from the SDF, Kurdish, Arab, Assyrian, Armenian, uh,

(01:01:25):
to fight and die against the islamic state so the
americans didn't have to right americans by and large ran
special forces operations and airstrikes and that's the bulk of
the killing and the dying to be done by their
allies but when they needed help the americans sat in
their bases and did nothing right with surface to air
mixers right the americans shot down a drone that went
over their base they didn't shoot down the drone that

(01:01:46):
killed the 14 year old his mother i interviewed uh
and i saw that when people there needed something it
was people there who helped them It wasn't the most
powerful state in the world or the most powerful military
in the world. It was your next door neighbor. And
so I think they had learned through a decade of
war who you can rely on and who you can't.

Speaker 3 (01:02:08):
Think global, act local.

Speaker 5 (01:02:10):
Yeah, that's a good one.

Speaker 2 (01:02:11):
I'd love to know what you guys think. There's this
thing that... Because we're living through, man, as you said it,
I think you said something like we're living through a
crisis of capitalism where the state is finally seen as
less benevolent than it once was. But when we live
in these communities, even if we are taking care of

(01:02:32):
each other, often in our communities, especially smaller towns in
the U.S. that are suffering because there are no jobs,
there's not a lot to do, there's not a lot
of ways to bring money and, you know, often the benefits...
to living in a society, you know, an advanced society
the way we do now and all of that, they

(01:02:53):
suffer because they need jobs. So when a chemical plant
is going to be built there, you know, or one
of these things that are less desirable, a prison, you know,
a big corporation is coming through and offering hundreds if
not thousands of jobs to local people, it becomes this
thing that we welcome and we want and we like
cheer for or vote for because, even though it's horrible, right?

(01:03:15):
Maybe that chemical company causes terrible things to occur to
the water table and to the local ecology where you live,
but hey, you've got a job and now I can
feed my family. I'm just imagining we find ourselves in
this really tough spot where we have the necessity, we
have the, maybe the feeling of a need for the

(01:03:37):
things that end up harming all of us. And what
do we do about that?

Speaker 5 (01:03:42):
Yeah, definitely. Like, capitalism creates these perverse incentives right like
and often it ends up being a bait and switch
like look at the places where they were told oh
you guys are going to have prison and it'll be
bad folks coming here and you'll keep society safe and
now it's an immigration detention center now it's families that
are being torn apart right and like I said before

(01:04:02):
like the way to make sure everyone has everything they
need is to make sure the people near you have
enough and like that can be hard to do on
those like it can be hard for rural communities, especially
like I've seen that, right. I've seen it. There are
not jobs where I grew up. I'd have to drive
to town to get a job. I've seen people really

(01:04:23):
struggle with that. But I think like the way to
get through this is like the way to get through everything,
which is that we have to remind each other that
like those, the people with a chemical plant don't care
about you. And when they come and they say, yeah,
we'll give you jobs. You got to understand that, you know,
like when uh, the boss makes a dollar, you make
a dime. And that if their chemical plant starts leaking,

(01:04:46):
they'll just go somewhere else and tell that same lie.
And then you guys will have to live forever with
the consequences of what they did.

Speaker 3 (01:04:53):
Right.

Speaker 5 (01:04:54):
Um, I, the place where my father grew up, like
there was a lot of coal mining, right? The mines
are still there. Damage done by the coal mines still there.
The jobs are not like, they're like, they're selling you
a short term panacea. And like, Look at what coal
mining did to people. Look at what it did to
their lungs. Look at what it did to their backs.

(01:05:15):
Look at what it did to their whole bodies. There's
a way that we don't have to do that. And
sometimes it can seem harder in the short term. But like,
ask anyone who works at a chemical plant if they
want their kids to work at the chemical plant. Ask
anyone who goes down the mines if they want their
kids to go down the mines. Like, they're selling you
this thing because capitalism has forced you into a place

(01:05:36):
where you need to meet your material needs. Like, That's
why we need to start with helping people meet their
material needs so they don't have to do these things
that compromise for future generations.

Speaker 4 (01:05:46):
Beautifully put and a terrifying state of affairs. But we
have to say it is inspiring. And, you know, James, again,
we can't thank you enough for your time, man. We
know that you are in the trenches right now working
on natural causes. Do you have any spoilers for upcoming episodes?

Speaker 5 (01:06:09):
Yeah, so we're going to talk about the border wall next.
A few weeks ago, my friends and I found a
dead bighorn sheep. It's one of the peninsular bighorns, one
of the rarer. There are like 750 peninsular bighorns in
this country. 749 now, I guess, in the border wall wire.

(01:06:31):
And we found it after a biologist had found it,
but we didn't know exactly where, so we went exploring. Um,
and we, I want to talk about the ecological damage
that the border wall is doing. So that's going to
be our next couple of episodes. Uh, I want to
look at the DOJ investigation into big egg, uh, because

(01:06:54):
I think that's a whole lot about the shit that
we don't talk about when we talk about egg prices. Right.
And so we're going to get into big egg. Uh,
and then like, I also want, it can be very
doom and gloom. I really want folks to find the
comfort and joy in the outdoors that I do. So
I'm going to take people along on a couple camping
trips that I'm going to do.

Speaker 2 (01:07:15):
Yay.

Speaker 3 (01:07:15):
That's beautiful.

Speaker 2 (01:07:17):
Do you ever go caving or spend time in caves?

Speaker 5 (01:07:20):
I have, man. That is when you get into the
little skinny stuff. Oh, that's one. I'll rock climb all day.
I'll go up. I like to free dive, like breath
hold diving.

Speaker 4 (01:07:34):
Oh, sick.

Speaker 5 (01:07:34):
Yeah i've gone into some little constrictions there and yeah
i tell you what like that that gets the old
heart rate going um i got caught in a fishing
net once free diving as well so like i've stopped
doing sketchy dive practices yeah so uh caving don't invite
me on your caving trip i guess.

Speaker 3 (01:07:53):
Yeah or you you could be the lookout.

Speaker 2 (01:07:55):
Yeah sure yeah yeah the caves are gonna move on
you Just saying, we're probably going to have to move
back into the caves pretty soon. You know, we should
probably get used to them.

Speaker 5 (01:08:04):
I've stayed in some cave houses. I love a cave house. Sure. Yeah,
I would truck like that. I'd give an opportunity any time.

Speaker 4 (01:08:12):
And we have, of course, we've gone a little long.
We want to wrap up really quickly with two things. First,
how can people contact you to learn more about your work?
And second... Do you want to come back on our
show sometime in the future?

Speaker 5 (01:08:31):
I'd love to. This is great fun. I'll work on
my mood lighting for next time. Because you've got two
primary colors, so I feel like I could slot in nicely.
They can do naturalcausespod at proton.me if they want to
email me. You can find me on places where people post, well,
I guess just on Blue Sky and unfortunately still on x.com,

(01:08:55):
everything website with my name James Stout they can I
do like sub stack that's called the future is unwritten
which of course is a quote from Joyce drummer I
do the same shit on patreon just I know people
have platform preferences and I want to facilitate those I
would love it if people got in touch like some
of the episodes we're doing in natural causes are already

(01:09:15):
from people getting in touch like I can't keep tabs
on the whole world and So please, please do. I'm
especially interested in learning more about traditional ecological knowledge from
indigenous folks and how I can respectfully share that. And
so if people want to reach out about that, I'd
love to hear from them.

Speaker 4 (01:09:34):
And there you have it, friends and neighbors, fellow conspiracy realist, Dr.
James Stout. What a, you know, in addition to being
erudite and principled, just what a cool hang. I'm glad
we didn't censor the curse words.

Speaker 5 (01:09:48):
Oh, yeah.

Speaker 2 (01:09:49):
Yeah, no, that was a great conversation. Man, I think
we could probably talk to him for a long time
just because of what he's done already in his life,
which is embarrassingly leagues ahead of any of the things
I've done. So I don't know how you feel, Ben.
I know you've done a lot of stuff in your life.
Makes me feel like I need to get out there
and start doing some things, helping some people. I forgot

(01:10:12):
that you could just go help people.

Speaker 4 (01:10:14):
Yeah, well, you know, it depends on how you do it,
because I did almost go to jail for giving away
bread that one time.

Speaker 2 (01:10:20):
I remember that.

Speaker 4 (01:10:22):
That was a great reason to be late for work.
But folks, you know, Matt, I agree with you, and
we hope you enjoyed this conversation. We're not blowing rainbows.
Natural Causes is more than worth your time, along with
all of the other many pieces of investigation that James
has created, especially in his... in his partnership with It

(01:10:45):
Could Happen Here by our friends over at Cool Zone Media.
We think it could happen here that you reach out
to us. Ooh, not my best segue, but there we go.
There are a number of ways to contact us. You
can find us on social medias, Should Thou Sip, Conspiracy Stuff,
Conspiracy Stuff Show, Derivations Thereof. You can also call us
on a telephonic device.

Speaker 2 (01:11:07):
Hey, that's right. You've got one of those. Hopefully, maybe, probably.
Can you get access to one? If you do call 1-833-STD-WYTK.
Now you got to turn those letters into numbers. You
can find a way to do that. Oh, also wait, look,
you can just, you can just call this number. It's
right below me. Look at that.

Speaker 5 (01:11:26):
So easy.

Speaker 2 (01:11:27):
And it's already turned into numbers.

Speaker 5 (01:11:29):
Cool.

Speaker 2 (01:11:29):
Hey, If you want to send us an email, we are.

Speaker 4 (01:11:32):
The entities that read each piece of correspondence we receive.
Be well aware, yet unafraid. Sometimes the void writes back.
What are you going to write to us about?

Speaker 3 (01:11:43):
I never know, man. I never know. What are we
going to write to you with?

Speaker 4 (01:11:47):
Probably a random fact, as well as any links or
further sources you would like from this or our other
conversations on the air. In the meantime, we're going to
take a break and try to reattach Agent Scully's head.
That's one for everybody on Netflix. We'll see you out
here in the dark. Conspiracy at iHeartRadio.com.

Speaker 2 (01:12:26):
Stuff They Don't Want You To Know is a production
of iHeartRadio. For more podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app,
Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.