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September 5, 2025 15 mins

The track this week, "If You Could Ask An Endling" poses the question of how did you get to extinction and what could we do to avoid it. I can't help but think of the erosion of trust in experts as displayed by the firing of the CDC director.

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Episode Transcript

Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:02):
Media. So what do you do as an observer when
you see somebody as washed and they don't know it,
like they just truly, honestly cannot see it. On the
video this week of Politics, in the show and on
the news, I read off a list of reported by

(00:24):
USA today of the nations who have announced their suspension
and partial restrictions of shipping to the USA. Australia, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Cyprus, Chestnea, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, India, Italy, Japan, Latvia, Leeftenstein, Lithuania, Malta, Moldova, Montenegro, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Serbia, Singapore, Solving,

(00:54):
South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, and Thailand have all
said we may not we may go ahead stop shipping
to the US. Bruh, this is like you'd like, we're
on the brink of extinction here, Like this is this
is clearly like y'all, that's a lot of countries, okay,

(01:17):
But I think the biggest one for me that really
had me questioning, like, okay, this might be the moment
we really watched was the firing of the CDC director
Susan Manares.

Speaker 2 (01:35):
So like here, I'm quoting from the Hill.

Speaker 1 (01:37):
It says when Secretary Kennedy administered an oath of office
for doctor Manares on July thirty first, he called her
a public health expert with an unimpeachable scientific credentials. But
when she refused weeks later to rubber stamp his dangerous
and unfounded vaccine recommendations or he to his demands to

(01:57):
fire the CDC staff members, he decided she was expendable.

Speaker 3 (02:02):
This is what they wrote in the piece.

Speaker 1 (02:04):
Right, So in her refusal to sign off on some
of the CDC recommendations that he's trying to push through
a lot of other actual experts inside of the hass
was like, dog, we can't work here no more. It's
time to go. And I guess my question isn't so

(02:28):
much about like what they're not willing to sign up for,
but like, you clearly know that this is going to
go wrong. So I have a number of questions for
you that being with me.

Speaker 2 (02:55):
All right, welcome to a tap in episode.

Speaker 1 (02:57):
The plum we're gonna talk about on this one is
the poem called if you could ask An Endling, But
we'll talk about that at the end. But when I said,
a lot of this poetry on this new stuff was
inspired by what's happening in the news and what's happening
in our world right now. This is the perfect example
of this. The questions presented in this poem is like

(03:20):
when you at the end, do you know it? When
you know that, like you know there's an era a season,
that just probably means that, like, yo, I'm probably gonna
be the last one up here before everything changes.

Speaker 3 (03:35):
Now.

Speaker 1 (03:36):
Like we explained last week, an endling is the last
of a living person in a family before that family
line goes extinct because they had no offspring, or the
last of a species. But the thing we know about
species is that it's most closest related species learns from
the one that's a stink and then carries on a

(03:57):
lot of those characteristics.

Speaker 3 (03:58):
Right, Like.

Speaker 1 (04:01):
You know we have we don't have Willie mammis, but
we got elephants, you feel me. We ain't got dinosaurs,
but we got chickens. Yeah, you understand I'm talking about
Like it lives on in different ways. So it's not
so much that life is ending completely. It's not so
much that like America is dying as we know it.
Like I said, before countries fall, you can still go
to Greece. Greece has fallen, you know what I'm saying.

(04:24):
But when you're in the middle of it, do you
know it? On The Bastard's podcast, I did a marathon
episode with Robert about Hydrich Himmler.

Speaker 3 (04:37):
Was there any way?

Speaker 1 (04:39):
It's not like I'm not asking where they're warning signs.
There's always warning signs, but we always see those after.
But if you could, hypothetically, after something went horribly wrong,
if you could pull that person to aside and say, hey, listen,
let me ask you a few questions, like, okay, so
where did we go wrong? How did we get here?

(05:03):
How do I avoid ever being here again? Would that
not be now? Granted, if we're talking dinosaurs, I mean,
what you're gonna do not have the media hit you.
That's not what I'm talking about. I'm talking about right now.
As a country. Imagine if you can pull experts aside
and ask them, hey, dude, like, if we were twenty

(05:25):
years from now where half our population died of measles
and COVID, did you know.

Speaker 2 (05:33):
This was coming? And how could we have avoided it?

Speaker 1 (05:37):
Obviously this is fictional you know, and like a thought experiment.
But if I could, if I could, forty years from now,
sit down Susan and all the people that left the
CDC in the RFK of it all, what could they
tell me? So one of the things I would think,

(06:00):
I would imagine it would be the erosion of trust
of expertise somehow or another. The capitalism of it all,
which has to do with the health and safety of
the American citizen, is so financially motivated.

Speaker 2 (06:21):
Especially as a black.

Speaker 1 (06:22):
Person, we have actual evidence that we have just been
guinea pigs. So when the experts get to talking, there
is this piece of us.

Speaker 2 (06:33):
That believes that maybe these.

Speaker 1 (06:36):
People have an ulterior motive. How could we have avoided that?
What could we have done different to not get to that?
And it's not obviously it's not just in the medical field, right.
I personally think that, like I said before, bullies do
play a particular role.

Speaker 3 (06:50):
Sometimes.

Speaker 1 (06:52):
Shut your dumbass up should have happened a long time ago.
That phrase saved a lot of us young men and
young women. When we were in middle school, somebody said,
may shut your dumb ass up. Y'all know, like you're
talking about I wish there was some sort of provable,
hirable board of shut your dumb ass ups that our

(07:17):
country had. There is definitely a lot of corruption. There's
definitely a lot of financial things to be gained from
the selling of medicines, the soups and nasty stuffs and
red dye number fours. That is truly a part of
an American diet. However, that does not necessarily mean that

(07:42):
everyone in this system does not know what they talking about.
So when you get somebody who is of impeccable integrity
who understands that science isn't about knowledge, it's about the
discovery of knowledge, and when you learn something new, your
recommendations this was the best information we had, who truly

(08:04):
have a desire to keep us alive and says based
on the evidence that they can verifiably prove these people
who have been a part of this program, been a
part of this department for multiple presidencies, who gains nothing.

Speaker 2 (08:21):
From lying to the American people is fired.

Speaker 1 (08:25):
Because they looked at the paperwork and what they boss
wanted them to do and they was like, I cannot
co sign this.

Speaker 2 (08:33):
So when they leave, what do we do?

Speaker 3 (08:36):
Now?

Speaker 1 (08:37):
We are left with these people that are in charge
who are every once in a while saying something that
makes sense. But just because you use big words don't
mean you know what you're talking about. Now, this would

(09:06):
be the future questions I would ask for them if
I were able to do a hypothetical thought experiment with them.
But I got you now, the ones that are alive now.
People who signed this op ed in The New York
Times was William Ford, who served as the director in
nineteen seventy seven to nineteen eighty three, William Roper, who
served nineteen ninety to nineteen ninety three, David Satcher nineteen

(09:30):
ninety three to nineteen ninety eight. I could go on
all these people that said what they are doing is
dangerous and I can't work there. What I'm asking you
is like, yo, so what should we do? Like as okay, so.

Speaker 2 (09:42):
I'm an American, I live here, Like what do you
want me to do?

Speaker 3 (09:46):
Do? I?

Speaker 1 (09:47):
Like?

Speaker 3 (09:48):
What do? I?

Speaker 1 (09:49):
Waitit wait, don't leave, cause if you go, who are
posed to listen to?

Speaker 3 (09:56):
I don't know? For trust the doctor's either what are
we sup?

Speaker 2 (10:02):
What who do I listen to?

Speaker 3 (10:05):
Do? I just trust RFK the guy with the worm.

Speaker 1 (10:09):
In his head listen y'all, I can truly say from
somebody who don't do science but can read and verify information,
the most researched piece of medical advancement we have is vaccines.
Like since the seventeen hundreds, we didn't figured out germ theory,

(10:31):
like this is something we've been working on for three
hundred years. I know we know what were talking about.
Who do we go to? I get that that man
fired you because you wouldn't sign off on something, but
I don't understand how that's not a red flag to
anybody else. The point I'm trying to make is if
I could ask an endlingk y'all the last people to
shut that door.

Speaker 2 (10:50):
You understand what I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (10:51):
The only people that will push back to this man
before the rest of us for the next twenty years
start running around here with polio and smallpox, stuff that
we don't all already eradicated. But because you don't believe
in vaccines, now we can't do the thing. Why I'm
asking you who we supposed to go to? How do
we never get here again? Far be it from me

(11:15):
to believe in the institution, because some of the erosion
of the institution is your fault? How can we not
get here again? I ain't got to answer, y'all, but
I wish I did. All right, listen to this poem
if you can ask an in link, Hey, come here,

(11:37):
let's take a little walk. Just use your little thought experiment.
You can choose to ignore the ethereal music if you want,
but just allow us this creativity here. If you can
ask an in link, just what I would say? How
different are we than you?

Speaker 3 (12:00):
Missing?

Speaker 1 (12:00):
What is familiar? What have we leveled up in? Do
you see you and us? What pillars of survival have
we pillaged until they were pointless?

Speaker 3 (12:09):
I have so many questions, many questions. What was earth like? Then? Wait?
You know, don't answer that. I mean, how could you earth?

Speaker 1 (12:19):
For you?

Speaker 3 (12:19):
Was just earth? Right?

Speaker 1 (12:21):
Where did you go and did you go wrong? What
was your fault? What was that out of your hands?
Were you wise enough to know? Were you lonely or
didn't even notice? Did you know this was the end?

Speaker 3 (12:31):
Did you pan in it? Were you confident that.

Speaker 1 (12:34):
The best, most efficient parts of you were living on
in other forms like your closest rarely learned from your
best practices?

Speaker 3 (12:41):
Was that on purpose? Or were you just living? How
do you just live.

Speaker 1 (12:44):
I have so many questions when it's my time, will
I know? Did you know it was coming? Or will
it just sneak up on me? When I look around
and see a world I don't recognize, where minds are
incrementally removed from the terrari area without me even noticing?
Was I so consumed with consumption with no thoughts of

(13:07):
the future? Was the future as vague and as made
up as it is to me?

Speaker 3 (13:12):
Were you bitter? Were you tied? We're how about this?

Speaker 1 (13:18):
Were you excited about what the young links and found
Links have figured out?

Speaker 3 (13:22):
Was you dancing all over that fine line.

Speaker 1 (13:24):
Between OG's and old heads, between battle raps and dad jokes?

Speaker 3 (13:29):
When you're in a golden era?

Speaker 1 (13:31):
How can you possibly know?

Speaker 3 (13:35):
They say journalism is the first draft of history.

Speaker 1 (13:37):
I say history can only be understood through poetry.

Speaker 3 (13:41):
Were y'all writing any of this stuff down?

Speaker 1 (13:44):
Y'all know that agent that Gypsums didn't call themselves ancient?

Speaker 3 (13:47):
Right? They was just them?

Speaker 1 (13:49):
Right?

Speaker 3 (13:49):
Do you think they knew their way of life was
slipping away? I mean, you're right? How could they?

Speaker 1 (13:55):
How could they know that their pantheon would find its
way through Greek and Roman mythos, it's send their millennia
old habit of tapping African inspirations.

Speaker 3 (14:03):
Yeah, how could hol Tevan possibly know? I mean did
he know? I mean did he know?

Speaker 1 (14:09):
Or maybe it never crossed your minds? Life was as
beautiful and ugly as it is just like this, I
should ask modern us, what was the last moment before
your phones cooked your brain?

Speaker 3 (14:21):
The last phone number you remember?

Speaker 1 (14:23):
You're a dying greed and my silly bre even naming
this is immortality in these mortal coils, as pointless and aimless.

Speaker 3 (14:31):
As I think, it is what we made. We can't sustain,
so enjoy and that chance. Look hard, You're freely this
so hard. This is what we had, even though it
never does.

Speaker 1 (14:44):
Smith want Lazarus to go back and leave the comforts
of heaven and warn the living that the life you
live in really ain't it. But if you could ask
an endling, doesn't that mean you are the one?

Speaker 3 (14:56):
That mean you are one? Had to.

Speaker 1 (15:04):
Before in the sinks pep s
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