August 18, 2025 • 24 mins
Please welcome alll the way from the USA, Robert!
Sure Robert's demeanour is disarming, as is love of sourdough bread, The New York Times crossword, and mushrooms, but there's more than meets the eye.
Robert knows an awful lot about an interesting bunch of people that live among us, you might be one of them and you may not even be aware.
What is Robert concealing?
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:08):
Please welcome your gorgeous host, me Art Simone. But I
know you're not just tear for me. You're wanting to
meet someone with a drabic steria who is concealing some sparkle.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
What's that sparkling?
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Oh love, I'm a magpie and I'll uncover that special sparkling,
shiny thing in everyone. This is concealed with Art Simone.
Let's meet our guest Rowl the time.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Hi. My name is Robert.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
I'm from the US and I work at Arizona State University.
I am forty two years old and outside of work,
I enjoy sourdough, baking, bicycling, and doing the daily crossword
puzzle of the New York Times. I am concealing something
that I have researched extensively.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Oh all right, hello, Robert, We've gone international today, all
the way from Arizona.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Do you know, Robert, I'm going to make this about
me for a moment, even though I know it's all
about you. But guess what time I hate to get
up this morning just to make sure I looked glamorous
for you on this zoom call four in the morning,
two thirty am. Baby, goodness. No, I should have just
stayed up from last night. I could have gone straight
from the gig. But no, I've done a fresh face
(01:27):
for you. But enough about me, because we are international. Hello, Hello, Hello, Robert.
Now we're in Arizona. What's the weather like in Arizona
at the moment.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
It's currently forty five degrees celsius?
Speaker 2 (01:37):
What celsius?
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Yes, oh, it is incredibly warm.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
We're in the depth of our summer, and anything I
can do to take my mind off of it, including
being on this show, is a welcome. A welcome rest
from forty five degrees Jesus.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
I don't even think it gets that hot here. Very often,
you know, says are you in the desert? Is the
Arizona or a desert? Have a desert, don't they? I'm
very international.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
Yes, we are square in the middle of the Sonoma
Desert or the Sedona Desert, Sonoran desert.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
My goodness.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
You could say cinnamon desert and I'd say, yes, that's correct.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
I love it absolutely, Yes, from the middle of a desert.
And it's always hot and dry. And that's about the
long and the short of it.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Yeah, okay, Well, I'm sending my condolences. It was nine
degrees when I walked in the building this morning, so
I'll send some of my coolness all the way from
Melbourne to Arizona. So you we're Arizona State University. You said, wow,
that's right, that's very fancy. I don't know anything about university.
I went for a year, but it wasn't really for me.
(02:41):
So anyway, what I'm going to do is ask you
three questions, and from the answers to those three questions,
I have to work out what it is you are
concealing from me today, because I have no clue from
the sour dough, bicycling and forty five degree desert that's
given me nothing so far. So let's see if these
questions can help me out. So first question I have
(03:01):
for you, Robert, is what's a habit You never would
let yourself get into.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
A habit that I would never let myself get into.
Would be hoarding.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Oh, oh okay, hoarding. Oh that's that's not I don't
know if we can be friends anymore.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Robert. I'm a drag queen.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
I have to hoard absolutely everything that's ever existed in
my life because I might needed again.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Well, look, there's there's tasteful procurement, and then there's hoarding.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
I'm going to write that one down for later. Thank you. Actually,
tasteful procure movement. I do have to meet.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
There isn't much happening behind you on your screen at
the moment. It's very bare. You should see my setup
at home. Oh my lord, there's three thousand Chucky dolls.
There's some books, there's there's a Rupe Paul doll. There,
there is just shelves. It's so distracting whenever anyone zooms
into my office. So no hoarding for you, got it,
all right? Question number two, what's something you've been watching
(04:01):
recently that you recommend?
Speaker 2 (04:03):
I should too.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
I think if I could recommend one thing for you
to watch, it would be the show The Last of Us.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Oh okay, all right, The Last of Us. I have
seen it. I have seen it. I'm up to date. Gosh,
don't want to give any spoilers. The people still haven't
seen it. But Jesus, that was it the first episode
or the second, I don't know. It was just too much,
too much.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
It's a lot to take in, and they don't they
go right at it. It's amazing.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
I cracked it. I cracked it. I literally yelled at
my house mate. He made me watch it, and he's
played the game, so he knew what was coming, and
I said.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
What is over?
Speaker 1 (04:39):
I don't want to watch this anymore. I don't want
to watch this at all. I don't want to follow
that character for the rest of this. I'm not interested
in them. I came here for one thing, and one
thing only Neil interest Sharon. So look it's a bit
too much for me, all right, Last of Us? So
Last of Us is a video game. It also has
lots of fungus. Okay, so do I?
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Christ Number three The final one to try and pieces
together is if I gave you a plane ticket to
anywhere in the world, where would you go.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
I would take a trip to New Zealand and for
a few reasons, Okay, I want to see what all
those American billionaires are up to there. You know, they're
buying citizenship, you know, and all that kind of stuff.
But also that's where the Shire is, and I'd like
to visit that. And you know, as a geography geek,
(05:33):
it's like the one place that has like all seven
climates just in one tiny little package.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
So you can see everything when you're in New Zealand.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Okay, Okay, I tell you what a little side note.
When I filmed a little TV show in New Zealand,
very traumatic experience. But I was eliminated in this TV
show and I was stuck in the country because the
border bubble had closed between Australia and New Zealand. I
couldn't leave, and I was like miserable. I was crying,
I was screaming, and I said, I just want to
(06:05):
go to the Shire. That's all I want to do.
I just want to go to the Shier. I didn't
make it to the Shire because they put me back
on the TV show, so I still haven't seen it.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
So I have some unfinished business.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
But okay, New Zealand Billionaires, the Shire, Last of Us
Fungus video game, hoarding, no hoarding, no taste will procurement,
but no hoarding.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Jeez.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
I guess I'll come around to like obviously film and television.
But then Hoarding Hoarders is a TV show, okay. And
then New Zealand Billionaires. Climates, Oh climates, okay, climates and fungus.
That's like stuff, Oh fungus climates. You could be studying
(06:47):
fungus professional shroom person, It's come to me, all right,
are you a professional shroom enthusiast?
Speaker 3 (07:00):
I am not, but I really wish I were. Now.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
I am a professor at Arizona State University and I
researched doomsday preppers. I've co authored a book called Be
Prepared with my colleague Emily Ray at Sonoma State University.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Oh what okay? So what do you mean you researched them?
Go into it? What?
Speaker 3 (07:25):
Sure?
Speaker 4 (07:26):
So specifically, I've been looking at prepping movements in the
United States about people who are getting ready for the
end of the world for various religious, social, or ecological reasons,
and along with my co author, we wrote a book
arguing that prepping is not a sort of strange behavior
(07:46):
from fringe elements, but rather it's a mainstream activity that
a lot of people engage in.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
And so we're working on.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
This project and we are actually expanding international. So we're
also studying bunker and prepping movements in the UK and
Australia as well.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Oh my goodness, you're researching doomsday preppers. Where did this
all start? When did you go?
Speaker 2 (08:11):
You know what? These people are interesting and I want
to know more about them.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
Yeah, it was way back in twenty eighteen. Emily sent
me a little article about a Silicon Valley startup called Preppy,
and of course it's misspelled pr Eppi, because that's how
Silicon Valley does things right. And it was a startup
company that sold bug out bags to sort of aspiring,
(08:38):
upper middle class on the go professionals, and their whole
sort of like approach was that this is a bug
out bag that you can be proud to display in
your living room and then you don't have to hide
away and be kind of ashamed of your prepping behavior.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
And so we.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
Thought that's something's going on here because you would have
assumed when you think about doomsday preppers think about like
cable television shows or something where there's extreme people, but
like this is being targeted to like middle class Americans,
and so it's an interesting, sort of in many ways
typical Silicon Valley story. You know, you open the Preppy
(09:15):
bag and there's like there's some food, but it's like
a very posh eighty five percent cacao chocolate bar from
Dubai or whatever, you know, and there's a chunk of
gold and very fancy lotions and comestibles in there. So
that's how we got started. And then we, as one
does when you get started on this kind of thing,
(09:35):
we started.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
Seeing it all over the place, all over the country.
Speaker 4 (09:38):
There are people who are getting ready for things to
kind of fall apart for religious, social, cultural, ecological reasons,
and so they're getting ready for that to happen. Everybody's
kind of doing it, that's our argument. Everybody's kind of
doing it. The question is when does it get weird?
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Yes, so you were saying that there's this more lux
concept of it as well. But what I've kind of
been exposed to over the e is, like you said,
like the cable TV shows where it seems like they're
really far outskirt widows that are doing this strange thing
prepping for no raisin. But is there a whole other
community of established people that are prepping and getting ready
(10:17):
for whatever it may be.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
Yeah, there are, and they're all over the place. And
I'll just give you a few examples that we found
in the US. Right.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
So, and again we think about this in terms of
economic class mostly, and so we look at like prepping
at different price points, if that makes sense. So there
are there are folks who have basically built time shares
for doomsday, right, Like you pay a little fee and
there's a compound kind of waiting for you. What I
love about this example is as like a time share, Right,
(10:45):
It's like, well, how does that make sense in terms
of you know, It's like people don't think this through
maybe right, We found companies and real estate agents who
have purchased decommission nuclear missile silos and are building luxury
condos underground in these old missile silos. Again, it's kind
(11:05):
of peculiar behavior, but that's sort of like for ultra,
or not for ultra, but like for richer people. But
one of the reasons I mentioned New Zealand is a
place I wanted to go to is because that's where
all the luxury bunkers are.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
For all the super.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
Mega wealthy people, Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, they've
all got New Zealand citizenship. They've all built these massive
compounds into the mountains. They have it staffed with like
medical facilities and personnel, and they're ready to go, like
if things get crazy, they are going to jump on
a helicopter and get over to New Zealand.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
It just doesn't sound real. It's so ominous, that's right.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
But you can you can see them, like if you
if you know a fortune or in Forbes and the
sort of like high end finance magazines or whatever, don't
give you these like lux tours and like, oh, look
at these beautiful bunkers that the tech elite have built
for themselves. We're not going to tell you where is
because that would be naughty, right, but they absolutely want
(12:04):
to display it.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
What's the end plan for these high end bunkies? Like
they go down there and then what are they just
gonna live there for the rest of their lives?
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Like what is the end go? Like, what's the point?
What are you doing? Like what do they want out
of it? I don't know.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
That is exactly the question that animates us, is the
question like, oh, do you want to just survive two
weeks longer than everybody else when things go like totally sideways,
Like yeah, we argue that because class is the kind
of animating feature here that especially the ultra wealthy, they're
so attached to maintaining their class status that even if
(12:39):
the world ends, they have to be the wealthy people, right,
And so they have to preserve this like this ultra
luxurious lifestyle. And you know, in our own research too,
we've sort of tied that into an American identity, but
that gets kind of in the weeds and the history
of the US. But yeah, I really think that it's
just a matter of like, if things go totally wrong,
(12:59):
very few of them are going to make it.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Why not me?
Speaker 4 (13:02):
And if it's going to be me, I'm going to
do it in a way that sustains my standard of living.
I think that's what drives the fantasy, is that you
can just sort of take your lifestyle with you into
a bunker.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
But I don't think they've actually thought it.
Speaker 4 (13:16):
Through, like what happens after if you really kind of
think through like if things are so totally degraded that
the world is uninhabitable and you have to go underground, Like,
I don't know how you can think about a future.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
It's this It seems to be really based around nacissism really,
whereas I'm so important and I should continue to live
on this earth beyond anyone else because I look what
I can do. It's ikey, I unlock it.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
We're not psychologists, but I think you're right. So, but
that's my that's my non professional opinion. But yeah, you're
right there there is a sort of ickiness factor, but
art at the same time, kind of being ready for
things to maybe not go quite right might be smart.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Well, certain times within the history of the world where
preps have come and gone and like ebbed and flowed.
Is it like we're getting a lot more of them
now because of the current climate or.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
It seems like there's a renewed interest in it. And
I think what's to me the most interesting thing is
that the United States's FEMA agency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency,
estimates that about half of Americans.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Engage in some kind of prepping behavior.
Speaker 4 (14:25):
But what I think is interesting in that data is
that they break prepping behavior into two kind of categories.
There's the social behavior, where you know, you join a
civic organization a church, or you talk to your neighbors
and you develop a play and that kind of thing, right.
And then on the other hand, there's a sort of
individual responses where that's like stockpiling home security surveillance technologies
(14:49):
or even like bunker building that kind of thing, right.
And so they say that half of Americans are engaging
and prepping behavior, and that's held kind of constant. But
what they notice in their most recent survey is that
way more Americans are shifting away from the pro social
kinds of prepping behavior and moving into the sort of
individualistic kinds of behavior. And I think that to me
(15:10):
is the most worrisome aspect of.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
This coming up, we find out which celebrities are preparing
for the end of the world, and the telltale sign
of an Aussie prepper.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Will start to notice everywhere.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
All right, so we're here with Robert the doomsday prepper researcher.
So you have kind of touched on the different areas
that people are prepping for what they're worried about, but
could you list some specific examples of common reasons that
people want to prep what they're actually scared of.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
Absolutely, So you can find groups of people who have
a very strong evangelical theology where they think that Jesus
Christ is gonna come back, and so they think that
that might happen within their lifetimes. But since Christ left
for the first time, people have thought he was going
to come back and so hasn't happened quite yet. But
(16:10):
maybe so I think that animates a lot of people.
Another interesting group in the US is up in the
Northwest area. There's a lot of wilderness, very sparsely populated.
There's a group of landowners that call themselves America's Redoubt,
and it's sort of like a co op of people
(16:31):
who are sort of thinking like, well, you know, America
is going to fall apart under the weight of its
social contradictions, and so we need to be ready to
go and sort of reboot America. So it's sort of
this like hyper America two point zero out in the wilderness.
You have to apply to get into this thing, and
it's like do you have any usable skills? Are you
a doctor? Are you an accountant? I mean, they're really
(16:52):
trying to build what hippies in the sixties might have
called an intentional community, right, but they're doing it for
the total social collapse of the US. I think there
are prepping groups too that there's a racial or ethnic
component to it, but even that's ideologically frustrated in the
sense that you can find prepping groups of African Americans
(17:15):
that are sort of firmly what you'd call right wing,
their very Second Amendment focused, and so they're like big
into gun rights and the idea that a tyrannical government
will have to be fought off. And then there are
other African American prepping groups that are engaging in that
pro social behavior of building community, figuring out how to
(17:35):
procure for themselves via community gardens, repurposing urban land, and
so it cuts across all those kinds of things, and
then I think there are other folks that are really
worried there's going to be just an ecological disaster that
they are not going to be saved by the government.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Yeah, well you were touching on, like you said, water
and solar panels. Are there some trites and happy spy
preppers that you've discovered while researching that you think are
actually maybe a little bit beneficial for people to incorporate
into their own lives.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:08):
I think it kind of gets at that question of
when does it get weird? Because if you think, okay,
you know, having fifteen gallons of water is good?
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Is thirty two much? Is three thousand a little bit peculiar?
Right hand? And you get to a point where it's like, Okay,
it got weird.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Do you think prepping is kind of getting cool? Because
I see like bunker tours on TikTok. I see like
all of this stuff, and it's like people love it.
They engage with the content. I don't know if they
seeople actually real preppers, who knows. But they're doing all
the actions and they're being celebrated for it.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
It is it cool?
Speaker 3 (18:44):
That's a really great question, and I'll say yes for
one reason.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
I mean, and we open our book with this. The
Kardashians took a tour of an Atlas bunker on their
show Keeping Up with the Kardashians, and so like that
has to buy a little bit of coolness, and so
I think it is kind of cool. I think it's
a little bit cool too, because it's it's still a
little bit exotic seeming, right, because so much of the
(19:12):
emphasis is on the extreme or kind of like marginal behaviors.
But I suspect that if our argument holds and people
sort of realize that they are increasingly engaging in prepping behavior,
maybe it'll be less cool. So maybe that's what I
should say. My real goal is here is to make
(19:33):
prepping seem less cool by suggesting we're all doing it.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
All right, Okay, yeah, you don't want to be involved.
Everyone's doing it how boring.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
So you said you were now moving in research and
looking at places like Australia. What are we doing over here,
because I haven't heard about it. The only prepping that
I think Aussies do is have like a bag ready
to go visit bush fire. That's kind of it that
I've heard.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
Right, We're we're working with colleagues in Australia, including one
in Melbourne, and I think what we're going to contribute
is we're going to argue that there's a kind of
Americanization going on here. And I don't know if this
is true, but a sort of guiding principle of this
has been seemingly anyway. I mean, you can tell me
if this maps onto your own Americans dig and Australians
(20:26):
take off into the wilderness.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
That's true.
Speaker 4 (20:29):
Yeah, when we don't get ready for things to go wrong,
we like get in the basement.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
No, we run to this day out back. We're like,
nothing can touch us here. We're fine, whatever, We'll go
hang out there.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
Take a thirty rack of beer with you and like go.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Well, literally, you know, I sometimes ponder the end of
the world, and you know, because we are so separated
from everything here, it takes a little bit longer for
things to get to us. So I was like, oh,
we'd get a bit of a heads up, okay, so
then what would I do? And then it just run
into the bush.
Speaker 4 (20:57):
That's a very philosophical question. If the world ends, a no,
no one's there to see it.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
Did it happen?
Speaker 1 (21:03):
If the world ended but I'm still around, is it
actually ended? Because I think I'm my world so and
I'm pretty sure i'm a lot of other people's world,
so I think it's still going.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
If you ask me, what is the world? Oh, we
can go for ages.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
But this conversation has really triggered something in my brain
and realized that I think I am actually a doomsday prepper.
But my doomsday is running out of makeup because I
have to have all My friends call it my stock.
I always have stock of everything. Whenever I buy something,
it's like twenty of them because I always use them.
I always need them and I don't want to run out.
(21:37):
I'm a busy working girl, so you know, if the
end of the world happens, I'm prepared because I've got
like thirty cans of hairspray. Three leaders of Foundation twelve
buckets of glitter and fifty seven thousand pairs of eyelashes. So,
I mean, is there one item that people usually start
prepping with?
Speaker 3 (21:57):
I think most people starting a tool for prepping as
a gun.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Can't. Really.
Speaker 4 (22:04):
Yeah, I do think prepping in America is part of
it so unique because it's so wrapped up in gun culture.
You don't find a lot of people who are engaging
in prepping who aren't also sort of heavily armed. But
then again, most Americans are heavily armed anyway, so it's
sort of as it's just an interesting kind of dynamic
(22:25):
that you have to take account of. And I would
suspect that for a lot of Americans who are thinking, oh,
I should do something to protect my home or get
ready in case things don't go quite right. I suspect
it for a lot of people, their first thing would
would be to go get a pistol.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
I mean, it makes sense.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
It's such a different world over there, so we got
get guns, so what would we have?
Speaker 2 (22:41):
What are we doing at the moment?
Speaker 3 (22:43):
I mean it sounds great.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
I mean I guess what I've heard from my colleagues
in Australia is that OSSI's are in like true mad
Max fashion. They're sort of like retrofitting vehicles to be
like really rough and ready for different kinds of environments,
which I'll take.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
That has given me an idea.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
There a Priscilla bus fitted out for the end of
the world, so I could have my big pink bas
I can drive out into the desert. I can have
all my glitter, I can have all my makeup and
lashes and everything, and I'll just be in my little
drag vehicle Priscilla two point. I forget about the sequel.
They're riting at the moment. Not interested. I've just changed
(23:22):
the plot right here, all right, No, someone calls Stephan Elliott,
called Tim Chapple. We're changing it. Priscilla mad Max, end
of the World.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
I'll be there.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
And if you need a budding mushroom enthusiast like a
Bob Olive.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
So that was Robert, a doomsday prepper researcher.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Well, I'm off to go and pick up my pink
Priscilla bus and fill it with glitter.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
And if the world does happen to end today, surely
you want one of the last things you see to
be good.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Just me. It's easy. Just check out concealed without Simon
on the socials.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
M m
Speaker 4 (24:12):
M HM
Please welcome your gorgeous host, me Art Simone. But I
know you're not just tear for me. You're wanting to
meet someone with a drabic steria who is concealing some sparkle.
Speaker 2 (00:20):
What's that sparkling?
Speaker 1 (00:22):
Oh love, I'm a magpie and I'll uncover that special sparkling,
shiny thing in everyone. This is concealed with Art Simone.
Let's meet our guest Rowl the time.
Speaker 3 (00:38):
Hi. My name is Robert.
Speaker 4 (00:40):
I'm from the US and I work at Arizona State University.
I am forty two years old and outside of work,
I enjoy sourdough, baking, bicycling, and doing the daily crossword
puzzle of the New York Times. I am concealing something
that I have researched extensively.
Speaker 1 (00:59):
Oh all right, hello, Robert, We've gone international today, all
the way from Arizona.
Speaker 2 (01:06):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 1 (01:07):
Do you know, Robert, I'm going to make this about
me for a moment, even though I know it's all
about you. But guess what time I hate to get
up this morning just to make sure I looked glamorous
for you on this zoom call four in the morning,
two thirty am. Baby, goodness. No, I should have just
stayed up from last night. I could have gone straight
from the gig. But no, I've done a fresh face
(01:27):
for you. But enough about me, because we are international. Hello, Hello, Hello, Robert.
Now we're in Arizona. What's the weather like in Arizona
at the moment.
Speaker 3 (01:34):
It's currently forty five degrees celsius?
Speaker 2 (01:37):
What celsius?
Speaker 3 (01:40):
Yes, oh, it is incredibly warm.
Speaker 4 (01:42):
We're in the depth of our summer, and anything I
can do to take my mind off of it, including
being on this show, is a welcome. A welcome rest
from forty five degrees Jesus.
Speaker 1 (01:55):
I don't even think it gets that hot here. Very often,
you know, says are you in the desert? Is the
Arizona or a desert? Have a desert, don't they? I'm
very international.
Speaker 4 (02:02):
Yes, we are square in the middle of the Sonoma
Desert or the Sedona Desert, Sonoran desert.
Speaker 3 (02:09):
My goodness.
Speaker 1 (02:09):
You could say cinnamon desert and I'd say, yes, that's correct.
Speaker 4 (02:12):
I love it absolutely, Yes, from the middle of a desert.
And it's always hot and dry. And that's about the
long and the short of it.
Speaker 1 (02:20):
Yeah, okay, Well, I'm sending my condolences. It was nine
degrees when I walked in the building this morning, so
I'll send some of my coolness all the way from
Melbourne to Arizona. So you we're Arizona State University. You said, wow,
that's right, that's very fancy. I don't know anything about university.
I went for a year, but it wasn't really for me.
(02:41):
So anyway, what I'm going to do is ask you
three questions, and from the answers to those three questions,
I have to work out what it is you are
concealing from me today, because I have no clue from
the sour dough, bicycling and forty five degree desert that's
given me nothing so far. So let's see if these
questions can help me out. So first question I have
(03:01):
for you, Robert, is what's a habit You never would
let yourself get into.
Speaker 4 (03:08):
A habit that I would never let myself get into.
Would be hoarding.
Speaker 1 (03:13):
Oh, oh okay, hoarding. Oh that's that's not I don't
know if we can be friends anymore.
Speaker 2 (03:20):
Robert. I'm a drag queen.
Speaker 1 (03:22):
I have to hoard absolutely everything that's ever existed in
my life because I might needed again.
Speaker 3 (03:27):
Well, look, there's there's tasteful procurement, and then there's hoarding.
Speaker 2 (03:33):
I'm going to write that one down for later. Thank you. Actually,
tasteful procure movement. I do have to meet.
Speaker 1 (03:40):
There isn't much happening behind you on your screen at
the moment. It's very bare. You should see my setup
at home. Oh my lord, there's three thousand Chucky dolls.
There's some books, there's there's a Rupe Paul doll. There,
there is just shelves. It's so distracting whenever anyone zooms
into my office. So no hoarding for you, got it,
all right? Question number two, what's something you've been watching
(04:01):
recently that you recommend?
Speaker 2 (04:03):
I should too.
Speaker 4 (04:06):
I think if I could recommend one thing for you
to watch, it would be the show The Last of Us.
Speaker 1 (04:12):
Oh okay, all right, The Last of Us. I have
seen it. I have seen it. I'm up to date. Gosh,
don't want to give any spoilers. The people still haven't
seen it. But Jesus, that was it the first episode
or the second, I don't know. It was just too much,
too much.
Speaker 3 (04:26):
It's a lot to take in, and they don't they
go right at it. It's amazing.
Speaker 1 (04:30):
I cracked it. I cracked it. I literally yelled at
my house mate. He made me watch it, and he's
played the game, so he knew what was coming, and
I said.
Speaker 2 (04:37):
What is over?
Speaker 1 (04:39):
I don't want to watch this anymore. I don't want
to watch this at all. I don't want to follow
that character for the rest of this. I'm not interested
in them. I came here for one thing, and one
thing only Neil interest Sharon. So look it's a bit
too much for me, all right, Last of Us? So
Last of Us is a video game. It also has
lots of fungus. Okay, so do I?
Speaker 2 (05:00):
Okay?
Speaker 1 (05:00):
Christ Number three The final one to try and pieces
together is if I gave you a plane ticket to
anywhere in the world, where would you go.
Speaker 4 (05:11):
I would take a trip to New Zealand and for
a few reasons, Okay, I want to see what all
those American billionaires are up to there. You know, they're
buying citizenship, you know, and all that kind of stuff.
But also that's where the Shire is, and I'd like
to visit that. And you know, as a geography geek,
(05:33):
it's like the one place that has like all seven
climates just in one tiny little package.
Speaker 3 (05:40):
So you can see everything when you're in New Zealand.
Speaker 1 (05:42):
Okay, Okay, I tell you what a little side note.
When I filmed a little TV show in New Zealand,
very traumatic experience. But I was eliminated in this TV
show and I was stuck in the country because the
border bubble had closed between Australia and New Zealand. I
couldn't leave, and I was like miserable. I was crying,
I was screaming, and I said, I just want to
(06:05):
go to the Shire. That's all I want to do.
I just want to go to the Shier. I didn't
make it to the Shire because they put me back
on the TV show, so I still haven't seen it.
Speaker 2 (06:13):
So I have some unfinished business.
Speaker 1 (06:14):
But okay, New Zealand Billionaires, the Shire, Last of Us
Fungus video game, hoarding, no hoarding, no taste will procurement,
but no hoarding.
Speaker 2 (06:26):
Jeez.
Speaker 1 (06:26):
I guess I'll come around to like obviously film and television.
But then Hoarding Hoarders is a TV show, okay. And
then New Zealand Billionaires. Climates, Oh climates, okay, climates and fungus.
That's like stuff, Oh fungus climates. You could be studying
(06:47):
fungus professional shroom person, It's come to me, all right,
are you a professional shroom enthusiast?
Speaker 3 (07:00):
I am not, but I really wish I were. Now.
Speaker 4 (07:05):
I am a professor at Arizona State University and I
researched doomsday preppers. I've co authored a book called Be
Prepared with my colleague Emily Ray at Sonoma State University.
Speaker 2 (07:18):
Oh what okay? So what do you mean you researched them?
Go into it? What?
Speaker 3 (07:25):
Sure?
Speaker 4 (07:26):
So specifically, I've been looking at prepping movements in the
United States about people who are getting ready for the
end of the world for various religious, social, or ecological reasons,
and along with my co author, we wrote a book
arguing that prepping is not a sort of strange behavior
(07:46):
from fringe elements, but rather it's a mainstream activity that
a lot of people engage in.
Speaker 3 (07:52):
And so we're working on.
Speaker 4 (07:54):
This project and we are actually expanding international. So we're
also studying bunker and prepping movements in the UK and
Australia as well.
Speaker 1 (08:03):
Oh my goodness, you're researching doomsday preppers. Where did this
all start? When did you go?
Speaker 2 (08:11):
You know what? These people are interesting and I want
to know more about them.
Speaker 4 (08:16):
Yeah, it was way back in twenty eighteen. Emily sent
me a little article about a Silicon Valley startup called Preppy,
and of course it's misspelled pr Eppi, because that's how
Silicon Valley does things right. And it was a startup
company that sold bug out bags to sort of aspiring,
(08:38):
upper middle class on the go professionals, and their whole
sort of like approach was that this is a bug
out bag that you can be proud to display in
your living room and then you don't have to hide
away and be kind of ashamed of your prepping behavior.
Speaker 3 (08:53):
And so we.
Speaker 4 (08:53):
Thought that's something's going on here because you would have
assumed when you think about doomsday preppers think about like
cable television shows or something where there's extreme people, but
like this is being targeted to like middle class Americans,
and so it's an interesting, sort of in many ways
typical Silicon Valley story. You know, you open the Preppy
(09:15):
bag and there's like there's some food, but it's like
a very posh eighty five percent cacao chocolate bar from
Dubai or whatever, you know, and there's a chunk of
gold and very fancy lotions and comestibles in there. So
that's how we got started. And then we, as one
does when you get started on this kind of thing,
(09:35):
we started.
Speaker 3 (09:36):
Seeing it all over the place, all over the country.
Speaker 4 (09:38):
There are people who are getting ready for things to
kind of fall apart for religious, social, cultural, ecological reasons,
and so they're getting ready for that to happen. Everybody's
kind of doing it, that's our argument. Everybody's kind of
doing it. The question is when does it get weird?
Speaker 1 (09:54):
Yes, so you were saying that there's this more lux
concept of it as well. But what I've kind of
been exposed to over the e is, like you said,
like the cable TV shows where it seems like they're
really far outskirt widows that are doing this strange thing
prepping for no raisin. But is there a whole other
community of established people that are prepping and getting ready
(10:17):
for whatever it may be.
Speaker 3 (10:19):
Yeah, there are, and they're all over the place. And
I'll just give you a few examples that we found
in the US. Right.
Speaker 4 (10:24):
So, and again we think about this in terms of
economic class mostly, and so we look at like prepping
at different price points, if that makes sense. So there
are there are folks who have basically built time shares
for doomsday, right, Like you pay a little fee and
there's a compound kind of waiting for you. What I
love about this example is as like a time share, Right,
(10:45):
It's like, well, how does that make sense in terms
of you know, It's like people don't think this through
maybe right, We found companies and real estate agents who
have purchased decommission nuclear missile silos and are building luxury
condos underground in these old missile silos. Again, it's kind
(11:05):
of peculiar behavior, but that's sort of like for ultra,
or not for ultra, but like for richer people. But
one of the reasons I mentioned New Zealand is a
place I wanted to go to is because that's where
all the luxury bunkers are.
Speaker 3 (11:16):
For all the super.
Speaker 4 (11:17):
Mega wealthy people, Peter Thiel, Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, they've
all got New Zealand citizenship. They've all built these massive
compounds into the mountains. They have it staffed with like
medical facilities and personnel, and they're ready to go, like
if things get crazy, they are going to jump on
a helicopter and get over to New Zealand.
Speaker 2 (11:39):
It just doesn't sound real. It's so ominous, that's right.
Speaker 4 (11:43):
But you can you can see them, like if you
if you know a fortune or in Forbes and the
sort of like high end finance magazines or whatever, don't
give you these like lux tours and like, oh, look
at these beautiful bunkers that the tech elite have built
for themselves. We're not going to tell you where is
because that would be naughty, right, but they absolutely want
(12:04):
to display it.
Speaker 1 (12:05):
What's the end plan for these high end bunkies? Like
they go down there and then what are they just
gonna live there for the rest of their lives?
Speaker 2 (12:12):
Like what is the end go? Like, what's the point?
What are you doing? Like what do they want out
of it? I don't know.
Speaker 4 (12:18):
That is exactly the question that animates us, is the
question like, oh, do you want to just survive two
weeks longer than everybody else when things go like totally sideways,
Like yeah, we argue that because class is the kind
of animating feature here that especially the ultra wealthy, they're
so attached to maintaining their class status that even if
(12:39):
the world ends, they have to be the wealthy people, right,
And so they have to preserve this like this ultra
luxurious lifestyle. And you know, in our own research too,
we've sort of tied that into an American identity, but
that gets kind of in the weeds and the history
of the US. But yeah, I really think that it's
just a matter of like, if things go totally wrong,
(12:59):
very few of them are going to make it.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
Why not me?
Speaker 4 (13:02):
And if it's going to be me, I'm going to
do it in a way that sustains my standard of living.
I think that's what drives the fantasy, is that you
can just sort of take your lifestyle with you into
a bunker.
Speaker 3 (13:13):
But I don't think they've actually thought it.
Speaker 4 (13:16):
Through, like what happens after if you really kind of
think through like if things are so totally degraded that
the world is uninhabitable and you have to go underground, Like,
I don't know how you can think about a future.
Speaker 1 (13:29):
It's this It seems to be really based around nacissism really,
whereas I'm so important and I should continue to live
on this earth beyond anyone else because I look what
I can do. It's ikey, I unlock it.
Speaker 4 (13:44):
We're not psychologists, but I think you're right. So, but
that's my that's my non professional opinion. But yeah, you're
right there there is a sort of ickiness factor, but
art at the same time, kind of being ready for
things to maybe not go quite right might be smart.
Speaker 2 (13:58):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (13:59):
Well, certain times within the history of the world where
preps have come and gone and like ebbed and flowed.
Is it like we're getting a lot more of them
now because of the current climate or.
Speaker 4 (14:11):
It seems like there's a renewed interest in it. And
I think what's to me the most interesting thing is
that the United States's FEMA agency, the Federal Emergency Management Agency,
estimates that about half of Americans.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
Engage in some kind of prepping behavior.
Speaker 4 (14:25):
But what I think is interesting in that data is
that they break prepping behavior into two kind of categories.
There's the social behavior, where you know, you join a
civic organization a church, or you talk to your neighbors
and you develop a play and that kind of thing, right.
And then on the other hand, there's a sort of
individual responses where that's like stockpiling home security surveillance technologies
(14:49):
or even like bunker building that kind of thing, right.
And so they say that half of Americans are engaging
and prepping behavior, and that's held kind of constant. But
what they notice in their most recent survey is that
way more Americans are shifting away from the pro social
kinds of prepping behavior and moving into the sort of
individualistic kinds of behavior. And I think that to me
(15:10):
is the most worrisome aspect of.
Speaker 1 (15:12):
This coming up, we find out which celebrities are preparing
for the end of the world, and the telltale sign
of an Aussie prepper.
Speaker 2 (15:22):
Will start to notice everywhere.
Speaker 1 (15:31):
All right, so we're here with Robert the doomsday prepper researcher.
So you have kind of touched on the different areas
that people are prepping for what they're worried about, but
could you list some specific examples of common reasons that
people want to prep what they're actually scared of.
Speaker 4 (15:48):
Absolutely, So you can find groups of people who have
a very strong evangelical theology where they think that Jesus
Christ is gonna come back, and so they think that
that might happen within their lifetimes. But since Christ left
for the first time, people have thought he was going
to come back and so hasn't happened quite yet. But
(16:10):
maybe so I think that animates a lot of people.
Another interesting group in the US is up in the
Northwest area. There's a lot of wilderness, very sparsely populated.
There's a group of landowners that call themselves America's Redoubt,
and it's sort of like a co op of people
(16:31):
who are sort of thinking like, well, you know, America
is going to fall apart under the weight of its
social contradictions, and so we need to be ready to
go and sort of reboot America. So it's sort of
this like hyper America two point zero out in the wilderness.
You have to apply to get into this thing, and
it's like do you have any usable skills? Are you
a doctor? Are you an accountant? I mean, they're really
(16:52):
trying to build what hippies in the sixties might have
called an intentional community, right, but they're doing it for
the total social collapse of the US. I think there
are prepping groups too that there's a racial or ethnic
component to it, but even that's ideologically frustrated in the
sense that you can find prepping groups of African Americans
(17:15):
that are sort of firmly what you'd call right wing,
their very Second Amendment focused, and so they're like big
into gun rights and the idea that a tyrannical government
will have to be fought off. And then there are
other African American prepping groups that are engaging in that
pro social behavior of building community, figuring out how to
(17:35):
procure for themselves via community gardens, repurposing urban land, and
so it cuts across all those kinds of things, and
then I think there are other folks that are really
worried there's going to be just an ecological disaster that
they are not going to be saved by the government.
Speaker 1 (17:53):
Yeah, well you were touching on, like you said, water
and solar panels. Are there some trites and happy spy
preppers that you've discovered while researching that you think are
actually maybe a little bit beneficial for people to incorporate
into their own lives.
Speaker 3 (18:08):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:08):
I think it kind of gets at that question of
when does it get weird? Because if you think, okay,
you know, having fifteen gallons of water is good?
Speaker 3 (18:16):
Is thirty two much? Is three thousand a little bit peculiar?
Right hand? And you get to a point where it's like, Okay,
it got weird.
Speaker 1 (18:24):
Do you think prepping is kind of getting cool? Because
I see like bunker tours on TikTok. I see like
all of this stuff, and it's like people love it.
They engage with the content. I don't know if they
seeople actually real preppers, who knows. But they're doing all
the actions and they're being celebrated for it.
Speaker 2 (18:42):
It is it cool?
Speaker 3 (18:44):
That's a really great question, and I'll say yes for
one reason.
Speaker 4 (18:49):
I mean, and we open our book with this. The
Kardashians took a tour of an Atlas bunker on their
show Keeping Up with the Kardashians, and so like that
has to buy a little bit of coolness, and so
I think it is kind of cool. I think it's
a little bit cool too, because it's it's still a
little bit exotic seeming, right, because so much of the
(19:12):
emphasis is on the extreme or kind of like marginal behaviors.
But I suspect that if our argument holds and people
sort of realize that they are increasingly engaging in prepping behavior,
maybe it'll be less cool. So maybe that's what I
should say. My real goal is here is to make
(19:33):
prepping seem less cool by suggesting we're all doing it.
Speaker 1 (19:38):
All right, Okay, yeah, you don't want to be involved.
Everyone's doing it how boring.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
That's right.
Speaker 1 (19:45):
So you said you were now moving in research and
looking at places like Australia. What are we doing over here,
because I haven't heard about it. The only prepping that
I think Aussies do is have like a bag ready
to go visit bush fire. That's kind of it that
I've heard.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
Right, We're we're working with colleagues in Australia, including one
in Melbourne, and I think what we're going to contribute
is we're going to argue that there's a kind of
Americanization going on here. And I don't know if this
is true, but a sort of guiding principle of this
has been seemingly anyway. I mean, you can tell me
if this maps onto your own Americans dig and Australians
(20:26):
take off into the wilderness.
Speaker 2 (20:28):
That's true.
Speaker 4 (20:29):
Yeah, when we don't get ready for things to go wrong,
we like get in the basement.
Speaker 1 (20:32):
No, we run to this day out back. We're like,
nothing can touch us here. We're fine, whatever, We'll go
hang out there.
Speaker 3 (20:38):
Take a thirty rack of beer with you and like go.
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Well, literally, you know, I sometimes ponder the end of
the world, and you know, because we are so separated
from everything here, it takes a little bit longer for
things to get to us. So I was like, oh,
we'd get a bit of a heads up, okay, so
then what would I do? And then it just run
into the bush.
Speaker 4 (20:57):
That's a very philosophical question. If the world ends, a no,
no one's there to see it.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
Did it happen?
Speaker 1 (21:03):
If the world ended but I'm still around, is it
actually ended? Because I think I'm my world so and
I'm pretty sure i'm a lot of other people's world,
so I think it's still going.
Speaker 2 (21:12):
If you ask me, what is the world? Oh, we
can go for ages.
Speaker 1 (21:16):
But this conversation has really triggered something in my brain
and realized that I think I am actually a doomsday prepper.
But my doomsday is running out of makeup because I
have to have all My friends call it my stock.
I always have stock of everything. Whenever I buy something,
it's like twenty of them because I always use them.
I always need them and I don't want to run out.
(21:37):
I'm a busy working girl, so you know, if the
end of the world happens, I'm prepared because I've got
like thirty cans of hairspray. Three leaders of Foundation twelve
buckets of glitter and fifty seven thousand pairs of eyelashes. So,
I mean, is there one item that people usually start
prepping with?
Speaker 3 (21:57):
I think most people starting a tool for prepping as
a gun.
Speaker 2 (22:02):
Can't. Really.
Speaker 4 (22:04):
Yeah, I do think prepping in America is part of
it so unique because it's so wrapped up in gun culture.
You don't find a lot of people who are engaging
in prepping who aren't also sort of heavily armed. But
then again, most Americans are heavily armed anyway, so it's
sort of as it's just an interesting kind of dynamic
(22:25):
that you have to take account of. And I would
suspect that for a lot of Americans who are thinking, oh,
I should do something to protect my home or get
ready in case things don't go quite right. I suspect
it for a lot of people, their first thing would
would be to go get a pistol.
Speaker 2 (22:37):
I mean, it makes sense.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
It's such a different world over there, so we got
get guns, so what would we have?
Speaker 2 (22:41):
What are we doing at the moment?
Speaker 3 (22:43):
I mean it sounds great.
Speaker 4 (22:45):
I mean I guess what I've heard from my colleagues
in Australia is that OSSI's are in like true mad
Max fashion. They're sort of like retrofitting vehicles to be
like really rough and ready for different kinds of environments,
which I'll take.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
That has given me an idea.
Speaker 1 (23:01):
There a Priscilla bus fitted out for the end of
the world, so I could have my big pink bas
I can drive out into the desert. I can have
all my glitter, I can have all my makeup and
lashes and everything, and I'll just be in my little
drag vehicle Priscilla two point. I forget about the sequel.
They're riting at the moment. Not interested. I've just changed
(23:22):
the plot right here, all right, No, someone calls Stephan Elliott,
called Tim Chapple. We're changing it. Priscilla mad Max, end
of the World.
Speaker 2 (23:32):
I'll be there.
Speaker 3 (23:33):
And if you need a budding mushroom enthusiast like a
Bob Olive.
Speaker 1 (23:46):
So that was Robert, a doomsday prepper researcher.
Speaker 2 (23:50):
Well, I'm off to go and pick up my pink
Priscilla bus and fill it with glitter.
Speaker 1 (23:54):
And if the world does happen to end today, surely
you want one of the last things you see to
be good.
Speaker 2 (24:00):
Just me. It's easy. Just check out concealed without Simon
on the socials.
Speaker 3 (24:09):
M m
Speaker 4 (24:12):
M HM
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