Trump Melts Down Over Reagan Ad & Kneecaps His Own Trade Deal with Canada 10/24/25

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
It's our Friday show, and I am so delighted that
you are checking it out whenever you do. Maybe you're
checking it out on Saturday, you know, maybe you're checking
it out on Sunday. Whenever you jump back in to
check us out. Thank you for being here. There are
a bunch of people who are live into the chat already.
I didn't see who was first in Timmy Tammy. Another

(00:21):
great day with Tammy first into the chat, and Ronda
and zero some. These are all other participants as well.
And you are welcoming to our chat for the entire
length of the show, and of course you're welcome to
leave comments after the show is done as well. But
if you're into the chat now again, Kim Ride's heard

(00:44):
over it. So if you're a hater with like using
caps et cetera, the wrath of Kim is indeed a
brutal one.

Speaker 2 (00:51):
How are you?

Speaker 1 (00:52):
And you will endure it if you run a foul
of Kim's rules. Tony is here in albert I know
it's kind of cooonies worked hard to get some good
stuff together. We've got quite a show. Moe Kelly joins us.
An hour or two, we'll be talking about the weekend politics. Yeah,

(01:18):
I will tell you about this situation with the Canadians
is just incredible to me. We'll get to that. We'll
touch again on the scandal that has rocked the NBA.
That's is the cheating scandal that involved high profile NBA players,
not so much a point shaving scheme involved poker, but

(01:41):
there was an aspect of it which involved one player
tanking on a game, and we'll actually show you a
little bit of what he did so that the bet
that's made on how that player will do would come
in the way the betters, it is alleged, were betting.

(02:06):
That is to say, they were betting he wasn't going
to do well in a game, and so he did
poorly and took himself out of the game early. So
that's that. The East wing demolition will get to that
with Moe Kelly again. Donald Trump having promised he's going

(02:28):
to build this magnificent ninety thousand square football room and
he's not going to touch the original structure of the
White House. Well he didn't touch it, but a bunch
of other construction people came through and they demolished the
East wing of the White House. And now they have

(02:50):
closed the Ellipse. Washingtonians I grew up in Washington and
others in Washingtonians watching you know what I'm talking about,
those who maybe haven't been to Washington or the It
doesn't mean anything to you the Ellipse, and there's no
reason it would. I mean, they just have all these
names for crab in Washington. So the Ellipse is this
kind of open field from which you can view the

(03:14):
White House and you have a certain perspective of things
in Washington. But by closing it, which they have done,
you were unable to see the East Wing construction, apparently
is the idea. So they've closed the Ellipse, and there
has been an edict to not show any pictures on

(03:34):
social media or anywhere else if your office overlooks any
of the construction, if you can see any of the
construction from anywhere, So.

Speaker 3 (03:44):
Which is silly, because there's satellite pictures of it, and
there it is. You can see they've already torn down
the East Wing.

Speaker 2 (03:49):
It's gone.

Speaker 1 (03:50):
There are satellite pictures of it. But I have to say,
when you see it in some of those close up shots,
you know the ones that were circulating yesterday in the
day before it is pretty it's more intense. Yeah, you go,
there's an example. I mean it's really intense. So you know,
promises made, promises kept. He promised he wouldn't touch it,
and oh well, uh, we'll get more into that with

(04:12):
mo Kelly because I think there's a whole I think
there's a pay to play aspect of this that's all
associated with a ballroom being paid by Pallenteer, Google, all
of the big tech players. There's a quid pro quo there, right,
I mean, you know, you don't throw twenty five million
dollars into a project that the president cares a lot

(04:34):
about without expecting that the president will look upon you
and projects that you have favorably. And so, after decades
of disappointment, DC tourists no longer have to ask, why
is there no giant, gaudy ballroom. Yeah, this is what
people were clamoring for for many, many years. Right, very
good point. Bottom of the hour. There's a new book

(04:56):
out from a couple of very smart MIT professors. MIT
Press is putting out this book. It's called Somebody Should
Do Something, How Anyone can help create Social change. It's
really a book for our times, don't you think and
both of these. There were actually three authors involved in

(05:18):
the book, but both the authors, Michael Brownstein and Alex
Madvi will join us. I think, to be technical about it,
they're not MIT professors. They are professors at other universities
and colleges. But MIT Press is putting out the book,

(05:39):
so that's why we I think we kind of refer
to them as MIT folk. I wanted to also recognize
and think a couple of people. Let me just see
what the chaplain.

Speaker 4 (05:55):
Have received a lot of positive letters.

Speaker 1 (05:57):
Yeah, what's that?

Speaker 3 (05:58):
Yeah, I am Chaplin for five. While you're looking this up, Yeah,
read that. If Mark does not show up on time,
let's send him to Florida. Then we will have a
real Friday, fabulous Florida. He'll be the one calling nine
to one one a happy Friday.

Speaker 2 (06:12):
Mark.

Speaker 1 (06:13):
Yeah, and Chaplin, Fred, you are rapidly becoming one of
my favorite people. Shout out to Eric and Sharon. They
just became ten dollars Patreon members. You can support this show.
You know, we didn't do a fall fund drive and
as a result, our coffers are lagging. But I kind

(06:35):
of feel like this is a tough time, you know,
for everybody it's a tough time for our show. It's
tough time. But I was thinking about a mini fall
fun drive the reason I noticed that everybody's doing a
fall fund drive, you know what I mean. I'm getting
my mailbox inundated with it and all the rest. But
we're not doing one yet. We might do one next
week or something we might do like a turbo fall

(06:56):
fund drive. But nonetheless, I wanted to recognize those who
have stepped up, and there were a few, And I
really appreciate Patreon and PayPal subscribers because that really is
the thing that sustains us. And new subscribers or those
who up their support make more work for Tony who

(07:21):
then goes and does the scroll at the end, but
he gets paid for it, so I mean, it's not
a complete loss on. But I'm just saying, but Eric
and Sharon, thank you very much. Ten dollars a month
they're going to throw in to keep us going, and
we appreciate it.

Speaker 2 (07:36):
Yep.

Speaker 1 (07:36):
I also wanted to quickly get a shout out.

Speaker 2 (07:42):
To Gloria Brown thrown in a couple bucks.

Speaker 1 (07:46):
Come on, thank you, Gloria. Did I mention Susie lineem Susie, Yeah,
went from sixty dollars to seventy dollars every month. He ross,
how about that?

Speaker 5 (07:57):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (07:58):
Pretty great, A big shout out and big thanks. What's
that telling? Yeah? Lan? Now Lan is someone who came
I remember from the radio. I thought. Anyway, twenty dollars
on Patreon and thank you so much for that really

(08:18):
means a lot. And you know when somebody becomes a
Patreon subscriber and we have PayPal and Patreon, of PayPal's
easier for you, and we have a we have PayPal, right,
is it PayPal that we use.

Speaker 2 (08:32):
Yeah, PayPal, we do Patreon, we do it all.

Speaker 1 (08:35):
We do it all. You know. I get a little
ping on my phone, right, and so I'll always right
back to everybody. And if I haven't written back to you,
maybe it's it's a it's a clerical thing or something,
because typically I will at some point. I try to
do it soon so I don't let it get away.
But really appreciate everybody. But I want you to know
I don't just send out some kind of robo response.

(08:56):
It's a it's a real response because we really sincere
appreciate it. Anyway. Let's uh also check the email received
a lot of positive letters. There was this one, Kim.
We got an email about the White House official homepage.

Speaker 3 (09:16):
Tony and I had to make sure this was legit.
We thought this can't be right. This message came from Keith.
He says, howdy, Mark and Kim wondering if you've seen
or caught wind of this. Looks like Stephen Miller's work
on the official White House page. Scroll down to major
events timeline and start swiping left to move to history sections. Unbelievable.

Speaker 1 (09:38):
Yeah, what really follows? And for those just listening, we'll
try to describe it. What follows is kind of a trolling.
I mean, isn't on the official White House page?

Speaker 2 (09:50):
Yeah?

Speaker 1 (09:51):
Yeah, how would you describe it? Go ahead?

Speaker 3 (09:53):
I would describe it as some very revisionist history where
they pick and choose some things that you know, are
very inflammatory. They talk about how President Biden and Kamala
vice former Vice President Harris had trans day at the
White House. They have a picture of the Muslim Brotherhood visit.
They have Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton's scandal up there.

(10:15):
This is the White House website of the major events
happening at the White House. They have oh, there's the
one cocaine discovered at the White House, remember that, And
they insinuate on the White House website that it was
belonging to Hunter Biden. And they have a picture of
Hunter Biden all sacked out in the bathtub. There's President
Biden with a trans person at the White House trans

(10:38):
the trans day of Visibility. I mean, is it's just
an excuse to have a hit piece for all the
people they didn't like and all the things they thought
went wrong on the White House website. I mean, this
should be a historical page full of you know, here
in nineteen oh two we updated this, you know that

(11:00):
a resolute desk in the history of that should be
like an official history of the United States. It should
not be you know.

Speaker 1 (11:08):
Yeah, they start that way, addition of North Portico, you know,
all of this rebuilding after the War of eighteen twelve.
But then, as Kim says, they get into you know,
scandal at the White House, Muslim Brotherhood visit with Obama.
I'm you know, it's you know, the cocaine discovered. It's
really it's offensive. I can't believe it's a you know,

(11:30):
on the way, but this is really what we've seen
happen at the White House. There's been a degrading of everything.
There's been a degrading of those who work in this administration.
And I'm not a fan, as you know, of many
of the choices or at least a handful of the
choices from the last administration, the Biden administration. But again,
I think this crew is so completely filled with loyalists

(11:57):
and those who will say anything and do anything to
please this president that we live in an autocratic nightmare
that is only getting worse. Ron Cook with a twenty
dollars supersticker, Thank you. I appreciate that very much, Ron Cook.
But yeah, that White House really reflects where we are.
So I mean the White House website. You know, this

(12:18):
is an August institution, supposedly, and it's really been degraded.
As I say so, I mean every opportunity offered to
troll Democrats and the last administration, every opportunity is taken.

(12:39):
So so as the White House gets it torn down,
and as the trade policy of the United States becomes
completely beholden to one man and his reaction reflexive reaction
to feeling offended, we end up with this story. Donald

(13:05):
Trump is terminating talks with Canada, this all over the
ad that is running which quotes Ronald Reagan and Ronald
Reagan in this quote and will play you the ad
will play you. A part of the quote basically says

(13:26):
terriffs might seem like a good idea, but they're really
a bad idea. They cost a lot of businesses their life.
That is to say, a lot of businesses go under
and a lot of people end up out of work.
So protectionists, It's sorry. I was just going to say,
protectionist policies and aggressive tariff policies are bad economics. And

(13:49):
this is essentially what Reagan is saying. And it's an
old school, traditional Republican viewpoint which has let the market decide.
So what were you gonna say, Kim? Sorry, sorry to interrupt.

Speaker 3 (14:00):
I was just going to mention it's not ai because
in this day and age, you know you think is
it fake.

Speaker 2 (14:05):
No, they're excerpts pulled from.

Speaker 3 (14:07):
A late eighties radio you know, they used to have
the radio address the president did, so this is their
actual words from President Reagan. Now, the Reagan Foundation says, oh,
it's taken out of context. It's not exactly what he
meant by this, but it's his real words. It's not altered.

Speaker 1 (14:25):
Is that Trump saying that that Canada is trying to
interfere with the Supreme Court case that's on about the
legality of reciprocal tariffs. I mean, you know, let's play
a little bit of the spot and you can you
can hear it.

Speaker 6 (14:40):
When someone says, let's impose tariffs on foreign imports, it
looks like they're doing the patriotic thing by protecting American
products and jobs. And sometimes for a short while it works,
but only for a short time.

Speaker 5 (14:55):
But over the long.

Speaker 6 (14:56):
Run, such trade barriers hurt every American worker and consume.

Speaker 5 (15:03):
High tariffs inevitably lead to retaliation by.

Speaker 6 (15:05):
Foreign countries and the triggering of fierce trade wards.

Speaker 5 (15:10):
Then the worst happens.

Speaker 6 (15:12):
Market shrink and collapse, businesses and industry shut down, and millions.

Speaker 5 (15:16):
Of people lose their jobs.

Speaker 6 (15:19):
Throughout the world, there's a growing realization that the weight
to prosperity for all nations is rejecting protectionist legislation and
promoting fair and free competition.

Speaker 5 (15:31):
America's jobs and growth are at stake.

Speaker 1 (15:35):
So there you have it. And that's run by Ontario.
I think, is it the state of Ontario or the
province of Ontario, Yet.

Speaker 3 (15:44):
Premier of Ontario Doug Ford says, we are going to
run this over every station that hits at the border
where there's the Republican districts. He's really into it, and
I think spurred on by the anger of Trump, because
this is really sitting the wrong way with Trump. He's
got so pissed off that he canceled trade negotiations over it.

Speaker 1 (16:06):
So Ontario ran the ad during the game in the
American League Championship Series between the Blue Jays and the Mariners,
and nine million people are watching that, according to the
Fox Sports ratings. And it's apparently it's public domain so
they can use it without like the approval of the

(16:26):
Reagan Library that the Reagan Library has weighed in. And
we'll talk more about this with Moe Kelly, but it's consequential,
not so much for the ad, which would likely go
probably somewhat forgotten work, not for the fact that Donald
Trump has made the centerpiece of his economic policy these tariffs.
These tariffs are a horrible idea. They're imposed impulsively and chaotically.

(16:48):
Witnessed this situation where he sees an ad that he
doesn't like, and impulsively again he then cuts off trade
negotiations with the Canadians. I mean, this is not only
a king, but a mad king, and so the wants
and impulses of a mad king only lead to bad things.

(17:10):
And sadly, he doesn't really have a very good idea.
The only ideas that he has that I think are
really good are associated with branding himself. He is really
great at branding, and so he likes to brand things,
rename things, and particularly those things that relate to Donald Trump.

(17:31):
But when it comes to economic policies and foreign policies
and international relationships, and he has no interest, he has
no knowledge. And Michael Wolfe, his biographer, the writer who
spent all of these hours both with Milania Trump and
Donald Trump, also with Jeffrey Epstein, Michael Wolfe says, you

(17:55):
have to understand, and David K. Johnston says this also,
David K. Johnston, who literally written chapter in verse and
book after book about Donald Trump. David K. Johnston says,
as well, you have to understand. He knows nothing, but
I mean nothing, I mean imagine nothing. It's less than that.

(18:16):
But he has power, and he's being used, I think
effectively used by a Republican Party, that has an agenda.
He wants them to keep a lid on the Epstein
files they have. And now he's surrounded by functionaries and
loyalists will do whatever he wants, and what he wants
is to go after his enemies or perceived enemies. So

(18:38):
the latest I would just pivot from this and draw
your attention to and I'll mention this to Moe Kelly
the irs. You know how the mortgage irregularities are being weaponized.
Turned on Adam Shift, turned on Letitia James, turned on Cook.
I forget her first, Lisa Cook? Is it Lisa Cook?

(19:00):
On the Governor's board at the FED. So that's all
because of that one guy who's crazy. He's even a
little extreme for a lot of MAGA people. And he's
in charge of this world of mortgages. So he can
look through all this mortgage information, which is private information
typically don't have access to and the Justice Department wouldn't

(19:22):
review on any level, but he can and if he
notes any irregularities, but he can then assign to those
who are perceived dissenters or opponents of the president. He
can bring that to the attention of the Justice Department
and hatch these various cases, as he did with Letitia James,
he did with Lisa Cook, he did with Adam Ship, etc. Well,

(19:44):
now that same plan is being hatched where at their IRS.
The IRS is now weaponizing their department to the point
that they are going to start prosecuting cases over taxes,

(20:06):
and they'll start prosecuting those cases against people who are
the perceived enemies of the president.

Speaker 3 (20:12):
They're looking for people who are big donors to leftists.

Speaker 1 (20:17):
It starts with organizations, charities, nonprofits, any institutions that seem
to quack left, and then it goes to leftists, those
who are part of that organization, those who donate to
those organizations. This is an autocracy. This is authoritarianism. It's

(20:44):
on full display. It's not a slow walk. Welcome, we
are here. You can cut the ribbon. When we come back,
we have for you a conversation about what you can
do about stuff. Also, this goes to another question that
we get a lot, and I think we ask a lot.

(21:06):
We all ask this question, which is what can I do?
I mean, it all seems so overwhelming. You know, whatever
change you want to make, the only change you feel
like you're really capable of. I hate to say it.
I maybe this might be an extreme example, but I
always feel like your diet that's about all I can control.

(21:26):
Like I'm realizing everything else is really difficult. Maybe being
on time you can kind of you know, punctuality, that's
something else that you could clean up. Maybe some work habits,
you know what I'm saying. But apart from that, when
you're talking about societal change, those things culturally and societally
that bother you. You feel overmatched, You feel like just there's
too much here. Well, these authors who are going to

(21:50):
introduce you to they've written a book about just this phenomenon,
what you can change, and how personal change actually does
connect with other change and does affect large change, systemic change.
It's a really cool book and a really cool concept.
You still want to give credit to Trump for the

(22:11):
peace talks in the Middle East, seeing that he's a
mad king, Mark, you still feel Trump deserves credit. Let
me answer that directly. Chaplain Fred and thank you for
the five dollars super chat and say, yeah, I give
him credit for that moment, which is exactly what I

(22:31):
said at the time. I'm not giving him credit for
bringing Middle East peace. I'll just review people said they
wanted a cessation of hostilities. They wanted the Israelis in
a cease fire, they wanted Hamas in a cease fire,
they wanted humanitarian aid to be permitted back into Gaza,

(22:52):
and they wanted some kind of hostage release of the
sort that we saw. What did we get?

Speaker 6 (23:00):
Yet?

Speaker 1 (23:01):
We got a hostage release, we got humanitarian aid, and
we got a ceasefire. Now the ceasefire, like all ceasefires,
violated here and there, their claims back and forth. Now
you could say, what has it been two weeks? You
could say it's fallen apart completely. I don't know that
it's falling apart completely, but I do know that there

(23:21):
are militia groups that are growing up in Gaza, and
that their Israeli troops and Israeli military is active in Gaza.
Don't think they're as active as they were, but they are.
But again, I give him credit for that moment. And
it's not just me. Google it. Everybody who you can

(23:43):
respect who has a perspective on international affairs gave Trump
credit for that moment. I played you a bunch of
them here. I'm not giving him credit for being a
peacemaker out of any sort of real altruism. He is

(24:03):
a dirty dealer dealing with other dirty dealers. Look at
who and again, I will wrap this up. I'll give
me a sixty more seconds. Look at who was at
that quote peace agreement or the ceasefire agreement, uae Qatar,
the Egyptians, the Saudi's. What you saw there was a

(24:26):
collection of countries and leaders, all of whom got something.
They all wanted a relationship with Washington. I mean, it
was a pivot point for this region to have that
kind of buy in from all of those states. But
that said, it was a dirty deal. Of course it
was Trump's dirty. He doesn't make any kind of deal

(24:49):
if it's not dirty. All of his deals are dirty.
I was saying he was the gangster to deal with
the other gangsters. I mean, I knew that. The minute
this thing fell apart and then hostilities began again, I
was gonna get But really, Mark, see what happened. We

(25:10):
told you, I get it, dude. You think I don't
know it's gonna get It's gonna fall apart. Of course
it's going to fall apart. But you wanted to stop
the bleeding at the time, and whoever stopped the bleeding
at the time deserve credit. That's really where I was
coming from. All of Trump's deals are about money ego
transactional relationships that deal with both. I completely agree, and

(25:32):
that's the point that I was making. Thank you Trevor
Starr in Hollywood for saying it. Mark, you don't have
to try to justify this again. Your position is the
incorrect one. Thank you, Trevor. I appreciate that. So I I.

Speaker 5 (25:47):
Really I just don't get it.

Speaker 1 (25:49):
I don't. Yeah, Ali, Bob and the forty Thieves. Well,
great reference, Penny, thank you very much for that. All Right,
smash the like button like a boss if you would.
Moe Kelly an Hour two and our two brilliant professors
upcoming Mark Thompson Show, Feelien You're Soul The Mark Thompson Show,

(26:20):
The Mark Thompson I'm super excited. It is true. And
the reason I'm super excited besides just talking to two
really smart guys, is they've written a book that may
be the book for this moment in time. Michael Brownstein
and Alex Madve co authors. The book is Somebody Should

(26:42):
Do Something. It's about ordinary people and how ordinary people
can take action to build real change. And it also
speaks to sort of the tug of war between the
individual having power and the collective having power. You like,
when you feel like sort of overmatched by the system,
what can you do to actually make a difference with

(27:06):
that system? How about it for Michael Brownstein and Alex Madva, everybody. Yeah, congratulations, guys.
Really an exciting piece. And as I say, it's I
think it's met its moment. You know, there is a
sense that there's this tidal wave of change happening over
our culture, over our society, political society, cultural society, as

(27:29):
I say, and it can be overwhelming. And what can
the individual do? What possible power might I have as
an individual to affect any change. There are a bunch
of really cool examples in the book that I'll get to,
but just speak to that thesis and that question, if
you would, right out of the shoot go ahead, Michael, Yeah.

Speaker 7 (27:51):
Thanks so much for having us. And as scary as
the times we're living through right now, are, we're glad
to have a book out right now, you know, it
says some thing for publication delays. The book came out
of a bunch of research that Alex and I and
our co author dan Kelly had been doing for about

(28:14):
fifteen years, really trying to understand the relationship between the
choices we make as individuals and the complex, often overwhelming
systems and institutions that structure the world we live in.
And we kept running up against this idea that making
change in our lives, the things that we can do,

(28:36):
is somehow ineffective or limited in reach, or even like wrongheaded.
And we just thought that has to be wrong, because
if change is ever going to be made, it's going
to be individual people working together who can make it happen.
And so we wanted to canvass both the history of
social change and also the contemporary social science that really

(28:58):
kind of gives a picture of what what are the
things that we can do that create real power versus
the things that just kind of make us feel better
or discharge our guilt. And that gave birth.

Speaker 1 (29:10):
To the book. Yeah, and it's interesting that you talk
about this because there is a sense one can easily
have that I, as an individual, have such a limited
impact on whatever it might be you guys talking the
book about fossil fuel interests of just saying, you know,

(29:31):
the essential the corporatocracy that's grown up around fossil fuel
is immense. You know, how can I, as a result
of you know, riding my bike to work and back,
really have any kind of impact on this. But Alex,
you draw it out and it is actually far more complicated,
and there is a line that you can draw between
your actions and your thinking and the end goal.

Speaker 8 (29:55):
Absolutely, yeah, we can get some into the way that
corporate polluters of brain w us into thinking that the
primary things we can do to fight against climate change
are just recycling, buying an EV and so on. But
it's interesting to note here that part of the problem
of what we call either or thinking in the book
is on the one hand, you have the sort of

(30:16):
individualistic approach where you're just focused on your isolated individual actions,
but then it seems like they don't matter. And then
on the other hand, people are rightly saying we need
to change the system, but then it becomes really unclear
what we can do to contribute to that. And here
it's really striking that it's not uncommon to come across
headlines of folks saying things like I work in the

(30:36):
environmental movement. I don't care if you recycle or going
vegan won't save the climate. Corporate polluters have to be
held accountable, because when you read those articles, they make
it incredibly clear what not to do.

Speaker 9 (30:48):
This doesn't matter, this doesn't matter, this doesn't matter. But
then you go way way.

Speaker 8 (30:52):
Below the fold, and they very vaguely start to talk about, oh,
just you know, do political action instead, right, And so
it's actually really clear what to do instead of these
supposedly pointless things that they're telling us don't matter.

Speaker 1 (31:07):
And just because you've mentioned it and touched on it,
you actually talked in the book about this ad with
this Native American supposed to be and it's this actor
I guess he's an Italian actor wasn't even a Native American,
but he's cast in this world. It's a super effective ad.
It's about a pollution and how like it's kind of
an extension of the only you can prevent forest fires thing.

(31:29):
It's like, only you can prevent the kind of pollution
that has inundated our society and culture. And it was
insanely effective. And you talk about it in the book
because there are a lot of complexities associated with that.
I really had no idea about beyond the fact that
I knew that that guy was not an American native American,
But I had no idea that it was really cooked

(31:50):
up by the very interests that were the polluters. Isn't
that right, Michael, Yeah, it is.

Speaker 7 (31:57):
And in fact, it's the same company that came up
with a lot of these what scholars sometimes call responsibilizing ads,
where they put social problems on the shoulders of individuals.
So only you can prevent forest fires. Guns don't. Yeah,
guns don't kill people. People kill people. So there's a
really long history and we tell some parts of it

(32:19):
in the book of Shifting the focus, shifting the public
conversation onto the shoulders of individuals. But of course, to
come back to the point before, if we're going to
make change, it is going to be individuals working together
in new ways that do that. And so really what
we try to do is shift the concept of what
it means to take responsibility. And so you know, you

(32:42):
were asking about like if I drive, if I ride
a bike or drive an ev or recycle, like does
it matter? And one way to think about whether it
matters is like the literal amount of carbon pollution you
save every time you don't get in your car and
you ride a bike instead. Or drive an electric bike
or whatever. But there are different ways to think about

(33:05):
your individual contribution even in doing those daily, seemingly small things. So,
for instance, you can think of yourself as a member
of a community who is showing your neighbors what you
care about and what's normal and what's sort of the
new or even cool thing to do. And there's all
kinds of research that suggests that that kind of peer influence,

(33:27):
acting as social proof for other people in your network
is actually far more powerful than we tend to think
it is. So a really good way to predict who's
going to put solar panels on their roof is to
see if their neighbors have done it. A really good
way to predict if somebody is going to become a
voter is to find out if their dorm roommate in
college was a voter. It's the same story in so

(33:50):
many different aspects of our lives. The best way to
predict who's going to quit smoking is if their spouse quits.
We are thoroughly social creatures, and we really try to
pull out the lessons for that. If you want to
be what we call a social change entrepreneur.

Speaker 1 (34:06):
I mean that's particularly relevant, I think coming off of
the most recent No Kings protest, where you heard a
lot of you know, I would have gone, but I
know it's not going to make a difference. There's no
stopping them. I'll try to stop them at the ballot box,
but I don't even know if that's gonna work, because
they've got things. I mean, you can build a kind
of superstructure of psychology over yourself such that you know
you're just helpless and there's nothing new. But I saw

(34:29):
personally in the No Kings protest in many different ways.
Sure they're on one level ignoring it, but another level
they can't stop talking about it and recharacterizing it as
the hate America protest and all the rest of it
was if it didn't make any difference, they wouldn't be
talking about it that way in so many different ways,
and even trolling with the bombing over the five Freeway
in southern California and all this sort of thing. And

(34:51):
more to the point which I thought was so powerful
in your book, which is that there is this there's
this adhesion, there's this connection between people in your community
and yourself, and we all gain some strength and energy
moving forward as a result of that, and so being
there it energizes us. It energizes us maybe in an

(35:13):
area we were already somewhat energized, but it is really
uplifting to see so many people who care so much
about filled in the blank, whatever the issue is that
you're trying to affect change of, you know, Alex.

Speaker 8 (35:24):
Absolutely, so there's one kind of risk here where people
might just go to the protest and think, Okay, I've
done my job. I don't need to do anything else.
But they are the kinds of social effects that Michael
was talking about also create another possibility, which could be
that even if you showing up at that protest, you
didn't somehow simply by being there tip the scale so

(35:44):
that it went from you know, six hundred and ninety nine,
nine hundred and ninety nine people to seven million. But
even if that sort of dynamic didn't happen, especially if
you showed up in like your local town, you might
have seen someone there who you didn't expect. Maybe they
saw you there and didn't expect you to see you there,
And that creates a possibility for building coalitions and finding

(36:08):
community and realizing you're not so alone, and so many
of the elections that we have coming up are really
small local elections. School board elections can be decided by
five folks. So maybe your vote in that election doesn't
cast isn't the deciding ballot, but maybe you got five
other people to vote who did, and that could be
the difference. I do think we would be remiss not

(36:28):
to dive into some of the story of how we
got brainwashed individualism. So I would like to share the
story of the Crying Indian Ad.

Speaker 1 (36:35):
If you don't mind, no, I'm delighted to have you
share it. It's one of the things I absolutely, as
I say, I was transfixed by all the details that
I had no knowledge of prior to your book.

Speaker 8 (36:45):
Go ahead, right, So the protagonist is Ironized Cody, who
if you watched any Western film or TV show between
nineteen thirty and nineteen ninety, you almost surely saw he
start alongside John Wayne. He has his own Hollywood star.
He sings in the background of Joni Mitchell's Lakota. But
this was probably his most famous role. It came out

(37:07):
in nineteen seventy one, a public service announcement, which so
this is just a year removed from Earth Day, which
was the largest protest in American history, with No Kings
being the second largest since then.

Speaker 9 (37:20):
And the ad.

Speaker 8 (37:24):
Playing or is responding to the situation where littering had
become a really huge problem in the US, so people
would go on a picnic and then just kind of
pick up the picnic blanket and just leave all the
trash there and think nothing of it. So in the ad,
you initially see ironized Cody dressed in full Native American garb,
and he's paddling down a river and it seems really
RESTful and peaceful, but then he starts to see trash

(37:46):
in the river. You start to hear ominous drums in
the background. You see a giant factory spewing smoke in
the background, and as he gets closer and closer to
the shore, there's more and more trash. He walks onto
the shore and there's the freeway there. Driver passes by,
opens their window and throws out a bag of trash
that lands at his feet. He turns to the camera,

(38:07):
revealing a single tear falling down his cheek, and we
hear the narrators say, some people have a deep, abiding
respect for the natural beauty that was once this country,
and some people don't. People can start pollution and people
can stop it. And as you noted, it was an
incredibly powerful ad. It's when people view it today they
still say that they approve of the message. There's good

(38:28):
reason to think that it actually made a huge difference
in bringing down levels of littering, but it turns out
that wasn't its real purpose. The ad was sponsored by
a group called Keep America Beautiful, which was also responsible
for only You Can Prevent Forest Fires and Gruff the
Crime Fighting Dog and so on. And the consortion of

(38:49):
organizations behind that group were organizations that did canning, chewing
gun companies, chips companies, packaging companies, and what they all
had in common was that they were selling product to
American consumers in containers that had to be thrown out,
that could not be recycled. And there was a growing
movement at the time to create producer responsibility laws where

(39:10):
we were going to put it on the producer of
this junk, that put the responsibility on them in order
to take care of this stuff. In fact, Vermont had
even passed a law banning the sale of goods in
non returnable containers. And so, of course these companies wanted
to keep making money, and so they realized they had
to change the conversation. And it's a basic formula that
we've seen play out again and again and again, where

(39:32):
they deflected the responsibility from where it belongs on themselves
onto us and brainwashed us all into thinking that all
we have to do is take care of our little
private corner of the world and take responsibility for our
isolated actions. And then, like drops make a notion, all
the little drops in the bucket will add up, and
then that will make the difference. And so part of
what we're trying to do in the book is, as
Michael was saying, hold on to the idea of responsibility,

(39:55):
but think about it as responsibility to each other and
responsibility to building a community. Another really important dynamic here
is not thinking about our own actions as isolated within
our own lives. So you know, the actions you take
today can shape the person you become tomorrow. So it's
possible that you just go to the No King's protest
and check out, But it's also possible that that moment

(40:17):
when you're with other people plays a kind of bootstrapping
role and has a kind of positive feedback loop effect
where you yourself become more committed to fighting for change
and bringing along more people with you.

Speaker 1 (40:30):
I want to segue quickly to the problem with race
in America and how that again seems sort of to
have taken on a lot of different moments and systems
within the system. You talk about section eight housing for
a minute, Michael or Alex.

Speaker 7 (40:50):
Sure, Yeah, So the two main examples that we work
through throughout the book or climate change and racism, although
we touch on quite a number of other contemporary problems.
So we use the example of housing vouchures to illustrate
really important and often overlooked feature of social change, and

(41:10):
it speaks to a role that any of us can
play in helping to create social change. So many cities
have housing vouchure programs that are meant to help people
who want to move from one neighborhood to another where
there are better resources, better public schools, safer streets, more
closer proximity to businesses, and so on. And the history

(41:33):
of the success of those voucher programs is not great.
And what's really striking is that even in cases where
they are quite well funded, where people can get a
lot of money to use to move neighborhoods, the uptake
is usually not stellar. It's much less than you'd want
it to be. And so we learned about some really

(41:55):
fascinating research by rog Chetty and colleagues who have a
series of experiments trying to figure out how they can
encourage more success in these sorts of programs. And what
they found is that when they created a role for
what they called navigators, which are really just people who
are meant to help implement the process. They're like good

(42:19):
customer service for the program. So they help people find
new houses to move to. They reassure landlords in the
new neighborhoods that the new renters have passed through all
kinds of screening and are reliable and so on. They
sort of fill the gaps that often get ignored. And

(42:42):
the results of this sort of project are astounding. Chetti,
who's an economist, said of one of these projects that
it was the biggest effect side he'd ever seen in
a social scientific paper. So the lesson that we draw
out from that is that it's very easy to pay
attention to the desire to start change, to have a

(43:02):
kind of flash bull moment where you know, like a
protest everybody shows up in the streets and demands change,
and that is hard and that is crucial. But what
often happens is even when some good policy gets enacted,
like these sorts of housing voucher policies, a lot of
the success turns out in the implementation. And that's when

(43:24):
a lot of well intentioned people go back to their
daily lives. They stop paying attention. So the crucial nature
of implementation success over time for social change really kind
of gets ignored. It's not as sexy as the instigating moment.
And again it's a role that any of us can play.

(43:46):
So in another context, oftentimes with local climate legislation, like
for instance, how building codes change the sorts of requirements
that builders have to use for clean energy. The way
those get implemented doesn't get a lot of attention, right,

(44:07):
people fight hard to get them put into law, and
then they go back to their daily lives. But people
can show up to those zoning board meetings, those building
code meetings and demand good implementation. So we try to
connect the dots across topics from racism to housing policy
to climate.

Speaker 1 (44:24):
And so on. I thought that I don't if you
use these words like the paradox of the box. The
box I'm talking about, Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, speak to
that because it's kind of it is kind of weird.
You'd think that, you know, you're trying to make a
change in one direction and it ends up with a
completely different result.

Speaker 9 (44:42):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (44:42):
So, our book also profiles lots of cases of well
intended policy changes and interventions that had all kinds of
unintended consequences. So one of the most notorious was the
introduction of Australian cane toads cane toads into Australia. They
were trying to eliminate pests there, and the cane toads
didn't care about the pests, but the cane toads were poisonous,

(45:03):
and so a bunch of other small mammals have suffered,
and now there's the continent is overrun with cane toads.
And we also talk about interventions like this in the
context of trying to fight against discrimination on the basis
of race or on the basis of someone's criminal record.
And it's a particularly important area to look at because
it's an area where people on whatever side of the

(45:24):
aisle are often extremely confident about what is the right
policy fix.

Speaker 9 (45:29):
And we are usually not.

Speaker 8 (45:31):
And so we think that when you look at examples
like the one I'll tell you in a moment, that
we need a lot more.

Speaker 9 (45:36):
Humility when we go into these processes.

Speaker 8 (45:39):
So in field studies, what researchers have found is that
having a criminal record can severely hurt your chances of
getting a job. For a white man, in one field
study without a criminal record, they had about a thirty
four percent chance of getting a callback for an interview.
With a criminal record, they had a seventeen percent chance
of getting a callback, and then for a black man

(46:01):
without a criminal record, they had a fourteen percent chance
of getting a callback. So the first thing to notice
is that a white man with a criminal record had
a better chance of making it to the next round
than a black guy without one.

Speaker 9 (46:11):
But then black men with criminal.

Speaker 8 (46:13):
Records only had callbacks about five percent of the time.
So for a black man with a criminal record in
these field studies, it was kind of like just don't bother.
And part of the problem here people thought is that
when you're applying for a job, you have to check
a box that says whether you have a criminal record.
So it seemed like, hey, we have this really quick
and easy fix here. We don't have to persuade anyone
to stop being racist, We don't have to worry about

(46:35):
people's racist hearts and minds. We can just remove that
information from the application, and then people can no longer
discriminate on.

Speaker 9 (46:42):
The basis of a criminal record.

Speaker 8 (46:44):
And there's some evidence that for black men with a
criminal record, it did slightly increase their chances of getting
a job, but it actually decreased black men's chances overall.
And that's because when you remove that information, when people
are not allowed to clarify that they don't have a
criminal record, if say there's a gap on the resume,
then employers, well, guess what happens. Maybe their stereotypes enter

(47:08):
into the scene and they assume that all the black
guys have criminal records, and so it's actually worse overall.
And so this also ties into a larger theme that
we have in the book, which is a very common
thing that you'll hear among people who are trying to
fight for structural changes. They'll say things like, don't worry
about changing the hearts and minds, we just need to
change the system. Policy change over mental change is, for example,

(47:30):
something that Candy Ibermex Kendy has talked about, and we
think examples like this show that it's not going to
work that way. If you want to fight for changes
that are best for all of us, we have to
also confront the prejudices and stereotypes inside people's heads. As
Michelle Alexander says, we have to stop having the mindset

(47:51):
that puts black men in the box. Whether or not
we have that process there at all, but it's a
really striking example of how we don't know in advance
what's going to do the trick, and so it's incredibly
important to have a kind of experimental mindset where we're
trying things out and we're sort of building it into
the policy that we're going to check to see if
it works, and if it's not, we're going to go
back to the drawing board and keep.

Speaker 1 (48:11):
Yeah, I mean, don't completely bake the cake. You know,
it really is you talk about your sort of road
testing these things as the most responsible thing to do societally.
I only have another minut or two, but one of
the things I love about the book is you do
have all these stories, all these examples. It's really it's
underpinned by a thesis and a general point that you're making,

(48:32):
and multiple points. But they're all of these wonderful examples.
And before you leave, give me a moment about Mothers
Against Drunk Driving, would you, because that's I think another one.

Speaker 7 (48:45):
Sure, yeah, I mean, Mothers Against Drunk Driving is probably
one of the most successful advocacy groups in recent American history.
So by two thousand and four I think it was,
which is about twenty five years after the group was founded,
something like ninety four percent of Americans have heard of it.
They played a role in changing the laws and the

(49:06):
national laws around the drinking age, and more importantly, perhaps
they really shifted the norms in our culture around drinking
and driving. The fascinating thing about the story for our
purposes is that the way they did it was, of
course partly that it was started by a really charismatic leader.

(49:29):
Her name was Janie Lightner, and that I think is
a crucial role for social change leaders, and you know,
people who are really fired up to dedicate their time
in their lives to.

Speaker 1 (49:40):
Making any and that story. Her story was such a
moving one.

Speaker 7 (49:43):
Her law very right, Yeah, that's right. So her child
was killed by a drunk driver. She had other family
experiences with loss around drunk driving, and so you know,
it lit a fire in her and I think that's
an undeniable part of the story. But another part of
story is the method, and I would say the message
that she really used, which was to pin drunk driving

(50:07):
on the bad choices of individuals. The original name was
not actually Mothers against drunk Driving, it was Mothers against
drunk Drivers. And she really tapped into the ethos of
the era, the sort of Reagan and Thatcherit emphasis on
personal responsibility. And so it's a funny story for us

(50:28):
because we're not really fans of Reagan and Thatcher and
that political message. But what it means is that successful
social change and sort of endeavors to change the system
really require understanding and tapping into where the people are,
the culture and the hearts and minds of the people

(50:51):
you're trying to affect. And so they did that very successfully,
and I think people in our position today who are
fighting fascism and for democracy or fighting against the climate
crisis have to be very careful to do the same
thing and think about who are we trying to change
and what is it that they care about.

Speaker 1 (51:08):
The started this conversation with the clear fact to me
that this book is for this time, because it does
really give you a sense of empowerment that we really
all can make a difference. You know. It's funny we
all make choices in our own lives, and you know,
I guess it's been like twelve years ago I decided

(51:29):
to be a vegan. I was like, initially, I was
really like a militant vegan, like, you know, meaning I
would look for chances to talk about I didn't want
to be the guy like that vegan, like the stereotype
begon where we're going, you know, and nice tell me
you I'm Mark Thompson. I'm a vegan, you know what
I mean. Like, I didn't want to be that guy.
But if somebody would say, well, how come you don't
eat dairy, I mean, dairy seems kind of then I
would go off and my other half ago, oh my god,

(51:52):
she said, just don't ask them about dairy because they'll go,
you know, whatever it might be, dairy, eggs, et cetera.
There's always a reason, right. But one of the things
we're struck is it's just a personal choice. For me,
I couldn't countenance being part of this anymore. I wasn't
trying to build a movement. But what you guys discuss,
and it's so right, is that no, that community, that

(52:15):
moment we touched on in this conversation when somebody asks
you a question about it and you tell them, or
when somebody else is part of a movement or part
of a a shared philosophy or strategy moving forward for
your life. It might be weight loss, whatever it is,
as you guys point out, it really does animate you further.

(52:36):
It works both ways, and so the kind of multifaceted
aspects of choices that we make and as a society
and individually. I think that's what you guys really get
into in that somebody should do something. So thank you.
I really think your book is powerful in this way.

(52:56):
Have you found it's very early. I think the book's
just come out, right.

Speaker 7 (53:00):
That's right, yeah, mid September.

Speaker 1 (53:02):
Yeah, so, uh, I hope you're going to continue to
get great reaction. We're gonna have a link to the
book under this video. You can get the book just
by clicking on that link. And uh, I can't thank
you enough for you know, being through and I hope
you know when you update the addition, you'll come back
through and we can have another conversation. I really enjoyed it.

Speaker 8 (53:22):
We'd love to thanks so much, Mark, and thank you
for all the important work you're doing on this show.

Speaker 1 (53:27):
Okay, Alex and Michael, thank you guys. All right, Thanks
Tomson Show, The Mark Thompson Show.

Speaker 5 (53:45):
Hey, which one you use?

Speaker 1 (53:45):
Mark Tomson? Right on, right on, it's our Friday show.
I'm excited. I'll swing right into one of my favorite
people here in a moment. Thank you for hitting the
like button. You got to smash it. It is a
part of the YouTube universe. I know it seems weird,

(54:07):
like it doesn't cost you anything. Why is it important?
Because if you get enough likes in relation to views,
it helps your video show up in feeds where they
don't even know you exist. So there is that. Saucelito, Steve,
thank you for a twenty dollars supersticker. My friend big
shout out to Saucelito Steve Noe. Marie Clarity with a

(54:31):
ten dollars super chest says, watch the Cane Toad documentary
in high school and it's haunted me since you have
The Cane Toad was referenced in that conversation, that and
the kid who did a school wide speech about what
does that, Kim? You're muted? All right? What is that, Kim?

Speaker 2 (54:57):
That would be a copy borro mark?

Speaker 1 (54:59):
And what is that.

Speaker 3 (55:00):
That's a creature endemic to Australia. That's looks like a
kind of a giant rodent.

Speaker 1 (55:08):
Oh yeah, sure, exactly right now, right, I see it now, Yeah,
I see it in my dreams. The end for this
information is likely the key to many of my husband's questions. Wow,
a ginormous guinea pig, right, thank you? There they are,

(55:30):
thank you, Becky. Giant rodents. Yeah, world's largest rodent, World's
largest rodent feels like a good nickname for somebody. I
don't know.

Speaker 2 (55:42):
I feel like I've got enough credit for just knowing that.

Speaker 1 (55:45):
I mean, I know that. I'm sorry.

Speaker 2 (55:48):
I think I take two things for that.

Speaker 1 (55:50):
I think honestly, you're muting yourself. Hurt you a little
bit in terms of points awarded, So I probably shouldn't
have given you a second thing, but I did anyway,
Thank you. Yeah, but but I agree you. You did
come through at a at a critical time, so I
appreciate that. Smash the like button and we continue. Thus,

(56:12):
I can't believe it. I'm such a fan of this guy.
He's so brilliant, really when it comes to politics, American culture,
international relations. You can throw anything at him and he
is terrific. And he joins us now regularly on Fridays.
He is the brilliant Moe Kelly.

Speaker 10 (56:32):
Everyone, Well, good afternoon, good evening, good night, whatever time
it may be.

Speaker 1 (56:37):
It'll take this stuff in now mo at all hours,
So that is an appropriate greeting. I have so much
to ask you about. I mean, the No Kings protest
seems like it was a month ago. It was just
I think it was last weekend, wasn't it. I mean
it was, or was it? You know? I guess what
I'm trying to say is between then and now we've

(56:58):
ended up with this remarkable pack of stories that must
be commented upon. I'm going to leave a side the
Canada thing today, which just happened, the cutting off of
the trade negotiations with Canada based on this ad that's

(57:19):
running that's quoting Ronald Reagan about tariffs. I'll get to that.
But to me, the story in a world of grift,
which is this administration, the Trump administration the two hundred
and thirty million dollar lawsuit to in some way rectify

(57:42):
the wrongs associated with the fact that Trump was harassed,
in his view, the victim of a witch hunt over
the documents that he took to Marlago and elsewhere, and
of course the case against him that was being built
around his collusion with Russia to build a campaign. So

(58:06):
he assigns the number two hundred and thirty million dollars
for my pain and suffering, Donald Trump is saying, and
he presents it to Pambondi and Todd Blanche, who are
his virtually his personal attorneys. Blanche literally was his attorney
before he became number two of the Justice Department. And
then Trump himself is the guy who has to sign

(58:28):
off on the check being cut. It is out in
the open, full on money grab thoughts. Please, Yes, he's.

Speaker 10 (58:40):
Playing both sides of this legal issue. But let me
back up to last week because I want to lightly
remind everyone that when we were so caught up in
a Trump getting credit for the release of the hostages,
I've made the point slow down. This media cycle is
going to change in five minutes, and we need not

(59:01):
get distracted with every little thing, or fight the battles
which are really less important. And here we are with
the more important things, and how the news has swung
in this direction, and this grift is out in the open,
and let's not forget it's the sum total of two
hundred and thirty million is grossly close to the costs

(59:22):
of this dance hall that they're building on the side
of the White House with private donors. When we get
in the screen, private donors, laser beat. All I'm saying is,
let's not be so outraged with everything that we miss

(59:44):
the important things.

Speaker 1 (59:46):
The grift is very important.

Speaker 10 (59:48):
How he's trying to enrich himself is very important going forward.
That should be the focus, not necessarily whether he gets
credit for releasing hostages. We also have to be mindful
that we may be in a war with Venezuela before
the weekend is out.

Speaker 1 (01:00:05):
Well, there are four more things to be concerned about.
This is a great point you're making, Thank you, and
I will tell you, and I'll raise my hand and
say I made the point. And I'm barked out of
my own show by a lot of people in my
chad because I did give him credit for that, not
for a peace deal. Not for making even a sweeping
cease fire deal, but for stopping the bleeding in the moment,
which was associated with the hostage release and getting humanitarian

(01:00:28):
aid into Gaza and at least an apparent thees station
of hostilities, even though we've seen the seatshire. But more
to the point, it was exactly what you're saying. It
was for being there at that moment to get the
humanitarian aid in hostages alt blah blah. But now it's
only the moment. It was to stop the bleeding at
that moment. It wasn't a Middle East peace deal. It

(01:00:50):
wasn't a big crafted arrangement with a twenty year layered in.
I mean, that's all crap. So it was his play
for a Nobel Peace Prize or whatever. And as I
said at the time, a Nobel peace prize. This is
a guy who is a weaponizing the military against his
own people while he's knocking out innocent fisher people off
the coast of Venezuela. Are you kidding? Meanwhile, he's smack

(01:01:12):
talking Ukraine, which is supposedly and I think quite you
can defend the notion that they are the victims of
a Russian expansion. So The idea that he's you know,
he's a peace nick or in any way an agent
of peace is absurd. I was really only speaking to
the Middle East thing. But now we get to the
grift and you know this is the other thing. MO.

(01:01:34):
And then and by the way, welcome to the show.
This is what you have to do asider. And listen
to me blab for a little while. And then I
shut up for a while. But what I was going
to but part of my blab is this. I love
that we are focused on the corruption because, in my judgment,
the one thing the Democrats really have. I mean, if
you just want to talk about the politics of it,
what you have in this administration is corruption on parade.

(01:01:57):
You have corruption at the highest level, and there is
probably plenty of corruption going on below the surface of
this iceberg. But what we can see in this iceberg,
the corruption iceberg, is the just this week, the pardoning
of the Binance of controlling of stockholder that was someone

(01:02:18):
who pled guilty to money laundering to any number, to fraud.
You saw the same thing with George Santos, you see
how and there's a litany of white collar criminals who've
been pardoned as well, so pardons are for sale, the
two hundred and thirty million dollar grab, the quid pro
quo associated with pallanteer, Google, et cetera, sponsoring the ballroom.

(01:02:42):
It's all of a kind, and in the kind is corruption.

Speaker 10 (01:02:46):
And that's the easiest case for Democrats to make leading
into the midterms. People can understand that, they can wrap
their minds around it. It's not as sexy as some
of these other things that we want to be out
raged about, but it's a part of a larger continuum.

Speaker 1 (01:03:03):
You can talk about.

Speaker 10 (01:03:04):
The ballroom, you can talk about the pardons, you can
talk about all these other moves which are being made,
but it's around a common theme or message of corruption
and grift. And to your point, Mark, I like how
you put it all together. And if Democrats actually want
to do well in the midterms, and I think they
want to do well, but whether they will do well,

(01:03:24):
we will be incumbent upon them be able to message
coherently and cojently those points. Because people who are struggling
with their groceries, people who are struggling in the financial
aspects of their lives, can understand genuine outrage regarding corruption.
Now here's the problem with the midterms. People talk about

(01:03:47):
the congressional approval ratings, how low they are, how they
hate Congress. Well that as an aggregate, this as a
body we think of Congress or the House of Representatives.
But by and large people like their congress person then,
which leads to those people being reelected. The Democrats need
to put this on it. As they say, all politics
is local. They have to put it on a very

(01:04:08):
personal and local level where people can understand that because
of this grift, you have fewer things in your life.

Speaker 1 (01:04:16):
They have to make that connection. That's just exactly how
it has to be done. You have to a and
be it. You have to say you can't afford groceries,
you can't afford healthcare. They are stuffing money into their
pockets with both hands. Donald Trump is getting two hundred
and thirty million dollars in taxpayer money. That's your money

(01:04:38):
into his pockets, Donald Trump's pockets, and so on. You
just and boy, it's just it is corruption on parade.
It's a shakedown of academic institution, of legal institutions, of
media institutions, and now of the government by the Trump organization.
Having Eric and Don Junior. They're alongside at the Mid

(01:05:01):
East piece talks. At the announcement, they were doing business.
I mean, your so bent out of shape about Hunter Biden.
These guys are doing business in every possible way, transacting
alongside that peace agreement for a golf course in Qatar,
a resort in Vietnam. This will all be done alongside

(01:05:23):
Terraf relief. This is all transactional. The administration is the
most corrupt in history, and it's all right there for
you to see.

Speaker 10 (01:05:31):
This one thing that you're missing, Mark, And I don't
know if you've discussed it, so please correct me if
I'm wrong. And I don't know if your viewers and
listeners have discussed this part of this race by the
Trump administration to do all these things that want. It's
more than just flood the zone. We're dealing with the
man who may not even be with us in twenty

(01:05:53):
twenty eight. I can't even bet that he's going to
make it through twenty twenty six. And I say this
with great respect because I saw the decline of my father.
And when you see the swollen ankles and you know
that he's dealing with congestive heart failure, you can understand
then why they're quickening the pace of making all these
changes and trying to get all these things done before

(01:06:17):
he is fully incapacitated. And I'm not saying that because
I want that to happen. I'm saying that out of
great respect, because he is still someone's father, someone's grandfather,
someone's husband.

Speaker 1 (01:06:26):
I'm not losing sight of that.

Speaker 10 (01:06:27):
I'm saying that part of the reason why all these
things are happening right now is because the Republican Apparatus
knows that the time of Maga is going to be
short lived.

Speaker 1 (01:06:38):
At this point, well, the time of Maga may extend,
I'd say, mo, because I think it is a real movement,
and there are people coming up who are younger, they'll,
i think, alter Maga. But to your point, and I
very much agree with this, and this is sort of
like the true thing. We can never know will Magga

(01:07:00):
survive in any kind of robust way after Trump. Trump
is a charismatic, generational figure. Again, people will be angry
about me me saying this is my fact. We don't
give you without that being the fact. Yes, exactly. And
so when you know the cult leader passes away, it'll
be interesting to see if the cult endures and who

(01:07:22):
takes it over. I mean jd Vance is positioning himself.
He certainly has, you know, Peter Thiel and the technocrats
literal technocrats who will take over on some level. And
the Pallunteer presence in the US government allow and Pallunteer
is a data collection service that will scrape and already
has scraped a lot of government websites for all kinds

(01:07:44):
of information on Americans. There's a surveillance state that's growing there.
This isn't me being a conspiracy theorist. It's the case.
And so it may take on one of, you know,
one of those kinds of forms. I think mo perhaps
in the post Trump era, but I guess I'm skipping
ahead in the movie. It may. But here's the thing.

Speaker 10 (01:08:03):
When you talk about a leader taking over a cult,
a cult is usually formed around an individual. We think
about cults from David koresh Namesciins me, the people who
had the the pudding.

Speaker 1 (01:08:17):
Marshall Branch, Davidians. No, yeah, branch Davidians.

Speaker 10 (01:08:20):
But also I'm saying that you look at Jim Jones,
all the cults are around the individual, the cult of personality,
and in the absence of that personality, the cult falls apart.
In this instance, you would likely see the cult falling apart.
On a congressional level, the Republicans will be less inclined
to disagree with all of this lawlessness. You know, actually,

(01:08:43):
you'd be more inclined to disagree with this lawlessness in
the absence of the person Trump, who has a stranglehold
on a party. We know that person is not going
to be jd Vance going forward, whether he's president or not.
He's not going to have the type of command over
the masses. I doubt it's going to be any individual.
And so if I'm the Republican Party, if I'm MAGA,

(01:09:04):
i have to do I have to get while they
getting's good and do it while I can because got
to be morbid. I'm just being real. I'm talking about
lived experience with the decline of my father. They're one
fall away. It could be one fall publicly, I'm talking
about a physical fall right, one fall privately and all

(01:09:25):
this ends all of it, and because we have social media,
we're going to know about it sooner than later.

Speaker 1 (01:09:34):
Well, uh, he's on the same accelerated pace plan that
you've described. Maga is on, meaning that grift and the
money grabs are all cranked up to ten. But in
addition to that, he has these bizarre policies, the tariff policy, chaotic, impulsive.

(01:09:57):
He even la out these tarofts initially was it Liberation
Day or whatever he called it, And it didn't make
any sense. You couldn't figure it out based on any
kind of existing formula. Plus it was just a bad
idea to begin with. Now it has survived, but it's
set up a system of patronage where different countries have
to come to Donald Trump and offer him the kinds

(01:10:19):
of deals that we've talked about, where the self enrichment
deals something where he can gain personally, and that clearly
is part of it. So we get to and I
will get to Canada, but we also get to foreign
policy that has nothing to do so I'm mentioning the
tarofts because again they're chaotic and impulsive. The drug trafficking

(01:10:41):
interdiction thing is associated with some vision I think he
has of like a nineteen eighties world where the drug
trafficking is coming in the way in which we've seen
it articulated by hag Seth and by Trump, you know,
on these boats out of Anezuela out of Colombia. The

(01:11:02):
reality is the current day stream of drugs comes in
so many different ways. If you've done any reading around this,
it is remarkable actually how many middleman there are, and
how they've really dispersed the trafficking across so many networks
that you know, the idea somehow that the drugs are

(01:11:24):
really on that boat in any kind of substantial way,
it's almost laughable. Yet this is our policy to take
these boats out. It is laughable, but it's also very serious.

Speaker 10 (01:11:37):
It's ridiculous, and there's something in that where Donald Trump,
with the exception of the Cold War, seems to be
stuck in nineteen eighty six. And I'm not trying to
make any statement about his cognitive time shifting. I'm just
saying that his worldview is very much of the nineteen eighties.
This whole Trump doctrine, and he alone can is going

(01:11:58):
to be the one to save us. That I think
is going to be another serious issue that we're not
going to be able to resolve until after the Trump administration,
where America will have to answer for killing innocent people.
They are innocent people until they're convicted. We're talking about
international waters. So it's not like we have jurisdiction over
what we're doing off the coast of Venezuela.

Speaker 1 (01:12:20):
There will be a consequence to that. It's just not
going to be soon well, and it's expanding, and it's
clear that some of these people are total innocence, and
even those, as you said, who would be on a
drug trafficking vessel are entitled to some kind of due
process and they would be detained and they likely wouldn't
be executed. I mean, they're summarily executed by the Americans.

(01:12:43):
It's outrageous. I mean, this is truly extra judicial killing.
And it is it looks like just the beginning. I mean,
he is talking increasingly about some kind of land incursion
by American troops or troops accompanied by drug and force
arms of the military. It's scary to.

Speaker 10 (01:13:05):
Randy in the chat to say a consequence from who, well,
hopefully after MAGA and this Trump administration, where we will
approach some degree of normality, and whereas Trump the individual
will not be subject to any of these consequences. Honestly,
don't believe he'll be alive in twenty twenty eight. And
again I say that with great respect I'm not wishing
death upon him, but those who've enacted these plans, those

(01:13:28):
who've carried out his wishes, are susceptible to prosecution and
will be held accountable when all is said and done.
I can't speak for the international community, but this is
not going to go without some sort of response in
administration's succeeding.

Speaker 1 (01:13:47):
Yeah, it is. I think it's optimistic to suggest that
the midterms and the general will go off in any
kind of normal way, but we can cross that bridge
when we come to it. It sure looks as though
a lot of things in America institutions and systems are

(01:14:08):
changing radically, and I think the elections will be part
of that eventually as well. Let me ask you about
the Canada thing. So you know, Canada's our second biggest
trading partner, and they put out this long yeah, not
for long exactly showed if you would again, Tony, show
everyone the ad that has created such anger on the

(01:14:32):
part of Trump that he's actually cut off trade negotiations
with Canada.

Speaker 6 (01:14:36):
When someone says, let's impose tariffs on foreign imports, it
looks like they're doing the patriotic thing by protecting American
products and jobs. And sometimes for a short where it works,
but only for a short time.

Speaker 1 (01:14:52):
But over the long run, such.

Speaker 6 (01:14:53):
Trade barriers hurt every American worker and consumer, inevitably lead
to retaliation by foreign countries and the triggering of fierce
trade wars. Then the worst happens. Market shrink and collapse,
businesses and industry shutdown, and millions.

Speaker 5 (01:15:13):
Of people lose their jobs. Throughout the world.

Speaker 6 (01:15:17):
There's a growing realization that the way to prosperity for
our own nations is rejecting protectionist legislation and promoting fair
and free competition.

Speaker 5 (01:15:27):
America's jobs and growth are at stake.

Speaker 1 (01:15:32):
So Ontario put that ad out. It ran during the
Blue Jays Seattle World Search, which is seen by nine
million people or seven million people. But it apparently cut
through to Donald Trump because he was infuriated by that
to the point that he's cut off these negotiations with
Canada trade negotiations.

Speaker 10 (01:15:52):
It doesn't surprise me that Canada seized on that. I
remember that speech when Reagan gave it. I'm old enough
to remember it. And it's weird how MAGA wants to
claim itself as the Party of Reagan. The GOP wants
to claim itself as a party of Reagan. But they
take nothing from what Reagan said about moments right now.

(01:16:13):
They take nothing from Reagan as far as how we
should view Russia as an adversary.

Speaker 1 (01:16:18):
They take nothing from him as far as and look.

Speaker 10 (01:16:21):
I'm not a fan of trickle down economics, but even
Ronald Reagan would not support these type of economics.

Speaker 1 (01:16:28):
And it's you know, it's there's a.

Speaker 10 (01:16:30):
Dissonance there, a cognitive dissonance that we can't explain other
than it's a cult.

Speaker 1 (01:16:35):
Because if it weren't a cult.

Speaker 10 (01:16:36):
It would be susceptible to reason and facts and there,
and they're not willing to listen to either.

Speaker 1 (01:16:42):
Traditional Republican tenets of economic policy would be those that
you heard Reagan talking about. Against tariffs and for a
free market. Now America doesn't have a free market and
never has had a free market, but the idea that
you impose these tariffs, and these are withering tariffs that

(01:17:04):
are designed to reflect the wants and impulses of one man,
and that's Donald Trump. And you know, witness the fact
that he's cut off these negotiations with Canada and again,
America's second biggest trading partner. I mean, look, what's happened
with your relationship with China and how he screwed our
own farmers as a result of this ridiculous back and
forth with China. Then China goes to Brazil. They'll get

(01:17:27):
their soybeans there. Their view is, hey, we're not screwing
with you America. We're done with this now, and so
they're going to Brazil. And to the latest news the
last couple of weeks, Argentina, so Argentina and Brazil will
be where the soybean products are going now to China.
Those will be the producers, China will be the consumer.
American farmers are left holding the soybean bag. They have

(01:17:53):
relief checks that are being cut from Donald Trump because
of this tariff damage. But that's not a business. They're
not going to go cut relief checks to these farmers
every year because they can't find customers for their soybean product.
China was the number one consumer of soybeans out of
the American agriculture community. Then add to that the fact

(01:18:16):
that Scott Bessn't and his hedge fund buddies invested heavily
in the Argentina or is it Argentine. I can never
keep track of what's appropriate Argentinian. Argentinian will also work
economy to the point that there was an imperative to
prop up the Argentinian economy, and so they did it
first with a twenty billion dollar bailout and now a

(01:18:38):
forty billion dollar bailout to Argentina so that they're able
to have some economic growth. The hedge fund managers get
that investment back. And this is the final code to
Argentina is able to discount their soybean product more because
of our subsidies to their economy, and they sell to

(01:19:01):
China at a discount well below what the Americans were
getting for their soybeans. It's the stuff of lunacy.

Speaker 10 (01:19:10):
The only problem with what you said, Mark, it's a
great distillation of everything which is going on. But it's
very difficult to message that to Americans. It's very difficult
to get Americas. I'm not saying they're stupid. I'm just
saying that it's a lot to ask people to pay
that much attention. What needs to be done is just

(01:19:31):
very simplely say Donald Trump is sold out of sold
out America, and because of that, your life is much
more difficult.

Speaker 1 (01:19:41):
And yes, I would again I'd go to cor again,
I'd go to corruption. I would mention the word corruption
or corrupt in almost every interview that I did. If
you're a public figure and you're interested in, you know,
being part of the opposition Democrats or whatever it might be.
So in this case, it's a corrupt deal made for

(01:20:01):
Scott Bessen, who's the Secretary of Treasury, Trump's treasury for
Trump administration. A corrupt deal is to pay off Trump's
friends who are a hedge front manager. And that's why
we're bailing out Argentina. It's corrupt. It's all corrupt, and
that's the way to tell it. That's the way to
tell it. Yeah, Now to the White House and the
destruction of mo Kelly. I you know, I know you
went to Georgiatown University. I know, did you ever go

(01:20:25):
to the White House or have you ever been through
the White House?

Speaker 10 (01:20:28):
Haven't been through the White House? Been to the White House?
That it's changed.

Speaker 1 (01:20:31):
It used to be you could walk pretty much up
to the gates.

Speaker 10 (01:20:34):
Then nine to eleven happened, and then Trump happened. And
what I mean by that is nine to eleven they
put up the blockades. Then Trump and the unrest of
twenty twenty happened, and now you can you're pushed even
further back. You don't have the type of access to
the White House that you had when I was in
school thirty some odd years ago.

Speaker 1 (01:20:53):
Yeah, used to be able to take a picture right
there at the fence, and you were close to do it. Now, Yeah,
you can't do it now. So even more to the point,
they've closed the ellipse, that area near the White House
because from the ellipse you can see the demolition of
the East Wing, and they're trying to completely eliminate any
pictures of that demolition. It's I'm sorry. We have a

(01:21:14):
piece of merch that says A Project nineteen eighty four
and a half. But I really always feel like this
is really Orwellian. Like we said the Trump administration, we
said we weren't going to touch anything involving the White House.
We were just going to build the ballroom, and we
don't want you to know about the fact that we've
demolished the East Wing, and the visual of the demolition

(01:21:35):
is really hard to stomach for a lot of Americans.

Speaker 10 (01:21:38):
It's difficult. And now you can see the messaging in
response as well. Obama had a basketball court put in
and everyone knows that used to be a tennis court.

Speaker 1 (01:21:47):
That just repainted the lines and put up a movable
basketball goal.

Speaker 10 (01:21:53):
You know, I don't know, maybe one thousand dollars all together,
something nominal amount. Yeah, But what one of the I
would say the magic trick of Donald Trump is he's
never held accountable to anything he said previously. He is,
He's not responsible. Yes, he said they're not going to
touch the East wing of the White House. Yes, not

(01:22:17):
only did he lie then, he lies now and unfortunately
there are no consequences for him, the individual who lies
incessantly and with impunity. But again, going back to what
we were talking about, the messages, the corruption, where the
money is coming from, Who's going to benefit Americans?

Speaker 1 (01:22:36):
I believe better understand that than just the the.

Speaker 10 (01:22:41):
Undignified demolition of the symbolic structure of the White House.

Speaker 1 (01:22:47):
I want to finish up with a question about reopening
the government because it really fits into a lot of
what we've talked about. You know, we've talked about I
see the closing of the government as working very well
for Donald Trump. The minimal oversight that there is doesn't exist.
The congressional questions that might have to do with the

(01:23:11):
demolition of the East Wing, whether any historians were consulted,
whether there was any sort of formal approval of this move.
We know the answer is no and no, but still
that tepid even pro forma kind of way in which
there might be oversight in quotes is gone. So as
long as you can keep the House in recess, and

(01:23:33):
Mike Johnson wants to keep it in recess, he's almost
gotten no incentive to reconvene this body because it works
so well for his boss, Donald Trump. Right now, I
wonder if you can help us with some kind of
I don't want to say prediction, but the way in
which you sort this out. How long might we be

(01:23:56):
looking at this closing of government?

Speaker 10 (01:23:58):
I think it's going to be for me, and I
don't say that with any hyperbole, if only because for
different reasons, both the Republicans.

Speaker 1 (01:24:06):
And Democrats wanted this fight.

Speaker 10 (01:24:09):
Republicans wanted this fight for the points that you've made, Mark,
because there's no downside as far as what they're trying
to do right now. It's like, wait a minute, school's out,
there's no teacher, there's no hall, monitors. We get to
do whatever we want. No one can tell us no.
That's the Republicans, you know. And the Democrats may believe
that they're engaging in a principled fight, but there's nothing

(01:24:32):
really for them to gain, and they now that they're
committed to the fight. If they give in, then they
look like they're the ones who chickened out, or they
this exercise was for nothing. It was an exercise and futility.
So there's no reason for either side to back away
from this fight. The Republicans are not willing to negotiate.
The Democrats are not going to back down.

Speaker 1 (01:24:54):
So we're this.

Speaker 10 (01:24:55):
Intractable position for the foreseeable future. And we're going into
the holidays, let's not forget, so it could be the
rest of the calendar year.

Speaker 1 (01:25:02):
I mean, it's scary because there are a lot of
people working. Essential workers. I've always felt if you think
they're essential and you're gonna make them work, then you've
got to cut checks to them. They've got it. They're
essential enough to work, then they are essential enough to
be paid. But that's not what's happening most of these workers.
I mean, I think he's jackhammered some money out of
the Pentagon and move some stuff around to pay some
of the soldiers, because that's sort of his flex you know,

(01:25:24):
but to TSA agents and you know, those who are
working in the control towers and all these federal employees,
they're working and showing up to work without pay. And
if it goes on for months and months, that's that's
a sad fact. These people are gonna have to, you know,
find side hustles and or they may want to leave
government completely.

Speaker 10 (01:25:42):
I would say leave government completely because this is not
going to change before the beginning of the year.

Speaker 1 (01:25:47):
Unfortunately.

Speaker 10 (01:25:48):
I don't mean to be pessimistic, but there's no reason
to reopen the government Thanksgiving, you know, if you know
the congressional calendar.

Speaker 1 (01:25:56):
Yeah, yeah, exactly, all right, they would wrap this up.
But there's one story that's wild and it just broke
yesterday and I had to get your thought on it,
and it's this scandal hitting the NBA. Now I don't
think the entire NBA is involved, although I think the
NBA is going to end up. You know, they certainly
have a black eye and they're certainly going to they

(01:26:18):
may be fined. There may be I mean, you had
cash Battell, who you know again, catches a jet out
to wherever there's a big announcement, and then you know,
puts his FBI jacket on and tells you, yeah, we
got them. You know, it wasn't easy, but let me
tell you, we got these NBA guys illegal poker and
they were fixed poker games, and they were tied up
with the mob. And it does seem as though this

(01:26:38):
is a pretty wide ranging scandal from the standpoint of
some luminaries out of the NBA being used to draw
in people to these poker games that are run by
the mafia, and they they use X ray technologies and
all these other things to defraud the poker players of
their money. That's to cheat them out of the money.
And it was millions and millions of dollars. But also

(01:27:00):
the NBA players we know of one, this Terry Rosier,
who seems as though he was I don't know, was
he under pressure, I don't know why this happened, but
he apparently indicated that he had an injury, and that
indication of the injury was passed along to some people

(01:27:20):
who were betting, and they bet on the what they
call it a prop bet, a proposition that he's going
to have fewer than a certain number of points, and
he then had fewer than that number of points, and
they paid out a huge amount to Again, these they're
suggesting they were mob related or some constellation of people

(01:27:41):
who were betting in that way.

Speaker 10 (01:27:44):
I had covered this from my former employer kfi A
six point forty at Nauseam talking about the emerging betting
scandals in professional sports, not just the NBA but also
Major League Baseball. We had talked about Chihl Tani's interture interpreter.
We talked about how Dante Porter was banned from the

(01:28:06):
NBA back in twenty twenty four, and I said, this
is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg. This is
just what you can see. There's much more going on underneath.
And let's not forget this particular investigation was spending more
than a year, I want to say, close to two years.
So the indictments are legitimate, the investigations are legitimate. Now
we can get past the whole Marshall, Dylan, you know

(01:28:29):
there's a new sheriff in town, a cash but tell
you know, trying to seem tough. Get past that. This
might I don't want to be hyperbolic, but this could
be the undoing of major professional sports as we know
it because of what lies beneath.

Speaker 1 (01:28:47):
I call this the roach theory.

Speaker 10 (01:28:49):
Like if you see a roach in your house, don't
worry about the one you see, worry about the twenty
in the walls that you don't see.

Speaker 1 (01:28:56):
Worry about the roaches that are in your house. When
the lights are off.

Speaker 10 (01:29:00):
You just turned on the light. They're just now turning
on the light and seeing these few people. I'm telling
you there are dozens and dozens more. And it doesn't
help that these leagues are supported in part by draft
kings and fan duel and these legalized betting sites. This
is going to get much worse before he gets better.

Speaker 1 (01:29:20):
Well, the irony of what you point to is that
the NBA was the first to embrace gambling. I mean, NFL,
Major League Baseball always hands off all of it was
being done, but it was never illegal. The NBA stepped forward.
It seemed either courageous or inevitable whatever, and then that

(01:29:41):
led to legalized gambling, and all of these different states
legalized gambling on sports. Now they actually have posted the
lines and this kind of thing. So in a way,
you had gaming encroaching upon these sports in ways that
it hadn't prior. It always had been sort of something
in the back rooms. And as you say, I guess
there might be more, which astounding to me, And I

(01:30:03):
guess why I am sort of hesitant is these guys
make so much money you don't see any kind of
reasonable economic incentive for them to do this. I mean,
you know, if you're knocking down twenty three million, what
the hell do you care if you make fifty one
hundred thousand, two hundred and even three hundred thousand on
a game. Ah. But here's the point that Shack made.

Speaker 10 (01:30:22):
Yes, you may be making that money on the upper
echelon levels of the NBA, but a lot of these
players along a lower level are not, and they can
make millions of dollars. But just floating out the information like, hey,
Lebron isn't playing tonight, he's got a back out, so
you want to put a lot of money on such
and such, or it's like, I know, if you a
person in the media, because I worked as a beat reporter,

(01:30:43):
you can come in contact with a lot of information
that can be helpful. What's different today, as opposed to
twenty years from ago. Is it's easier to bet. If
I get information, I can weaponize that information immediately and
place a bet on FanDuel drafting. Now, the leagues have
not allowed players to bet, ever, that hasn't changed, but

(01:31:04):
the people who have this information and can weaponize it
and monetize it has exponentially grown. Where if I find
out something which is listen, I work to you know,
right alongside AM five seventy LA sports, and you had
athletes come in all the time. It's very easy to
get information and monetize it in a way. I didn't
have a bookie twenty years ago. I didn't have anyone

(01:31:25):
I could call. I have an app on my phone
right now that I can place a bet because I
heard that so and so is not going to be
in the lineup tonight for the Dodgers.

Speaker 1 (01:31:35):
That's so, so true. And if there's time, I'll tell
you a story just like that. But I wanted to
show you Terry Rozard. You have it to Tony. This
is him on the court, and watch the way in
which he misses shots and then turns the ball over.
There is a first turnover and you see this again

(01:31:56):
in situation. I'm saying, there's a second turnover, and there's
a third turnover. Then he goes in, misses a layup
like a really misses the layup. Then he takes a
shot from three point range hits the front of the rim.
I think that was it. Maybe I'm so the idea

(01:32:18):
somehow that there is this going on is bizarre to
me for the reasons we've said. But as you've kind
of suggested, maybe it makes more sense. But this is
the guy who was making dough. You know, I think
he was making some real money. So this is where
I say, I don't know what was going on. I mean,
if he was really dealing with some pretty bad people,

(01:32:40):
then it could be like, hey dude, you're going to
do this, or there's you know, it's going to get ugly,
and that's one kind of pressure. The other kind of
pressure might just have to be, hey, man, throw us
a bone. You know we've all bet we're all going
to bet on you tonight and blah blah blah blah.
Don't know, like with your buddies, I don't know how that,
you know. I guess they're human being, these people, But

(01:33:01):
the one thing they emphasize in professional sports. Is you
know they have a whole seminars on this. When these
guys come in because they come in as young people
and they say, no gambling, don't do any gambling at
all on if you can avoid it at all, and
certainly not on our sport, you know it.

Speaker 10 (01:33:18):
You know what's I want to say disconcerting to me
is the NBA specifically had this issue with one referee,
Tim Donaghy about twenty years ag when I was working
for a sports radio show at the time, and what
he was saying on the sports radio show, no, no, no, no,
it's it's not just me. There are other referees, there

(01:33:41):
are other players, and now it looks to be like
prescient and the NBA wanted to cast him as this
lone wolf who was out there doing things on his own.

Speaker 1 (01:33:50):
But once again we're.

Speaker 10 (01:33:51):
Seeing mob ties and involvement and mark when you say
the players are discouraged from gambling at all, it's like,
you don't have to bet on the NBA. You can
find yourself in a place where you're just down forty
thousand dollars to say, and someone comes to you is like, hey,
I got a way where you can get those forty
thousand back, you know, just don't make five shots tonight.

(01:34:12):
Those are the prop bets Terry Rozier will score under
ten points tonight. And it's like, if we know that
you're not going to score ten points, we're gonna bet
the house on that prop bet.

Speaker 1 (01:34:21):
But you got to do your part as a player.

Speaker 10 (01:34:24):
And the thing is people don't know this that I
want to sound conspiratorial. Mark, the NBA is an entertainment corporation.
It is not a competition corporation. And they understand that
for the entertainment corporation, they're not held to the same
standards as.

Speaker 1 (01:34:40):
Other like high school and college sports.

Speaker 10 (01:34:42):
Because there's always been this tenuous connection to sports betting.

Speaker 1 (01:34:48):
I'll tell you the story quickly. I've been betting on
sports for many, many years, and back when I was
really betting, I've never really been a huge better Like
I never bet money that would really matter. It was
all we just fun, you know. But you you have
to buy bet enough that you care, but not enough
that it's going to affect your lifestyle at all. Like
now I can't go out to dinner this week because

(01:35:08):
I would anyway. I got a call from a friend
of mine at the time, Paul Pierce was playing for
the Celtics and they're playing in Los Angeles and he
was in LA and I played a lot of poker,
a lot, and at that time I was really, you know,
connected to a lot of people in poker, not the
big games that you know. I could never sit with
Paul Pierson play they were playing for so much money.

(01:35:31):
But he said, hey, man, Paul Pierce is playing cards
here and it's it was like, I want to say,
he's really drunk or whatever he was saying. He's really
like he's his blotto is what he really said. He said,
and he's got and there's a tip off tomorrow with
the Lakers at noon. And then he I said, well,

(01:35:51):
thanks a lot for the tip, but stay in touch
or whatever. And I got a text and it was like,
Paul Pierce is still here. He was four am and
he's still playing cards and he's still wasted, is what
my friend said. So I know that Peers has to
show up to play the Lakers at noon is the tipball,

(01:36:14):
and I know he was playing cards at four am,
and I know he was, you know, not himself. He'd
had a couple of Pops. So I bet on the
Lakers knowing that Piers is going to kind of be
a no show in this game. I mean, how could
he possibly write? Pierce went off for like forty points
that day.

Speaker 10 (01:36:34):
But there's something you're leaving out, and you may not
know the unintended consequences of these investigations. What I mean
by that is you may go in the house looking
for drugs and then you find the dead body in
the bathtub. What I'm saying to you is there is
also use of amphetamines and all sorts of other illicits, yeah,

(01:36:55):
which are connected to these stories of how players may
play cars in two, four or five in the morning
and then show up on the court. That's the thing
which is less discussed and is other things are going
to come out of this investigation unrelated to the investigation.

Speaker 1 (01:37:10):
That's really interesting. I'll tell you what I ascribed it to.
It was not so nefarious. I thought these guys are
professional athletes. He could be up all night and he
could still go off for forty points. That's the kind
of yeah. I mean, I didn't even think that he
could use some performance and no, I just think, no, man,
you don't understand he can get three hours sleep, show

(01:37:32):
up and then be out of his mind. Radically great
because he's a great player, you know. Anyway, fun to
kick it around with you, Mo. Love that you'll be
visiting with us regularly. And yeah, all the best, the
great Mo Kelly everyone, thanks Mo. Bravo my friend Marks. Yeah,

(01:37:52):
I should have mentioned that Michael Shore is away. He's
in Europe for a couple of weeks, so he'll join
MO on Fridays as well typically and we can all
kick around what's happening the weekend politics. But Mo is
just a wonderful resource. And Penny says, thank thanks Mo.
Thank you. MO says Obi and uh Tammy, thank you Mo? Mo? Mo?

(01:38:16):
Mo is what Daryl wants? Mo? Mo.

Speaker 3 (01:38:18):
Yeah, we have some exciting news because I believe MO
is going to be filling in for you. So I
get to hang out with Moe.

Speaker 1 (01:38:25):
Yes, yeah, that's going to be it is, you know,
as they say, eating caviar for breakfast, having Mo Kelly
fill in.

Speaker 3 (01:38:34):
I ask him about his apostrophe, because he's got an
apostrophe before Kelly, and I'm not sure if that changes
the pronunciation of his name or not.

Speaker 1 (01:38:43):
I think the idea is that MO is the abbreviation,
isn't it? Hang on a second, mo Kelly, can you
come back and clear this up? Okay?

Speaker 6 (01:38:54):
Uh?

Speaker 1 (01:38:55):
Okay? Yeah.

Speaker 10 (01:38:56):
My full name is Morris O'Kelly and some people call
me MO. And I had a friend and fraternity brother
who just started calling me Mo kelly because he didn't
want to call me Morris o kelly. So it's a
it's a truncation of more that's interesting and I would
kill that.

Speaker 1 (01:39:15):
I thought it was a simple explanation, but it's actually
a more complicated and an interesting exploment.

Speaker 3 (01:39:19):
So the apostrophe then is left over from the apostrophe
Kelly correct, wow, But there is no pronunciation for the
apostrophe because in Hawaiian that would be a stop like kelly.

Speaker 2 (01:39:33):
So that's why I thought, was is it Hawaiian? I?

Speaker 1 (01:39:36):
Iris is an Irish last name.

Speaker 2 (01:39:38):
With you, I'm with you and iris is a smelling.

Speaker 1 (01:39:44):
Can you start Monday? They're asking, now, wow, he was
too good? Is the problem? That's it? More and more
and more, Mo, that's it? Uh?

Speaker 9 (01:39:53):
I want him to fill in the problem.

Speaker 2 (01:39:56):
That's too good? Then you're.

Speaker 11 (01:39:58):
No.

Speaker 1 (01:39:59):
No. I I'd be happy at minimum to share the time.
And uh, you know at some point we love mo.
Thank you for him says like, well you got a
lot of love, man. If you want to feel good
about yourself, go through the comments and you'll enjoy it.
All right, we'll see you next week. Thanks, Mike, Kelly
so long. Yeah, pretty great. Yeah, he'll be in I
think in a couple of weeks too. Phil in Ohio

(01:40:20):
is for lovers, Mark Thompson is for And what is that?

Speaker 3 (01:40:25):
Kim Axel Lottel is a rare and critically endangered lizard
or kind of like a salamander, found only in a.

Speaker 2 (01:40:34):
Certain lake in Mexico.

Speaker 3 (01:40:35):
Wow, a lot is one of my daughter animals.

Speaker 1 (01:40:40):
Man.

Speaker 2 (01:40:41):
As a matter of fact.

Speaker 1 (01:40:42):
It's a real life pokemon, is what it is. It
really has that look huh.

Speaker 3 (01:40:46):
It has these regenerative properties and it's currently being studied
because the possibility exists that that that what the axe
Lottel is able to do could lead to humans being
able to regrow limbs.

Speaker 1 (01:41:01):
Oh yeah, I know. Cool acts a lot of knowledge, man,
that's very impressive, very very good knowledge. Indeed, Wow, I
know that there was I'm just seeing a research paper
on them here as I'm googling from doctor Emil.

Speaker 3 (01:41:19):
Yeah, actually, can we talk a lot about them on
the After Party Live?

Speaker 1 (01:41:22):
Apparently apparently very impressive, very sweet looking creature. Yeah, a
little smile, Yeah, exactly, very impressive. Last Angry Manny says,
here's ten dollars in a super Chat Thank you, Last
Angry Manny. President McKinley regretted imposing tariffs during one of
his multiple terms, and even though Trump worships McKinley, Trump

(01:41:45):
will never admit what McKinley stated regarding tariffs. Well, I
don't think Trump can spell McKinley, and I don't think
Trump knows anything about McKinley. And when you say he
worships McKinley, I mean maybe I don't think he could
name anything about McKinley's administration. I think you, in your
comment have just mentioned more than Trump is even aware of.

(01:42:08):
With McKinley. He might have read it off of pre
written cards as he's making an announcement, but he has
absolutely no interest in governmental policy and governmental strategies and
real economics. Cal Gon take me away, says Richard Tellman Delemator. Yes,
that was a great campaign. Calgon take me away ten.

(01:42:29):
Ten is the amount Trevor Starr and Hollywood throws into
the super chat breaking fake news, Trump announcing plans to
demolish the Statue of Liberty and replace it with a
gold statue of a fourteen year old girl in a bikini.
I see, Trump said, everyone has wanted this for one
hundred and fifty years. Wow. Man, there's some serious trolling

(01:42:50):
going on. Huh. Does Trump even understand that Navarro quoted
a fictitious person to promote terraft policy or is he
just using the fraud for his grift? Says Murphy, I
think Trump has this thing about tariffs. I don't know
where it comes from. I don't think he's aware of

(01:43:10):
Navarro using fictitious quotes or information or even statistics to
support it. I think it's my way or the highway.
And I think a system of tariffs the way it's
been imposed, which is very different for each country, but
it's all going in at one time. It is a

(01:43:32):
and I've made this point repeatedly. We did it at
the time, and I'll just mention it to you again.
It is setting up a system of patronage. Meaning I'm
coming to you, the mad King, Donald Trump, and you
have imposed a forty six percent tax on my goods

(01:43:53):
coming into America. What can we do to get that
tax down? I'm wondering if they're interest here, that might
be something that works for you in America and you,
President Trump, because you are a great leader and we
want to do business with both you and your great country.

(01:44:15):
So we're the country of Vietnam. You have a forty
six percent terrify on us. What if we green light
and quickly allow for the development without all the regulatory
scheme that is here in Vietnam, the development of your resort.
I know you have moved forward with a resort. You

(01:44:38):
want to build this entire resort with a golf course
and these beautiful accommodations. Let's just greenlight that already, because
we're as frustrated as you are that our country is
taking time with it. Now now that we've greenlit it,
can we just address this tariff problem? And what happened?
They got a break on tariffs. Trump gets his resort

(01:45:00):
and they've already broken ground on it. So there you
have it. Taco Trump is great branding. Yeah, that's true.
That caught on for a while.

Speaker 3 (01:45:10):
If we don't get to Friday, fabulous Florida. We're probably
not going to have time for.

Speaker 1 (01:45:13):
It, Kim. Yeah, it occurs to me that if we
don't do Friday Fabulous Florida now, we probably aren't going
to be able to because we have Michael Shore waiting,
I mean Michael Schneider waiting.

Speaker 2 (01:45:28):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:45:29):
Okay, So without any further delay. I don't know why
you felt so comfortable delaying, but I do love delaying,
so I wasn't going to stand in your way. This
is Friday Fabulous Florida.

Speaker 4 (01:45:42):
It's time for a Friday Fabulous Florida.

Speaker 7 (01:45:46):
There is a gigantic alligator.

Speaker 9 (01:45:52):
Oh look at.

Speaker 4 (01:45:53):
The weirdest stories from our weirdest state.

Speaker 1 (01:45:59):
A knife wielding Florida man allegedly, first of all, right away,
it's it's winter, allegedly threatened to eat the neighbor's dog.
What during a trespassing dispute?

Speaker 2 (01:46:12):
Yes, I'm calling meth. I'm calling meth. Or was it
bath salts?

Speaker 1 (01:46:16):
Something does feel very mind altering substance related. A Florida
man alleging alleged I should say that he threatened to
eat his neighbor's dog and stab the woman who's his
neighbor for calling the cops. During a property dispute that
turned hostile, Minor Catildge is his name, allegedly confronting his

(01:46:40):
neighbors she walked her dog across the public path near
his property. Catildge bizarrely proclaimed that he would quote eat
her dog if she trespassed on the property that he
believed was his, even though it was public property. As
I've stated, the woman called police officers, spoke with Cattilage
about the property, and appeared to have resolved the dispute,

(01:47:02):
but a little over an hour later, the madman approached
his neighbor's home with a knife began to threaten her
and her family. Well, I don't need to tell you, Kim,
you can't approach a neighbor with a knife and threaten it's.

Speaker 2 (01:47:17):
A neighbor from hell. I give that. I'm going to
give him a perfect ten. Though.

Speaker 3 (01:47:21):
Look at that picture you see you can see all
this plan out. This guy is like he's the perfect
from Central Casting.

Speaker 1 (01:47:29):
Yeah, we do rate the booking photos here on the
Mark Thompson Booking photo Meter. I'm actually gonna I see
what you're saying. It is kind of perfect Central Casting. Yeah,
I'll give him an eight. Yeah, I think that's very
very strong. Well, he was arrested and went away from

(01:47:50):
the property. I don't know whether it was his property
or whether it was apparently public property, but he went
away in police property and that property was zip Ties, Florida.
Man is arrested after toddlers are pictured with guns, beer,
and marijuana. No No, No Taylor Noop of Daily Owned

(01:48:12):
Springs was taken into custody. He was arrested after deputies
and child welfare officials responded to allegations involving images of
kids posing with drugs, alcohol, and a handgun.

Speaker 2 (01:48:23):
What in the world.

Speaker 5 (01:48:25):
Oh.

Speaker 1 (01:48:25):
The photos depicted an infant and a toddler in staged
scenes involving marijuana, a glock style handgun, and a beer bottle.
The residence was also deemed unsafe, with exposed wiring and
unfinished plywood walls. I mean it was a mess in there.
You can see. We're showing you the pictures here, of course,
concealing the identity of the toddler. Authorities say that Noop

(01:48:49):
admitted to being aware of the photos confirmed that marijuana
was real, although he claimed to belong to someone else.
He said, uh uh, I didn't take those photos, but
I did stage one of them as a joke.

Speaker 3 (01:49:02):
Most Poor Baby is CPS.

Speaker 1 (01:49:05):
They charged him with child neglect, citing both the photographic
evidence and hazardous living conditions. It remains unclear who took
the other disturbing photos if Nupe wasn't the photographer as
he claims, and is likely that further charges will be
filed against other adults connected to this case. A Florida
woman is accused of driving drunk with kids in the

(01:49:27):
car and biting a family member. The biting is big
in Florida. You are going to like her booking photo.
Oh yes, I knew it. I know it, I know it.
She's an attractive lass. Lindsey Allen is her name.

Speaker 3 (01:49:45):
Lindsay needs to stop drinking. She's a bad drunk. She's
not a happy drunk.

Speaker 1 (01:49:49):
Apparently Kim is correct. She was arrested and booked into
jail on three felony accounts. I mean, if you're going
to go for one, why not go for the hat
trick child neglect one charge for each of the three
kids in the car. That's how she got to three.
She got to misdemeanor charges as well, one count of battery.

(01:50:12):
Someone called nine to one one to report that Allan
was allegedly intoxicated operating a vehicle with her three kids
in the car. The report said that Alan was reportedly
restrained and on the ground. Well, that's when she can
do her damage as a bier.

Speaker 3 (01:50:27):
Who needs gators when you have people biting each other,
says Karen.

Speaker 1 (01:50:30):
She drove her car west on Pioneer Trail from a
Halloween event and a relative was concerned about her condition,
managed to stop her at the intersection, saying that she
was intoxicated, and the relatives said, I'm concerned about your
three kids. Well, the fight broke out and that ended
with her biting the relative's thumb. Officials noted visible bite

(01:50:54):
marks on the victim. Oh, but the victim declined to
have photos take and of the injury. Officers search Allen's vehicle,
they found five empty cans of an alcoholic iced tea drink.
She was charged with domestic violence, battery, and three council
child neglect. She was not charged with the DUI, which

(01:51:18):
is to me to me, perhaps the most unusual part
of that story.

Speaker 2 (01:51:22):
Was the biting and the battery more egregious or something.

Speaker 1 (01:51:25):
I guess it was one of those things. But there
she is. It's sad when an attractive gal like this
has chosen a bad path in life.

Speaker 3 (01:51:36):
Would have been so much better if she was not attractive,
she was ugly.

Speaker 1 (01:51:39):
Yeah, I'm just I'm speaking for all of the people
who evaluate people superficially exactly. And there you go. That's
I'm giving her a what would you give her on
the booking scale?

Speaker 3 (01:51:55):
She's definitely a nine to ten. She's really attractive, but
what's inside doesn't match what's outside.

Speaker 1 (01:52:03):
So yeah, yeah, she's got a nasty inside, is what
you're saying.

Speaker 3 (01:52:07):
And yeah, you know, you think you about want to
get close to her, and then she starts biting and
all bets are off.

Speaker 1 (01:52:13):
I guess that's true, all right, eight or nine is
what they were saying. Don't bite a battery. And finally,
we have this bonus video for you which might get
us demonetized. We will see. We're not sure monkeys are
spotted at Ocalla Springs and this was sent to us
by a number of you, and thank you for sending
us this video. This is a monkey festival that spontaneously

(01:52:38):
took flight. These are monkeys jumping from trees. Isn't that right, Kim?

Speaker 2 (01:52:44):
Yes, yes, this.

Speaker 3 (01:52:46):
Lady is on a kayak and all of a sudden,
the monkeys start splashing into the water all over the place.

Speaker 2 (01:52:53):
It's like monkey's falling from the sky.

Speaker 1 (01:52:56):
A it's raining monkeys. And Darryl says, you had me
at monkeys, that was it. So we must, even though
we don't want to, we must. The bylaws of the
show requires to pick a favorite. I'll remind you saw
the and heard of the knife wielding Florida man threatening
to eat the neighbor's dog over the trespassing dispute. The

(01:53:19):
other Florida man arrested after the toddlers were pictured with guns,
beer and marijuana, the Florida woman accused of driving drunk
with kids in the car, then biting a family member
when the conflict ensued, and then the kayaker delighted by
a group of monkeys leaping into the water around here.
What is your favorite? I ask you, Kim.

Speaker 3 (01:53:40):
All of these stories are so so Florida, But I
can't bring myself to vote for the kid ones. So
I'm going with the knife wielding threats of eating the
family dog.

Speaker 1 (01:53:52):
Of course, yeah, knife wielding threat to eat the family dog, Tony.
What was chosen by those in the poll right now,
Monkeys is winning. Monkeys is winning. What is your favorite Tony? Oh,
biting drunk girl. But I love the way Tony's Oh,

(01:54:14):
I mean, of course.

Speaker 2 (01:54:14):
Fighting drunk girl. You know you could have just.

Speaker 1 (01:54:20):
Done one of those nights. You know that. Thank you.
That's what we need. There, you go, Tony, the romance lives.

Speaker 2 (01:54:27):
Yeah, James, Tony until your thumb's gone?

Speaker 1 (01:54:30):
Yeah, I love that. Do you spell monkeys like that deliberately?
With an? I? Y as, it doesn't really matter. No,
I was typing too fast. Well done. Monkeys is in
the lead, and that is Friday. Fabulous Florida.

Speaker 4 (01:54:46):
This has been Friday Fabulous Florida is all in my kitchen.
Y'all come back now here.

Speaker 1 (01:54:59):
Are We're running behind? Michael Schnyder is in studio. Very
exciting to have you back in studio. Michael. Yeah, all
of your gallery visits and your stuff that you were
doing is concluded, and your back among us. All right,
I'm here. Yeah, I'm not going to delay any further.

(01:55:22):
Every Friday he comes through. He is a bona fide critic.
He used to write for the San Francisco Chronicle. He's
written for a number of different publications. He has written
as a critic on music, on movies, on media generally
television series streaming. When it comes to art gallery openings

(01:55:44):
and underground clubs, he knows it all. When it comes
to subtitled movies or superhero movies, he knows that all.
He comes and goes on a rainbow. How about it
for the great culture blaster, Michael Schneider and I am
happy to be here. You know what they say, Mark

(01:56:04):
Moe Kelly Les Thompson. I don't blame you for jumping
on board that train anyway.

Speaker 11 (01:56:12):
First I need to say that I don't understand all
the fuss by preservationists over the White House East Wing
tear down. I myself personally demolished six East Wings at
Kentucky Fried Chicken last night.

Speaker 1 (01:56:25):
I get it. I get it.

Speaker 11 (01:56:27):
Just kidding if you believe that I have a silo
of soybeans to sell you at a discounted price.

Speaker 1 (01:56:34):
These high it all in renovations. It's such an embarrassment.

Speaker 11 (01:56:39):
The planning ballroom is profligate, tacky, ostentatious. It's kind of
like a moron's idea of opulence.

Speaker 1 (01:56:45):
But let us move on. I may be back in
LA for a while.

Speaker 11 (01:56:49):
But that doesn't mean I didn't exult at the Warriors
home opener overtime victory at Chase Center. You were talking
basketball with Mo.

Speaker 1 (01:56:56):
Sure, the Warriors defeated the Denver Nugats.

Speaker 11 (01:57:00):
You know, Creamy filling or not, Steph is a wizard
took over the game in the fourth quarter. It was amazing,
and I hope the Niners have similar success on Sunday
in Houston over Texas. And I hope I'm not too
hungover from the big Constellation Club Halloween party at the
Formosa on Saturday night to get up and watch.

Speaker 1 (01:57:19):
You are amazing. Now, why you hit these different social
events A baby.

Speaker 11 (01:57:23):
I wanted to get all that in there because it
is the Halloween season. Yeah, and our first movie that
is going to cover has kind of a weird, horrific
sci fi vibe to it. It's called Bogonia and it
is in fact based on the wacky and weird and
wonderful two thousand and three Korean film Save the Green Planet.

(01:57:44):
And I'm not going to talk about that movie specifically.
And I know you love to suggest that I cover
all these foreign films, and I love subtitles, but This
is a good old fashioned English language film. It's called
Pogonia again. And by the way, Bogonia, just for those
who aren't aware, is an ancient Mediterranean belief that bees

(01:58:05):
could be generated from the carcass of a dead cow
through some kind of weird ritual. How does this relate
to the movie, Well, you know, if you go see it,
you may get a bigger handle on that. But Pigonia
is a very very dark comedy that has a lot
to say about the lunacy of today's divided, divisive, conspiracy

(01:58:26):
laden and digital media choked world. And in its favor
it is the latest from the iconoclastic director your Ghost Lanthemus,
And this is the guy that did the favorite The
Killing of a Sacred Deer and Poor Things, and that
was a little more recent and they may still be
my favorite of his films. But this has its moments,

(01:58:47):
even though it kind of goes off the rails in
a deliberate manner at a very significant juncture.

Speaker 1 (01:58:52):
But getting there is such a wild.

Speaker 11 (01:58:55):
And disturbing ride. And you have great principal cast members here,
So here's the essence of it. Michelle played by regular
Yorgos cast member Emma Stone is the CEO of an
Amazon type company. Teddy played by Jesse Plemons, is a
low level worker there, and he and his seemingly cognitively

(01:59:17):
challenged brother Don played by Aiden Delbis, keep bees at
their ramshackle house and despair over the dying of the bees,
which we see is a part and parcel of their anxiety.
So more to the point, they plan to kidnap Michelle
in an attempt to prevent global destruction, purportedly by Michelle's

(01:59:40):
other worldly comrades. So they are borderline looney. One would
think Will Tracy's script is appropriately kind of funky and freaky.
I was caught up in it. It wasn't totally satisfying.
Not everything gels the way it might. And I still
think that the Favorite and the killing of a Sacred
Deer are high water marks in Lanthemus's filmography.

Speaker 1 (02:00:03):
But man, I got to kick out of Bigonia.

Speaker 11 (02:00:05):
And it doesn't hurt that you have somebody like Emma
Stone and somebody like Jesse Plemmons at the heart of it.
It's in select theaters and Bigonia gets her recommendation.

Speaker 1 (02:00:15):
Wow, you can pique my interest. I might like it.
You very well might. By the way it's it's not
a horror movie at all, not per se, but it's horrific.

Speaker 11 (02:00:24):
And remember they're kidnapping someone and they think she is
something more than one would expect.

Speaker 1 (02:00:31):
Okay, so one more forecasting.

Speaker 11 (02:00:34):
Alicia Silverstone shows up here in a role and she's
you know, she's good actresses, she's a fine actress.

Speaker 1 (02:00:40):
Okay.

Speaker 11 (02:00:40):
This is something very near and dear to me, close
to my heart. Yes, I'm a Philadelphia native. I have
roots in New York and New Jersey. So Springsteen delivered
Me from Nowhere was on my radar a while ago,
and I thought.

Speaker 1 (02:00:53):
This is going to be cool.

Speaker 11 (02:00:54):
And what it is essentially is a slice of the
sprawling life of a world renowned artist who is wrestling
with depression and trying to hold onto his identity as
in every Man, and we're talking about Springsteen here. In fact,
if you were going to boil this down to one
short phrase, it would be anxious rock star with daddy issues,

(02:01:14):
bangs waitress and regrets it.

Speaker 1 (02:01:17):
That's basically the essence of this.

Speaker 11 (02:01:18):
But it also has clips of Springsteen performing live with
the East Street Band that has him interacting with some
of his friends of his youth, his road manager, and
of course what we would have to refer to as
his manager, and not only his manager, his advocate, the
guy who first said I've seen the future of rock

(02:01:39):
and roll and his name is Bruce Springsteen. That being
John Landau, who was listed as a producer on many
of his records as well. At this point in Springsteen's life,
he's already had success. His album The River in the
wake of the Wild Innocent and the East Street Shuffle
was a hit. He was drawing massive crowds. He had

(02:01:59):
kind of a hit single with Hungry Heart, and he
wanted to kind of get back to basics. So what
he ends up doing is moving into a house on
a lake, back home in the Asbury Park, New Jersey area,
and recording demos, some of which would eventually end up
on Born in the USA, his massive double breakthrough, and

(02:02:19):
also a bunch of songs that were far more intimate,
and he's recording them on a little cassette player in
this house on his own, and these are the songs
that would become a very deep and spare and dark
album called Nebraska. While he's doing this, he's also sitting
in with a band at the local club where he
first surface the Stone Pony and where he meets a

(02:02:41):
hot young waitress and takes up with.

Speaker 1 (02:02:43):
Her for a brief time.

Speaker 11 (02:02:46):
So you know, it's interesting, but it's such a tiny
little bit of Springsteen's life.

Speaker 1 (02:02:52):
I'm unclear. This is a drama or this is a
documentary drama docu drama. So these are actors playing Spranistan.

Speaker 11 (02:03:00):
You're not going to like focus in on him picking
up a waitress and no, no, what I'm saying, Okay,
I get it, but you haven't mentioned any stars or people,
are directors or anything yet.

Speaker 1 (02:03:08):
You said you're going to focus on him. No, I'm
going to get to that. I want to give you
the context of this thing.

Speaker 11 (02:03:14):
It is about this little piece of life and the
life of a of a superstar.

Speaker 1 (02:03:20):
So here's the pointy.

Speaker 11 (02:03:23):
Springsteen is played by Jeremy Allan White, and I'm watching
this thing and going.

Speaker 1 (02:03:28):
Is it the Bear? Is it the Boss? Is it
the Bear? Is it the Boss?

Speaker 11 (02:03:31):
That's right, Jeremy Allen White, who plays Carnby aka the
Bear on the FX drama comedy of the Bear. And
you know, he's quite good, but there's sort of a
disconnect there because he still looks like Jeremy Alan White.
And we know Springsteen so well. He has been in
our consciousness on screen. Many of us have seen him live.

(02:03:53):
We love his music, and White does a good approximation
of his vocals. There are live performance situations. The people
they cast as the East Street.

Speaker 1 (02:04:02):
Band came, they look like them. Do you know how Ai?

Speaker 11 (02:04:05):
You tell Ai, give me a video and I want
to future Max Weinberg, and everybody kind of looks a
little off, just a little off. So that's that was
an issue with the casting. But I mean I had
the same issue with my Weekend with Marilyn Michelle Williams
show does not really look like Marilyn Monroe, you know,
So that kind of creates a problem with suspension of disbelief.

(02:04:27):
But White is very very good here, and it's really
interesting to see these intimate moments.

Speaker 1 (02:04:32):
It's just not enough. It doesn't quite you would have
liked to see have seen a broader treatment of his
ascendants to rockstardom as opposed to getting him there already, or.

Speaker 11 (02:04:44):
Maybe that would be the simplistic way to approach the story.
But I still felt like, huh, man, I'm enjoying these
moments when I was a kid too young to go
into a bar. I was able to go to the
main point, which was a club in brit Maar Again.

Speaker 1 (02:05:00):
I was born in Philly, born in Philly.

Speaker 11 (02:05:04):
No, I will not do a Springsteen impression, but I
went to see them very very early on. He and
the East Street Band, sure, and I was absolutely blown away.
And he was so kind of connected to the audience.
And that whole idea of him being an everyman is
played up here because he's at the Stone Pony, He's
approached by people from high school who knew him back then.

(02:05:26):
He was able to kind of hang out a little
bit and interact with people, and there wasn't a lot
of frippery.

Speaker 1 (02:05:31):
There was not a lot of you know, pay me homage.

Speaker 11 (02:05:34):
So that's kind of interesting to see. The director, by
the way, Scott Cooper did some really wonderful films in
the past, Crazy Heart, Antlers, The Pale Blue Eye. This
just didn't fully work for me. And yet by the
same token, if you're a fan of Bruce Springsteen, I
think you should probably see it. And you may go
you know, this guy is in Springsteen, or you may

(02:05:55):
go woo yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:05:56):
Anyway, Springsteen delivered me from nowhere in the movie. Yes,
it is. What else do you have a great culture blaster? Oh?

Speaker 11 (02:06:04):
I have a film that kind of knocked me out
that came out in theaters a week or so ago,
and for some ridiculous reason, I didn't get access to screening.
But it is on Netflix as of today, and boy
it is a powerhouse. It's the latest film from director
Catherine Bigelow. It's called A House of Dynamite. And Bigelow is,

(02:06:25):
by the way, longtime companion of James Cameron of Avatar
and Aliens theme and she directed the Oscar Winner, The
hurt Locker. She directed Zero Dark thirty. She's an accomplished
directory accomplished. This movie, A House of Dynamite is a
kind of a dramatic triptych or kind of rationman esque
look at the harrowing events of an unidentified missile on

(02:06:50):
its way to the United States.

Speaker 1 (02:06:52):
They have no idea where.

Speaker 11 (02:06:54):
It comes from, who shot it off. It comes from
the Pacific theater of operations. It's a mod day drama
and it is tense as the entire superstructure of the
government attempts to decide what they're going to do as
this nuclear missile is heading directly for the United States,

(02:07:14):
and so you see everything, all the events from three standpoints,
and that sounds interesting. It's beyond interesting. The tension is
palpable throughout despite the movie's structure. By the way, that
structure seems to result in diminishing returns, but I was
on board for the whole thing. It ends in a
fashion it's either dramatically necessary or haphazard or borderline cruel.

(02:07:37):
And let me just point out that there are some
great performances, including Idris Elba as the President, Rebecca Ferguson
as someone working in ops. Jared Harris plays the Secretary
of Defense. Oh I'm sorry, should that be the Secretary
of War? I think I'll defer to the character played

(02:07:57):
by Jared Harris. And there's also Trace he Lets as
a general. It's really pretty engaging and honestly, you know,
for all of the flaws I saw in the aspect
of its you know, three part view of the action,
I still feel it was worthwhile.

Speaker 1 (02:08:15):
Well and it's on Netflix. You can see it at
House of Dynamite. The later from Catherine Begelo. What else
do you have a great culture?

Speaker 11 (02:08:22):
I will quickly talk about Heda, which is an adaptation
by the director of screenwriter Nia DaCosta, who came to
prominence with her remake of Candyman, which was pretty wonderful.
This is kind of a reimagining of Henrik Ibsen's classic
play heada Gabbler, and in this heada who's sort of

(02:08:44):
a kind of socialite party girl played by Tessa Thompson
is dealing with romantic angst and is in the middle
of this massive, upscale party. It's like an early nineteen
fifties UK setting. There's live bands and there's all of
this romantic intrigue and people manipulating one another and the

(02:09:06):
triangles and quadrangles and relationships going off the rails.

Speaker 1 (02:09:12):
You know, it really was.

Speaker 11 (02:09:14):
Engaging in that way, and God, our direction was wonderful.
You really got that sense of the upper crust in
England back in the fifties, and you know, it's post
war and everything.

Speaker 1 (02:09:25):
Is who let's dance, let's live it up. Yeah, they're
living it up.

Speaker 11 (02:09:29):
So there are aspects of it that I really really liked,
and it obviously deals with sexuality in a very modern way.
It seems to me that some of the women are
by there's one woman, played in magnificent fashion by the
German actress Nina Hass, who is a she's a lesbian,
she's a writer, apparently is part of this whole kind

(02:09:54):
of group of literary types. I kind of wish it was,
you know, a little sharper in focus because it gets
all over the place. A good performance by Imageen Poots
as a woman caught between her own sexual desire and
her desire to kind of be acknowledged for her intellect.
There are many interesting threads going through this remake of

(02:10:17):
Ibsen's Head or this reimagining of it.

Speaker 1 (02:10:19):
It is in.

Speaker 11 (02:10:20):
Limited release in theaters right now, and it is going
to start streaming on various VOD platforms on October twenty ninth.
I want to say that the accents, they get pretty thick,
and there's a lot of mumbling, and you know.

Speaker 1 (02:10:33):
People talking about that's bad for me, I can't hear anything.

Speaker 11 (02:10:36):
Well, yeah, but by the same token, put on the
subtitles and you'll be fine because it is streaming.

Speaker 1 (02:10:43):
Yeah, heada is.

Speaker 2 (02:10:45):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (02:10:45):
I think it's worth checking out a lot of sex.
It sounds like Michael, which you like because you're a
degenerate liberal.

Speaker 11 (02:10:51):
Let's just close things out with a movie I wasn't
really that enamored of. It's called Regretting You, and it's,
you know, a critic from melodrama, based on a best
seller and bolstered by its cast, although one of the
crucial actors in this, Alison Williams of Get Out, Megan
and Girls, doesn't quite have the depth needed to sell

(02:11:11):
her role. And it's about four friends, two sisters and
their husbands who have to deal with growing older and
having odd romantic desires for the other partner. And you know,
there are children involved at this point, and a very
devastating accident takes out two of them and secrets become

(02:11:35):
revealed over time. And yeah, Josh Boone, who directed The
Fault in Our Stars directed this one, so you can
tell his territory is angsty romance with a gut punch
of tragic loss to be overcome. And again, to its
credit that the cast is pretty good. I didn't think

(02:11:55):
that Williams was. Again, she was the least of them.
But when you have a movie movie that also features
Dave Franco and uh, you know Mason Thames is in
this thing, who's he's kind of on the rise McKenna, grace,
young actress who is finding her footing in the business.

Speaker 1 (02:12:12):
You know people are going to like it.

Speaker 11 (02:12:14):
I guess I'm trying not to regret the two hours
spent watching regretting you. But regretfully I will not get
those two hours.

Speaker 1 (02:12:21):
Back, So you're not you're not a fan of regretting it.
It is wide. It is in theaters theaters and likely
will be streamable soon. Yeah, sooner than I think they
probably would like.

Speaker 5 (02:12:31):
I don't know.

Speaker 1 (02:12:31):
He also featured heada based on the Ibsen story. Michael
thought it was interesting. I got it was kind of intriguing,
at least the way you summarized it, like this post
world or two liberated. Uh uh, what shall we say?

Speaker 7 (02:12:51):
Vive?

Speaker 1 (02:12:52):
It's a certain but it.

Speaker 11 (02:12:53):
Is obviously a shadow over all of it, as people
are still going to be venal and self surveying and
trying to like seduce one another.

Speaker 1 (02:13:01):
I don't know. You know, A House of Dynamite the
latest from Catherine Bigelow. You can stream it amazingly. It's
a very good movie. Michael really feels that her ouvra
is so strong. Her body of work events of around
an unidentified missile coming to the US, Idra Elba is

(02:13:21):
the president, cause which Ibral Elba was actually the president.
I agree with you, Rebecca Ferguson's and a Jared Harris Tracy.
Let's go see it and you can go see it
in your living room. A house of dynamite that's called
You may have issues with the closure when you watch
this movie. That's not a perfect movie, Michael says. Springsteen
Deliver Me from Nowhere, speaking of imperfection. Directed by Scott Cooper,

(02:13:45):
it picks up Springsteen, already a success working on songs
for the Nebraska album Meets a Waitress, They Fall in
Love Jeremy Allen White from the Bear play Springsteen. Michael said,
it's interesting. If you're in the Springsteen you might like it.
You might also be annoyed by it. It didn't.

Speaker 11 (02:14:05):
It sounded to me like it didn't ring your bell.
I won't denigrate it. And by the way, it's not
so much that they fall in love, but they fall
in bed.

Speaker 1 (02:14:12):
I got it, okay. Oh, by the way, one more
quick note.

Speaker 11 (02:14:16):
John Landell, who I mentioned as his longtime advocate, is
in fact played by the ever popular and I know
you love him because you've probably watched succession, but his
portrayal by Jeremy Strong is strong. Stephen Graham plays his
father by the way Springsteen's father, and Gabby Hoppin plays

(02:14:39):
his mom, and they're wonderful and our old pal Mark
Maron is even in this is engineer Chuck Plotkin at
one point, so just a couple of I.

Speaker 1 (02:14:46):
Don't know Mark Maron, but apparently he's an old pile
of yours, but really I respect him. But I don't know.
Comedy scene in San Francisco, but Gonia I missed him somehow.
I don't know anyways there, but Goonia is where you started. Yes,
ancient belief has be gone here that bees can emerge
from a coyle carcass is not all you said it
with a proper ritual anyway, this uh she does It

(02:15:08):
does involve bees because Jesse Plevens and his brother apparently
raised bees and their on there at their place. But
it's directed by the guy who did the favorite and
killing of Sacred Deer poor things yogas Lanthemus. Amma Stone
plays this CEO of an Amazon type company, and she

(02:15:29):
is kidnapped by Plevens and his brother again trying to
save the planet you liked it. My sense was you
liked it, didn't love it. You felt it didn't quite
tie up neatly, but you still liked it a lot.

Speaker 11 (02:15:41):
It kind of does some crazy stuff three quarters of
the way through that you know, visually bold but maybe
off putting for some.

Speaker 1 (02:15:49):
But yeah, there you go. All right, what a culture Blaster.
Your cup runneth over, and thank you very much for
your patience in waiting to get your segment on. Oh
it's okay, you know, I understand that I'm used to it.
You know, you can find the Culture Blaster if you
want to read the Culture Blaster, and I think he's
very much appreciated when you read his stuff. It's at

(02:16:12):
the Voice SF dot org. The Voice SF dot org
look for Michael Snyder, and across Culture Blaster media you
can find Michael in all the wonderful places where the
Culture Blaster inhabits. My Instagram and the YouTube and all

(02:16:32):
the different places. Any closing words, Michael, just go niners.
I love it. He comes and goes on a rainbow
sing goodbye Culture Blast, Happy pree Halloween everybody, and we'll
see you next week. Oh my gosh, what a great
way to finish the show, Kim, it has been a pleasure.

(02:16:54):
What a week, Tony. You stepped up in so many ways,
even in some ways people probably aren't even aware. Tony
is one of those guys you can put up the
bat beam and you can say, hey, can you re
edit this? Can you put someone in the heat there?
I mean, it's it's really always busy. Yeah, I always
looking to make a couple extra bucks, which I respect.

(02:17:17):
Literally make a business cards say mercenary.

Speaker 2 (02:17:19):
Really for me, that's.

Speaker 1 (02:17:21):
What it feels like. I don't even know. And I
don't want to know what the politics of Tony is
because it's not important. He does all his work so well,
you know, And same with Kim. I have no idea.
Oh you know, there's rumor that she's a big maga person.
I can't even imagine. Look, I didn't say it. I'm

(02:17:42):
saying it was rumored at once. What I'm saying that,
I don't know. There's never been anything like him saying
that she might have some.

Speaker 2 (02:17:52):
Who is having that conversation.

Speaker 1 (02:17:55):
I'm starting the rumor. Okay, can I just say that
I'm starting the rumor cam maga. Yeah, I'm I appreciate
the culture Blaster's wit and intelligence, says ROBERTA. Well, I, uh,
isn't that nice? Michael? You got a little bit of
uh yeah, yeah, you've got my new best friend. Yeah,
there you go. Let me quickly just finish out here,

(02:18:18):
because I really appreciate the support with the super chat.
This thumbnail traces my failing, my failed voting of my life.
I do not want to die with pooh. Rhonda Abrams says,
what was the thumbnails about? Uh? Trump? And do you

(02:18:39):
recall what the thumbnail is?

Speaker 2 (02:18:40):
Reagan and Trump shaking hands?

Speaker 1 (02:18:42):
Oh that's it? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, Wow, that's great.
Isn't it funny? It just didn't recall what it was.
Harry Magnum with a ten dollars super chat, Thank you, Ronda. Fabulous,
Happy fabulous Friday. There ones were two hosts, Mark and Kim,
whose banter was sharp never dim. On the Thompson Show stage.
They'd rant, rave and rave, then laughed, the light started
to dim. Oh my God changed the ending and then

(02:19:05):
I liked it. Yeah, that's great, thank you, Thank you, Harry.
Appreciate that with that ten dollars super chake, Richard Delemator,
I'll get to you in a second. Happy Weekend, all.
It seems to have arrived too soon. But here we are.
We survived another week of the American catastrophe. Get some
sun and energize, says REDP. Good Plan. Richard Delamator says,
I've got a chocolate donut and you can't stop me. Well,

(02:19:30):
I hope that's a code of some kind. I think
we need to blame Albert today, said yeah, I mean
I Albert. Yeah, Albert went to his other job today.
Natasha Jackson says, hey, Mark, this is a hell of
a week. Can't believe what he did to our white House. Yeah,

(02:19:53):
it's a metaphor. I made that point before. I think
it's probably been made by a lot of people. I
mean to see the physical destruction of what has happened
with a government and institutions with guardrails, with those things
that would be so very relevant in terms of regulating
what is an unregulated power grab. America is in a

(02:20:13):
very dark place, and I don't see it getting lighter
anytime soon. But I think we addressed a lot of it.
And I thought Moe was really good on the government shutdown, etc.
In fact, Moe Kelly is a great addition to the
Mark Thompson show, says Mimi Gil couldn't agree more. Love
Moe Kelly and love that he's part of things. Canada

(02:20:36):
is our friend. What is Trump doing? Trump is trying
to control what is said by other countries. Yeah, I
mean he's and he's able to do it on some level.
He is the most powerful man in the world. It's
a scary thought, but it's true. And Calvin Wong, who
is a shadow producer of this show, first thing, vote
yes on Prop fifty if you're a Californian, that would

(02:20:57):
be the right move. So, uh, Kim, tell me what's
on the docket for next week please.

Speaker 3 (02:21:05):
Oh, We've got Gary Dietrich coming in on Monday, so
that's going to be great, of course, David K. Johnston
on Tuesday. That's gonna be really fun.

Speaker 1 (02:21:13):
Yeah, yeah, Okay, I guess there's a reason that this
place is fine. Guess that's true.

Speaker 3 (02:21:20):
Yeah, it would be good, really good, the best.

Speaker 1 (02:21:25):
I thought we had some other special uh bookings as well.

Speaker 3 (02:21:29):
Adi not on Monday that doctor g will be in
on Tuesday.

Speaker 1 (02:21:33):
Yeah. I think we have a couple of other I
don't know, we'll see. Thanks again to Michael Snyder, Thanks
again to Moke Kelly. Thanks again to the professors who
joined us. If you missed that, that's a great conversation.
I really feel as though that book was so provocative
and is so provocative. We'll have a link to buy

(02:21:55):
that book, won't we, Tony under the videos, Yeah, Tony
will make that happen. A link to their book under
this video and under the conversation. Please share this show.
Share it on your social media on Facebook, share a
segment from the show whatever you like. And until Monday,
I'm Shelfon of Stevens feather Mark Johnson Show. Babba. Thank

(02:22:19):
you all, Kim, thank you, out of time, Bye bye,
out of time, Tony, thank you, thanks everybody, Till Monday.

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