Behind the Bastards - It Could Happen Here Weekly 103

Episode Date: October 21, 2023

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Are any of us truly innocent? Premiering October 19th, ending Halloween. Listen to 13 days of Halloween on the I Heart radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. The system's broken. I said something's wrong here, you know. Whenever a woman is allowed to kill my two kids. Unrestorable is a new true crime podcast that investigates the case of Catherine Hogel, a mother accused of murder. Despite signs that Catherine Hogel took her tiny children one by one into the night, never

to come home again, she has yet to stand trial. Listen to Unrestorable on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcast. If you really want to know what's going on in this country heading into the 2024 election, the iHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you really want to know what's going on in this country heading into the 2024 election, you have to get away from the extremes and listen to the middle. Hi, Jan here in Kansas City, Missouri. On the podcast, the middle with Jeremy Hobson, I'll take calls live every week, elevating the voices of Americans who are so important when it comes to who's in power and what

gets done. My name is Venkat, I'm calling you from Atlanta, Georgia. the voices of Americans who are so important when it comes to who's in power and what gets done. My name is Venkat, I'm calling you for Atlanta Georgia. Listen to the Middle- with Jeremy Hobson on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hey everybody, Robert Evans here, and I wanted to let you know this is a compilation episode, so every episode of the week that just happened is here in one convenient and with somewhat less ads package for you to listen to

in a long stretch. If you want, if you've been listening to the episodes every day this week, there's going to be nothing new here for you, but you can make your own decisions. Ah, welcome back to behind. Wait, no, sorry, it could happen here, you know, um, we'll keep that in so that our audience, uh, who, who I know is, is deeply tied to the myth of my own perfection knows that I too air, um, speaking of, of perfect creatures, perfect creatures who have never made a mistake, our guest today is Dan Olson. Hello. Welcome. Hi, Dan. How you doing? I'm doing well, not making mistakes. Exactly. Exactly. You are the Buddha I met on the road and I'm going to say hello, teach me how to be flawless. It's a first, have you heard of gold? Yes, yes. I was about to

talk about gold, the perfect investment, Dan. Perfect investment vehicle. Never fails. So Dan, you are a YouTuber, an investigator, one of my favorite researchers. We had you on recently to talk while a couple of months ago, I don't know, to. A couple of months ago. Flat circle, et cetera. But we had you want to talk about your work reporting on the NFT bubble bursting and on the metaverse bubble bursting. And more recently, you just published a two and a half hour documentary investigation into the gameStop stock cult, which is a lot of people are aware of the first part of this,

which is that in January of 2021, a bunch of folks started buying, via some weird Reddit movement started buying huge amounts of GameStop stock, which in a period of pretty exaggerated decline caused it to briefly surge in value to absurd levels. And I think that's where most people kind of eventually fell apart.

And I think that's where most people kind of stopped paying attention. Yeah, they remember that week where it was like in the news and then they just kind of assumed like that was it. Yeah. So yeah, it's been a, it's an interesting and weird ride because the evolution into like cult like behavior was, it was a very strange journey. It happened surprisingly rapidly, but also not that surprisingly. Once you fully unpack it, you have this internet movement that is very nebulous in its origins, not in its origins. The origins are very straightforward.

Wall Street Bets is a gambling sub that itself describes as if forechan found a Bloomberg terminal. So, sure. You know, it's it's crass, it's irony poisoned. You can get just as much social cloud for losing thousands of dollars as you can for for winning thousands of dollars. In fact, there's an argument that there's more clout for loss porn than there is for actually posting big gains. Obviously, not the healthiest or most wholesome community, you could imagine, but out of that plus COVID madness, could imagine, but out of that plus COVID madness, plus stimulus checks and just general nihilism arose this kind of Frankenstein short squeeze play on on GameStop that weirdly never actually happened because the play just sort of turned into its own

self-fulfilling thing. That enough people believed in the idea of this short squeeze play that they just kept piling in and piling in. And suddenly, like the short squeeze doesn't actually matter at all because there's enough critical mass flooding in that you just get this massive pump anyway, which convinces people that, oh, the squeeze is going on. Because in the moment you don't actually know what mechanisms are driving the price movement, you just see number going up. And so more people kept piling in, piling in, piling in. I got a phone call from a friend of mine who's like,

hey, have you heard about the game stop stuff? And I'm like, yes, I heard about it two days ago. So if you heard about it today, it's way too late. Do not. It's over. It's over. And sure enough, I went back and reviewed our text messages. And if he had bought, he would have been

just massive bag holder. Like it plummeted hours you know, hours later. And like for people who are not finance people, which I certainly am not, this is like, if you watched the big short, that's kind of the tack. I mean, number one, that movie is seen as a blueprint by a lot of these guys. Obviously, there's folks, knowledgeable financial folks who have critiques of that movie, but it is accepted as like almost kind of like a sacred text within the GameStop. Yeah, and it's weird because like they're the GameStop enemy. The the the the ape, okay, I'll just use their Laxaca, we'll go over it real quick.

They call themselves apes for reasons that are not worth explaining. Their enemy are short sellers, but short sellers are like, Dr. Burry short sold the housing market. And Burry is, that's Christian Bales character, right? Christian Bales character. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like all of the main characters in that movie,

short sold the housing market. Like that was their play. That was the big short. Was there like, look, there's this bubble. We're gonna short sell it. Then when the price goes down, we close our positions out and keep a tremendous amount of money.

And I should, we should go just because when I watched this with a friend, they did not know what short selling was. It's not, I think, a normal, it's not a thing. Normal people will ever be in a position to do. The basic idea, and this is all occurring with like stocks and commodities, but the basic idea is you make an agreement with somebody to get basically a loan of a bunch of shares in some way, right? And with the understanding that you will give those back at a point in the future. And then you take those and you immediately

sell them for their their present value, right? And your hope, your like, like, like goal is that the value of that drops and then you are able to buy back an equivalent amount to repay the loan and have made a profit based on the gap between those two numbers, right? But that's the idea. Yes, that's the idea. You can, as an individual, like, do this. You can take out a short position with your broker.

You can do it through derivatives like puts. I wouldn't recommend it. It's kind of normal. It's not like normal people stock stuff. Yeah, it's not normal people stock stuff. Like you're there's nothing legally barring you from doing it, but it really is kind of this like advanced play. You got to know what's going on, especially because like a thing that a lot of people in the description sort of skip over is that while you're borrowing it, you know, you're borrowing a thing

and thus there's the expectation that you'll pay some kind of like, you know, borrowers fee. I came to interest on like the value of the thing that you've borrowed, but like it's not interest on the value of the thing that you've borrowed. But it's not interest on a housing loan where the interest and where your payments are geared towards paying off the loan.

It's just like, all right, you owe me five bucks every single month forever as long as you're holding this. And so if you're not paying attention, like you need to be very actively managing these kinds of positions, otherwise like your borrowing fees will just eat up all of your profit. Yeah. And it's the kind of thing where like today, most of those kinds of trades aren't even really made by people directly. They're made by massive banks of computers and algorithms and shit. Kind of. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, I think that's that's enough background back

to the kind of cult aspect of it, which is I think much more relevant for for what we're talking about here. One of the points you made early on that I found really interesting is, is that a significant amount of the initial game stock, game stops. I'm going to keep doing, hype was driven by influencers, right? Yeah. And that there's evidence based on kind of the US government's analysis of this that got published that like regulators are paying additional attention, increasing attention to the influences that,

or to the impact that influencers can have here, because there's this concern that especially working in groups There's like an ability for people like this to disrupt the economy to a significant extent to a way that would affect like normal people. Yeah, so one of the weird kind of so Pump and dumps have existed forever Right, the thing was is that so the the meme stock run up. It wasn't just game stop It was about like 15 about like in January 2021, like so late 2020 or early 2021, it was about 15-20 different companies, Nokia, Blackberry, Bed Bath, and beyond.

Just kind of a bunch of over-the-hill companies that were all sort of part of this wave. And the issue was that in the GameStop price run up, so the price went from at the end of 2020 as everybody, like as sort of the meme wave like begins. And particularly once Ryan Cohen, billionaire, Chewy founder. Chewy V, cat, treat, or dog,

or dog food sales. Yeah. Yeah. When he buys in, like that kind of like puts the stamp of approval on the whole thing. So it goes from like four and a half dollars up to 19 something. And then at the end of January, it goes from 19, 2020 up to $480. And so in that

spread, the short sale, so there was short interest in GameStop. There was, in fact, a reckless amount of short interest in GameStop. But the price increase was so huge, the volume of participation was so big, so many people were jumping on this that the short interest closing their position, the actual like short squeeze portion of all of this, is only like 10% of the price movement. All the rest of it is just people fomowing in on like this thing that they heard about through their cousin.

Yeah. I think another thing that's interesting to me is, as this thing has evolved, you mentioned that the actual price got up to close to around $500. By the time this thing transitions into being this millenarian apocalypse cult, not nukes and stuff, end of days, apocalypse generally, but like a, the entire economy is going to come, the belief that kind of has evolved broadly and obviously there's different kind of factions, but is that like, there is going to come a point where like the price of GameStop stock will increase to such an insane, some people say

hundreds of millions, billions of dollars per share, that it effectively allows all of these apes who have bought shares to hold the entire world economy hostage until they have there, but increasingly arcane demands met, right? Yeah. That is the belief. And that is the belief. So out of that, like, so, okay, so the short closing was only like about 10% of the total movement. So that leads to the conclusion that, you know, that the events of January 2021 weren't a short squeeze, which is actually kind of true. Like it wasn't purely a short squeeze, it was actually very little of it was a short squeeze. But because it wasn't a short squeeze, like that term,

then allows the creative individual to fill in the gap and just say that it's like, just say that it's like, oh, the short squeeze never happened. Therefore, it's still on the table. The short, like, it hasn't happened yet. Therefore, it can still potentially happen. And in fact, if we just like look at the trend line,

like I bet since it hasn't happened, since it didn't happen, and the position that they held in December was so reckless, it's only gotten worse since, which position that they held in December was so reckless, it's only gotten worse since, which means that they're getting, which means that these short sellers must be getting desperate, which means they're going to be willing to engage in whatever level of depraved criminal activity is necessary to protect themselves. Therefore it's just getting more and more and more and more extreme. Therefore when this finally goes off,

it's not just gonna be like, it's not just gonna be a $500 price point, it's gonna be a nuclear explosion, it's gonna topple the entire economy. Yeah. And that's this like train of logic. And what they, and it all comes from that just like missing the fact that it's like,

oh, it wasn't a short squeeze because it was mostly FOMO. The short squeeze was buried under a mountain of FOMO. Yeah. But so it wasn't a short squeeze. It's like, yeah, it's all just like based in these like word games of like, ah, you said it was, you know, the dumb and dumber.

You know, it's like, what are the odds? A one and a million. So you're saying there's a chance. Like, well, that's not what I'm saying. It's a saying. It's because of the impossibility of the things they're actually hoping for, but also their fundamental belief that like it's inevitable.

In part, because this is not wildly different from the psychology of like needing to believe in that you are going to paradise in the after. Yeah, hallmarks of millennials. Yeah, yeah. Because of that, what you get is a lot of people who think that they are thinking scientifically, but what they're doing is taking an endpoint.

And the endpoint is that, this specific, these hedge funds or whatever are evil and illegally bribing or whatever the government to stop us from succeeding or there's this other conspiracy. You're starting with this end point and then working backwards and like finding ways to explain the things that have happened within that framework. And here's the things that would need to be true in order for the thing to happen. Like the thing that like Citadel must have ordered Robinhood to stop letting people buy and share game stock stocks rather than like,

you know, what actually happened, which is that Robinhood simply like could not exist if they allowed this to continue. Yeah. And you know, legally, I don't believe there's anything that was stopping them from doing that. It's medieval peasant brain kind of stuff is what I initially like that's how when I was watching your documentary I was like, oh, it's this you know this need to find this kind of like magical answer to the problem and then I like

Interrogated that conclusion and was like, well, no, it's not this is just the way people's brains work Right, yeah, like we're pattern making this isn't medieval peasant shit. They're no dumber than we are like yeah That's what this shows. Yeah, and one of the things that I love just kind of on that is that like, if you had a time machine and you went back 100,000 years and found a bunch of, you know, almost literal cavemen.

Yeah, actual apes more or less. Yeah, you know, like 100,000 years ago, that's modern humans, like genetically,000 years ago, that's modern humans like genetically that's genetically modern humans You you could just like implant yourself in their tribe and teach them calculus and you know Soon it would be shooting game stuff stuff Like we're like they don't change is it's like yeah, no, we've been we've been doing this every since we were you know It's like, yeah, no, we've been doing this every since we were, you know, this pattern seeking doesn't change. It's almost like it is basically endemic to the human psyche.

There's a really good question that I've gotten in response to this is just like, is this just secular religion? Like, is this just, are we just like wired to need faith in some shape or form and if that is not provided by some institution, we will just invent it. And it's like, I don't have the answer to that, but signs point to yes. Yeah. Now, so I wanted to talk a little bit about one of the other things that you brought up that I thought was interesting is the way you've got this cast of, and these are,

you know, the influencers, these are the people who make a lot of these like arcane videos or put out these, publish these perspectives with, or dozens or hundreds of pages laying out, you know, the arcana of how these different sort of anticipated apocalyptic financial moves are going to go out, right? A lot of these people, the belief is that I think is accurate, at least this is what I got from your documentary, maybe I was interpreting you wrong, is that most of these or many of these people are not believers, they're manipulating a group of people because there's money in it.

And one of the tactics that you see used a lot is kind of foe humility, right? I'm just a dumb ape, you shouldn't trust me. I'm not qualified to give financial advice, but here's the secret history of the universe to invest your money here now. So, I mean, you've seen this a lot with various cult leaders and pseudo cult leaders and just general, like, grift fluencers.

There's always this question of how much of their own hype do they believe? How much did they believe when they started? How much did they eventually just like convince themselves of as people follow them? And I think it's very much like kind of an individual case by case basis. Some of them are absolutely true believers, like from the get go, some of them, like a lot of them are like soft believers,

you know, where it's like they're not hardcore into it. You know, if you really pressed them, like it's not motivating their daily decisions, but what they're taking from it is like social reinforcement that they've found a group of people who respond to them, who like their posts, who leave messages. It's like, oh man, this blew my mind. I can't believe the system is like this fragile.

You know, my tits are jacked lighting the fuse on the rocket ship, buying more moon tickets. And they respond to that very socially. And out of that sort of soup of reinforcing messages, it's really easy for people in those influencer positions to just kind of like hold conflicting like hold the conflicting beliefs of like I know that this is impossible, but also it is like fulfilling me socially to say these things I'll just I'll just juggle that in consistency Yeah, and the way the mechanics of social media, in particular, in this case, it's the mechanics largely of Reddit. That's not the only place

this occurs, but Reddit is certainly like the homeland, you could say. The way in which upvotes and downvotes work, in the way in which upvotes and downvotes take critical content, people who are trying to induce some accuracy, or you might even say sanity in the discussion, and that that gets pushed down and hidden after a certain point of time with enough down votes as opposed to like the stuff that is fundamentally unhinged, but is like utopian, gets upvoted. It's the physical, like the actual mechanics of how the site is structured to work in force fund at a fundamental level in force group thing consensus.

Absolutely. Oh, and I mean, and the best part about it, and we see this across all across Reddit communities, which is this, like, it is the social enforcement of truth, that people will take this social mechanism of upvotes and downvotes and use it as proof against the claim that it's like, oh, well, if your negative sentiment were true, it would have been upvoted. Yeah. Because like, there's this underla... there's this kind of just like implicit belief that people will recognize truth and will upvote truth and thus upvotes and downvotes are an accurate filter on reality, which is

demonstrably not true. Yeah. So yeah, that's intensely at play here because you'll see Apes who will then like reference the fact that like that, you know, that is like if this insane theory were false, why did it get so many upvotes? And it's like, well, because it hyped you up. It made you excited. People are not rashes. People are not rashes. People are not rashes. You got a tingle feel like in your tummy when you're reddit and the person told you that you were gonna be a millionaire.

That's why it's it's like asking why do we like magicians? Of course we like magicians. It's it looks nice. It's fun. It makes us feel a sense of wonder. Yeah. I want to discuss one of the terms that you use a lot that I missed the first couple of times because I'm not I'm not this is not a community I had studied I thought you misspoke at first when you described like someone reach achieving a financial win fall as wife changing money I just thought you like I do that all the time it's delivered that's a term yes yeah no no and the time you used to that was like okay this is a thing they say yeah a lot of people are like I thought you misspoke I'm like no that. I was like, okay, this is the thing they say. Yeah, a lot of people are like, I thought you missed spoke. I'm like, no, that's because

I was tricking you. I was deliberately like very hiding in this term because they use it like obviously as a non-tondra. I was like, okay, I'll just use it straight face with no explanation. They did. They did three, four times. And then finally explain it at the end and make a lot of people angry when they realized that like, no, they weren't just mishearing me. Yeah, so that's one of those things. Like, that goes to sort of the 4 Chan roots of all of this, which is the sort of like crass irreverence slash besoginy of Chan's speak and just this,

Wall Street bets will use this kind of like celebration of making so much money that you can afford to be misogynistic and just swap your wife. And it turns out that like, as we know, you make a joke like that often enough, you're eventually going to attract the people who are just straight up like, yeah, I hate my wife. Yeah. I want to be able to replace her using my, using my crypto or my, yeah, whatever, my, my game stock. Stop. God, gains. I was wondering if you might lay out one of the things

the parts that was most interesting to me was the whole Teddy day. Teddy day. Oh boy. Teddy days. Yeah. Can you explain Teddy day to our listeners? Okay. So Ryan Cohen, who fancies himself an activist investor, he buys into GameStop and gets a minority, a pretty substantial holdings that count as a minority thing. You need to file a bunch of paperwork with the SEC that say, I hold greater than 10% of this company. He used that position to basically get power inside the company itself as Chairman. As of a couple weeks ago, he's now CEO. So,

Ryan Cohen gets heavily involved with GameStop and he's like, I'm going to turn this around because his real angst, what seems to be his anxiety in life at the moment is this like sense of legacy. He doesn't just want to be like, oh, I got lucky with an online pet food sales thing. I'm a real, I'm a big boy finance guy. You know, I saved dying companies. Real rich guy hobby. He puts out a series of children's books called Teddy, named after his late father. And these are its five books that have a target audience of two year olds that because, you know, when you're rich and you want to do something like that, you want to vanity publish books, you don't just like go to an off the shelf vanity publisher, you make your own vanity publisher,

because in the scheme of things like that's just not that expensive. So Amazon has made it easier than ever. Easier than ever. So he found this LLC, you know, air quote, founds pays the like 600 bucks in filing fees to create this LLC, Teddy publishing, files a whole bunch of trademarks, you know, we're talking like a few thousand dollars all in all in order to file,

like in order to just file a bunch of paperwork. And this is all just like the scatter shot stuff of like, okay, we're making a product aimed at children. Let's file the trademark for Teddy very broadly. And so it's going to cover like basically children's merchandise across the board, you know, what if we want to put, what if we want to put the characters on blankets or bottles or cups or plates or party supplies or whatever. These trademarks are just incredibly wide-ranging across just merch.

But the existence of these trademark applications and this LLC becomes the seed for Teddy, the company as this, like the mechanism through which Ryan Cohen is going to collaborate with apes in order to trigger Moas. Because I guess this is the important thing about the mythology. apes believe Ryan Cohen is on their side. That he is, he is their inside man.

He is working with them. He is as frustrated as they are that this hasn't happened yet, but for like arcane legal reasons, he needs to like, he needs to operate like a clockmaker. You know, he has to do everything very delicately and indirectly and like his hand cannot be seen, pushing on the scales. So they think that this becomes a thing

that they in view all of their hopes and dreams into his Teddy LLC, that it's like this is the thing that he's going to use as the mechanism to do this. He's going to buy GameStop via Teddy. He's going to buy maybe some other company via Teddy. Teddy is going to get bought in to like, is he going to get bought by GameStop. Like one way or another, there were like hundreds of competing theories all rooted in this. But then back in January of this year,

a insanity starts in two, so in both GameStop forums and Bed Bath and Beyond forums, the two meme stocks that are linked by Ryan Cohen, they create this idea called Teddy Day, which is a combination of a bunch of things. So Ryan Cohen tweeted several Titanic references. James Cameron's Titanic was being re-released this past February on a day that aligned with National Teddy Bear Day. And so two different communities of apes for completely separate reasons latched onto this idea of Teddy Day. It was Friday, February 10th, 2023. They latched onto it as just this, like, this is the day. This is when it's all going to come together. This is when he's going to make his big move.

And a major driving piece of evidence that they had for Teddy day was that in one of the Teddy books, the kids learned to read a clock and the hands on the clock are pointed to ten and two So Ryan Cohen left them clues in this children's book published six months earlier warning them that that February 10th was going to be

The day that it all went down. It would that that was the day be the day that it all went down. That was the day of the apocalypse. That was a head-e-day. And it got just like the spread of this got just like absolutely unhinged on the forums. Like it was all the superstonk and BBB why we're talking about for like a week and a half leading up to it. The hype was like unreal.

And then of course nothing happened. You, you, I don't know if you noticed this, but, but the US economy did not collapse last February. Oh, that's good. I had been, I have been living like a postal, apocalyptic warlord under the assumption that it had, but I'll pivot now. Yeah, so it's just one of those, it's just such a great encapsulation of the fact that these communities,

they will invent these catalyst moments, convince themselves that, oh, here's a date that's upcoming, and then the moment that the great disappointment happens, some of them bleed off, but for the most part, nothing can actually stop the inertia. They can just discard it. And they did.

No one talks about Teddy Day anymore, except for the fact that it had a brief Teddy Day 2.0 as October 2nd was like upcoming, because you know, ah, maybe it wasn't the 10th of February, it was the second of October, you know, and sure, like I'm willing to bet that when next February rolls around, like we'll get Teddy day 3.0. Yeah, I'm sure. It just keeps the same thing has happened with like different kind of Christian apocalypse

cults, right? Yeah. Where you'll have a guy pick a day, then the day comes, and then there's always a reason. And fundamentally because this becomes so much of someone's social life, because it becomes part of their emotional support network because it's like fundamentally you changes the way you talk. Like you learn so many new words that make it into your diction that like it's easier to just keep rolling the expected date ahead rather than like acknowledge that kind of

fundamental hit to your self conception that admitting you got played would take. Yeah. Yeah. The guy who does a so religion for breakfast. Yeah. He picked up on the fact that like I was using phrases like a great disappointment in in the video like very deliberately because it's like it's the same it's the same mechanism. So the great disappointment was like that's the event that caused the seventh day Adventist to come into existence. Because it was like a expected date of the apocalypse of the second coming like, didn't happen.

And you end up with like this then fragmentation of the aftermath. A bunch of people just bleed off, but you end up with like a couple different factions, ones who were like, ah, well, the date, well, the date wasn't wrong per se, or the idea wasn't wrong, just like the date was wrong. Maybe it's off by a hundred years or whatever. And you get other people who were like, actually,

it did happen, it just happened in secret. Obviously, it wasn't gonna just happen in time square. It happened, the millennium is already kind of rolling happen in times square, it happened like, you know, the millennium is already kind of like rolling underneath normal looking society. It's going on right now. It's just day to day life hasn't changed, and that's how you know it's happening

is that nothing's changing. It's like, okay, cool. So completely unfalcifiable, rad, awesome. Love that for you. Yeah. So one of the things that kind of related to that, I have been thinking about a lot lately, is we've got this story that keeps popping into the news every couple of, usually a couple of times a year that what are called non's are increasing as a percentage of the population every single year, which is like people who are not affiliated to any religion.

And I've seen, especially a few years ago, you know, atheists that I knew who were kind of like more active as in like atheism as a movement really celebrating this. I think that does like the assumption that that means that like atheism is growing more popular has been kind of fundamentally inaccurate. I think what we're seeing and what this this is kind of evidence of is that like nonaffiliation with an organized religion is more common than ever. People are rejecting organized settled religion at a kind of unprecedented rate that certainly and annihil But that doesn't mean they're not the same as I'm They are still believers and this is an example right right this is people are creating the internet has given created a tremendous capacity to

build Religions and that's what people are doing That's what this is yeah given, created a tremendous capacity to build religions. And that's what people are doing. That's what this is. Yeah. And it's like how long lasting will it be? I mean, I don't. In the scope of world faiths,

I don't think game stop ism is poised to stand the test of time. I don't think we'll be seeing a an ape emperor any any time soon, but yeah, like and the thing is is that like you go back through history and like you you look at like religious archaeology and like you you start sort of breaking away from this idea of Christian hegemony as being effectively like that. It's like, okay, once the Christianization of Rome happened, it was then locked in until Martin Luther and then you get fragmentation into sex, but like it stays like locked in and it's like,

no, when you start really digging into the history, it's like this is just, this is always going on. This is always boiling under the surface. You look at like puritanism in America through a non, like through just kind of like a human lens of like what you know about how people behave and you suddenly start seeing that it's like, oh, they were just like in a constant perpetual state of internal fragmentation as people had different ideas about like what was supposed to happen,

what should happen, and just kind of like formed, you know, cliques and factions, and sometimes those factions got big enough to split off. And then they lasted, you know, 10, 20, 30, 50 years, and then like either folded back into the main thing or whatever, but this kind of like churn in faith and belief is just, it's always there. It just in an organized, codified faith, it's a lot easier to lose track of it.

Particularly from a historical perspective, it's a lot easier to just look at like the bigger picture and be like, ah, it was all the same. It was homogenous. And it turns out no. Yeah. Sorry, that was a very, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, I threw a lot of like very big assumptions into a very tight impact statement there. No, no, no, I think that was great.

And yeah, that's kind of, I think what I, what I had to sort of ask about, you know, just sort of this fascination with the way in which almost anything can become a cult. These days, thanks to sort of the social dynamics of the different online communities and how they reinforce each other. This is kind of at the center of almost everything that's a problem right now, one way or the other, right? Yeah, I think the thing that is new and modern really is the ability, or is the,

I don't wanna say ability, the phenomenon of decentralized self organizing belief systems. You know, there's these, a lot of the, a lot of the meme stock influencers, you know, they're not leading it. They're just like nudging it. They're not in charge of it. And if they, if any of them like tried to like really like seize the reins, that would get them like, exiled. You know, any kind of like overt power grab would be, would be antithetical to it. But so it's the, it's, and it's the same thing like in QAnon. If somebody, anyone who's come out and been like, I am Q, listen to me, gets immediately just like,

just demolished by the faithful, because like, it's antithetical to their whole thing to have a really identifiable leader and the fact that there is no identifiable leader, that the leader is mythological, is useful and beneficial to the organization. And those kinds of movements, they're not unique to the modern age, but the modern age has made them very easy to form almost by accident.

Yeah. Well, Dan, this would be something for people to continue to keep an eye on, because it's not going to stop. Probably not. It's not going to stop. Oh, boy, like, there's going to be some like amazing doctoral dislocations on this subject in like 10 years. Yes. I would certainly agree with that.

Well, Dan, you want to let the people know where they can find you. They can find me on YouTube. The channel name is folding ideas, and I'm on socials, Twitter, blue sky, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, as foldable human. Excellent. All right, check out Dan's videos, check out his YouTube channel, Like and Subscribe, and

check us out, but you already have, because you're here, so continue to check us out. What is this place? Wait, why my handcuffed? What am I doing here? 13 days of Halloween, Penance. Season 4 of the award-winning horror fiction podcast presented in immersive 3D audio. Where am I? Why, this is the Pendleton. All residents, please return to your habitation.

Light stuff on your feet! You're new here, so I'll say it once. No talking. Starring Natalie Morales of Parks and Recreation and Dead To Me. Am I under arrest? We don't like to use that word. Can I leave of my own free will? Not at this time.

So this is a prison then? No, it's a rehabilitation center. Premiering October 19th, ending Halloween. I'm gonna get out. And how may I ask, or are you going to do that? Escape. Listen to 13 days of Halloween on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, over ever you get your podcasts.

you get your podcasts. I notice Jacob is not in his crib, so I look in and say, oh, she's not there, so I'm like, OK, they're not there. Unrestorable is a new true crime podcast that investigates the case of Catherine Hoggle, a mother accused of murder. I'm thinking, you know, like, what's going on? Like, this is insane. Like, where are my kids? But despite signs that Catherine Hoggle took her tiny children one by one into the night,

never to come home again, she has yet to stand trial. Because soon after her children went missing, she was declared incompetent to stand trial. You know, when I would ask her her engagement was up in the body of the remaining competent. And then I would say, well, who advised you should throw you know, I can't tell you that. In Maryland, if a defendant is found incompetent and can't be restored to competency, their felony charges are dismissed after five years.

So as the clock counts down, Catherine's charges on the verge of being dismissed will a grieving dad ever get justice. Listen to Unrestorable on the I Heart Radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. There's a place beyond this place. A middle ground between the light and the darkness, the nature and the zenith. For some is a bridge between the living and the dead, yet for others is something else entirely. It's the place where our nightmares dwell.

Each one of us has touched the other side and felt the presence of something beyond this world. Welcome to Hip Hop Horror Stories. I'm your host, Belly. In each week, we're going to take you to the limits of your imagination as we explore the reality of paranormal experiences. I believe in the shift for real, and the stories you're about to hear might make you believe too.

Everywhere I look, I saw something. And I looked closer and noticed there was a footage figure. Whatever it is, it's like K-Bit, it became reality. Listen to hip-hop horror stories on the High Heart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. It's chaos in Congress. This is the, this is it could happen here in the podcast about things falling apart and just this is a gesture falling apart episode with a, it's a kind of funny one.

Yeah, I'm your host Mia Wong and with me is Garrison Davis. Hello, chaos everywhere, but especially in Congress So I just realized you grew up in Canada. I did which means I did yes Can can you explain what the speaker that you know what the speaker of the house is? for America yeah It's the guy who like presides over the things and has the hammer and he yells. You know, that's pretty close. Okay, see?

See? Come on. Yeah, yeah, it's not bad. This is okay. So we're going to go into a bit more depth about what this person does because, I don't know, the American Constitution was written by absolute clowns and there's some wild stuff there. But however, comma, you know, somewhat

more seriously, this is a very, this is a very sort of consequential and dangerous moment in American political history. And in this moment, Congress is in complete chaos. It is, it is the most non-functional. It has been in my entire life. And that is, it is, it is the most non-functional it has been in my entire life. And that is, that is saying something like Congress has been non-functional for my entire life. This is the worst it has ever been. And the reason this the worst has ever been is that Kevin McCarthy, who is the now former speaker of the house, was removed by a vote of no confidence on October 3rd, which when this comes out, that will be exactly two weeks out. And he is removed because he tried to cut a deal with the Democrats to avert a government

shutdown until the 17th. And he got the deal through. It would be crazy if we had a shutdown until the 17th. God, imagine, imagine, I met Jesus. Fuck. Here's the thing. Okay, there's no shutdown until the 17th. There's also a chance, like a real serious chance that like the shutdown starts

and we still don't have a speaker of the house. Oh yeah. It's not that high, but it could happen, which is nuts. This is never having before. Yeah, and so I guess we should go into specifically what hasn't happened before. The thing that hasn't happened before is that no sitting speaker of the house dream

their term has ever been removed by a vote of no confidence, which is nuts. Because again, and I can't emphasize this enough, for most of the 2000s, the speaker of the house was a guy named Dennis Hasdett who was literally a pedophile. And he was not removed by a vote of no confidence. So like this is, this is the level of, of, you know, weirdness that we're in. Like literally the 200 something year history of the US, this has never happened. Well, and from my understanding, you don't actually have to be like an elected member of the House to be the speaker, which means they could carry on this tradition and they

could get Polanski as Speaker of the House. If they could find enough votes to carry it over. You know, at this point, this is something we're gonna get you later. There was a two day span, two and a half day span where Trump was trying to get himself elected as Speaker of the House. Yes, yes. And then that was followed apart.

That was probably the most funny, the most funny. Oh, yeah, no results. Yeah, but you know, so, so because this is he also has a path to the presidency. Yeah, yeah, you have to get to impeachment vote somehow. And buy it in there to take it out. This is how Trump could still win. This is the path, guys. This unfortunately, he's, well, I mean, here's the thing. Okay. Well, genuinely, if Biden and Harris

had died in a plane crash tomorrow, I actually think Trump could win the, would win the speaker of the house vote. Oh, yeah, absolutely. But, no, guys, this is, this is how Bernie could still win.

This is the path. This is the path. So, all right. So, so, you know, we're in this, we're in, we're in, I don't know, we're just, this is all nuts, but again, we are in the wilderness. Like, we're in complete chaos land. No one, the US has never been here before.

And okay, the other thing we need to mention is, okay, so you know, you were saying there hasn't, there hasn't, like, you know, we need to bring back the like pedophiles to be the speaker of the house. So speaker of the house, not a pedophile. The guy who removed him as speaker of the house, he's provoked by Matt Gaetz, probably probably.

Yeah. So here's what I can say legally about Matt Gaetz, the guy who led eight Republicans to join the Democrats in the vote of no confidence. He is a man best known for being investigated for the Department of Justice for trafficking under-aged girls. What I can legally say is that he was suspected by the Justice Department of being a pedophile.

There are like, there were receipts from his, like on his phone from like cash app of him sending money to under-aged girls. So, you know, bad things, bad things happening there. That investigation got killed because the bourgeoisie protects its allies. But, comma, we do not have to speak of the house right now.

So, something I think I guess we should also mention this. So, there's like a, there's no speaker in the house. There's some guy they put in there's like a with the speaker of the house. There's some guy they put in who's like is not actually an acting speaker of the house. The only thing he can do effectively is like make sure that there's vote specifically on there being another speaker of the house. Yeah. And this has thrown the entire American political system into chaos because with no speaker of the house, the house of representatives cannot pass bills. I can't do it. They cannot pass any bills

at all. And because of the way that the American system was designed, not having this one person shuts down the entire effectively shut, it shuts down the entire legislative branch, right? Because you can't get anything passed into Senate without also getting ratified in the house. And this has just shut down effectively, like most of the American government outside of the like, you know, so the executive branch is in all the departments and stuff are still functioning. But there is no legislative branch right now. Effectively is what has happened to right. I think I think maybe subcommittee meetings are still running, but they can't pass any bills. And this is both a blessing and a curse.

Normally this I think would just be a curse. I don't know, maybe right now, this is probably the best possible time this could have happened because the consequence of this has been, the US has been unable to follow through on its most sort of just rabidly genocidal impulses about Palestine because again, the house literally cannot pass any pills until they figure this shit out. So we haven't been able to send money to it. It's really, we haven't been able to send like God forbid, like we haven't been able to plonnie troops, which I don't know if they, I don't know if there was actually the political

desire to do that. Anyways, but you know, the fact that there was no speaker in the immediate wake of the stuff that's been happening in Palestine means that they've been restrained from just like glassing the entire Middle East, which is good. The downside is that again, we have until November 17th to pass a funding bill to avert the government shutdown. And not only is there like no progress on a deal about that bill, like the American legislator is currently incapable of passing any bill, much less the spending bill.

So things are going great in the American political system. And okay, so we should ask the question, why is this happening? And there are both sort of short and long answers to this question. Both of them effectively have the same group, which is that the Republican Party is a coalition. It's one that usually has pretty broadly compatible politics, but it is a coalition between different sectors of capital. So, think, for example, you have your different right wing tech mogul billionaires, Elon Moskir, Peter Thiel. But these people align on a lot of stuff, but they don't necessarily have the same interests

as a weapons manufacturer, or like Coke industries, you know like one of the big sort of tensions for example is that the Republican party has a lot of backing among the financial sector. The financial sector has very little interest in conflict with China because they have an enormous amount of capital like tied up in Chinese firms. There are a lot of other like people who have a lot of like like even this is a thing between Elon Musk and Peter Tiel, right? Or like Musk is kind of more pro-China than like the average Republican tech billionaire because he has a bunch of contracts

in a giant factory in China. And so, okay, so this is a coalition between different segments of capital who disagree. This is also a coalition between different, like right wing social movements, who are also a very powerful part of the party, you have the evangelical stuff. Um, but I mean, you know, the consequence of this and the consequence of the sort of shift right of American politics has been, you know, have this party where

there are like libertarians alongside neocons, you have more moderate conservatives, and you have basic people who are effectively neo-nazis. And the fact that the coalition is like this now, the fact that it is genuinely more so than it's been in a long time, a very broad and diverse coalition, this has made the House representatives effectively unmanageable. Okay, and this has been a real issue in the Republican party for a while now, partially because, you know, and this is been a real issue in the Republican party for a while now partially because you know, and this is why we're getting the government shutdown stuff. Like a big part of Republican strategy for the last decade, basically since Obama took office, it's just been shutting down the government and doing arts obstructionism so you know,

nothing can get done. Wait, Kare, have you been, do you remember the last government shutdown? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, it was only like two years ago. Yeah. I'm going. It feels like maybe it was longer. It feels like it was pretty recent.

There was no, it was. It was in 2018. I think it was like, yeah, see, because in my brain, we're still in 2020. Oh, yeah, actually less for a funny. So what I said, when I say two years ago, what I mean is 20-eight-steaks. Yeah. I mean, 20 years. Yeah.

And that one was funny because that was a Republican president. Yeah. Which is very funny. Yeah. But back when Obama was in office, this just happened all the fucking time. Every other week, there was a threat of a government. Every single time a building, a funding bill

was going to pass Congress. I had a bunch of family members get furloughed at one point because the government actually did shut down for a long time. But there's a real problem with this, which is that this political strategy encourages effectively the, it encourages creating chaos, right? And this is something that Trump has been very good at sort of exploiting, but it also means that there's now this like cadre of politicos who've come up who are like incredibly right-wing and effectively the only thing they know how to do is obstructing anything from functioning. And this is what McCarthy ran into.

He ran into gates and he is sort of like band of Mary, well, I don't know. I was going to call him a band of Mary weirdos, but that's way too complimentary. His band of like absolute fanatics. And the real issue here is that, okay, so there's currently two vacant seats in the house. So this means right now to win a vote in the full house to become a speaker of the house, you need 217 votes. Sorry, hold on, this new shit happening like right now. McCarthy thinks that Jim Jordan has 217 votes. I don't know if I believe him.

I don't know. Well, I'll just explain what's happening now. And then we'll put that at the end is like breaking news. Insert that at the end, Daniel. Thank you. Or keep it in right now. It's a funny bit. Yes, because this situation is still developing as of time of recording. So yeah, like as yes, it's only we should mention you know, this process is complicated enough to like, yeah, as we are recording, it stuff is changing rapidly. Like stuff has been news is coming in. So what's been making it hard is that in order to get 217 votes, right? The Republican majority is only, they only have 211 votes. So if you want to become Speaker of the House, you can only lose four total votes.

And this means you have to win both the moderates and Matt Gaetz's coalition of fanatics. And this is effectively impossible. It is, it is effectively impossible. It is unbelievably difficult. McCarthy was able to do this because he pulled votes from the far right by promising things like impeaching Biden, and stuff like that, and also sort of cutting his own deals

with people like Marjorie Taylor Greene, who like, and this is the other thing about this impeachment vote is that it's not actually a purely ideological lines like far right versus moderate vote because. No, like he even split the more extreme contention of the Republican Party in Congress. It's really bizarre.

Well, that's not bizarre because you can't understand it, but it is certainly interesting where the dividing lines ended up being for a lot of the people that we consider mostly being on the same side, right? Because usually people imagine like Matt Gaetz and Margie Taylor Green usually in the same kind of far right voting block. And to see like divisions over over this vote is certainly an interesting aspect of, you know, possible fractures within the, even the extreme contingent of the Republican Party. Yeah, and this has been a really interesting dynamic, but it also makes it just like impossible. Like you have to, in order to do this, you have to somehow appease the moderates and gates, like you're dealing with multiple different right wing of fringe factions. Yeah.

And this is, you know, what we're talking more about the freedom caucus in a little bit. But you have to, like, you're at a point where you're trying to appease so many different groups of people who all have kind of competing agendas who also just have like personal beef with each other. And as of right now, time of recording, which is 2 p.m. Pacific time on Friday, no one has been able to actually pull together this vote. We're going to take an ad break. And then we're going

to talk about actually needs to be appeased by these same people. Is it the products and services that support the podcast? Ronald Reagan coin looks down upon Congress every single time that guy hits that little hammer and Ronald Reagan coin also looks down upon all of you. I think I think I have a good idea. I'm going to do all gold coin. Move all that over to gold coin. It's stable, it's going to be worth, it's it holds value. And that is, that is definitely my plan. Oh, we're back. Hello, everybody. Sorry, didn't, didn't, did not realize you were already back so soon. I was just talking with me about expanding my investment portfolio. Anyway, yes, as you were saying.

So what has happened after that? The answer is an absolute clown show. I mean, this is one of the moat. Like, I mean, let's, let's not disparage clowns, shall we? That's true. This is unfair to clowns. We could have clowns in the audience. We could have closeted clowns in this phone call. That's true.

That's true. Okay. Yes. I've been being unfair to clowns by comparing them through a public and party. This has been one of the most pathetic displays of politics I've ever seen. And I have followed the political trajectory of Israeli labor. This is, it's been truly awful. So, all right. So McCarthy is ousted. The problem immediately is that no one has anywhere close to enough votes to replace him. Like, like, when I say no, like McCarthy, McCarthy went down by

he lost eight votes in the Republicans. Yeah. Yeah. No one else is within like 60, right? Like, what? Like, this wasn't just a power move for gates then like he he like was was he looking to take this spot or no no get the gate there's gate gates has absolutely no shot of winning he would get like 10 votes maybe like basically nothing um what he was trying to and this is this is kind of gate gates is in this kind of obstructionism thing where he's trying the thing he's trying to do basically is he's trying to Like he's trying to set up himself as a political flank of like the Bolshev publicans or publicans and everyone else are these like sell out to work with the Democrats Yeah, um, and he's he's also been trying so so gaits is preferred candidate is a guy named Jim Jordan

Um, Jim Jordan is the found he was the founding head of the powerful far right freedom caucus and he's a real he's a real piece of work. He's mad. I feel like Jim Jordan that has been a recurring character on this show. Yeah, sometimes he's not a very nice fellow. No, he sucks. Like he's not quite like a full on neo Nazi in the way that like yeah, but like he's not good. He's he's from like the far right. He's so well, I guess you would call the like the more acceptable far right other Republican party like you some with the freedom caucus like is is a like a very right wing organization even within their Republican party, but they're not seen as like weird fringe fanatics in the way.

Yeah, at the very least they will have to hold the door open towards people that are even like, like even way way more extreme. Yeah, yeah. And that's true. And he's been serving in Congress in sixth year, seven. Yeah, he's a very, he's a very high. He's one of the guys. He's been like the architect of a lot of, well, a lot of the architect.

He's been one of the, the figures behind a lot of the sort of like government shutdown stuff. He's been, he's been one of the guys who's kind of like, I don't know, like he didn't, because he didn't come in on the tea party. We've came in before that, but he's been, he's been a guy who's been pushing that kind of sort of like that kind of very, very Roman politics. Yeah. His original opponent was Steve Scalise, who is a kind of semi McCarthy ally, kind of, and you will see him described as being more moderate than Jim Jordan. And that is maybe kind of true in the sense that like he's being back in the fact that like like Jim Jordan is being backed by like

Mercury Charlie Green, Matt Gates and like Donald Trump. Um, this is after Trump gave up as bid to like becomes become himself key back which would have been the funniest outcome. Yeah, it would have been very funny. But however, we don't we don't live in the funniest possible timeline. No, we live in the worst one. Yeah, yeah. So that didn't timeline. Sadly, we live in the worst one. Yeah, yeah. So that didn't happen. So the problem is the other guy is, again, this Steve Scalice.

And again, he's called him moderate. Scalice also wants, there is a report of him calling himself and I quote David Duke without the baggage. And in the early 2000s, he spoke at a David, at a rally for a group founded by David Duke. What? Without the baggage. What is left of David Duke?

Like, what does that sentence actually mean? Like, what is that sentence? Like, I guess we should mention. So David Duke, if people don't remember, David Duke was the grand wizard in the game. The grand wizard in the game. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. So, when he says David Duke without the the grand wizard. The grand wizard. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So when he says David Duke without the baggage, what he means is that he has David Duke's

politics, but he doesn't have the immediate what the fuck association you get when you mentioned the head of the fucking KKK. Yeah. That's what he was going for, right? So this is not a good guy. He's being presented as a, and again, this is what passes for like a moderate, I mean, he's kind of in the moderate right. But like, this is what passes for a fucking moderate Republican in 2023, right? Like these people have always sucked. They've always

fucking been like this. And, you know, but problem. Yeah, yeah, it's a, it's, it's a real issue. That again, this guy who is speaking at, like it should, like in any even remotely no political system, having given a speech at a rally for an organization ran by David Duke would immediately be disqualifying, but no, like you can just do that. You can do that and you get to be a moderate in 2023. But the problem with, the problem that Giles has

is that Giles's problem isn't that again, like clan bullshit. It's the fact that the way that votes for the speaker of the house work is that. So there's an internal blind vote inside of the, inside the Republican Party where each, each representative gets to anonymously vote. Like where each representative gets to anonymously vote, like each Republican representative gets to anonymously vote for their preferred candidates.

So Jim Jordan, like, kind of narrowly loses out to Scalice in the first vote. So he loses 113 to 99. And so Scalice comes out as the guy who's the nominee for the Republicans, right? So he loses 113 to 99. And so Scalice comes out as the guy who's the nominee for the Republicans, right? Problem is Scalice lasts one day as that guy, because the problem is to actually become speaker, you need to win a vote on the House floor. And the vote on the House floor with everyone in the House, including the Democrats, that's where he needs to win 217 votes. He did not have it. He so incredibly did not have it that again,

within a day of him winning this vote, he is out. So Scalice is now out of the race. What has been so the developments literally as we are recording this, Jim Jordan has one of votes to become like the next, he's the next person to win a vote because he was running against just a fucking clown. Sorry, I'm being offensive to clowns. He's just like a nobody, like just like some dipshit. They're probably going to like picked off off the street, right? Like, this is where we're at.

Like, there's no one, like if Jim, if Jim Jordan can't do this, like there's, like, I don't know, like he would bring McCarthy back, like there's nothing. Like Jordan, Jim Jordan's like the last, even semi-series political figure of the Republican Party who could even conceivably do this.

So Jim Jordan has won the vote inside of the Republican Party. However, comma. And also, the other important thing that happened literally as we were recording is that he's been endorsed by my McCarthy now, which is kind of a big deal. McCarthy has said publicly that he thinks that Jim Jordan has the votes. I don't believe him.

And I don't believe him because immediately after he said that, it came out that Jim Jordan is 60 vote short on the floor of the house. 60, 60. He is screwed. There's no way. Like, he has to get through 60, 60 votes. And there's no way. I don't see a path for him to do this,

even with McCarthy's support. Like, I don't think it's a way for him to do this. As of time of recording, the thing that has happened is that there are Republicans have all gone home because they get out at five. And she's going to try to spend the weekends like building up support, trying to build up enough votes in the house

to like windspeakership, but. Yeah. This has not worked for. It seems like a pretty... I don't know, like chance. It's possible that like on like Monday or Tuesday or something when that like when this comes out, I'll be eating croon. I'll have to record like that's true because it's because but yes, because this does come out after

the weekend. So yeah, but I we will I know by this. I absolutely just do not buy that Jim Jordan has enough votes. Um, this is is, this is, this is my analysis. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong, but... He has to get 60 votes. And like, there's no way, there's no way. So this is, this is the current state of Congress right now. Like we don't, we don't have a latest lady of branch. Everything, everything is in chaos. Nothing can happen.

One down two more to go. We're almost there fellas. Yeah. We're almost. Well, the executives, if we can not go the executive, if we can not go the executive, the judiciary will fall by itself. Yeah, so that's that is certainly, certainly exciting.

There's always, always good things to like forward to. Yeah, but I think a closing note on this is that the fact the US effectively can't do anything right now while it's in the middle of a pretty serious, like a couple of, well, I think one, is in the middle of several very, very serious international political crises and wars, is, I don't know, it's in the middle of several very, very serious international political crises and wars. Is has, I don't know, it's been the thing right now

that has been restraining the US from just like really going all out and trying to get it if one of Palestine killed. So I guess there's that, but I don't know. Our government is a joke. Yeah, and like, I guess the last thing I want to say is I want to invite all of you, everyone is listening to this, to look at these absolute numb skulls. Like, look at what they're doing right now.

They can't even pick the one guy who is necessary for the entire legislative branch to function. And I want you to ask yourself, could we do this, could like any of you and like your neighbors and your friends run a political system better than this? Because I bet the answer is yes. Go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go go What is this place? Wait, why my handcuffed? What am I doing here? 13 days of Halloween, Penance.

Season 4 of the award-winning horror fiction podcast presented in immersive 3D audio. Where am I? Why, this is the Pendleton. All residents, please return to your habitation. Light stuff on your feet! You're new here, so I'll say it once. No talking. Starring Natalie Morales of Parks and Recreation and Dead to Me.

Am I under arrest? We don't like to use that word. Can I leave of my own free will? Not at this time. So this is a prison then? No, it's a rehabilitation center. Premiering October 19th, ending Halloween. I'm gonna get out.

And how may I ask, or are you going to do that? Escape. Listen to 13 days of Halloween on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I noticed Jacob is not in his crib, so I look in and say, oh, she's not there, so I'm like, okay, they're not there. Unrestorable is a new true crime podcast that investigates the case of Catherine Hoggel, a mother accused of murder. I'm thinking, you know, like, what's going on?

Like, this is insane. Like, where are my kids? But despite signs that Catherine Hoggel took her tiny children one by one into the night, never to come home again, she has yet to stand trial. Because soon after her children went missing, she was declared incompetent to stand trial. You know, when I would ask her, her engagement

was up in the bodies of remaining confidence. And then I would say, well, who advised you should Troy, you know, I can't tell you that. In Maryland, if the defendant is found incompetent and can't be restored to competency, their felony charges are dismissed after five years. So as the clock counts down,

Catherine's charges on the verge of being dismissed will a grieving dad ever get justice. Listen to Unrestorable on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. There's a place beyond this place. A middle ground between the light and the darkness, the nature and the zenith. For some is a bridge between the living and the dead, yet for others is something else

entirely. It's the place where our nightmares dwell. Each one of us has touched the other side and felt the presence of something beyond this world. Welcome to Hip Hop Horror Stories. I'm your host, Belie. And each week we're going to take you to the limits of your imagination as we explore the reality of paranormal experiences.

I believe in the shift for real and the stories you're about to hear might make you believe too. Everywhere I look, I store something. And I looked closer and noticed there was a hooded figure. Whatever it is, it's like it became reality. Listen to hip-hop horror stories on the I Heart Radio app. Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcast. As mass bombing continues across Gaza, 2.3 million Palestinians remain trapped in the

strip as the Israeli military conducts a total blockade. Israel has cut off water, electricity, and fuel while intentionally restricting humanitarian aid from being sent into Gaza. This is it could happen here. I'm Gareth Davis. On October 7th, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu gave a speech addressing Palestinian's inside Gaza. A part of the official English translation of the speech reads, quote, all of the places which Hamas is deployed, hiding and operating in that wicked city, we will turn them into rubble. I say to the

residents of Gaza, leave now because we will operate forcefully everywhere." The next sentence in the speech was left untranslated, but it roughly read, quote, we will target each and every corner of the strip." According to the UN, by last Thursday, October 12, about 423,000 people had been displaced from their homes by Israeli air strikes. That's about 25% of the Palestinian population. Many sought refuge in crowded United Nations shelters set up in schools, but even those shelters and hospitals were attacked by air.

Last Friday, October 13, Israel issued a military order for all citizens in northern Gaza, including Gaza City, to evacuate their homes within a 24-hour period, and apparent preparation of a major ground assault on the besieged enclave. Over 1 million Palestinians live in this area, it's almost half the population of Gaza. In between bombings, Israeli military aircraft dropped thousands of leaflets into Gaza City, advising civilians to immediately leave their homes and the UN shelters, but not to actually try and leave Gaza, as the leaflet warned that if anyone approached the Israel Gaza security wall, they would quote, expose themselves to death.

Unquote Israel laid out just a few roads that it was supposed to be quote, unquote, safe to travel southbound. Thousands of people in northern Gaza began to flee towards the strip's southern half on Friday morning. But as they were following Israel's orders, civilian convoys transporting Palestinian families out of Gaza City were bombed by the Israeli military at three different points along the evacuation route. At least 70 people were killed with hundreds more injured by the Israeli air strikes as they were trying to follow Israel's impossible order to evacuate everyone from their homes in just 24 hours. Between Netanyahu's speech and the evacuation order of Northern Gaza,

this leaves people questioning where exactly are these people supposed to go. A Palestinian in Gaza told the Associated Press, quote, we can't flee because anywhere you go, you are bombed. Unquote. Gaza isn't that big. It's only 25 miles long, and it's completely surrounded by Israel and the Mediterranean Sea, save for a small section on the southern tip, which borders Egypt. With Israel sealing off access to Gaza, the only way in or out is the Rafa border crossing located at the southern end of the strip bordering Egypt's Sinai Peninsula. The Rafa crossing is a critical passage for humanitarian aid and serves as a vital gateway between Gaza and the outside world.

One of the very first targets of Israeli bombing this month was the Rafa border crossing between Gaza and Egypt. It was targeted by three air raids in a 24 hour period, severely damaging the crossing, preventing it from operating, and resulting in fatalities. There's video and audio of the bombings where you hear hundreds of people make a singular scream. It's pretty gruesome. With Israel undergoing a quote-unquote complete siege of Gaza, this crossing was the only way to send humanitarian supplies into the strip and to let willing refugees flee the assault. The Egyptian foreign minister has said that

Israel has yet to allow the reopening of the crossing. Egypt is expected to assist in delivering humanitarian aid to Palestinians in the enclave, but it has rejected proposals to accept fleeing Palestinians into its borders. Both Egypt and Israel operate a blockade of Gaza to strictly control the passage of people and supplies going in and out of the strip. There is no freedom of movement to enter or leave Gaza,

even when there's not a declared war. One can't simply leave Gaza. There's no Gaza airport, at least not since 2002. Historically, the wrath of border crossing into the Egyptian peninsula was only open to the public very sporadically, and often for very narrowly defined categories, such as medical patients, religious pilgrims, foreign residents, or residents of Gaza with

foreign visas or passports. But I don't have to tell you how hard it is to leave Gaza even when there's not a war, because late last year, we interviewed two Palestinians for a still upcoming episode that's being worked on. During the interview, they touched on their own experiences escaping Gaza. So we're going to play some of that interview for this episode and I'll jump in occasionally to add some context. So here is Ahmed Matar and Abdullah Al-Khassab, athletes from a PK Gaza, one of the most recognized parkour teams in the world.

My name is Ahmad Mataar and 26 years old. I'm from Gaza, Palestine. And I do parkour. I live at the moment in Sweden because, yeah, I moved to Sweden six years ago after I got invited for the Airwood Challenge. It's a parkour competition that was organized in Sweden, a Helsingborg. And that time I just lived in Sweden because I just did not want to go back for so many reasons that we can just talk about it later in this episode. Hey guys, I'm Abdullah. I'm 12, I'm 25 years old.

I'm also on Barqur'ath Lita. And I'm also right now in Italy. I go to a chance to travel to Italy because I parted, I bathed in a movie or in a film with which is the directories in Manuilig, who will judge, he's an Italian movie, it's called Mojamba. My friend, he was the main character, he was one of the directors in the film, so we do the chance to participate in a festival in Sishia. And it wasn't really easy, it was really harder to do it because having a visa, Ahmed also moves that. It's a bit of a visa as a Palestinian, especially from

Gaza City, something really, really hard. And even though it's not about having a visa, it's about a trouble in our side guards, like something else. This is also another completely different story. But we could manage that. And up in here in the nature, I came to bodice with the agency,, the first of all, me and my friend, we managed to get these

and it was just for five days. And now I'm here in Italy for almost 11 months. In the other city, when you're with the area, it's not, you don't really feel free as free, because you're surrounded all the time by so many obstacles, you know, which is very crazy and it drives, but even though because we were really kids and we didn't have a really good childhood somehow. Yeah, I remember since we were kids, we were seeing the tanks or what did it go? Yeah, the

tanks that bombed something. We were it in front of the street and we were hearing bombs and two things and and that's before 2005 that was like Since I was four years I could remember all of that moments where the tanks are crossing our road and we were seeing that I will attack happening between people together and bumps and flights and drones and and that's something that for sure affects us as a kid that we we get the fear whenever we we see some bumps and just we want to hide from the bumps and we want to be close to the family. For me, all of these things that happened around me affected me that I wanted to be that guy who liked to enjoy life and the same time Gaza was a place that we had the situation where we are psychologically or how is it called? Like when you are affected by the situation

where you know that you are, you can be dead any moment or you can get a bone close to you, any moment or someone close to you who die. I mean, kids, the most important for the kids just the most safety. And we didn't have safety. Safety is what kids really want, you know, all the time. I mean, you're already a kid, you just need your mom, your dad makes the deal because you really feel this kind of safety. But when we were kids, we couldn't have this kind of feeling

because even our parents, they were not really sure what might happen to us or to the end. So how they will protect us. So it's already easy for anyone to protect the others, you know, you know, one able to, you know, to do that. That's something affected us for sure, like, because we grown up in such things like that. Maybe for me in our, if you were talking about this, it's maybe something usual, which is something normal because I really good use to it somehow, which is not normal.

I mean, it should have been normal for anyone, but for us, we could have kind of normal because it's kind of we were used to. And now when I really, because before I was really kids, I didn't know what is really going on. I was really terrified. And it was really scared,, I didn't know what was really going on. I was really terrified and I was really scared and I didn't know what was really going to happen. But now when I'm kind of adult and I know what is really going on and I see the kids, because for example, the last four, especially when I'm even outside Gaza, it's completely

different. Because when you're inside Gaza, you'll be family and your friends' power applies. It's really different. But now when I can see how the kids, they are screaming, how the kids, they have this kind of feeling, you know, that, you know, they are really terrified of the ponds because it's next to them. So I can really remember myself and I just go through back, you know, the memories, the stories that really happened. We are, the memories, a lot of memories before about that. It was, it was really crazy.

We're going to go on a quick ad break that when we get back, Ahmed will talk about his long experience trying to leave Gaza. When Ahmed was younger, he began to share videos online of his athletic skills, slowly gaining notoriety around the world for his pretty impressive parkour ability. Soon both himself and PK Gaza were being invited around the world to perform a parkour, or to enter into parkour competitions. PK Gaza was invited to the Arabian TV show, Arem's Got Talent, but they were unable to go on the program due to difficulties traveling outside Gaza. During this time period,

the Rafa border crossing into Egypt was only open around six times a year and for only a few days. To catch a flight out of Egypt, you need to have all of your proper paperwork, tickets, and a valid visa which lines up perfectly for when the Rafa border crossing happens to be open. And you have to also hope that you're not in the back of the line to get through the border crossing, because they only let a certain number of people through each day. Ahmed was invited to participate in the Red Bull Parkour Challenge in China, and even successfully got a visa to travel, but wasn't able to leave Gaza because the Rafa border crossing was closed during the time frame when the visa was valid. The US-based world free running and parkour federation tried to help

Ahmed travel to the United States to participate in the WFPF 2016 competition in Las Vegas, but Ahmed was unable to get an American travel visa due to long wait times to use the northern border crossing into Jerusalem. And even if you did manage to get into Israel, it was quite difficult to receive a US travel visa as applicants were frequently denied. A park origin in Italy frequently invited Ahmed to participate in their summer and winter events, but the Italian Embassy denied requests for a travel visa three times. In late 2016, Ahmed got invited to the Airwip parkour challenge in Sweden, and with the help

of some Swedish friends, he was able to secure a travel visa in just two weeks. Unfortunately, when Offmed got the visa, the wrath of crossing was closed. But by pure luck, just one day later, it was announced that the crossing would be reopening. When he went to the crossing, he learned that there were 30,000 people in line in front of him. With the crossing only set to be open briefly and the temporary visa set to expire, it was not looking great. After a very challenging series of events that Ahmed is about to explain, he was able to get to Sweden. And just last year he starred in a play about his own life and his journey traveling from Gaza to Sweden. Tell us a little bit about this. There's going to be a play about your life that they're doing in Sweden.

So we have had the premiere for the play in 29th of May. So we have been doing the show for a while now, like we have had a performance is at the moment and the play is about me, my family and my friends from Tiki Gaza. It also talks about the journey from Gaza to Sweden, which was the biggest part of the play. Talking exactly about how it is to face the visa, embassy, Egyptian control, Egyptian security when we get out of Gaza that they have to also Palestinian side that they have to interview us every like I have

if I had the visa and I say I got the visa after some tries then I have to apply for the travel which I have to stand in the queue behind all of that people who already applied before me, which is, imagine I'm 30,000, my queue number is 30,000, then I have to wait. And okay, let's say I go in front of all of that people, and today I am here in the Palestinian side. In this Palestinian side, in Rafa Forder have to interview me and check all,

why do I need to travel, show me your documents. If I have an investigation in my documents, and I go back to Gaza, even if all my documents I have the vision and everything, and then if he don't want me to travel, then I have to stay in Gaza. Okay, let's say I did pass the Palestinians side. I am in the Egyptian security side. And there, one time, the Egyptian security sent me back to Gaza. After waiting, I had the visa and it was like, no, what are you going to do? I'm going to do parkour. I have a parkour competition. What is parkour?

Hey, jump. Then you go jump back in then from there he sent me back. And yeah, and I mean without the help I do, I would not have trouble because 30,000 people in front of me, I have the Q number but I am behind them and I have the visa that will expire in two days, let's say that starts in two days and it will expire in two days, is, oh, like, let's say, that starts in two days and it will expire in 20 days. And if I don't travel in this 20 days, my visa will expire and then I cannot travel just within. And the only thing I had to do was go into the crossing

the first day with my father, he went with me. And we just stand there in front of the crossing. It's, you know, there is a control, there is a list with names that you cannot really cross if you don't get any help. So I go there and then we just waited around six hours me and my father, then the sunset came and good dark and then I was like, I cannot do anything.

We have to go back and then we went back home. The day after my father told my father, at least, can we go, I have to travel, I have the visa, I just will expire. And then he was like, well, I cannot do anything. He don't know what he will do, my father. So I told him, okay, I will go for the guy. We have a guy close to us, like the same I never, but he's a far neighbor. And he

was the manager of the crossings between us, like the managing of a good, the naithing, the visas, the less between us and Egypt. So he can really do whatever he wants. He can inter-Egypt whenever he wants. He's a very friend between Egyptians. He's the manager of the Christian, he's the boss. So I go to him and I wait him outside his car. Like outside I was close to his car, waiting him to get out of his home. I know he'd go to his work around the eight in the morning,

then I wake up at seven in the morning and I go there waiting him to come to his car. I see his car then I was really happy that he did not leave to his work. I knew that he stayed there and I was waiting waiting and then he came and then I showed him my visa and I really have to travel to the other competition and I have to join this competition and then he was like, and then he was like, okay, but they have the Q number. Yes, but I am the last in the list. Okay, but how will we do? I cannot tell you. But I have already, I told him, I have already been into Egypt before,

but the Egyptian security sent me back to Gaza and they told me, do you have the registration of that, the time you travel? I told him, yes, and they'd of that, the time you travel? I told him yes, and they'd have that time, and he was okay. Follow me to the crossing, I told him, yeah, but I can I go with you in your car, so you don't forget me when you go there, because he's very, like, people just run after him and the crossing ran then. There, I had to tell him, I want to go with you and he said, yes, okay, you can come with me. And then he told me, but you cannot stop.

I told him, can I stop her and say goodbye to my family first because they did not know that I will travel. I just took a very small bag with me in case. I really had like a backpack with me. And he said, yeah, but you cannot stop. I have to go now. And then I was, okay, I called my mom. Mom, he's going to help me.

And I, but I cannot stop to say goodbye. And then, yeah, I went to the crossing and he brought me into like a VIP list that I had to go like in a very special bus that was just five people in it and I was very like respected by the control there and it was like I got all the way to Egypt and the Egypt I really met the same guy that he also asked me about Parkour and he was like oh you and then my friend the guy the manager of the crossing called

and I showed him what Parkour is. I really had to go left for it. I did a workster in that room where he, the control chick, and I was, oh, wow, so cool. Okay, here's the stamp and the strategic. But the magic I had to go into that airport, he did not know, you know, the Egyptian don't understand the visa. Like, if it's in the visa, it says that it's going to be valid in this day. If it's valid in this, like, imagine I get the visa today, but it's not valid yet. But the crossing is open today and tomorrow and the day after. I have to travel in this three days, then

the crossing will be closed for another six months. So I had to travel in that days, otherwise I will lose my visa. So my visa was not valid at that time, I traveled from Gaza. So he thought that it's valid. So he was, oh, go to the airport now and travel from there. He thought that I can travel to Europe directly. But if my visa is not valid, Europe would not let me in. So I had to stay in the airport that time that my visa was not valid, which was five days. And then in the end, I traveled, but I had to wait in the airport because he did not understand my visa. But I had to wake into airports because he did not understand my visa. No one should have to do of Webster front flip to cross a border.

Because there was still one week left until the visa became valid, Egyptian security sent Ahmed straight to the airport to wait for the week. While in limbo at the airport, the Egyptian authorities locked him in a small room without his phone or belongings until the visa became valid. After many harsh difficulties and compounding inconveniences, Ahmed boarded his plane for Europe. Ahmed has built a life for himself in Sweden. He's been teaching parkour classes there for years now. In fact, that's how the play came about. The mother of one of his students is a theater director

and she became interested in his story. By his account, life is much better for him now. But he still is not free to see his own family or to go back to his original home. Getting into Gaza is almost as hard as getting out of Gaza. And hopefully you guys can get back and see your families too. home. Getting into Gaza is almost as hard as getting out of Gaza. And hopefully you guys can get back and see your families too, because I know that must be a really difficult being separated, not being able to get back.

Yeah, it's been six years almost. Jesus, I can, yeah, that's really hard. But you know, Dramathan, the theater, I've invited my brother and luckily he got the visa from first time. He got help from the same guy that helped me. He worked for him and asked him and he put him into a special rest. He traveled from Gaza without having to wait and then now he's here. Oh wow. He didn't have to be a backflip in the visa. Oh wow, he didn't have to be a backflip in the visa. No, he did not because he's an artist and he had the visa and everything. So he got the visa because in Dramatin the theater center

and part of it will be a part of the show with his Oh cool. The visa fabric that he drove. True. Yeah. And I don't like the same way with the drama, so everyone is like, you know, if you don't have someone to help you, True. Yeah. And Abdullah the same way with the trouble. So everyone is playing.

Yeah. You know, if you don't have someone to help you, you would not travel. Right. Yeah, it shouldn't be that way. Abdullah had to get the also help because his visa also was also one week. One week and he had to travel in that in the weekend. His name is the last of the list. Unfortunately, Abdullah had some internet issues and some of the audio isn't usable, but he similarly only made it out of Gaza because he had a friend who had a contact at the Italian

consulate. When Abdullah tried to apply for the visa, the office wasn't taking any more applications, but this friend was able to explain Abdullah's situation to the consulate and they decided to give him a travel visa. Abdullah also had to travel through Egypt and was forced to stay in a small prison cell for three days without food or water. Once he got to the Kyra Airport, the German airline he was booked on refused to accept his paperwork because they didn't want the

responsibility of stamping his passport. With the alternative of just going back to Gaza, Abdullah was able to find a manager of sorts and explain his situation with the travel visa and needing to go to this film premiere for this parkour thing. You know, it's not the easiest thing to explain, not everyone knows what parkour is. But the manager was sympathetic. And then just like what happened with Ahmed, they requested a parkour demonstration to see if this guy was actually telling the truth. So the already exhausted Abdullah did a backflip in the airport as he was recovering from the COVID vaccine.

And then the manager, seemingly satisfied, transferred him from this German airline to an Egyptian airline and he was able to make it to Italy and escape the prison of Gaza. When you're a riding one who's in prison, the only thing that he thinks about, I mean, when you're a prisoner for the whole life, I mean, the only thing that you think about is just how to escape, no? I mean, that's normally because you just want to be free because you're a prisoner for the whole life, I mean, the only thing that you think about is just how to escape, no? I mean, that's normally because you just want to be free because you're a prisoner. I have never been into the prison.

I mean, I've never, no, we both, we, I mean, I've been to the prison of Gaza, but not the real one. Exactly. That's exactly what I mean. So we both, we were in a prison, which is open big prison. And the only way that we were thinking about is how to eat out of that.

And the only was really possible, we just wanted to use perfume as an opportunity for us. So we can get our freedom. And somehow, now you're in Sweden, how many to leave? We have this kind of freedom. But at the same time, it's really hard because our family is our friends and everyone is still connected. Not the follow-up freedom.

It's still connected. I was trying to meet my family last December and I applied for the Egyptian visa because I still don't have the Swedish passport. I have to apply as a Palestinian to go back or to visit Egypt. So I applied for the Egyptian visa to visit my family because my mother was in Egypt and she was there to attend the marriage of my uncle, but she was there in Egypt with my sister. And yeah, I bluffed with the visa. I never with the visa, so I had to stay in Sydney.

It's like, I'm not free yet. I mean, yeah, I will give the British passport soon. I don't know when, but I'm sure it's not more than six months from now. I have been applying, I more than six months from now. I have applied six months ago and it's usually not more than a year to get to the city. And usually it's accepted if you have everything correct in the country, like if you're legal and you pay the tax and you're working, you're studying and not allowing yourself to. I'm good there,

I just like, I have to wait. So'm good there, just like I have to wait. So in the end, I would be able to meet them. I would not be able, I would not say I will be free to enter Gaza whenever I want, because yeah, to enter Gaza, the moment I hear from people, it takes like three to four days and you suffer in the way, just like you have to stay in the car these three days and every

thousand Kilometers a thousand meters to get stopped by a Control like a road control that they need to check everything you have every bag you have Take it out in the road and you have put it back By yourself and then the car continues another thousand kilo another control and then in the road and you have to put it back by yourself and then the car continues. Another thousand kilo, another control and then in the end you arrive like does and you say this is the worst part of my trouble with the Gaza because they

don't want to do it again, they don't want to get to Gaza and suffer the same way again. And the same to get out of Gaza, to get out of Gaza, I mean, if I have the Swedish passport, for sure, I will have that trouble from Gaza without worrying about getting a visa or not, but in the same time, yeah, I need to wait for an acute, when will I travel? When I will be able to travel from Gaza, is it like going to be one month, two months, two months because it's like thousands of people who want to travel and they just they allow 500 people a day and that's maximum and then they don't allow any more of that people and then also they close the crossing at any moment and I remember the time I traveled to Gaza was the crossing was closed for six months,

the three, six months. And it was not open at all. And it was 31,000 people in the front of me in the queue, 31,000. So I imagine like I was the last person in the queue and they have to wait all of this people to travel and the crossing was open just the three days every three months. That means like in this three days it's one thousand five hundred. When is the rest going to travel? And will I have the travel and imagine you have a visa that is valid for like ten days. if you get the visa just for everything in Europe,

that is just three days and then you get the visa for 10 days. And then if you don't travel in that 10 days, your visa gets expired and then you have to apply for a new visa. And then after that you have to wait because if you get your fused visa, you cannot apply directly, you have to wait three to six months. If you use Visa, you cannot apply directly. You have to wait three to six months. And then you can apply for the new Visa. So it's really terrible. I don't want to go through all of that process again.

That's why the site stands within and work in the suite and get this with the citizenship, where I can travel freely without worrying about getting a visa or not. Because till now, because I'm not Swedish, I have to think about getting a visa or not, will I be refused me or not, and even Egyptian embassy refused my visa. And they did not even answer. I call them every day. Did I get the visa? When will you give me the visa? I go to their office here in Stockholm, they're like, oh, you have to call us, send us an email and I call us in the email. Oh, we will call you when you get the visa. But will you call me that if I don't get the visa? No, we will call you when you get the visa. They never call.

Okay. And I said, I'm not coming to you. Yeah, that sounds rough. And I know for a long time, Abdullah was in Gaza when you were in Sweden, right? And Abdullah was trying to get the visa to travel. Last time we spoke, you hadn't been able to get one. So I'm glad you did. I'm glad you're now a film star. He had been up playing many times all the time.

But we went together many times. And I also like, there is a way that also invited him and Jihad also. And they got refused these, and I'm sure he applied before also to Italy and he applied for England. I also applied Italy, Italy, Italy and Italy around four times. I got the refused visa from Norway Oslo. I met them in 2013. USA invited me for the Spagas and WFF, invited me for an event in Las Vegas that I could not make. And also Germany, Hamburg and Hanover invited me and it was many events that I could not

make. In the end, I could make it to Erwin, but the first year of the era, I invited me to the first year of Erwin, and I applied for the visa I did not get it, and then the year after 2016, I got the visa because I had the help also from another private invitation, so I got double invitations that made it stronger for the consulate and the embassy in Giorgio della Mesa. It was like, yeah, it was 21 days visa. And, directly when I arrived with an ask, like, my friend, you, I don't want to go back. So, they told me to the immigration office in Helsingborg and Malmo. And there I extended my visa for six months first and

in that six months I wanted to work and stay here so I started to look for a job and I started my own job actually I like to start to work with Parkour myself like making glasses that I was teaching in English and I had one of the students translating to the kids in Swedish. So he was getting three classes and he was tough at that time. I was like, it was hard for him also to translate because he was not more than 13 years old. He was so shy and everything. I was forced to learn the Swedish language because of that. Because I wanted to work and I just start to know hands, head and both knees.

And it was easy because it was similar to English. And by the time the kids had taught me to speak Swedish at the moment, because it was the only way I learned Swedish. I was my way to learn Swedish. I was with the kids all the time, the kids language was the easiest to take, like to pick out because the kids have a simple language that can really learn much faster than talking with another, that talks really fast and talking very advanced with this. I dreamt the trouble from Gaza and then I made it, I did travel from Gaza and then you will think, okay, what do I want to make next?

And then I want to work with Parkport. Then I start working with Parkport. I never expected that I would be in the biggest theater stage in Sweden. And then I am here in the biggest theater stage in Sweden. And then I am here in the biggest theater stage in Sweden, but just like being able to come and watch my story and watch me performing Parkour, and telling my story to the, it's like I never think I thought about it,

but just Parkour brought that to me. As an extra note, earlier this week, James spoke with Ahmed and Abdullah, and Azab a few days ago, at least both of their families were okay. Obviously, this is an ongoing situation, but I just wanted to add that in here is that's the most up to date information we have. Ahmed is still in Sweden, is still doing parkour. You can find him at Matar Gaza on Instagram or his website matargasa.com. That's M-A-T-A-R gaza.com. Abdullah is still in Italy and is studying to become an English teacher. And just last February, Ahmed and Abdullah were able to see each other in person for the first time in quite a while.

The documentary that Abdullah is in is called One More Jump. It's about very similar questions on whether it's worth it to stay in fight for your country or try to escape and fulfill your dreams. Thank you once again to Abdullah and Ahmed for talking with us. I'll link their social medias in the show notes below. See you on the other side.

What is this place? Wait, why my handcuffs? What am I doing here? 13 days of Halloween, Penance. Season 4 of the award-winning horror fiction podcast presented in immersive 3D audio. Where am I? Why, this is the Pendleton. All residents, please return to your habitation. Light stuff on your feet! You're new here, so I'll say it once.

No talking. Starring Natalie Morales of Parks and Recreation and Dead to me. Am I under arrest? We don't like to use that word. Can I leave of my own free will? Not at this time. So this is a prison name? No, it's a rehabilitation center.

Premiering October 19th, ending Halloween. I'm gonna get out. And how may I ask for you going to do that? Escape. Listen to 13 days of Halloween on the I Heart Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I know Jacob is not in his crib. So I look in and say, oh, she's not there.

So I'm like, OK, they're not there. Unrestorable is a new true crime podcast that investigates the case of Catherine Hoggel, a mother accused of murder. I'm thinking, you know, like, what's going on? Like, this is insane. Like, where are my kids? But despite signs that Catherine Hoggel took her tiny children

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Hello everybody, welcome to It Could Happen here. This is Shrine and I am so happy to be joined by my guest today. I'm so excited to speak to him. I am joined by D.V. Kashi. He is a propel-seeing activist from New York and Israel. And there's just a lot of stuff I want to talk to you about, so welcome. Pleasure to be here. Good to meet you, Shireen. I want to start with just some background for the audience to just kind of get to know where the perspective

you're speaking from. Can you tell me a little bit about your family history and where you grew up and where your parents are from and all of that? Sure. My parents were both born in Israel and they like many Israelis moved to New York City in the 80s and had myself and my two siblings and as my grandparents were getting older, to whom we were very close, my mom decided to move back to Tel Aviv

when I was in 2000, so right before the second in Tifa da. And we, so when I was 13, eighth grade, I moved to Tel Aviv for the first time. And obviously I was very familiar with it, like visit every summer, and grew up in our grandparents' house, both of whom were Iraqi Jews who immigrated to Israel in the early 50s. And so, yeah, so when I moved there in eighth grade, I was completely pretty

much a shock in terms of what I was used to in New York. Obviously, I had friends from many different walks of life, many different backgrounds here. I was very used to that, right? I didn't grow up in, you know, a very staunch Jewish community. I had Jewish friends, but I didn't solely have Jewish friends. That's what I loved. That's what I embraced. But when I moved to Israel, it was very jarring. I'd studied in Hebrew for the first time. Everything that we studied in school was pertaining to the Jewish identity. So, every kind of history class, you know, it's the Roman Empire and the Jewish people, it's the study of about, you know, ancient Greece and the Jewish people. And that's okay to learn

about Jewish identity, but intertwining it with every aspect of the school curriculum, intertwining it with every aspect of the school curriculum and really thinking about the persecution, really hammering home this notion of persecution, really understanding how, you know, and again, I think it's important to understand your history and history in general, but I think of introducing this notion of persecution as a tactic to retraumatize people that aren't directly experiencing the trauma. So everyone in the world learns about the Holocaust, but did you know that in Israel, Holocaust Remembrance Day isn't on the same day as the rest of the world's Holocaust Remembrance Day isn't on the same day as the rest of the world's Holocaust Remembrance Day, because they want to own their own kind of version of the Holocaust Remembrance Day. Right? And so, you know, when you think about the Holocaust, you think about other Holocaust,

other genocides that have happened, and Israel is failure to recognize those genocides, like the Armenian Genocide, right? And the fact that And the fact that many people don't know, but throughout history, Israel has armed genocidal forces with Israeli-made weapons to support imperialist motives and colonialist powers around the world. So even now with what's happening in Armenia with the Azerbaijanis by Johnnie's, right? Israel is on the wrong side of that equation, right? And so it's never been about standing with the side of the oppressed for Israel. It's never been about, you know, ensuring that what happens when they say never again, actually never again, never happens again

to anyone around the world, right? Think about their policies, their racist policies around refugees, right? I think people don't understand, right? I have a very unique perspective because I understand kind of the minds of the colonizers. I can humanize the colonizers. I think there's a dangerous kind of maybe thinking about things from a bit of a different angle than kind of people are used to and also bringing it back to the events of the last 10 days

or 11 days at this point. I think, you know, I've always kind of looked at and identified with the Palestinian struggle, right? And I've always seen it as a human rights struggle, right? And, you know, as such and as many well regarded activists and thinkers and intellectuals have always talked about the unification of all the struggles of the oppressed. And that's always always arrived at the identification with this struggle for the Palestinian people. I've also felt, you know, by virtue of this imposed identity of, you know, Israeli, I've always felt directly responsible for the oppression of the Palestinian people,

even though I've never done anything myself to champion or perpetuate that oppression. I've always worked against it from a very, very young age. Now people always ask me, you know, kind of annoying questions like, you know, why do you care so much about the Palestinians when so many people in the world are suffering? And the answer to that question is I care about all suffering, but this is something that the government that supposedly represents me, the entity that supposedly represents me is directly perpetrating. And frankly, after going to many protests in New York and in Israel itself, after going to many protests in New York and in Israel itself, I've realized that this is the most important human rights struggle of our generation for sure, but of modern times.

Because it stands for all of, it's essentially the last beacon of direct colonialism, right? We all know how kind of neocolonialism works. I mean, maybe we do when we're doing, but neocolonialism through, you know, different capitalist structures, right? America has been able to perpetrate neocolonialism without actually having to occupy other people, you know, save for Iraq for almost 20 years, but 15 years or whatever it was a very long time. But Israel is directly and physically occupying other people, and they have been for the last 75 years, right, officially for the last 75 years. And that's been a constant, right? It's not, hey, you know, here's a country and let's, you know, fight, let's continue our,

our, our, kind of battle in that way. It's been, it's always been, if you, if you're scholar of, uh, Israeli history of Zionist history, you always, you, you start understanding that the goal was to take over all of Judea and Samaria, right? And that's kind of how the settler government that Netanyahu has in power has been speaking for years, right? I'm really upset and really kind of frustrated by the way that the Western media has been portraying what's happening over the last 11 days because even Israeli media, Ha'atats, which is an Israeli newspaper, which is a very prominent

one, right, isn't portraying it the way that the Western media is portraying it, right? They're criticizing the Netanyahu. There's so many people in Israel that are scared, right? All the leftists are scared. They're being persecuted. There's signal groups doxing friends of mine. People literally fighting for human rights. They're doxing them.

Islai Flai, he's an orthodox reporter that's been staunchly pro-Palestinian and he's a very prominent member of the press. A angry mob of right-wing extremists of trying to knock down his door the other day and he had to escape from the back door and run away so they don't potentially kill him. And so these voices are being silenced in Israel. No one is talking about that. Everyone in the West is beating the drums of war.

The media is supporting that. We've seen on kind of a micro but tragic level what happened to that six-year-old kid that was stabbed to death by someone just because of the anti-Islamic Palestinian rhetoric that's being perpetrated and so everyone's kind of losing their shit As all of a sudden everyone's saying the same thing because everyone is being pushed to justify this war But people are starting to wake up, right? The UN's woken up and very, very slowly, people are starting to wake up because they're seeing that genocide is actually being committed. And so you can't throw your full weight behind genocide, but they're walking it back too

slowly. And the people that I'm disappointed by are people that are supposedly smart, spewing complete, nonsense rhetoric about two sides, right? I struggled, right? This is important. I struggled. I know people who were killed in the Hamas tab, personally and intimately know them, right? You know, my ex-girlfriend's best friend was killed, right? She, we've hung out many, many, many times. She was a very sweet, very kind person. We know an activist who was literally, because people don't understand, and this is for a lot of the kind of pro-Palestinians that I completely empathize and I understand why people believe what they believe, believe

me. But this is for a lot of the pro-Palestinians that immediately called all of them settlers. And I think it's important to distinguish, because if there's ever going to be a path forward in this mess, we have to offer a new rhetoric that deconstructs the nationalist ideologies. I don't put the Palestinian flag or say free Palestine, which I do, as a nationalist ideology. I say that as a deconstruction of nationalism, as a call to freedom for all, right? The oppressed, as well as the oppressor, right? If you actually read everyone's quoting, everyone's quoting Fanon, right?

Everyone's quoting all these revolutionaries. If you actually read the material that they said, Che Guevara even said, the true revolutionary is guided by deep, with deep feelings of love in their heart. And he said this at first-hand account, I know very good people that are guided by nationalist and fascist ideologies. However, they've been manipulated, they've been lied to, they've fed propaganda 24-7 through the news. And the sentiment in Israel right now, and I can tell you this, I'm getting messages from people,

they think everyone is trying to kill Jews. That's what they believe. That's what they've been told. They think this is Armageddon for the Jewish people. That's what the media narrative is in Israel. Okay. In spite of the fact that there are many people that are against what's happening, there are many people that directly blame Netanyahu for this, but they're being scared to believe that they're going to be attacked on all fronts, and they have to do everything they can to neutralize the threats. That is the survival, that is a fact. Does that mean that every single person in Israel is a terrible human being, is evil as some people say? No, that is not true at all.

And my point is, and what a lot of the revolutionary said, right, Paulo Freire in the pedagogy of the oppressed said, in the process of dehumanization, the oppressor dehumanizes himself. Putting that aside though, I think that, you know, for me, I see, I know people that I, it was very difficult for me to post in the first two days. I think there were some problematic Justifications for the massacre that didn't sit well with me because I'm a humanist, but in the same token Right, I think that I Understand the context. I think it behooves us to understand the context, right? There's a really famous quote, I forget who said it,

but if you started the clock or started looking at the colonization in America from when the Native Americans started shooting the arrows, you'd think that the Native Americans were the aggressors. If you started looking at the colonization of Algeria, when the, when the, the, the local population started rebelling, you think that they were the aggressors, right? And that's not to say in the same breath that terrible things happen to amazing people there, right? What people don't know, and a lot of the proposed movement doesn doesn't know is that many of the people living

in the area on Gaza are actually activists, like very anti-Zionist activists, right? Many of the testimonies of the families of those activists are saying to stop the genocide that's not going to bring back their friends, their family members. Those are the people that a lot of whom were killed in the attacks because that's where they live. They work with organizations in Gaza. Like, acknowledge that, right? Understand the complexity.

Saying, hey, you guys are all settlers. That's just dumb. It's not factually true. Their grandparents were, their great-grandparents were 100% but now their generations and generations of people, right? Just like in America, their generations and generations of people that descended. Are they to be held accountable for the actions of their ancestors? Doesn't make any sense. They should be held accountable for actions that they take now for sure, right? Holding your government accountable,

you know, thinking about an actual solution to this terrible situation, that 100% people should be held accountable for. But to call them settlers as a justification for their deaths is something that I will never do, right? And I don't think it helps the struggle, right? I think it's important to say and then simultaneously also say Did you guys know that Israel played a very major role in establishing the Hamas?

Like don't be stupid open a history book see what happened, right? Understand don't just be quick to call and quick to say both sides. It's not a both-side situation Even though the aggression was terrible. Those two things can be true. It's a devastating tragic event, right? And I know many great people that were killed in it, but in the same breath, we have to remember what caused it. Yeah, context is everything. Right? The context is everything. Israel funded the Hamas. BB has direct quotes in Israeli newspapers saying, we have to fund the Hamas. BB has direct quotes in Israeli newspaper saying,

we have to fund the Hamas in order for Palestinians never to have a state. He directly said that. How do you guys ignore these statements? They've been very, BB has been very clear as to what is going to happen and what he's trying to accomplish. And then on top of that, some compound things, the settlers in his government right now,

Itamao Bengvia and Smotrich are two settlers. They literally are settlers. Like in accordance with their national law, they're considered settlers, okay? Illegal settlers. And they're the second and third most powerful people in Israel, okay? I don't think people understand or know. But those two guys, there's a famous rabbi, okay? I don't think people understand or know, but those two guys, there's a famous rabbi, okay? In Jerusalem, he's an extremist, fundamentalist rabbi,

Jewish fundamentalist rabbi. What he's been calling for, for a long time, Kanat Sadakah was right, he was a very fascist rabbi that was basically calling for the extermination of all Arabs and and they're basically they're called canis team and that's it's basically what the left of in israel used to call this government man shallas canis team means government of cajanaists okay that is what that's who's running

the country and this rabbi has been calling for in a biblical sense and we all know when people have an utmost you know devotion to religion that guides them right not our world our world does not guide them the religious texts and the religious leaders are the ones who tell them what is right and what is wrong right religion in religious fundamentalism and so what this rabbi has been calling for for years has been a war to end all wars. Okay, that is what he's been telling them. That is what they've been operating under. Okay, their allegiances are to human. Not to the Israeli people, like literally to that ideology. And so they're in the government right now. Over the last year, they've been essentially adding illegal settlements at a rapid rate emboldening and empowering settlers to commit violence that we haven't seen in many, many years, levels of violence we haven't seen in many many years even before this latest aggression. I'm talking about over the last 12 months and the biggest most

annoying thing that I hear from Westerners that think they understand right they're like oh yeah we really care about Palestinians but Khamas has to go. Two things to that. One, the fact that there are Palestinians on the West Bank and the Palestinians in Gaza doesn't mean they're not the same people. There are Palestinians in 48 as well. They feel deep feelings of solidarity because they're all oppressed in different ways. It's solidarity under this grand Zionist oppression that they experience. And so I think that it's a fallacy that it was an unprovoked attack.

It's a fallacy, right? It's not the case. The fact that Alexa kept getting bombarded by settlers on purpose, on purpose. I don't put it back like they did this to get a provocation. They've been provoking to get the retaliation for Hamas. They've been doing this for years. This is nothing new. Every time Hamas shot rockets over the last five years, it was because Israel was attacking

Al-Aqsa, right? Right after Ramadan, if you remember, or during Ramadan. And so every time a barajah rockets came in, right after that, barajah rockets, because Hamas wanted to show that someone is sticking up for them. But I'm just saying, you have to understand the context. When you're in a blockade, when you're living in a concentration camp, worse than a concentration camp, frankly, right? Electricity is controlled, water is controlled, food is controlled, you're not able to leave, right? You're not able to freaking leave when you want. You're not able to come when you want. You're not able to, a 60 kilometer strip of land is the most densely populated strip of land in the entire world. Depression is the highest, the highest rates of depression. I think the highest

rates of child suicide are in Gaza. Okay? When you're living under those conditions, I have no idea how you're sp- like I don't- I have no idea what that would feel like. So how can I judge anyone, any response to that, right? In the same breath, I can also say it's a tragic thing that innocent people died and they're innocent people. And I think it's important to hold that complexity also for the Palestinian cause. I think it's important to not lose sight of our humanity in criticizing the grave injustices that Israel is committed. And putting the blame squarely on Israel's shoulders that Hamas exists.

Yeah, I think that's something that I keep coming back to is whenever someone is just all about condemning Hamas, which is like yes, as you mentioned, like innocent people shouldn't have died, but I blame all the violence that's happening in Israel on Israel. Like it's not, yeah, you can't just start like at a slave revolt as like beginning of history of slavery. It's like no, actually, they did that for a reason and they had no other choice. And I mean, for Palestinians, I think like what's the biggest context that's missing is like they've tried everything It's not their first choice to

To kill people that didn't deserve it. It's I think I think I think that's what's been really annoying with the The people that have chosen to speak out that have never spoken out before. They are so narrow in their view of this that it's so damaging because they have so many followers who they're talking about the wrong things and all of those things like kind of perpetuate a really dangerous environment where like a 60-year-old kid can get stabbed to death or,

I don't know, I agree with everything you said and I really appreciate you saying all those things. Before I forget, we're going to take our first break, so don't go anywhere. And we're back. Something you mentioned early on that I have a thinking about and getting really angry about is why people are surprised or like unexpected you to speak out about Palestinians if you are not a Palestinian. I am not a Palestinian. I'm Syrian and I am extremely vocal about the Palestinian cause and the Palestinian. I've always been 100% repalestined till I die.

And it's almost like surprising to people like why are you so worked up? Like why aren't you so worked up? That's what really gets me is your humanity and care. It shouldn't be contingent on your identity if you actually give a shit. And I think that's what I really want to like relate to people is this is not the Palestinians struggle solely for themselves. Like this is not the Palestinians struggle solely for themselves. This is a struggle for all. If this genocide obliterates the Palestinian people, that's on humanity's shoulders.

That is so indicative of how depraved humans have become. It's just so upsetting. It's just a complete obliteration. There has been videos of settlers saying they want to flatten the whole thing, make it a parking lot. I mean, I don't even have to tell you what like actual media and like politicians have been saying because it's like atrocious. But I think that's what I want to relate to people is like, if you're not, if you don't care, examine that because that is troubling to me. If you don't care about actual genocide and maybe that word has been used too much to make people give a shit, but it really makes me question people's humanity when

they are able to kind of just like shrug it off and continue about their day. I've been practicing being hopeful. I think it's really important, especially in times like these, I think it's really important, especially in times like these, to be hopeful, because without hope and that sounds cheesy, but it's true, we're not empowered, right? We're not able to act. And I think what's exciting, what's, I guess, heartening to me, is actually the people's response to what's happening. Yes, there are many influencers and celebrities that posted the wrong thing. Also seeing many that posted the right thing. I'm also seeing many people that I'm surprised by.

I'm seeing many people that I wasn't surprised by posting the wrong thing. That's true. That's right. But I'm also seeing many people, white people, you know, black people, right? Like people of all kinds that are undisconnected, you know, from an identity perspective to the post-ending people,

doing so much, showing up. I went to the, I was, I saw images from the protest in the other day, and I'm not talking about the Jewish protest, which was amazing, with JVP did, with if not now, in front of Truck Schumer's house, was incredible. That's solidarity. That's real. That's that's solidarity. That's that's that's that's that's humanity. Right. That's what humanity should be That's real solidarity. I'm talking about the protest though that that was Palestinian led in Midtown and I saw tons of Jews there Mm-hmm And I'm not talking about the Sutmar

Antizaian is you know, a acidic Jews. Those are great, right and they're they're helpful I'm talking about like regular regularic Jews, those are great, right? And they're, they're helpful. I'm talking about like regular, regular-as Jews, right? Like me, like people with, like, not even wearing amokas, like people with, you know, small amokas that aren't like, you know, Hasidic or anything, holding up signs to help liberate the Palestinian people. In spite of the Hamas,

in spite of everything that happened, they showed up, they were not scared, a positive inflect doesn't scare them, right? It shouldn't scare anybody. It shouldn't. It shouldn't. But again, I want to maintain the view of objectivity. I think again, you know, devil's advocate. I think when, and again, this is not me blaming, right?

It's more so offering kind of a perspective to question how to move forward. When people, Israeli Jews, whoever, right whoever are indoctrinated to believe that Palestine means no place for me. And then you couple that with the anger, anguish that the oppressed people are feeling and saying, yeah, fuck that. We don't want you here. Look what you're doing to us. I think that

they view the Palestinian flag as a replacement of, you know, the flag of Israel, which many people actually kind of, not many people, some people view it that way. And I think that the way I see it and the way many people I know see it, it's a flag that represents liberation from oppression. Liberation of the Palestinian people were being actively oppressed by Zionism, right? An ideology, right? Perpetuated and executed by people, but it's still an ideology. Also just like because I this always comes up, but being anti-Zionist has nothing to do with being anti-Semitic. And I think they always get conflated. And that's on purpose to make people afraid to speak

up about Israel. I can only imagine how brainwashed Zionism becomes to the whole, like the education and everything. Like is that something you experienced like firsthand? Yeah, 100%. I think what we've seen over the last decade, right? The fact that Netanyahu has been in power for over 20 years. That's like the dictatorship level stuff. And people in America are like, oh yeah, the West, you know, there is a semblance of power to the people in the West, a semblance of it, right? We're seeing how much the media is incahutes with power against the people right now, which is very, very scary and everyone should be in arms, no matter where your feelings lie.

But there is, there's a new president, every four years, a president is termed, right? You can't be a president for more than two terms. These are real things, right? These are real protections. You have three different branches of government, right? You have local government, you have so many different checks and balances that are corrupted and quipped it in certain ways, you know, through lobbyists, and corporate interests, etc. I'm aware, but at least you have

that system. In Israel, that system doesn't exist, okay? There's no constitution that system. In Israel, that system doesn't exist. There's no constitution, and a prime minister can't be turned. So now, Bibin et Alliou has been in power and figured out how to survive attempts on his throne many times over, through building coalitions with right wing extremists, which frankly are against his interests. He wanted to perpetuate status quo and just be in power. This is kind of made it difficult for him to just be the guy who makes everything okay for his realies. Now his realies are scared shitless. But putting that aside and going back to your point, The Nakaba was never even discussed

until recent history. Like, it was not like no one even knew what that word means. Right? We celebrated it as Yomats' mode in dependence day. So the Israeli Independence Day is the Palestinian's Nakaba, which means the great tragedy for those who don't know And the catastrophe is what they call it the catastrophe yes and so But but what's interesting and very sad is that in recent years because of the world actually and when Israel is telling you

You don't know what you're talking about don't comment on things you don't talk about, that you don't know about, you most likely, if you've done any, any, literally any, if you read one book on Palestine, if you're on Palestine by Noom Chomsky and any Lampope, like you know more than Israelis know about their own situation. And I say that wholeheartedly, because I know what they study, right? They omit the large swaths of information in order to form the psyche through the narrative that they perpetuate. And so, but because of recent external and global pressure, because of the fact that the world's, the new generation of young people have educated themselves on Palestine, you know, catalyze, a lot of them catalyze by the social justice movement, right?

The Angela Davis is the Chomsky's of the world who always, since the 60s, I've been talking about black liberation as a complete without the liberation of Palestinians, unifying struggles. They know more about history of Israel and Palestine than Israelis do. I've always been super impressed, not to say that people are dumb, I actually think people are very smart, right, if they're willing to look. But every Palestinian friend of mine, every single one knows so much about Zionism and Zionist history, right? There's scholars of Zionist history, right? But Israel has no idea about Palestinians

and Palestinian history. I think it's really unsettling because, I mean, for those who don't know the catastrophe was, like, the mass explosion of like 750,000 Palestinians ethnic cleansing massacres extreme like just a disgusting show of forcing someone to leave their land and taking it over it was atrocious and her and I I think the fact that they can't even learn about how to learn deeply about Palestine or Palestinians. It's like another way of ethnic cleansing and like forgetting that even

exist. And I think that's very unsettling because you can't just forget, I mean at the same time they say like history is written by the people that are in power right or the people that like win the war quote unquote. And they're very capable of convincing a big amount of people that like pal that they were never here. I think being hopeful is a practice and I've definitely fallen into you know bouts of depression and and hopelessness and helplessness, and hopelessness also. I think we all do, but I think it behooves us to practice hopeless, especially in times like this. Because without it, we don't have the power

to liberate the oppressed, right? Yeah. And I think, you know, yeah, I think, like you said, I think it's also important. I keep saying the Palestinian struggle is the people's movement all over the world. And we're seeing that. It's not me, I'm nobody. But we're seeing that people understand that. Like I said, people are smart, right? You don't have to go to, you know, an Ivy League school to be intelligent, right? Paulo Freer talked about banking intelligence, right? When you just consume information from a teacher perpetuating the, perpetuating the injustices

and maintaining the system of oppression, right? You can be as educated as you want in that form of education and not understand the world and understand the inequalities around you, right? But if you feel those inequalities, if you have that empathy, if you're able to expand your consciousness a little bit to also include those that may not identify with or as or that maybe are not tangible, their experience is not as tangible to you. Then you're able to understand situations pretty clearly and easily. And I think the world is showing up because they understand that. Sure, the air world is showing up and that's incredible.

Because they understand, this like what I always say is Palestine is the last kind of like I said earlier the last direct colonialist project that exists in the world direct right in terms of direct and active about that colonial project that exists in the world and the Arab world you know if you read Edwards Eid and Orientalism, you understand how the West basically created an other kind of Arab world in order to create that separation in the vision, in order to create, you know, a world that serves self-interest, individualism versus kind of communitarianism, and of the kind of East. And so when you think about in that context, you start understanding that this is a struggle against kind of Western imperialism.

This is a struggle to free all oppressed people, because that's what Zionism, Israel currently stands for. And everyone who perpetuates it and people that talk about intersectionality and anti-racism and all that and they still say and they still don't understand that this is literally in a real time manifestation of the shit that they've been reading and history books. Right, and we're seeing it and it's jarring and resistances. Fucking jarring. Like, it was jarring to me. I could barely watch it.

I had people crying. And I didn't say this earlier, but I had family members that didn't want to speak to me. And people cursing at me and friends from middle school sending me heat messages. My mom is receiving death threats. This is real shit. And so, this isn't an abstract. That's what people don't necessarily understand when they just approach it academically. And I commend them. And I think it's important to understand

the intellectual context of things. I've done the work, I've read the books, but I think it's also important to kind of take a step back and contextualize things all around, right? And only through that contextualization can we rehumanize, you know, both the oppressed and the oppressor in order to actually have a path forward that's inclusive of all that doesn't that doesn't pit people against each other right yeah Jews lived on that land for many years before Zionism if you're still a peaceful you want to say like everyone is just fine before the introduction of Zionism which is a very modern, very fascist ideology. Not only Zionism though, right? Like think about Cix Picot, right?

The British French treaty that was signed in 1920 that sliced up the air of world according to their whim, didn't take into account any demographic, any ethnic geographic relations, didn't take into account any of that. And that is what set the tone for a lot of what we're seeing in the air world today, right, compounded by the introduction of a European ideology into the region that served European interests is what we're seeing to this very day. And the Palestinians bear the biggest brunt of it. I wouldn't say, like I would say, like in recent years, there's tragedies all around

due to Western imperialism and Western intervention, right? I take that back, right? Like I don't wanna compare tragedies. But the tragedy of the Palestinian people, there's no one really advocating on their behalf. Yeah. I was gonna add a wrinkle that probably 99.9% of population doesn't know, including Palestinians and Arabs because it was

actively erased. But up until the Sykes-Pico, up until Western imperialism, Arab Jews were an integral part of Arabic culture. Okay, my grandparents from Iraq, right? Iraq wasn't, they Iraqi Jews were not Zionists. There were hundreds of thousands of Jews in Iraq that lived there since Babylonian times, right? There are many, you know, many empires that came through the Arab world, right? So this place replaced, etc. But they were there for hundreds of years at the minimum. Some would say some of them were actually not there due to the Spanish Inquisition, but actually were there before and never left, basically.

And so, you know, there were musicians. They played a Zoom costume, right? Like there were statesmen. They were very integral part of the culture, right? And they are, many Arab friends that do know this and they're like, yeah, it's the biggest tragedy, one of the biggest tragedies is kind of the betrayal of the Arab Jew. And they understand, at this point in time, and this is not only Iraq, it was Egypt, and Yemen, and Morocco, there's a huge community, right?

Like these people live there, their Nazism is not an Arabic concept. They're trying to paint Arabs as Nazis. Even growing up, I would go to Syria a lot. And my grandfather would like, he would only get bread at the Jewish bakery. Like he would take the walk and go there. And it was normal.

No one cares, like no would take the walk and go there and it was normal. No one cares. Yeah. Like no one gives a shit. Really, what your religion is in those communities. And I think, I mean, this is obvious for people that are reading about all of this, but the media and Zionism and Israel, they're purposely conflating what's happening with religion to make it more complicated for people to make it this like ancient battle of all time right when it's not about any kind of Muslim versus Jewish versus Arab versus whatever. It's it's really so simple to the point where it's kind of silly and I think they make it so complicated For people to be scared to talk about it. They're they're not informed enough. They don't know about religion

They don't know about the history. You don't have to know about any of that to know that oppression is wrong and genocide is wrong. 100% and every every resistance movement in history was considered a terrorist movement in modern times, right? Even Israeli militias, right? You had the lechi, the exel excel and the aghanah okay they're considered terrorist organizations because they would attack civilian British and they've attacked civilian targets during the British mandate yeah sounds familiar no me that's very important to bring up but you know what those you know those three militias became the idea the idea exactly the three

militias that formed that formed the idea once Israel was given statehood were considered terrorist organizations, the IRA, terrorist organization, right? Nelson Mandela was on the US terrorist watch list until 2008. These are real things, these are all facts. But I'm saying even if you're thinking about it from the perspective of attacking civilian, okay? Wrong, my opinion. But, if you look at, actually, here, another fact, right? Look at what the Chisbalah is doing, okay? They were considered terrorist organization. Their armed to the teeth, Israel's scared shitless of the Chisbalah threat.

I'm hearing it from people on the ground, right? They're talking military targets they're showing the world that they can because they can They used to not be able to now they can so they are When a population is is oppressed suppressed to the level that the gauzeans are What what military do they have do they have f16 fighter jets that they can go and bomb What military, do they have, do they have F-16 fighter jets that they can go and bomb? I don't know, the, the Kira, did you guys know that the biggest military base in Israel is in the middle of the Tel Aviv?

Yeah, in a residential area, like a very residential area. Yeah. So what if, what if, what if the Gazans had F-16 fighter, what if Klamas had F-16 fighters? They wouldn't want to bomb that. Yeah. Like, people, or people that dense, like, that they don't understand how this thing works, and what oppression looks like, right? A lot of my Palestinian friends always say,

the world wants us to be the perfect victims. Yeah. And in a lot of, in a lot of senses, the burden is always on the victim, right? In these oppressive scenarios, so I always tell them, guys, like, we have to be smart, we have to make sure that, you know, again, it's trauma that I can't, you know, I feel in my bones, but it's not directly

happening to me. And so I can't, it's not from a place of judgment, it's from a pragmatic perspective, we have to understand that that's the trap that they're setting for us. The Hamas enacted, the Hamas did exactly what the right wing government wanted them to do in order to justify the plan that they had all along. I'm not gonna go so far as to start perpetuating conspiracy theories because it's not my place.

So I'm not gonna say that they planned this and it was an inside job, but I'm not going to say that. But what I will say is it served the interests of the right-wing government. And one thing I wanted to say because I keep going off on tangents and I apologize. But to your point about the knock-bop, I said, in the last 10 years, it's pretty crazy to see the narrative shift. Israel is so been so emboldened.

They feel so invincible because of the international support that they have. Now they acknowledge the Nakba. Now they acknowledge the Nakba. We know how they acknowledge it. They say, yeah, the Nakba happened. Let's do a second one. Yep. Right?

And so now they're now suddenly Nakba existed. Right? And they're basically saying,up and let's do a second one. Yep. Right? And so now they're now all of a sudden the knock-but-existent, right? And they're basically saying, hey, let's do a second one. All the right wing government officials are saying that second knock-but-hup, let's do it now. And that's what they're trying to do. Yeah, I mean, they're trying to do in Gaza. It feels like if the first one ever ended.

It feels like the first one just never ended, right? That I always say that, I agree. Yeah. But I'm saying, like, I'm talking about mass expulsion right now. They're trying it They're trying under international under everyone's noses to utilize genocide and ethnic cleansing to displace millions of Palestinians from Gaza and God knows I don't they don't have a they don't this was like a biblical idea Right like the you day in Samaria. This is not like a biblical idea right like the Judean Samaria this is not like a there's no like specific plans that people had like this is a biblical fervent ideological idea they

don't freaking know what they're doing they they don't want to go they don't want to go to where were they run they're scared of the Kizballah like these are real things these are real threats like Israel hasn't fought a real opponent since the 70s and the young people were. That's what I'm trying to say, like this showed how vulnerable they are and they're scared, I'm telling you, like I know the sentiment on the ground,

like people are scared out of their minds. They don't think they're not very confident in Israel's military, right? Like that's why they're bombing the shit and like that's why they haven't invaded. They said they're gonna invade, baby's fucking this big game they haven't done it because they're scared Remember also is that the IDF that's all of that

Does not actually act in the best interests of the civilians if anything like there was like a report from an Israeli woman that who survived the The massacre at the music festival that said a lot of them worked shot by like their own forces It was like indiscriminate shooting. The biggest casualties for Israeli soldiers up until this was friendly fire. Yeah, that's it. That's it.

I mean, I just think they're so important to remember because they're framed as this very ideal warrior bullshit and it's so far from the truth. And- That's what I'm saying. They're 18 year old kids. Yeah. These aren't like US like Marines that are career assassins.

Like, you ever see an US Marine and next to him is really soldier. No, I'm serious. Like, no, I know. I mean, it's become a trend to be a soldier of anything. It's like very like, you see these like young people almost like a, I know it's become a trend to be a soldier of anything. It's like very like you see these like young people Almost like a yeah exactly. It's like a very Cool thing to do

When there was never threat though, Israel has been you've grown up in Israel believing that you're the most powerful entity and you could do whatever you want whenever you want Right and And that notion has been shaken to its core. And if you're part of the propaganda machine, if you're caught in the propaganda machine that is an of Zionist Israeli ideology, you're basically now, your whole world has crumbled beneath you. You're completely insurvival mode.

Everyone's posting, everyone's like, you have to eradicate Hamas. They're not even eradicating Hamas. What are they doing? They're just been bolded in Hamas. This happens all the timeicating Hamas. What are they doing? They're just been bolding Hamas. This happens all the time. It's just happening on a much bigger scale right now. Any Hamas leader that they are basically looking for

like a major Hamas leadership attack. And once they're able to neutralize, in their words, numerous high ranking officials, I think they'll declare victory, even though they're not gonna give it to us. They're not gonna bring back the 1,400 people that- I mean, they're also going to kill the hostages at this, right? You know what I mean?

Like, they're not like- They've already killed more than 22. Yeah. That's, how much do you actually care about your civilians? And the hostages, like the foreign hostages either, like it's your, but, I don't know, they're just clearly showing their ass in my opinion. I want to, I want to have a clear message though to kind of people that are on the fence in the West

that are being fed propaganda through Western media outlets that is quite clear at this point. And some of them recognize this and that's why they come to my page and they're like, oh, thank you. I didn't know. I didn't know. In Israel, there are many people, not even ideologically, that want to bring the hostages back and don't understand why Israel is doing what it's doing before and not even talking to them about the hostages. Yeah, they've seen videos completely pleading. ...cleaning, being like, please just, yeah. Just, I'm not talking about left-wing activists. I'm talking about like, averages, really. Right?

Netanyahu has failed the Israeli people. That attack, the fact that, and again, this, I don't know if people know this, right? People who know, know, but maybe some don't. That attack was a complete military failure on behalf of Israel. And that happened because over the last six to nine months since the right wing government took place to power, they've been using the idea to support and power in boldin and protect settlers in the West Bank. And that's why a settler attacks have increased. That's why settlements have increased.

That's why there are more settlers than ever before. And what they were doing on that very day, people don't already know, I hope they do, but if they don't already know, the idea was in the West Bank on Sukkot, which was a Jewish holiday, and they were protecting settlers in building a Sukkot, that structure that people sit in, in the middle of Hawara, Palestinian village, and they were protecting them and shaperoning them so that they can break into Palestinian village to build a Sukukha in order to antagonize Palestinian. That's, say what you made about anything else. The fact that that is the priority of the government.

You're doing the oppression over. You're already committing the oppression. You're already subjugating the Palestinian people. You know that Hamas is Hamas. You're going to remove security forces from the border to embolden and empower settlers instead. That's shame. Doesn't make any sense. No, it's, it's, I mean, that's why the most unsettling things I've seen coming out of Israel are those right-wing protests where they're like death-to-Arab's and whatever, or like they're attacking people and the idea is like either helping

them or standing by. If you're all defense about this still, you are literally for genocide. Those are the two differences. It's either you're for genocide or you're against genocide. And if you're considering the options, examine yourself. That's not right. I was just sent this tweet. Apparently, yesterday, I was just sent this tweet. Apparently, yesterday, the Twitter for Israeli Prime Minister at Israel PM said, this is a struggle between the children of light and the children of darkness between humanity and the law of the jungle. Are you fucking kidding me? That's like Nazi Hitler shit. Are you? There are so many lives I've already been lost and the ones that have not been lost are never going to recover they've lost so much other than their life. There are so many terrifying and horrific videos that I've seen that no one should have to go through and not only are they going through it they're getting funded and encouraged by most of the world. I cannot accept that. I, I,

sorry, I don't want to cry, but I might. I mean, it's, that's where we're at at this point. No, but I appreciate you being here to get through to people who might still be considering what's happening as a both sides thing or Justification for anything when they see tweets like that or when they see Justification for killing all the people because they're all barbarians or whatever it is. I urge you I urge you to seek out Palestinian sources of news actually see what's happening in Gaza What listen to people who are not advertising anything to you,

and it's like pleading for their lives. I just, this can't be how we end up as a people. I'm very, very sad. It's extremely un, like, no words to describe how devastating. And I think if you were listening and you are wondering what to do, there are places you can donate to. I can put some links in the description of sources that I trust, of people to follow and all that stuff. So you can look at the description for that. I think what's very important that people maybe aren't taking too seriously is how important social media and like spreading awareness has been because the only reason the resistance has come this far is because of that because more people are aware about what's what going on. People aren't accepting that Israel is doing this. So I think we just can't stop like as much as they want the world to forget that Palestinians were even there We cannot forget Palestinians and I'm not I'm not gonna stop talking about it. And you shouldn't either

Here this is this is why I'm speaking out. I just got a message On Palestinian friends You are our voice now. We're not allowed to spit out a lip. They are arresting anyone who speaks or shares the truth. Please, I beg you, don't give up on our people in Gaza. We need your voice to stop the genocide. Thousands of lives have already been taken. We can't stand this anymore. Please listen to that, everybody. Please. It's very hard to fathom and

internalize what's happening. Yeah, it's a lot. And we're privileged enough to think about it that deeply. The people in Gaza, Palestinians, they don't have the luxury of anything other than their nightmare of a reality. No. I want to add, just because I think

the biggest Kind of pushback that we keep hearing is how much this almost yes, please yeah, and I think that Again remembering what we got to mention to earlier in the call how Liberation movements for occupied people have always been deemed occupied people have always been deemed terrorist organizations and even targeted civilians, right? So not only by the definition of terrorist organizations, or terrorist organizations. So even if that's what we believe, and let's just say that that's, you know, we accept and agree, that that's what Hamas is. I think it's important to understand that terrorist organizations have become political organizations time and time again, and I think that it's also important to understand historically the

Hamas as an entity. Again, I remind you, was created and partially created and funded by the state of Israel. And boldened by the state of Israel because I want to be very clear. Up until the 90s, right, all slow-cord to the peace process. People say, oh, the pastinies in one piece. To your point earlier, the pastinies were willing to take almost anything at that point. I refat, who was considered a terrorist before he became a statesman, right, was on the table with Robin, had an agreement in place, okay, and then people don't know, if you're not a scholar, you don't know, we should know, Oh, Godstain, an Israeli terrorist came in to

a mosque, I believe it was in Hebron. I don't remember exactly. And he killed more than 30 people during prayer, just in the skirmishod, innocent people in a mosque. So the biggest, one of the biggest tragedies. And then he was not only did the response, you know, over being's response to that was, it was locking down

headbron, Palestinians and headbron. So because he was fearful of what the Palestinians would do in retaliation. The immediate response by ravine was locking down the people of headbron, okay? Instead of going and doing something about the settlers that committed the crime or that emboldened the person committing the crime. That's number one. Number two, that sparked the retaliation because when people don't have justice, they take justice in their own hands, so that's

sparked this series of attacks in Israel, right? Devastating attacks in Israel. But it was that that did that. And it was his, he could have handled that differently but he didn't, right? And that was what sparked the response. Then in turn, okay, again, who, putting that aside, right? And sorry, little tidbit, his grave,

well, gochitane's grave, is guarded by the IDF as some and many, many, many consider him a national hero. Yeah, I've seen photos of people like crying at his grave. Like it's, save their family or something. When he's not just, when he literally just went into a mosque with a gun and shot 30 people who were fucking praying. Yes.

And that's where people are idolizing. Exactly. It's rotten to its core is my point. This is what you're supporting when you support the state of Israel. Okay. This is part of, this is part of what you're supporting. Now taking a second step, Rabin was assassinated by a Jewish Israeli, not by Palestinian, even in spite of everything, the peace process

was still going on because they did everything to foil it, right, and then they assassinated the Israeli Prime Minister. And ever since then, right? Then you had Ariel Jerome and whatever that tried to continue a peace process and, you know, some capacity, but ever since then for the last 23 years, no one has been talking about a peace process. They blame the Palestinians for every act of resistance. They don't listen. They believe that they talk the way that politicians

discuss the Palestinian kind of oppression is managing the occupation. Okay, managing the occupation. No one's talking about peace. Not left, left pseudo left, whatever you wanna call it. Not liberal Zionist left, or center center or right no one is talking about peace no one is talking about any semblance of peace I find it very

Particular right and this is my this is why I'm saying we live in the twilight zone that in Donald Trump's four years in office, okay? He he had Kushner that that I'd that say all the bad things about his behavior. He was trying to, through normalization deals with the air world, trying to get a deal for the Palestinian people, albeit the most absurd sort of deal if you ever read what the Abraham Accords actually entailed, weird highways and, weird, like, highways and weird, right? Like, not a deal that anyone should have accepted. But putting that aside, he was talking about it.

There was discussion. There was Palestinian, like, the word Palestinian was being said by the office of the president. In the last four years, the Biden was in office. No one said anything. No one did anything to advance peace, no one even brought a bogus deal like Jared Kushner to the table. I don't make it make sense, I don't understand.

They basically bought into the Zionist idea that we can just live, continue living while millions of people are being oppressed and occupied. This is the Democratic Party and that's why we see the media now, the way it is because they're controlling the media narrative too. So open your eyes, see if for what it is. Don't let your judgment get clouded by this two-side BS aspect. Hold space for the killing of innocent civilians, including the killing of Israeli innocent civilians, while simultaneously understanding that this is all because of the aggression of colonialism and specifically the perpetuation of the Zionist project as a colonialist, nationalist, ethno state.

And that is what I ask of you guys to do, right? Yeah. Thank you for that. That's, I think a great place to end. Thank you again for joining me. You are just, as your Palestinian friends said in that message, your voice is really critical because people will more likely listen to you than to a Palestinian so I very much thank you for your activism and I don't know it's

We're not living in a just world and so We just have to stick together. I also want to mention the other reason why social media is so important is like one, there's a reason they cut electricity to Gaza, they don't want anything coming out of there, they want them to die in a blackout. And two, they are literally arresting people for following Palestinian accounts now. So I mean, if that's not to talentarianism, like what the fuck is, I don't... Anyway, so, that's it for today. I don't think it can do anymore, but again, I'll put some sources in the description to donate to keep raising awareness. If you have people in your circles that are still hesitant about having a stance on

this, like, have conversations. It shouldn't be complicated. It really shouldn't be because it's not. And that's all I have. So thanks, everybody. Thank you for having me. Go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, go, What is this place? Wait, why my handcuffed? What am I doing here?

13 days of Halloween, Penance. Season 4 of the award-winning horror fiction podcast presented in immersive 3D audio. Where am I? Why, this is the Pendleton. All residents, please return to your habitations. Like stuff on your feet! You're new here, please return to your habitations. Light stuff on your feet. You're new here, so I'll say it once. No talking.

Starring Natalie Morales of Parks and Recreation and Dead To Me. Am I under arrest? We don't like to use that word. Can I leave of my own free will? Not at this time. So this is a prison name? No. It's a rehabilitation center.

Premiering October 19th, ending Halloween. I'm gonna get out. And how may I ask, or are you going to do that? Escape. Listen to 13 days of Halloween on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I noticed Jacob is not in his crib, so I look in and say, oh, she's not there, so I'm like, okay, they're not there. Unrestorable is a new true crime podcast that investigates the case of Catherine Hoggel,

a mother accused of murder. I'm thinking, you know, like, what's going on? Like this is insane. Like, where are my kids? But despite signs that Catherine Hoggel took her tiny children one by one into the night, never to come home again, she has yet to stand trial. Because soon after her children went missing, she was declared incompetent to stand trial. You know, when I would ask her her in game, it was I've been invited to remain incompetent. And then I would say, well, who advises you should throw you know, I can't

tell you that. In Maryland, if the defendant is found incompetent and can't be restored to competency, their felony charges are dismissed after five years. So as the clock counts down, Catherine's charges on the verge of being dismissed. will a grieving dad ever get justice? Listen to Unrestorable on the iHeartRadio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Your career is your most valuable asset. Imagine powering it with the unvarnished advice of the most successful chief executives in the world. I'm Mike Stein, a three-time CEO, Fortune 500 board leader and author of the Topselling Career Guide, the world. I'm Mike Stein, a three-time CEO, Fortune 500 board leader and author

of the Topselling Career Guide, the Career Manifesto. On my new show, Office Hours, I sit down with the leaders shaping our world from unicorn founders to battle-tested executives to share the answers to the most important questions you face in your work and to help you be the CEO of your own career. No script, no spin, just straight from the gut answers to your questions from chief executives

ranging from visionary founder Tommy Hilfiger to New York City's mayor Eric Adams, and our honest advice for achieving the career you've imagined. Submit your own questions by calling today at 213-419-0596. Listen to office hours with Mike Stybe on the iHeard Radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Welcome back to It Could Happen Here, a podcast about things falling apart. And speaking of falling apart when we're talking about the crumbles, the slow and sometimes rapid erosion of institutions in this country, nothing is quite as relevant as the tech industry.

I'm Robert Evans obviously on the line with me is Gareth and Davis. We also have someone new with us today who's going to be talking tech, particularly talking about the NFT crash and some of what that has to tell us about both how the tech industry functions now and about how our economies of hype contribute to a state of what Ed Zitron, who is our guest here, tends to call the rot economy. Ed, welcome to the show. Hey, thank you for having me. Yeah, I'll just hand it over to you at this point. So you may remember two years ago where kind of Goulish, half-wit libertarians, and fatically

told you that NFTs, non-fungible tokens, would change everything. The people wanted to own a unique digital object, and indeed, that the said uniqueness of said object, say a picture of an ape, or an animated gift of a sports moment would be worth millions. The hype, yeah, was insane. Justin Bieber paid $1.3 million for a board ape, which is one of 10,000 procedurally generated pictures of a monkey, and celebrities like Mila Kunis and Lindsay Lohan would fund and create their own NFT projects. In fact, multiple celebrities

raised millions of dollars for these kind of noxious little creations. They're logic entirely hinged upon the idea that something being a one-of-a-kind somehow made it valuable. And that a digital token connected to a picture or a video was the same as say, a red baseball card or a comic book, or the sense that owning part of a digital entity, like a game with somehow valuable, I personally do not think owning a sword from World of Warcraft a unique one means anything. I do not think owning a sword from World of Warcraft a unique one means anything. I do not think that's meaningful in any way. But listen, go a bit of advice for

anyone listening. When NE1 tells you to ignore your eyes and your ears, to dull a voice in your head that says, huh, that sounds really goddamn stupid. Or to, of course, put a bunch of money into an unproven asser, you should always try and work out how they're going to get paid in the end. But nevertheless, it's important to know the fundamentals of this crap, this not just industry. Now, of course, we're talking about cryptocurrencies, so these are tokens on a decentralized blockchain. In this case, a non-fungible token, or so-known as NFT, is a unique digital tokens on a decentralized blockchain. In this case, a non-fungible token,

or so known as NFT, is a unique digital identifier on a blockchain like Ethereum or Polygon, one that cannot be copied, substituted or divided like a regular token. Ownership, in this case, who owns the NFT, is based on whoever owns the wallet that said that the NFT in question is actually stored and meaning that if someone tricks you into sending your board ape to somebody else, they technically

own it. These NFTs of images say the board ape yacht club, Pudgy Penguins, what have you, are connected to images. So by which I mean you are quite literally buying a JPEG, you are buying a tokenized JPEG. These images are kept on something called the Interplanetary File System IPFS. And you have an IPFS address that is attached to each token. What's important to know about this is this is another decentralized project where there's no real proof that your IPFS address isn't going to disappear in 10 years. So you could end up buying one of these tokens and be left with bugger or like I said, you're effectively buying a very expensive JPEG that may or may not be an image of something

in 10, 15, 20 years or even five years. So like I used to buy a whole bunch of digital games for my Nintendo Wii system. Right. And these were not physical games. And now, I cannot read download any of these things, even though I bought them because the digital system is just Nintendo is no longer supporting it. It's kind of like a similar mechanism here in terms of, there's like all this necessary internet infrastructure to like host these digital assets,

but we don't actually control infrastructure, right? So it's different than holding like, you know, a disc or in the case of an NFT, like an actual physical picture of a monkey. What's really funny is the example you just gave is one of the few examples of where NFTs could actually be useful. Huh.

Digital games right now are in this position where, like you said, and you find this a lot with streaming products as well, where you can buy something, you buy a video game, you buy a movie, and you own it on Apple TV. Apple has complete power to pull that down. If indeed there was a non-fundrable token that contained the video in question,

that might be quite useful. That might be really useful, in fact, unlike NFTs in general, which are not useful at all. You are just buying a JPEG. The leads to an image and owning this JPEG, this NFT, might get you inside a Discord, perhaps a special Discord of like mine did people who have spent a lot of money on something very silly Sounds sounds like a party. It's so good and it's it was really something these things have been around since At least 2014. I think Crypto Kitties was one of the original ones. You could breed horrible looking cats Oh, no horrible cats have sex and create new horrible looking cats. Well, you. These horrible cats have sex and create new,

horrible looking cats. Well, you didn't get to see the sex, don't worry. Okay. Sure. We were the only reason I invested. Well, let me Google Crypto Kitty Rule 34. I'm sure I'll find something. I'm sure that there is Crypto Kitty Hentai.

But no. No, make sure to put Reddit in the search phrase there. You got to, you're going to get better results that way. Will I get in trouble for sending these results in the group chat? Will people get mad? I, I feel nothing anymore. Yeah. Honestly, there's not as much as I thought there would be.

I'm kind of disappointed. Well, there's a vampire. So the thing about this is the gold rush, this huge multi-billion dollar NFT industry that kind of popped and dropped in the last couple of years was something created by a kind of perfect storm of post lockdown financial hysteria. So it was like AMC and GameStop. Yeah. Starks, you saw it with crypto in general. And it was the sense that you

were getting in early on something. And it kind of resembled in a funky way, like Beanie Baby's baseball cards, but also with the kind of stench of the fine art industry. But I also think that during the pandemic, and I'll get to a little more of this later, people really got this defined sense of how unfair everything is, how you can't just go to college anymore, you can't just work really hard and get a mortgage, you have to effectively find a way to cheat. And this seemed like a cheat they had got in on early. The problem is they didn't, and I'll kind of get into that later, but another part of it,

the part that really sank to me was that they were selling this ugly, obviously rotten dream, that you were owning part of a future media property. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Like you were going to be part of Disney or Marvel. The board apes, when you bought a board ape, you allegedly got the rights to distribute it and build a show or merchandise. And in fact, Seth Green bought an ape that he tried to build a TV show around classic 2022 idea building a TV show around NFT. Oh, did you guys see the app for that show, by the way? We worked it for first few episodes.

No, no, no, that was a different NFT show. There was a different boardade show. I can clarify here, there was a show called the Red Ape family that was about an adjacent property that included red apes, but other NFTs. But then Seth Green was also trying to make a show that was like almost like a who framed Roger Rabbit where it's a mix of like cartoons and like real background sets.

Um, but it's just like about Seth Green who is a monkey, uh, as a bartender, like it looked like dog shit. Oh, what's really funny is someone scammed him out of that. Yeah. So he had to pose, he had to pause production on his show. This is the future of entertainment, folks, because he didn't have the intellectual property rights anymore. And then he ended up having to pay a hundred grand to get it back. And the show never I cannot find the show anywhere. But this is the thing. Putting that aside, people genuinely thought they were

buying like amazing fantasy 15 first parents, Spider-Man stuff like that. They thought that they were buying something that would give them access, but also some degree of ownership over a future IP. And frankly, I can understand how they were scammed because you had people like Alexis Sohanian, the founder of Reddit, who through his VC firm, 7776, sunk $54 million into an NFT project called Doodles, claiming in January of this year, 2020 through the Doodles. This year. This year. Yeah. In fact, now, to be clear, the funding was last year, 2022.

Okay. Okay. But he claimed this year, and to be clear, the funding was last year, 2022. Okay, okay. But he claimed this year, and to be clear, Douglass is a collector in an FTs and an associated cartoon that kind of looks like adventure time, but significantly worse.

Yeah, that makes sense. Alexa said that Douglass wanted to build the next generation of Disney and a whole world of IP that is giving people a state and a sense of ownership. Sure, sure, buddy. Yeah, exactly. Thank you, Alexa, I want to hunch And a whole world of IP that is giving people a state and a sense of ownership. Sure. Sure, buddy. Yeah, exactly.

Thank you, Alexis. I want to hunch how does being rich feel? So to be clear, what doodles was is still was a collection of 10,000 NFTs of doodles, procedurally generated like most of these. And it's worth taking a step back here. Why are so many of these projects 10,000 images? It's because there's absolutely no creativity, not even a little.

They just, it's, it's like a, is there like a false scarcity aspect which is trying to like inflate value? Is that like another reason for why they would have like these limited batches? Cause I know the original board A-pons were like like around around 10,000 as well at least initially. Yes, there's always like a couple thousand 10,000, but when you take a step back and really think about it, that's actually a huge amount. It isn't the scarce good. It isn't. It may be to the people who are pumping and dumping them, but 10,000

isn't creativity. There's what, like, there's maybe 30 different Spider-Man. Sure. But that's not 10,000 of them. And none of these have a name, none of these have a character. I will get to the two characters and doodles, because there are just two. The more that you talk about this and just kind of based on my paying attention to it, I kind of feel like part of what we're saying is like the intersection of two cultural myths, right? One of them is like the myth about how,

I mean, it's not entirely myth, largely accurate, about what happened with Apple when it went public, right? And you have all of these hundreds of like nerds who had just been like working class kids who become worth hundreds and millions of went public, right? And you have all of these hundreds of nerds who had just been working class kids who become worth hundreds and millions of dollars overnight, right? Which has become part of our cultural memory of how tech is supposed to work ever since.

And then the other is like Star Wars, right? And the way in which George Lucas revolutionized capitalizing on every silly idea you've ever had. Like a lot of NFT, a lot of the NFT hype is based on the belief that like, you could be, you could, you could buy into the next like, Glerfstribo or whatever fucking we know, but George Lucas character and it could get a movie, you know, because it's all infinitely capitalizable. Yeah, the kind of buck shitos of the world. Yeah. Yeah.

You're actually right as well because I don't know if you remember when episode one, Star Wars Episode One came out. They deliberately made the box to look like the old return and the Jedi figures, which we're now worth thousands. A lot of money. But there is that full scarcity aspect and it is, it is like that except even worse because there's less value to it. Because when you buy a doodle, as you will, putting thousands of dollars into something called a doodle, one might wonder, what exactly is the value of this? Because doodles do not actually convey any intellectual property. Boardapes kind of do. The legalities muddy.

You can merchandise your doodle for up to $100,000. A physical good. So t-shirts. You know, why you would buy a doodle t-shirt? I'm not really sure, but you could sell it. Just the theoreticals here are amazing. But doodles, really it is called, was sold on the idea that it allowed you to steer the company to vote on the future of doodles, which is kind of similar to board ape yacht

club. You could get ape coin if you had NFTs of the apes or the mutant apes, and you could then vote in these votes about the future of the board 8 Yacht Club, but not Yuga Labs who owns the Board 8 Yacht Club. So really, you were just controlling a vague sense of nothing. In the case of Doodles, you could vote on what they may do in the future. It was never really obvious. Was Doodles a Dow? Doodles is a Dow. Okay, okay. And the funny thing to remember about almost all of these as well is not in the case of doodles, but in the cases like the Bordeie Yacht Club and the ape chain. I hate this crap. The ape and Jason Horowitz owns 14% of all ape coin

of their initial drop. They own multiple crypto products, large chunks of these total tokens, and so they can control these votes if they need to. But what's also important to know is, none of this stuff involves the actual goddamn company. Nobody owns a thing. These decentralized autonomous organizations, DALS, are always framed as this kind of democratic process. Carefully leaving out the fact that a democratic system with transactable votes is by definition

a goddamn kleptocracy. But on top of that, you don't own anything. You don't have anything with these companies. You don't get stock. You don't get anything. You just have one of 10,000 images that may in 10 years not actually go anywhere. It's, it's farcical.

The only thing, Damaumber than that, however, is the fact that doodles is no longer an NFT project and will no longer cater to speculators, according to a statement from March, by the co-founder Jordan Pupi Castro, Pupi is. Okay. Well, see, this is where I'm putting, you know what, Garrison, I'm putting the whole company pension plan behind this guy.

Pupi's gotta be the one who makes those calls from now on. You got a, it's really got to suck as well if you were like a speculative investor in doodles already. And you find out that your whole thing is what like can be worthless because of a guy called Pupi. I think that that's, that's just very special to me. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I'll continue. So just to be clear, less than a year before this, according to their investor, this company was positioned to continue to define the NFT industry and on board millions to the blockchain and become one of the most inclusive, creative, joyful media brands in Web 3 and beyond. This is the same company that had now officially rocked called their entire customer base. And by the way, if you did invest it at the time that the $54 million funding round so towards the end of 2020, you would have lost money.

You would not have gained money. There was no liquidity event that had given, would give you anything. Also important to recognize with. So other than Alexis O'Hanian, the other investor in Doodles was FTX Ventures. So in March of 2023, you kind of sat down with your morning coffee and you read the announcement

from Jordan Pupi Castro and found out that your FTX backed NFT project had lost about 85% of its value and now the company was not backing you in any fucking way. Yeah, but I mean, FTX is putting out Super Bowl ads. They seem stable. They seem like a fine. Yeah, you'd be fine. I'd love to. What could happen?

Be fine. I don't think what could happen before. But what's great about this is, it is probably one of the largest rug pulls I've ever seen and nobody is in trouble. Nobody's mad at Alex Sohanium. Doodle's sold people on a dream. A stupid dream, but a dream nonetheless. Yes, yes. Very, very God-down stupid one, that you'd be investing in participating in the future of intellectual property and have some industry over its future.

You would theoretically, though obviously when you read this now, it sounds dumb and also when you read it at the time, you were meant to be buying into the next Disney, the next Marvel, this is what was sold. That is another huge aspect of this thing. There's like, I think a lot of people who are like,

you know, grew up with like pop culture and wanna take part in like the creation of like culture and media, but, you know, Hollywood systems feels so foreign and unattainable. So this thing comes up and it, and this looks like like a democratized way that you can like get in on some like new version of what the entertainment like landscape will be.

And you're like, oh, this is like my chance. I can be one of 10,000 people to like contribute towards this next big, you know, cultural thing in 10, 20 years. But I mean, obviously that's like, in retrospect, it's very clearly a scam. For some people, like probably myself and many people listening, initially this sounded like a scam, but it certainly was alluring for a good deal number of people. I mean, this is kind of reminding me,

there was this very similar kind of Dow big, big failure around a dune. They were wanting to put out. Oh, yeah. So they wanted to buy, they wanted to buy the deck and the rights to Yoderofsky's Dune. Yes. Yeah. And and and put out media and put out like their own like animated series, which is funny, because initially they just, they weren't even going to bother with like the intellectual property, which is really funny because, you know, a big part of this, this NFT stuff is like, you own the IP of each NFT character. And as they, as this kind of project progressed, and they slowly started to realize that what they've done

was probably just commit massive fraud, and they completely collapse. But like this dude, like NFT Dow project was being, was being boosted by a lot of like very mainstream publications. It was, it was extremely hyped up, which can lead people to assume this is a legitimate entertainment project that you could participate in by buying this small little piece. Last year, very clearly fell apart, yes, was pre-destined. And what's really sad about this is we can laugh at these people.

I don't get to this in a bit. We can laugh at these people. We should. It's very funny, but the same time a lot of people got screwed here because they trusted in people like Alexis Ohanian, founder of Reddit, unscathed despite the horrifying things that Reddit has done. Alex Ohanon insanely rich, married to a tennis star, got blessed him, hoped to have a happy, but nevertheless, Alexis

has managed to fairly easily escape all blame for the fact that he misled everyone with this and other things, but this in particular, because the dream of doodles, got that sucks to say out loud loud by the way. Yeah, it sure does. The dream of doodles was that you would buy one of these 10,000 things and that you'd be part of a community and you'd be able to steer the doodles movement. The doodles community is Christ. I know.

The doodles revolution, I think, is more accurate. And the doodle list is, no, that's not a time. No, no, no, I like that. I like that. Doodle leasters doodle leasters doodleers. They're all the doodles. But you would be investing in the future right, peeing that you'd have part of this. And you'd be, you know what, put aside the money, put aside all the cash because they're not doing speculation anymore. It's not about that. Let's just focus on the community, which is dying, which is completely dead, I would argue. So fairly recently, doodles had to remove the 50%

quorum, which would require 50% of NFT holders to interact with the project to push a vote through. They had to remove that in, say, why? They had remove it. I want to guess is nobody gives a shit. Because nobody cares. Nobody gives a rat fuck about any of this. And then voted to appoint a founding community council to make decisions about where the doodle bank, my God, Jesus Christy would be, would be spent in the future. So the doodle bank was where some of the revenues went from the secondary sales of these NFTs because the companies always take a cart because let's see, Kim, baby. Anyway, so if you're interested in the community aspect of doodles, you're kind of shit out luck because they've now entirely deleted their visions and guidelines document,

which is the part of the website that tells you how any of the community ship works. And they, nothing is happening right now with them. There's nothing going on. This is the ninth most popular NFT project. And they have attempted to, and indeed succeeded in removing their association with NFTs. Now one would think, okay, maybe they have a discord. Of course I did find it. 85,000 members. Oh wow. Except it felt more empty than my discord, which has 600 people in it. 85,760 members as of when I opened it last. And the newsstand section did not have a post in it since August 30th, which was announcing that the Doodles cropped collaboration had sold out terrible news, least-buckable people alive. And there are other official channels really hadn't been updates since May or August. The general whole channel, which is where everyone was

talking, was mostly just bots and people saying the words dude's rule, let's do DS rule. No real communication, it felt like several chat bots. Kind of what, you know how you see oblivion or Skyrim NPCs walk up to each other. Yeah. Kind greetings to you. Imagine that with NFTs. 85,000 bloody people. I even tried to. I'm not going to say antagonize them. But I did ask them, are you happy with your investment? No responses. I was like, how do you feel about no response?

Someone responded with dudes rule once. And it's insane because you won't believe this. the valuation of this company, in their $54 million funding round, was $700 million god damn dollars. And their chatroom has the charm and vibrance of a dying mall. This is meant to be the next generation of Disney, and yet it has no fans. There are people who will shoot you to death for insulting Spider-Man. There are people who will scream at you for not liking the latest Star Wars thing.

These are super fans. Yeah. There are people who will do that with obscure video games you've never heard of, but for doodles, this really billion dollar enterprise, the future of Disney, not one of these people cared anything about this. All it was, there's like, there are no super fans, no loyalists, no evangelists, nobody excited, no one even expressing an emotion,

just a bunch of freaks who got corn saying GM every two minutes or hours, actually, what, how, it was so strange because I've been in chat rooms since almost like 11. I've seen varying levels of chat rooms in various games. Even the smallest community was kind of hopping at some point. This thing had no life. It was so strange.

It's just like a digital ghost town. And the reality is what I said earlier. There's 10,000 of these goddamn things. These featureless, procedurally generated things. There's 10,000 of these goddamn things. These featureless, procedurally generated things. There's nothing to them. These NFT companies, these ones that allegedly want to replace Disney, they're incapable or unwilling to do anything, approximating world building or law development. L.O.R.E. Doodles, which is worth $700 million, Goddamn dollars, which got $54 million. Has three characters that I can find.

As HAP is Cap Mello and there was another one which I could not find a name for. There is maybe 10 minutes of footage in the years that this thing was meant to exist. It's just so bizarre. It's so utterly craving and half-assed. People attack Disney and Marvel through Disney obviously in Star Wars. They're just, oh, they're pushing this crap out. They're just churning this shit out and saying people are buy anything. In comparison, Disney are steadfast or ters. They are creative agents like like into Salvador Dali. They are the compared to the NFT people.

They're gods because even Disney's least likeable properties get more attention and have big offense than this. There are Disney adults who would like crying and falling on their knees when the lockdown's ended. Oh yeah. Now these people would care. Now these people of Jordan Pupi Castro died tomorrow. Nobody would share the tear or even remember apparently. And it's just, I think the way to look at this in especially doodles

is that there is just within the NFT world and actually within the tech industry, writ large, just this deep deep-seated loathing for creativity storytelling and the customer Pendleton Ward who made the original Adventure time, don't I if you remember Which is very clearly where doodles is ripped off from just compare them. They look very similar You made it over a decade ago. It's a five minute long video

We made it on his own without funding without anything and, and it's beautiful, and it's weird, and it's great, and you're like, wow, I'm so glad this guy did this. Doodles, which has ten to billions of dollars sitting around, has put out seven God-dam minutes of teasers and an advertisement for brand collaborations. That's it. That's all. Something about feral, something about crocs, something about allegedly doodles, having a cartoon.

I don't goddamn know, but my theory is that none of this was ever about creating anything. This was an attempt to go back to what you were saying earlier, to recreate that sense that I just bought the Star Wars toy that will be worth $3,000 in 10 years. That's all this was. It was. I'm pretty sure they're well on their way because I'm looking at the doodles side right now. You can buy a rug featuring my favorite

doodles character, Hap, for $100. So. Are you serious that Lee's not the fuck is it selling a rug? Yes. Yes. The cracks are sold out. Unfortunately, I know.

I know you were really wanted to get those. They're sold out, they were 120 bucks. They're selling little vinyl toys for $185. They have a cat plush for 40 bucks. They have a puzzle for $22 and they finally have the before mentioned drug. So yeah. It's, it's just wonderful. It seems like a good investment. These things are selling out fast. You want, you got to, you got to get in. You can't, you can't, you can't be the next one. Yeah.

But I think that the ultimate thing is, none of this was about creating anything. That really is it. It was creating just enough to sell securities to suckers. And now all of it is falling apart. The SEC just sued a group of celebrities for an NFT cat cartoon called Stona Cats. Yeah, no, I was really excited about Stona Cats. I was really pumped up for seeing Stona cats. Yeah, no, I was really excited about Stona cats. I was really pumped up for seeing Stona cats. But sadly, the SEC charged the creator for unregistered offering of NFTs, which

are securities, and they raised $8 million. It's just very sad, very funny, by the way, that the SEC now is to get him, like, Garyensler has to look at Stona Katz and say, all right, let's take a look at this. Oh, that's not good. The how he test is going to have fun with this. But I think NFTs were, and are probably one of the more nihilistic parts of the tech industry. Yeah. Because they did the bare minimum to convince people. They made up all, it's kind of like that episode of The Simpsons where they remake Flanders

his house and it's just a fascia and it effectively forced down. With a load bearing poster, yeah. Yes, exactly. And it's just enough to make people believe this could be worth enough because it's never really obvious what actually makes something worth something in the collectible's market. There are established artists who my eye at personally own a bunch of original comic art work, a lot of it by Arthur Adams, and that market is fairly small because there's only so much one man can do and the value comes from what people are willing to pay. But in that case it's beautiful

pencils and inks, it's gorgeous, you wanna on your wall. that case, it's beautiful pencils and inks. It's gorgeous. You want that on your wall. In this case, I'm buying something that sounds like it might be valuable. There's not really a fundamental community. That sounds fine. But when you push past even the first layer,

it all falls apart. And that's because, in my opinion, the NFT hype was just a long-con on customers in the media. It's a scam. A scam where companies built the appearance of value without ever actually generating anything. There's nothing to owe some vinyl figures. Who cares?

Nobody's done the BoardApe yacht club has the world's shittiest cartoon. They did a flash game called Dookie Dash. Yes, I did. I did see Dookie Dash. I, what was great was game game of the year 2022. Game of the year 2022 immediately, by the way, scammed, just immediately someone broke it. And they had to like, they were like, what, how did this happen? That's the thing you go labs with a couple billion dollars,

it doodles worth 700 million, nothing to them, not a single. million dollars, the doodles worth 700 million, nothing to them, not a single interesting idea in any of them. But they existed to con people into believing this completely thin view. And also the nihilistic part is he was talking about people collecting art and collecting creative things, but without actually ever seeing the value in the object. The object's creativity was only as valuable as it was sellable, but not even sellable to an enterprise.

It was just like to another person who could continue the chain of shit. I think there is a large untapped market for this though that doodles is actually trying to exploit because I just found probably one of the most upsetting things I've discovered today, which is saying something because I've seen a lot of a lot of stuff today. Today's a hard crime footage. A lot of work on what it is, but there is a doodles of immersive experience in Chicago for children. Oh, no. Children create their own doodles, and you can pay $28 per person to spend an hour in this doodles themed art installation in Chicago.

I'm looking at the availability. There is, yeah, let's say, there is 10 slots open each day. All the slots are open tomorrow. So I think we should get a flight like 10 nights. Yeah. Right now, we got a book this ASAP. Yeah, that's gonna sell out. I'm gonna send you this link because it is the most,

one of the more disturbing things I've found. I don't wanna go to the doodles camp. Every, it's $ dollars per kid for one hour of Walking in this one doodles themed room Where first your kid creates a doodles character so you can enter a doodle world You go through a rainbow portal you slide down rainbows play in puffy clouds and crash a spaceship and you slide down rainbows, play in puffy clouds and crash a spaceship. And then you rom through a lomsco world until your hour is up and then you leave after spending $28 per child. It's like if a committee designed fucking a meowulf, right? Yeah. It's like a committee of people

on Thorazine. But if you watch this video as well of this dude goes world, here's the thing you don't see anything of anything. There's nothing. No, it's nothing. There's a picture of the guy who I've already forgotten the name of. Hop? I can't believe you forgot Hop's name. I can't believe I forgot Hop.

Hop is $185 to get a figure. You have to remember. Uh-huh. God dammit. It's $185 to get a figure. You have to remember. God damn it. But that's the thing. This is just... It's a masterpiece of emptiness. It is a meaningless thing. There is nothing to doodles.

Oh no. No, it's a vapid. There's nothing to any of it. And NFT investors were sold this dream of kind of an access to wealth they were for both sides that like, oh, the artist will make money because every NFT sale, you get some royalties and rigid residuals, which theoretically is a cool thing that when an artist has a piece sold on someone else, they get like, I like that idea.

I always have. And in turn, by buying into this quote unquote art, you can generate your own wealth. And you can be part of this positive chain where everyone wins, but you're also early so you get to feel smart, except the problem is that you're more than likely left with a worthless piece of shit. You're left with nothing. So fundamentally, there will be, and I don't believe more than a couple thousand people made any money on NFTs. Now, majority of the people who bought NFTs are going to be left in the red, And every new entrant is just another sucker to hopefully dump an investment on to because there are no NFTs that have a fundamental

value. There's not one. It's not like Disney Marvel, none of these major things, none of them got involved. They didn't want to fucking touch us. DC did a vague idea of buying comic covers, but even then it was half-os because why? Why would you do it? I've been saying this since 2021 that these things had no value. It was just an attempt to sell people this very sense of participation in a new economy. In fact, there was a study that came out, an analysis of 73,257 NFT collections. 95% of NFTs on the market are now totally worthless. The value of these collections is zero Ethereum.

Almost every single person encouraged to invest them by the New York Times by CNBC is a victim of a massive legal fraud peddled by internet charlatans like Alex Sohanian. I'm not saying he's one of them, but there are people within the NFT industry who also wash trade these things, which means that they effectively sell them to themselves.

And there's actually increasingly impressive research that suggests that most NFT sales were just wash trading, just people pumping and pumping and pumping. That's why Justin Bieber's ape that he bought for $1.3 million is worth about 60 grand now. He'll be fine, but other people won't. And that's what's really anger-inducing. That's what fills my veins full of poison. NFTs were never worth anything, and the majority of the industries made up a fake goddamn transactions. And the people who will suffer on the majority and the majority are not rich, the majority

are not anything other than desperate people who were manipulated. It's like with fucking the FTX collapse, which is funny in a lot of ways, but also one of the big bag holders wound up being like a teacher's pension fund. Right. Like that was massive. But, and obviously, I think that like an addition to going after Sam, people, regulators should be looking at who the fuck made the call to put people's pension money in fucking

brain genius kids gambling then. But it is like there is like real harm did and that was like always the plan. Everyone who was involved in pushing this is was was trying to like the the whole game plan was create this critical mass of hype that broke people's ability to actually analyze what what they were doing that just kind of made them panic and throw money in because they felt like otherwise they were going to miss out on their chance to retire. Right? That was the whole thing.

And that's why like the entire social media hype around this was all based on, you're going to stay poor forever if you don't get in on this right now. Like it's so disgusting and yeah just evil, evil people. And they were never a great investment, they were never at the future of IP. They're just a vehicle to extract capital from retail investors, from regular people who to your point earlier, who didn't invest in Apple, earlier, or Google, early. They didn't get the chance, they didn't buy the Star Wars toy. So this was their chance to get ahead. And if these are just an exploitative scam, they create just enough, it's a true scam as well.

They create just enough to get people in the door and just enough to make that investment defensible. They, and it honestly shared a lot of the language of the Joel Old Steens and conspiracy theorists and other teller, evangelists, telling people, do you want to, oh, you're not gonna make it. I'll have fun staying poor. What a noxious fucking thing to say.

What a disgusting thing to say to someone. And what's funny is they use the other scam that some companies in the tech industry used, FDX, for example, where they would raise rounds of venture capital, which gave the appearance of a real enterprise where things were actually happening. And capital, which gave the appearance of a real enterprise where things were actually happening, and then they sold them this dream of, oh, you could own a piece of this, despite the fact that not a single goddamn NFT actually granted stock options,

voting rights or anything else, because if they did that, it would immediately become a security. So they'd never do that. You don't have consequential votes. You don't have any industry over this industry. You just have a thing that can be, it may not be fungible, but the operating environment for it is absolutely fucking fungible. If doodles was truly not fungible, they wouldn't be able to change the doodles quorum. They would just have to sit there and do nothing. But what's also important to realize, and as I've said before, but I'll say it a goddamn game,

is they really didn't try very hard. The board eight-yard club, which is the biggest one, the 10,000 horrifying-looking apes owned by a company called Eugel Apps, they were valued at $4 billion in 2022. Despite the fact that they said they were going to go Hollywood, they've not actually created anything. They did a, they said they were going to do a metaverse product. They sold NFTs of this metaverse thing that they've never shown

called other side, I believe. Yeah, it crashed Ethereum. But nothing that video game where you travel through a toilet looking for poop. Dookie, dookie dash. Yeah. That's this is the new Disney everyone. This is it. This is the new Disney.

It's the metaverse that will never get built. It's the cartoon about monkeys and toilets that actually advertise douki Dash, the rich, deep law of the board eight yacht club, by the way, is the a monkey did a poo so bad that a key came out to another dimension. But then the monkey somehow put that key in a beer that the monkey drank and then the monkey did another poo where it put it into the sewer pipes, thus making it necessary for you to pilot another monkey to go and get the key. Very fucking stupid, very bad, ugly, like the design suck. That's the other thing, these aren't even good looking. And this is a company worth $4 billion.

$4 billion. And all they've done is not make a metaverse, but make a lot of money, make a terrible series looking of cartoons that may or may not go anywhere, and an e-bounce world clone that got scammed almost immediately. Someone found a way to exploit it immediately because it's a flash game. These are not creative enterprises. These are not entertainment companies. They're shell corporations for ill-gotten revenues. For secondary market sales of 10,000 bullshit pictures that were hyped up by the media who could not analyze it properly.

They just saw the large amounts of money that were being made, the crooked ways, by the way. The ones which were clearly pumped, everyone covered them. World of Woman, do you remember that one? World of Woman, the NFT. That was my favorite one because there were so many guys

in the crypto world who like, yeah, I bought a World of Women NFT, I support women. That's, that's, I love it. No, it's so good. And it's because all of it's exploitative. NFTs are vehicles to exploit people, particularly Americans, who are desperate and fairly questioning their place in the world that is continually turned upon providing basic social services and the

ability for its citizens to thrive. There are a few honest ways for the average person to accumulate wealth anymore. It's nearly impossible to buy a house, returns on the market, suck. Markets are already confusing. And yeah, all of that's quickly outpaced by the fact that you have student loans, health insurance, and inflation is making things more expensive than ever. And yeah, all of that's quickly outpaced by the fact that you have student loans, health insurance and inflation is making things more expensive than ever. And I would argue that that is really the root of what Soevel about crypto.

Yeah. It's inherently exploitative. It is inherently linked in all of these ways to religious dogma. You're buying into something, that you're finally part of something meaning for, something that will grow, something that will make you whole in a way that your predecessors might have been

just to living normally. This industry, it took root because most people can't thrive. Everyone has to hustle. Everyone has to struggle. You can't do the things that people even 20 years ago could do. You can't work a normal job in a house anymore. You can't get a mortgage in many cases. You can't just go to college and probably pay those loans off in five years. God, no.

That shit's going to follow you decades. And nobody's helping you. And then along comes these, along comes this very technological cool sounding non-fungible token. This thing where, oh, I could be part of this new art market. I can be the smart one for once. I can be ahead of everyone. And the people on the other side of that transaction are telling you everything you want to hear. They're the next Disney. They're the next marvel. You're going to be ahead of everyone. And the people on the other side of that transaction are telling you everything you wanna hear. They're the next Disney. They're the next Marvel. You're gonna be part of something.

You're gonna make it. That's what you'll do if you buy into this. All of those crypto people are totally fine. All of them, the Winkelvosses, like Sohanian, Mark and Dreson, Kristixson, they're all doing great. They're all multi-millioness. Several times over. The people on the other side are victims. Victims of what I would argue, any

just society would decide was a financial crime. And I think that every single venture capitalist who put money into these products and who pumped them should be held accountable. They won't because that is the modern tech industry because that is the modern government There is no justice for the victims of NFTs and It's really horrifying to watch Yeah, I know sometimes it can be hard to be sympathetic for these folks because we imagine them being like, you know, Fedora, Reddit, you know, characters. But I think if you have the capacity to feel sympathetic to like former cult members, this is kind of the same thing. Exactly.

This is like, it's really the same process. And a big part of actually beating cults is the ability to be sympathetic to former cult members that is actually like a crucial part of getting people to like get past this sort of thing. Yeah. And that's that's going to include not just the innocent, but some people who did some pretty ugly things. And yeah, I think that's.

And that's hard. I critical. Yeah. And I always try and push people to think of that because it is very easy to your point to look at the Fedoras, to look at the Waggamy guys. We're going to make it for people and say these are the majority. I would argue most people, and I say this haven't been in too many telegrams of too many rug-pool projects, just watching. The vast majority of people are desperate. They just want their investment to turn. They just want something because there really isn't much way out for most people.

There really isn't. Most people get lucky and that's how they live, what used to be, what used to be just like the general purpose, good life, 2.4 children, house, white, picket, fans, just doesn't happen for anyone anymore. And you're left with this in a society where that happens, where there's so, there are so few opportunities to thrive for people. You get things like this, you get these massive cons. And I think that it will be hard for this to take root again. I don't think crypto is done screwing people. I think that they will find a way to pump this in the future. Yeah, which is why you should buy our new cool zone coin. You know, for just the price of $45 a coin, you can ape in. And we're recommending right now just kind of transferring your whole 401k over into cool zone coins, which you can do by just

sending it to our mailing address in the form of a check. We'll get your coins to you. Don't worry. No problem. I will personally take care of that. Well, Ed, thank you so much for putting this together. I think it's important to kind of look at this sort of stuff in retrospect, especially as the next con builds up scheme, you know, interest rates will drop eventually. And then there will be another attempt to flee large numbers of people, possibly using Larry David, although he may have learned his lesson this time. Ed, do you want to give the people some notes on where they can find you if they want to read your stuff?

You can find me at www.ed.at. That's my newsletter, where's your ed app? And you can find me on Twitter or xd.everythingapp or rate my new stuff business. It will be called soon. At Ed Zitron, I'm also on Blue Sky. I find me as Zitron, the ITR I went. Well, check Ed out any of those places and check us out here. You already found us once, so presumably, you will not forget how to find us the second time. Until next time, you know, don't invest money in unregistered securities. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of

the universe. It could happen here as a production of CoolZone Media. For more podcasts from CoolZone Media, visit our website CoolZoneMedia.com or check us out on the I Heart radio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. You can find sources for it could happen here, updated monthly, at coolzonemedia.com slash sources. Thanks for listening. 13 days of Halloween, penance.

Season four of the award-winning horror fiction podcast presented in immersive 3D audio. If I am under arrest, you have to tell me what I'm charged with. Starring Natalie Morales of Parks and Recreation and Dead To Me. Please, you've been some kind of mistake. I'm not supposed to be here. How do you know? I'm innocent. Are any of us truly innocent?

Premiering October 19th, ending Halloween. Listen to 13 days of Halloween on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The system's broken. I said something's wrong here, you know. Whenever a woman is allowed to kill my two kids. Unrestorable is a new true crime podcast that investigates the case of Catherine Hoggel, a mother accused of murder. Despite signs that Catherine Hoggle took her tiny children one by one into the night, never to come home again. She has yet to stand trial. Listen to

unrestaurable on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If you really want to know what's going on in this country heading into the 2024 election, you have to get away from the extremes and listen to the middle. Hi, Jan here in Kansas City, Missouri. On the podcast, the middle with Jeremy Hobson, I'll take calls live every week, elevating the voices of Americans who are so important when it comes to who's in power and what gets done. My name is Venkat, I'm calling you for Atlanta Georgia.

Listen to the middle with Jeremy Hobson on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Atlanta Georgia. Listen to the Middle of Jeremy Hobson on the iHeart Radio app Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts.