Behind the Bastards - It Could Happen Here Weekly 138

Episode Date: July 5, 2024

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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. This is It Could Happen Here. We're talking about the June presidential debate starring Donald Trump and Joe Biden, which was by far the worst presidential debate I've ever seen in my entire life.

There's no competition. There's no competition. Like I remember the days when we laughed at George W. Bush fucking up edit a bait. He would, he would clean up with either of these guys. He would be sashaying across the floor. You can drop Sarah Palin in here. Yeah. And she would fucking own them.

Sarah Palin comes out of this looking like Bob fucking Hope. So I'm Garrison Davis. I'm joined by Robert Evans and James Stout. Let's get into it. I guess, who do you think quote unquote won the debate? I can tell you who fucking lost Garrison. Fucking all of us. I mean, I will go into this later.

I'm not sure it matters, but if the debate matters, Trump won. Totally. If the debate matters, Trump won. Yeah, that was my same thought as well. He definitely was a much better debater and had much better like political rhetoric. He could form complete sentences, which is something you could not say of Joe Biden. And that's not hyperbole. I actually argue with the first two-thirds of your analysis there because I don't think in argument terms, if we're looking at this as a debate, Trump

repeat, like if I were scoring this the way you would a competition, Trump repeatedly followed Biden on these, like Biden would goad him with shit, like what he said, what Trump said after Charlottesville, like Trump's height and him lying about it, fucking golf scores. And Trump always took the bait. Why I think Trump won is that this is not gonna get consumed as a debate. People aren't going to look at this and like,

look at the whole sweep of how they both did. Sure, sure. Which Biden would still very likely lose, but it's less clear. This is gonna get cut up a million ways on TikTok. And Trump's just got a lot more ammo out of this fucker. Yeah. The very first thing I noticed is that both of them

looked barely awake. Uh, as soon as it went on screen. And so I did get a debate bingo. I almost got two. I almost got three. Uh, I was very proud of that. I guess, I don't know, we can, we can go over some of, some of what, some of what they talked about because yeah, why not?

Do you want to hit Joe to hear Joe Biden's review? Just get that out of the way real quick. Yeah. Did he get Joe give it? Jill or Joe's still. Yeah, sure. Dr. Jill Biden, such a great job. You answered every question. Fantastic. That's amazing stuff.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. He did answer them coherently, not so much. We we had we had an inject bleach reference from Biden very early on. And that was that was one of his better ploys. Unfortunately, he followed it up by mumbling incoherently for like 40 seconds. Yeah, yes. But I was glad to hear it dropped. Yeah. He was well, he just did not.

He executed poorly. Look, here's what I'll say. I've said this about Joe for a while. If you were looking at this man, not as the president, but as like a relative, you would say, well, he's doing Uncle Joe's doing OK for 82. You know, like he's still most 86. It'll be 86 if he does a second term at the end of it. But like if he were a regular person,

you would say, Uncle Joe's doing okay for 82, maybe we should take the keys. You know? Maybe he doesn't need to be in a home, you know? That would not be the right call at this moment, but maybe he shouldn't be driving, you know? Yeah. So one of the smart things I think Trump did very early on

is that he attacked the vaccine mandate but not the vaccine Yeah, that was that was one of the more subtle moves that he did that I think he pulled off very well Yeah, Joe just gave it up Yeah one of the one of the record trends with Trump is that he really loved to call the United States a third world nation and say Yeah, we we are now an uncivilized nation That was that was like one of the many things Trump kept going back to. Because Trump really did just have like five things

he just kept talking about over and over and over again. He mostly ignored the actual questions from moderators. The moderators themselves did a really bad job, both with the questions they had and also like actually controlling the candidates and keeping them on topic. But in general, I think the questions they did were just kind of bizarre. Third World Nation was a very common refrain from Trump. And one thing that like Trump Trump did badly more than Biden or like you can see how Biden's

team prepped him on it. And then he screwed the pooch on it. But like, Biden would say these things that he knew would trigger Trump like his weight and his height height, right? Or they're very good people on both sides. And Trump completely fell for that hook line thing. You can tell Trump has been obsessing over the little things that people say about like how he treated, handled stuff like the alt-right and whatnot. Like he's very angry about some of that, which is interesting to me.

Because it wasn't the smart move. The smart move was like, as Gare noted, Trump very, I think, intelligently pivoted on the vaccine issue to still being able to take credit for it with some audiences while also making it clear that his issue was the mandates. Whenever Trump was on the economy, I think, even though I don't agree

that he was the better president for the economy, I think that he performed strongly on stage. He spent a lot of time in the weeds. If we're going to use golf metaphors, he kept knocking shit into the sand dunes and having to like... Thank you for raising golf from it. It's a very important national issue. You're welcome.

You're welcome. Because this had the longest golf digression of any presidential event I've ever seen. It had like a two minute argument over whether they could play golf against each other and who would win. And whose handicap was what in the 80s? What I saw in this is you've got two men who are not at or are past their prime. And the thing, the reason why this in large part went Trump's way is that Biden has never been a good public speaker. That has never been his strength. He has a speech impediment, right?

That he worked and got over much of his career, but when you are older, you have less control over everything and we can see it coming back, right? There ought not be any shame in that, but also it does affect the way people think. This is a horrible country full of terrible people. People do not forgive a speech impediment, right? But more to the point, the thing that Biden is showing his age in most all, as we all do, it's the shit that we're bad at, we get a lot worse at, right?

And you can kind of hide how much you've aged when you're doing something that is clearly your talent. My grandpa, fairly late in his Parkinson's journey, could still like gut and clean and catch a fish really well. It wasn't until pretty advanced that he lost that ability. And it was almost like you could see some of that skill returned to him. And like Trump is a talker. Trump is a charismatic guy. He is good at working a crowd. You can tell he is falling off in his inability to, the fact that he keeps falling for all of these very obvious traps,

Joe would lay and he spent a lot of time in the weeds, but he still sounds a lot stronger. And this is entirely a contest of who can look best on camera. Right. And yeah, it's of course Trump's going to win. I think the first really big topic that they that they started to argue back and forth on was abortion It started by Trump saying that he is pro the abortion pill and he's pro the Supreme Court's recent ruling which he kind of Mischaracterized but that's still he did anything coming from Trump saying that he's he's okay with the with the abortion pill He even brought up being okay with a nine-month abortion if it's for the life of the mother, which was interesting to me. But then they spent a long time arguing over whether Roe v Wade means that you can kill babies after.

Exactly. Yes, birth to birth. And that was an interesting, I don't think that that interaction, I don't know how much it's gonna matter, but it didn't come off well for Trump because he. No, it didn't come off well for Trump. That was, I think this is one of the few things he did not do well in. Of course, you know, Biden has done very little to secure reproductive

rights as the current president. We all know this, but this did not come off well for Trump. They were basically just arguing back and forth over whether Biden wants to kill babies post-birth, which is just a ridiculous thing to argue about. It was a shameful chain of arguments, right? George Bush would have insinuated the same thing, but done it in a way that left everyone feeling less gross. And that's why he did so many terrible things. It's just interesting that we've stripped so much of the shellac off of it. And now they are just... Because in George W. Bush's day, we were still, the Republicans were still calling Democrats baby killers.

There was just, it's interesting how much of the sheen is gone. Maybe some of that's not bad. There's a little more class. Yeah. Yeah. Maybe it's not all bad that we're not pretending anymore. Right? Like there's no pretending on this stage.

Both men are clearly not doing well. The system itself is not pretending, right? Like we just got a couple of fucking idiots and we have to install one of them. Something I will never pretend to do is dislike our products and services that support this podcast. I love them. I would never pretend otherwise. So go listen to these ads. Okay, we are back. Yeah. Yeah. Still here.

We are. I don't know. I feel good. I feel good about America today. You think so? You think we're heading in the right direction? You know, it's not that we're heading in the right direction. We've never been heading in a very good direction.

The driver has always been drunk, right? And finally, 45 minutes into the drive, he just was like, look, man, I'm not doing great right now and I'm not going to get this car back home unless you bust open the center console where I keep a handle of bourbon. And you're scared of the driver because he has a gun and you don't know what he'll do with it. You're not even sure if he can really see you. And anyway, that's how it feels to watch this election.

Let's talk about immigration, one of the other main, main topics in this debate. And that went bad for Biden. Trump had a fantastic line saying, border patrol endorsed me for president, but I won't say that. Amazing stuff. Yeah.

They both claimed border patrol endorsed them too? Yeah. The border patrol itself doesn't make endorsements, right? But the border patrol union, which is one of the worst accounts on Twitter, did clarify that they endorsed Trump. So there was a lot of bad stuff with abortion. I mean, James, do you have any thoughts overall in the abortion discourse?

The immigration discourse? Yes. Wow. That was a real Biden moment for you, Gareth. Garrison. Yeah, Garrison Davis, elderly member of the podcast. Somebody get Garrison his pet pills. I wish.

Yeah, they're fogging the air in Atlanta tonight. Alright, um. The discourse over abort- Jesus Christ, how really in this- They're bringing abortions with them, Garrison, don't worry. There's a pretty great onion headline. Report, uh oh, they're about to talk about black people. Oh god. Yeah. Another fine moment of this're about to talk about black people. Oh god. Yeah

Another fine moment of this debate the fucking black jobs thing. Yes. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah Yeah, immigration immigration right just real quick. Donald Trump kept throwing out this 18 million number fuck knows where that comes from Yeah, that was just all the numbers Like like fully from the rectum to the debate stage. But look, Border Patrol have reported 9.6 encounters. I've beaten this horse to death, but encounter does not represent a unique individual, right? People go and come back when they get deported back. Very common. Both of them.

What I actually want to focus on is the way that Jake Tapper framed that question, because it was fucking atrocious, right? Like he didn't frame it in a way in which either of them, if they had wanted to, could offer a reasonable, compassionate stance on immigration, right? It was posited as a terrible thing. And yeah, fuck CNN. I know next time you come DMing me asking me, oh, scummy, scummy shit. Yeah, it was for the record, Jake Tapper should be

hit in the head with a, I don't know, truck or something. Podcaster Robert Evans threatens violence against CNN anchor Jake Tapper. In a way, he supported violence against me, so I think I have that right with Jake. That is true. He's a dogshit journalist, and this was the worst moderated debate,

because Trump is just lying. Everything he says is absolutely full of shit, and half of the shit that Biden says, it's hard to tell what he was even trying to say, and there was no attempt to make it. They treated this like Werner Herzog would have filmed it, right? But they're too, Herzog would have done this way

because like, my job is not to interfere here. My job is to let this unfold, right? I don't need, now Herzog would have done this way because like my job is not to interfere here. My job is to let this unfold, right? I don't need, now Herzog would interfere if that would have made it a better story, but he loves collapse. See, but Herzog's an artist. These people are journalists. Yeah, these people are journalists.

And your job was to attempt to both hold them accountable to some standard of reality, and also to attempt to present this in a way that's intelligible, right? And you failed on both accounts. You did bad jobs as journalists. No, I think for me, the best and worst line of the debate in terms of like, oh wow, we're really in it,

is Trump saying that migrants are taking black jobs, which is one of the most loaded statements I've ever heard, because for one, it's weird on the migrant thing, be like, that's really your main concern. Black jobs. What is a black job? What the fuck is a black job? What do you think he's implying there?

Well, I think we all know what he's implying, but he's fucking disgusting. We all know what he's implying there. No, he's talking about farm work, he's talking about working in the fields. Low skill jobs is what he is talking about. Yes, that's how he sees this. But where I think that came from,

my suspicion is that, because the Trump campaign is still consistently extremely weak with black voters, right? They've actually made a lot of inroads with Hispanic voters. Not according to Trump in this debate. Yeah, they are still based on all of the polling I've seen. They are about as bad with black voters as they were in 2020. That really has not moved.

What you have seen on that is not really based in much of the way of evidence, at least in terms of what polling can show us. They know this is a weakness and it's one that they see as a significant strategic weakness. So at some point, Trump had a meeting with his campaign prep staff and one of the things they wrote on a billboard as they were spitballing ideas to get black voters was migrants taking black jobs? And that stayed in Trump's head. They had a million better ways to phrase it, but when the moment came up, that's how he fucking ran. I guarantee you.

Exactly what happened. It just, yes, totally. It also displays somehow extremely anti-immigrant and extremely racist at all at the same time. Coming from opposite directions. It's quite something. Another great line was human trafficking in women. Just another wonderful reference though.

Human trafficking in women. I'm glad that women do make the human list though. Like that feels like progress, Garrison. We did it, Joe. Anything else on the immigration front? I mean, it was as bad as we would expect. Honestly, I thought that Biden would try to go further on the right on immigration than what he ended up doing. Not saying he did well on immigration, but I expected Biden to kind of push a little bit more. He's not comfortable with it clearly.

Because he got so much of his win on highlighting the obvious inhumanity of Trump's border policy. And he obviously has adopted a policy that's very similar. Yeah, I mean, he tried to hit him on the separation of families. Families are still fucking separated. Like, I've literally seen that this week. Well, I just don't think he's comfortable fighting Trump on this. Because I don't really think he has a great feeling

about where they're separate on the matter, right? So he's not comfortable with that line of argument. The way he is, like Biden's best moment was attacking him for like being shitty to dead soldiers. And I was shocked that Trump followed him on that fucking rabbit hole. It was not good for him. They talked about that for so long.

It was a huge, it was as big as the economy. They talked about veterans for so long in just weird circles. That was an interesting one. A few other just fun lines that were thrown in. Biden calling them the Paris Peace Accords, very cool. Funny stuff. Biden saying that Trump has the mortals of an alley cat.

That's a great line. That was a good line. That's saying that Trump has the mortals of an alley cat. That's a great line. That was a good line. That's a great line. And that was, that was again, he, this was number one, he didn't slur any of us where I'm not saying that to be shitty, but it affects his performance. He was very clear in the lean up of like, these are the, he's a bad person, which he is.

That's a strong thing to hit him on. And I hope, again, we'll talk more about like, will this matter? But I hope strategically what the DIMMs realize is that like that is a thing to keep hitting him on because it actually matters. In terms of like how voters think of the guys, it's a way to actually hurt Trump because he is a really obviously shitty person. One other thing Trump did in terms of, you know, this whole black jobs thing is Trump did hammer Biden on super predators. Yeah, that was interesting to see. I feel like Trump actually did an okay job there.

It's not me endorsing Trump's behavior, but this is, he's like, that was a good move for him. No, an interesting one too. I was kind of surprised that he went for it. Cause that's like, yeah, that was surprising. Do you know what isn't surprising Robert? How much we love the sponsors of this podcast. Who are, you know, I often think of the president

as like a father, you know, or like my father during different times, right? Trump is like my father that time he brought home the movie Event Horizon, thinking it would be like a fun little science fiction romp. And Biden is like my dad when he snuck in the South Park movie, but he had not gotten the right language version so we couldn't actually watch it.

Right. They're all, they're different eras of everyone's dad. I don't know. These sponsors are our father. Anyway, we're back. So one thing that I'm looking forward to is that if Trump does get elected, he will settle the Ukraine war as president elect. So that's great news for all of us. I'm looking forward to is that if Trump does get elected, he will settle the Ukraine war as president-elect. So that's great news for all of us.

I'm excited. Before he's even inaugurated, he's gonna crack that down. Yeah. That was really the... Yeah, it's interesting to see him kind of adopt the whole Ukraine is cooked, they've lost all of their young men line. That's not a great thing to hear in terms of like, whole Ukraine is cooked, they've lost all of their young men line.

That's not a great thing to hear in terms of like, it's exactly what Putin wants. It's exactly what Russia wants. It's not accurate to like what we've actually seen on the ground, which is another Russian offensive completely stall out despite what was supposed to be an overwhelming advantage in theater and artillery. But I don't think it matters. I don't think that shit's gonna move the election. At the end of the day, I can bitch about US policy

in Eastern Europe, but nobody votes based on that. I do, but nobody else does, right? And I barely do. Like, it's just not, it's not a needle mover in the same way that fucking inflation or the economy or crime or the border is. Trump was harping on it because he's just trying to blame

all of these new conflicts on Biden, being like all these things happened since Biden was president. If I was president, this wouldn't have happened, you know, magically, right? And that's a very easy move for Trump, is to bring up all of the bad things that have happened since Biden's took office and say,

this is Biden's fault. We have that with Ukraine. They talked about Ukraine for like a really, a really... It was a shocking amount of the debate. A decent amount of the time, like way longer than they talked about Israel and Palestine, which is kind of surprising to me. Now I can understand how both of them would want to just avoid talking about that,

but I'm surprised like the moderators like let that happen, I guess. I don't think I mean the moderators, moderators let everything happen. I think who I put, yeah, they did. I am surprised about was Trump because he kept going back to Ukraine, which is not a strong issue for him. Now, Israel, Palestine really isn't either. Most Americans don't like what Israel is doing. There's even a lot of like question about that on the Republican side. So his choices are either be all fucking genocide about it

and alienate a lot of moderates or kind of hedge it and just try to attack Biden for his performance, which is what he did. Which is what he did. Yeah. Yeah. He didn't do much of it compared to getting drawn again and again into arguments over NATO. I was really surprised that he kept following Joe back to fucking NATO. It was really weird.

Yeah. That was a bizarre choice for him, like when he had a million other places. His Trump's response on Palestine, I want to talk about. Oh, that was bleak. Absolutely. That was one of the worst moments in this country's entire history. Yeah, that really set a new low for me. And we've got like, what, eight, seven to eight genocides. So, you know, pretty bad moment. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's a country built on genocide. But that one, that one was pretty, pretty bad. Yeah. So basically Trump was harping on Biden for not being pro-genocide enough and said something that I really never, I did not see coming.

He said that Biden has become like a Palestinian, a bad Palestinian. Yeah. A bad Palestinian because he doesn't do bad enough things. What was that? What was the exact line that followed that? So Trump says, quote, he's become like a Palestinian, but a bad Palestinian because they don't like him very much. There you go. Thank you. We needed the whole thought. He's a weak one. Yeah, the Palestinians don't like him. And I hate the Palestinians,

but you should be liked by your own people. I'm trying to put together the logic here. It was really bad, but like, basically using Palestinian as an insult to Biden, you know, that's not great. Trump also had a lie how, quote, the Palestinians and everyone are rioting right now. Yeah, who was he talking to?

Because the country's been pretty chill, actually. I think he's referring to the campus protests, just calling everyone at those protests Palestinians, which is a really interesting political move, actually. Yeah, and a dangerous one, potentially. Absolutely. Yeah. We knock on wood whenever we may have wood.

That's a good Trump line. That's a good Trump line. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah. And James, James was giving him shit for that earlier, but this is, this is you and your ivory tower. A lot of people don't have wood, you know, Ben Shapiro could only afford one board of wood.

Yeah, Ben Shapiro only got wood once. Yeah. That's exactly right. You know, small amount of wood at that. He was lucky enough to find it. We can't all. And he put his wood in a little bag. So this was a bit on healthcare, right?

Or is this talking about healthcare or drugs? I think that one went straight over Garrison. It did. Well, he was, yeah, he was talking about being healthy. And he was like, yeah, I'm still healthy. You know, knock on wood. We all knock on wood where we find wood or something like that.

But he was being like we have wood He was kind of trying to win actually this may be a little bit of like a fuck-up by him because he was hitting Biden pretty successfully and Biden's age But then he dropped a line so baffling that it was like it focused attention where I was like, what do you mean by this? They were talking about Yeah, they're talking about being in good health and that's where they got into the little golf argument. And then Trump's weight.

Who would play golf better? And yeah, if Trump could carry his own golf clubs. A really good line was, we bought a certain dog. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was a borderline. We bought a certain dog, you wouldn't believe it. We bought a certain dog that can sniff fentanyl. And then he just kept talking about machines that could sniff fentanyl. Biden's talking about these machines that they have to supposedly detect fentanyl on

the border, which they've spent millions of dollars on, but they've been doing this since the Trump administration. Like this is not a new thing. It was in his border bill, but it's nothing compared to we bought a certain dog. Oh, God. Have you guys seen the dark Brandon's secret sauce? No. Robert, share this immediately. Yeah. Yeah. I've just shared it. Apparently he's lost Jeff

Tiedrich, which is a fad. There's a there's a post that Joe made right before the debate would have started that I'm just gonna send to the chat while I describe it to the listener It's Joe with like a can in his hand and it's a can you sent a link to x.com? home No, so he's got he's got a can of this, it's like a water in a beer can,

and it's called Zero Malarkey Biden, and it's got a dark branded image with a laser eyes. Get real Jack, it's just water. And then Biden's actual tweet says, I don't know what they've gotten these performance enhancers, but I'm feeling pretty jacked up. No. Try it for yourself folks.

And for $4.60, you can get a, what looks like one can of Biden water? The secret, I'm on the website now. The secret to a good debate performance, staying hydrated. Get yourself the same performance enhancers Joe Biden took before going on stage. We need to get the company caught out. Well, we have to do some testing on this.

Guys, I'm gonna get wrecked, because he looked fucked up. I have some experience with performance enhancing to device drug users in my career. I can FB. This is, if any, I miss having a good GHB hookup, you know, this would be a per, I feel like that would get me on Joe's level, right?

I think only a brain injury could get you on Joe's level right now, Robert. That's why I brought up GHB. The last topic I want to discuss in terms of what was talked about at the debate is January 6th and Trump kind of tried to avoid the question over whether he would concede the election saying that he would only if it was a fair election. Only if it was a fair election. But Trump's line on January 6th, let me tell you about January 6th. We had great borders on January 6th. Oh, that holds spiel.

We had a great economy on January 6th. It is very funny. I should post some pictures I took. I took them just after January 6th. I took them the week of Biden's election of the border wall just stopping in random places. Like where they got to a certain level of construction and just stopped. Like we... I found Trump's direction here kind of interesting. He tried to kind of really avoid talking about his own opinions on the actual Capitol insurrection. His very first reaction was to say, no, well, the rest of the country was doing so much better because I was the president.

The moderators kind of forced him to talk a little bit about it, but he really avoided it as much as he could, which is, you know, he doesn't want to alienate his base. He also doesn't want to, like, you know, be too pro-J6 and scare away, like, independence. So he was really skirting that line. It's just weird because moderators were so much stronger on this question during the debate primaries for the GOP, which Trump wasn't even present for. They really harped on this here, and on this they did not care at all. They really did not push Trump on J6 whatsoever, and it was kind of pathetic. Yep.

Yeah, it was. It was terrible. The moderators didn't moderate at all. They just asked some questions and let it fucking rip. I think let's just move on to finally talking about like the debate in general. I think the GOP will probably be pretty happy with Trump's performance here. Yeah, he did what he needed to. They're going to call us a dub. I think the Democrats are probably kind of scrambling right now, trying to figure out what the next move is.

I hope it's possible for someone to be like, we got time throw Pritzker in throw fucking Whitmer in, you know, either of them. Right. I honestly, you know, you know, Robert, this is this is how Bertie can still win. I know he's too fucking old. Bring him back. Why the fuck not? I will say, I think he probably,

based on the last time I saw him speak, I think he probably would have done better than Joe did in this, but not if he had a cold, right? Like that's the thing. Sure, sure. I believe Joe has a cold and that that's why he sounded like shit. But you know what?

A strong young person with a cold could pull it together for an hour. Right? He could lock down. He could lock down. He could lock in. We shouldn't have to explain, I don't give a shit,

old people shouldn't be the fucking president. They shouldn't. Old people should not be the fucking president. Past the point at which I feel like, if somebody like, if we were helping you move and I was like carrying something heavy and I turned around and I slapped you in the face with like a board or something or a piece of furniture, if I have to be worried that your skull is going to crack, you shouldn't be the fucking president.

You should be able to like, I should feel confident that you can jumpstart a car without blowing up my battery. You know? Like I don't feel that for either of these men. They both look unwell. Yeah, if you let these people go into a supermarket, they would be lost. Yeah, it's it's not good. It's so I know a lot of people make jokes about this, right?

People love joking about how old they are, how incoherent they are. It's not funny. I was shocked. Bleak. I was shocked at how bad Biden did this debate. He looked so bad. He looked so bad. It was one of his worst public speaking outings in a long time. Look, I am not competent to diagnose shit, but I lived with my grandfather for the last 10 years as he died of Parkinson's.

And it's there's a shuffle you get to recognize, right? Like, I don't know if it's Parkinson's, but he's not a well old man. He's a sick old man and he shouldn't be president. There is. There is a reason I put candidate collapses on stage on my bingo card, which we did not get, but we sure got close. We sure got close. Very close, very close. I filled out almost all my bingo card. It was, and I did not pick easy ones too. You can check me on this. You can check the card on Twitter.

And yeah, I was, I was, just, I just felt really bad. I feel terrible. I wanted to ask half that debate, Gare. How do you feel about getting your citizenship? You jazzed? Well, this is a great, this is a great proud time, proud time to become an American. It is better than it's better than it's better than only having a green card. Yeah, it's true. Let me tell you, as someone who recently upgraded to American status, it is

at least it's a little bit less concerning with the shit that Trump is saying. Yeah. Or Biden. Both of them. Well, any final thoughts? I hope Gavin Newsom doesn't pull out a way to become the president. That would be bad. Because I don't want him to be the president. He is going to be the, my prediction is he will be the 2028 nominee. He's at least going to try really hard. Very really hard. It's between the smart option based on where we stand now. For now, war for 2028 is Pritzker. I think Whitmer would also be a great pick. Pritzker is really good with conservatives and he's really good with conservatives

without like folding completely on shit. Whereas Whitmer has some weakness just because of how much time has been directed in attacking her over like the COVID 2020 shit. But either of them I think are strong candidates who are a lot better than Gavin Newsom. But you are right. He's going to be a strong candidate in 2028.

Well, I think that does it for me at least here on it could happen here. Let's talk real briefly. Do we think the debate matters? Do we think that this is a thing that is going to turn an election? I think it- Like can, yes. Yes, I think it actually does.

I think this could actually hurt some voter enthusiasm. I think people who are maybe looking at Biden and being like, yeah, probably, if he keeps performing like this, people might just not vote for him. Some of them might move over to Trump if they're like weird, like independence. Many of them just might not vote at all. Like I think if Biden shows that he is just kind of a bumbling, like incompetent old man,

that's not going to help an already kind of dire situation in terms of voter enthusiasm and possible voter turnout. So yeah, I think this actually does have a decent chance to hurt Biden. I don't think the debates will necessarily hurt Trump. I don't think they'll necessarily help Trump like majorly, but I think they can subtract support away from Biden. See that's where I don't have a strong feeling on which way this is going to land in either case, but some of the data we're seeing, particularly how well Trump performs relative to Biden

on voters who are not sure they're going to vote, I think this might be the first election where a higher turnout would be bad for Biden. But I also don't know. I think if any, if this depresses, I think you are right that if this depresses turnout, it's going to be worse. It's going to be Biden turnout, right? Although, I mean, yeah. I just don't know.

It's hard to say. I don't want to do, the easy thing would be to just like pick a lane and stay in it. And, but if it comes to my honest opinion, I still have no fucking clue how this is going to go. Because at no point has this election been about, do you think Joe Biden will be a good president?

It's been about, are you scared of Donald Trump, right? I don't know that you're less scared. I think the worry for Biden is that people are now more scared that he is going to sleepwalk his way through a nuclear war, as opposed to Trump at least being lucid for it. But I just don't know how that's going to sleepwalk his way through a nuclear war as opposed to Trump at least being lucid for it. But I just don't know how that's going to actually shake out in the long run.

God bless the USA. We're doing great. The conventions are gonna be great. Yeah. Stay tuned. He could be dead in a week. That really is like the wild card. He could be dead tonight. I. That really is like the wild card. He could be dead tonight.

I wouldn't be surprised at all. It kind of exists in the back of my brain all the time. It's like either one of these guys, especially Biden, could just like not exist tomorrow. Like he could just get a little too stressed out and just kind of fall over. I mean, they could meaningfully make the argument tomorrow that like there's been a significant decline in his health and he is not Physically capable of being president because that's what we saw. Yeah, he doesn't he looks bad. Like if he was not involved I don't think they will If the things whatever things you consider worst and for me with Biden, it's it's the border in Palestine

But if whatever things you consider worst about Biden weren't a thing, I would purely be like, for this man's health and safety, get him out of this job. Get him somewhere comfortable. Let him enjoy his final years. Don't make him do this. Yeah. Anyway. It's not right.

I don't know. Fuck. Part of me wants to read this Jeff T. Rich tweet to finish off. At a certain point, we're all's it's not right. I don't know. But part of me wants to read this Jeff T. Rich tweet to finish. At a certain point, we're all complicit in elder abuse, but I guess they but we are for both of

them. Yeah, like in some ways, in some ways, the American system is pushing these two sick old men towards the disasters. That's also why I can't trust anything they say on Social Security, because they clearly

have a vested interest. I can't see. they say on social security because they clearly have a vested interest. I can't see, I will say, we saw the president of Bolivia face down a coup yesterday. I think that that would not be possible for either of these men in 2025. God. All right, I want to go cry and go to sleep. Oh yeah, it's bad.

That's good, Have a good cry. Make some friends, guys. I'm going to keep drinking. Yeah, do a little mutual aid. Yeah. Yeah, I'm going to buy some of the Biden water with company money. From KT Studios, the number one podcast, The Idaho Massacre is back. The new developments in the University of Idaho murder case. It was an unimaginable crime. In the early morning of November 13th, 2022, four University of Idaho students killed.

Police have no suspect and no murder weapon. A nationwide manhunt captivates the world. Moscow PD saying today they're now looking for a white Hyundai Elantra. Then a shocking arrest. There is now a suspect in custody. This is a PhD student in criminology. This is the guy. Will he be found innocent? He claims he has an alibi. Or face death.

Listen to season two of the Idaho Massacre on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Andrea Gunning, host of the all new podcast There and Gone. It's a real life story of two people who left a crowded Philadelphia bar, walked to their truck and vanished.

Nobody hears anything, nobody sees anything. Did they run away? Was it an accident or were they murdered? A truck and two people just don't disappear. The FBI called it murder for hire. It was definitely murder for hire for Danielle, not for Richard. He's your son. And in your eyes, he's innocent.

But in my eyes, he's just some guy my sister was with. In this series, I dig into my own investigation to find answers for the families and get justice for Richard and Danielle. Listen to There and Gone South Street on the iHeart radio app, Apple podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. We all know what that music means. Is somebody getting coronated? No, it's time for the Olympics in Paris. The opening ceremony for the 2024 Paris Games is coming on July 26. Who are these athletes? When are the games they're playing?

You may be looking for the sports experts to answer those questions, but we're not that. Well, what are we? We're two guys. I'm Matt Rogers. And I'm Bowen Yang. And we're doing an Olympics podcast? Uh, yeah.

We're hosting the Two Guys, Five Rings podcast. You get the two guys, us, to start every podcast, then the five rings come after. Watch every moment of the 2024 Paris Olympics beginning July 26th on NBC and Peacock. And for the first time, you can stream the 2024 Paris games on the iHeartRadio app. And listen to Two Guys, Five Rings on the iHeartRadio app and listen to two guys, five rings on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States, awarded for gallantry and bravery

in combat at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty. Since it was established in 1861, there had been 3,517 people awarded with the medal. I'm Malcolm Gladwell and our new podcast from Pushkin Industries and iHeartMedia is about those heroes. What they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Without him and the leadership that he exhibited in bringing those poets in and assembling them to begin with and bringing them in, I saved a hell of a lot of lives, including

my own. Listen to Medal of Honor Stories of Courageage on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Hello, welcome to Eat Could Happen Here. We're doing it again. Several months back, I did an episode about corn, which I personally think was a huge hit. And I did that episode with the intention of making this food series, Eat Could Happen Here, into an actual series about food, and not just a silly one-off pun. In all honesty

though I wrote and recorded that corn episode before October 7th, even though we ended up releasing it afterwards around Thanksgiving. Because since October 7th there have been much more pressing things I need people to know about and learn about and keep talking about, namely the genocide happening in Palestine. And I will keep talking about it, because we all have to keep talking about it. But I'm learning that in between my episodes where I talk about the most horrific things I've ever seen or read about or heard about, my brain needs to go into silly mode or else I will simply eject myself into outer space.

And one of those silly things I've decided will be the how did we get here of food, which I personally find very fascinating, as is the history of all things is very fascinating, namely the history of how Palestine has been illegally occupied by a settler colony ethno-state for nearly a century of genocide and ethnic cleansing, and how no one had any right to claim land as their own that was already inhabited by indigenous people. But I digress, we have other episodes about that, and we will continue to have episodes about it, but today we are going to be talking about something which, in comparison, is objectively kind of stupid. We're going to be talking about something which, in comparison, is objectively kind of stupid.

We're going to be talking about sea urchins. I want to blame and or give credit to James Stout for suggesting this topic very enthusiastically when I mentioned wanting to do an episode about food. And because I personally don't believe I've ever had sea urchin, or maybe my brain has deleted that memory to make room for the worst things I've ever seen, I've brought James here today to walk along or dare I say swim along with us on this sea urchin journey and to impart on us his never-ending knowledge on basically everything. So welcome, James. Thank you, Shreen. That was a very nice intro. It's the truth. You suggested this very, very enthusiastically. I did suggest it enthusiastically. I was referring to the never-ending knowledge on nearly everything part.

Well, genuinely anything I bring up, you have a story about, which I find very impressive. So it's just the truth. You know a lot of things in that brain versus me. I delete things pretty fast. I have deleted some shit. I don't suggest banging your brain into your skull if you want to retain information. That's something I've done a little bit too much in my life. Oh yeah, I think that's wise. But anyway, the sea urchin. Maybe y'all know it as uni, but actually the sea urchin and uni are not synonymous words and they do not mean the same thing. Uni is actually only a small part of the sea urchin, the edible part, and we will get into

exactly what it is later on. But its flavor seems to be quite distinct. In 2016 Nestle described uni as one of the top 10 food trends due to its unique flavor. Some people describe the taste as rich and complex. Others describe it as having a rich, buttery flavor that is often compared to that of foie gras. Is that right? Magic. Yeah. Thank you for taking my French lessons. Thank you. It has a slightly sweet and briny taste that is unique to sea urchin.

James, how would you describe it as someone who has had sea urchin? Yeah, it's like ocean butter, I think. It's got a buttery-ness, but also a briny kind of essence of the sea-ness. Everything tastes good when you're sitting on the rocks eating it, you know? This is a thing I like to do. Refreshing or something. Yeah, and it's nice to get your own food, isn't it? Like it's nice to, it's nice to go to the bottom of the ocean and grab a sea urchin and then bring it back up and eat him and you know, know that you're also helping to preserve the kelp. So like it has a little

aura around it, which we're going to talk about, I'm sure. Yeah. I think, I think ocean butter, I've never really been one to like bring it home. I know people do pasta sauces with it. Yeah. But I'm not a big pasta sauce maker. So I'll just normally crack them open or get some friends around, open them up and then you get one, you get a nice shell and you kind of, you keep that one nice

and you do like a little kind of salsa or something in there with the uni or you just put the uni in there and people dip into it. Wow. It's a nice little presentation. What a whole new world. I had no idea. Yeah. So you have to come down, Jareen, and I'll pick on the uni. We'll do a live podcast, everyone.

You know, I don't know, after learning about them, they might be too cute for me to eat, but I guess we'll just keep talking about them. Really? This is going to make me sad if that's the case. There's just one that I keep thinking about called the sea potato, which we'll get into later. But it's so cute. I can't stop thinking about the sea potato. But anyway, we'll get into that in a second. According to Food and Life magazine, uni is complicated. They say, if you know uni, there's a chance you love it.

There's also a chance you took one look at this creamy yellow seafood and decided it would never enter your mouth." In the same article I found, they say that some people say it's sweet and buttery, with icy cold raw uni in sushi as their preferred method to enjoy it, and apparently it also tastes delicious when it's lightly cooked or steamed. And some say, as you just said kind of, that the flavor evokes a dip in cool salt water. So yeah, very, very poetic there. But again, maybe the most popular way y'all have seen sea urchin is being served as sushi, uni. Uni sushi is a delicacy that has gained popularity around the world, and the dish consists

of the sea urchin being raw and with rice. Sushi, wow, a cute little bite. But the history of our little sea urchin is a humble one, and its journey to become a global delicacy has been slow and steady. We're going to take a look at the history of the sea urchin as a food source and its cultural significance. So are you ready? Buckle up. Here we go. Okay, I'm buckled.

The sea urchin has its roots in Japan, where it has been enjoyed for centuries. The first known mention of sea urchin as a food source dates back to the Edo period, spanning between 1603 and 1868. During this period, the sea urchin was consumed by the samurai class. The sea urchin has other cultural significances. In Japan the sea urchin is associated with the ocean and is considered a symbol of good luck and prosperity. It's also believed to have a number of health benefits including improved skin health and increased fertility. However, it wasn't until the 20th century

that the sea urchin became popular as a sushi ingredient. Sea urchin was used and is still used today in Japanese cuisine more broadly. It's used in soups and rice bowls, and it's often served in traditional kaiseki meals. A kaiseki meal is basically a traditional multi-course Japanese dinner. This term, fun fact, also refers to the collection of skills and techniques that allow the preparation

of such meals. In addition to the sea urchin being an ingredient in Japanese cuisine, the harvesting and processing of sea urchin is an important industry in many coastal regions of Japan. So even though it's served raw usually as sushi, as James said, it's used in a variety of ways, like in sauces, pastas, and on bread for centuries. Modern day chefs are even transforming it now into foam and mousse.

Mousse! Yeah, I ain't got time for that shit. I'm sure it looks pretty. It looked great because it's very orange. If you've not seen it, I mean, you get on Google unless you're driving and look for a picture of it. Maybe I'll post one. I'll use it as a thumbnail for this episode.

I mean, I did watch the harvesting. I had never seen it being harvested before, so I saw that, but the color is like crazy from the jump. Like as soon as you crack it open, it's just like this crazy bright color. I had never... color. I never... Yeah. I mean, they're purple. The ones that the ones you're getting in California are purple.

There are reds and purples, but you want to be hitting the purples if you're diving in California. So will your foot. Your foot will be purple if you stand on one. It is a bad day if you stand under sea urchin, because a little spine can go in and then break. I've done that a couple of times. Ugh. Yeah. You get up, you get up. Yeah. Don't be doing that and getting affections. Learn from my mistakes. Yeah, please do. But when it does come to sushi, the sea urchin was considered a cheap and plentiful

ingredient for a long time, and it was often used in sushi rolls alongside other more expensive ingredient to just fill out the roll. However, as the taste for sea urchin grew, sushi chefs began to showcase it as a standalone ingredient, hard launched as an ingredient everyone liked. Today, it's enjoyed around the world, as I said, and considered a delicacy. It's often served in high-end restaurants, and it can get to be quite expensive because of its rarity and the difficulty of sourcing high-quality urchin. Because as with many things sea urchin is safe to eat as long as it is prepared properly. It's important to ensure the urchin is fresh and has been handled and stored correctly. Let's get a little bit more scientific. I'm gonna mispronounce a bunch of stuff coming up so oops.

Sea urchins are globe-shaped little creatures that live on the ocean floor. Sea urchins belong to a group of marine invertebrates called echinoderms, which means spiky skinned. Animals in this group also include sea cucumbers, sea lilies, brittle stars, and starfish aka sea stars. This is some of my favorite little underwater creatures. Yeah, what a cute little group. I love it. Yeah, I love to see a sea cucumber just cucking along for a starfish.

You know, like I love to, who doesn't love to see a starfish. Yeah. Leave them alone. Don't touch the starfish. Yeah, please just leave them be. They didn't do anything to you. They just want to live and chill. They just, yeah, they're just vibing down there.

They're the biggest chillers, you know? Yeah, they did nothing wrong. I will stab you if you mess with the starfish. I respect that. The spherical shells of sea urchins are called tests, and they're made up of plates and movable spines that protect them from predators. Sea urchins can be found in all of the Earth's oceans, and they first appeared as a species

around 450 million years ago. One of the groups present in our oceans today, a word I will mispronounce right now, but it was the first to evolve. It was the Cedirodea. Let's go with that. Start with the sea, you can look it up if you want. But it appeared about 268 million years ago.

These primitive sea urchins often have stubby, rounded-off spines. A second group of sea urchins are called Echinodea, and they evolved a little later, and they include the spiky creatures you probably are more familiar with. This subclass is known as the quote modern sea urchin. The most recognizable sea urchins are round, often brightly colored and covered in these sharp looking spines. In fact, urchin comes from an old word for hedgehog and because they look like hedgehogs with their little spiky armors. Fun. I didn't know that. Yeah. Love a hedgehog. Hedgehog is one of my favorite animals.

They're the urchins of the land. They look like them. They're not though, because they're not like, they're not destroying the ecosystem. I didn't mean it completely literally. They look like little urchins, but they're all rounded up. Yeah, they kind of do. There's one that visits my dad pretty often. It lives by his house and he sends me videos of it. That's cute.

Yeah, I think he gives it like a dog food. We used to give them milk when I was a kid. Another example of me saying literally anything in James. Sorry, I've given you all the good content. No, don't apologize, it's great. I want people to know that you shouldn't give them bread and milk, that you should instead give them wet dog food. Okay, good to know.

Did not know that. Yeah, so if you come across one. They're illegal in California though. Fucking, I'm doing it again, sorry. You're doing it again. I learned so much with every conversation I have. But back to the species of sea urchins. There are over 1,000 species of sea urchins and they have varying characteristics. They inhabit a wide range of depth zones in all climates across the world's oceans,

and only 18 of them are actually edible. That's interesting. Most modern sea urchins are round, as I said, but about a quarter of them have modified that body plan massively. For example, there are sea urchins who evolved into a flatter shape and have smaller spines that adapted to life burrowing in the sand. You can get really weird shapes of these deep sea urchins with strange bodies that don't look like anything else. We don't know much about these deep sea urchins with strange bodies that don't look like anything else. We don't know much about these deep sea urchins yet because they're very hard to reach and

they're very fragile and this makes it very difficult for people to study them on the surface. I think this is a great, if you are a billionaire and you are listening to this podcast, you could have a sea urchin species named after you. All you need to do is create a submarine, fill it with other wealthy people and then take it to the bottom of the ocean to study sea urchins. You know what else should go into the bottom of the ocean? Is it the products and services to support this show, Shereen? Yes.

How unkind of you. It's not hedgehogs. They don't belong there. No. Leave them out of this. Hopefully it's a hedgehog advert. Fuck the police. Get a hedgehog in California. A-Cab! And we're back. I had just talked about some irregular shaped sea urchins before the break, and an example of this kind of sea urchin is actually the sand dollar.

Sand dollar is a kind of sand that's made of sand. It's a kind of sand that's made of sand. I had just talked about some irregular shaped sea urchins before the break, and an example of this kind of sea urchin is actually the sand dollar. Sand dollars are much flatter than other urchins, and this is an adaptation that just better suited their environment. Like most echnoderms, sea urchins have an internal skeleton called a test. A sea urchin's test is made up of a type of calcium carbonate called starium, which is a porous structure that holds the urchin together, like jigsaw pieces cemented in place.

Sea urchin tests have five symmetrical parts arranged around a central point, like segments of an orange. And this shape isn't always obvious from the living creature, but it can be seen on their skeleton when it's dried. Yeah. I found this next bit kind of cute and funny and a little sad, but sea urchins can't swim. They live and move along the seafloor, favoring hard surfaces like coral and rocks. They have appendages called tube feet, and they often have suckers at the tips of these feet. The sea urchin uses the hydraulic pressure of water moving in and out of their little tube feet to move about slowly. They can also propel themselves with their spines. That's pretty impressive because they don't have brains.

And that's another fun fact. That was kind of sad. They're still cute though. Some sea urchins also have these pincer-like organs that look like little jaws called pedicillarii. These are mostly used for self-defense or to remove debris from the animal, and some of the pedicillariae and sea urchins are venomous. Urchins primarily feed on algae and kelp, but they are also omnivorous scavengers that will feed on animal matter. Their main diet then is algae, but they can also eat animals too, like sea cucumbers, their own kind, as well as mussels and sponges. So as sea urchins move about on their tube feet, they scrape algae into their mouth.

Their unique chewing organ, or the mouth part, of the sea urchin is called Aristotle's lantern. It includes complex jaws as well as five self-sharpening teeth. If something nutritious lands on a sea urchin's body out of reach of their Aristotle's lantern, they'll use their tube feet to pass the food into the mouth. A sea urchin's mouth is actually on the underside of its body, whereas its anus is on the top. And so they scrape off food from the ocean floor and it makes sense that the mouth is on the underside, and then when they poop, they excrete waste from the top of their body. Thought that was a funny little creature.

So everything living it turns out the longer like all living things are just tubes, right? Like food goes in one end and the waste comes out the other. That is very true. Yeah, that's my philosophical insight. And the video I did see of the harvesting actually, you cut it from the mouth, the underside. Yep, yeah, yeah, yeah, going in the base there, into the Aristotle's lantern, which I didn't know it was called. Isn't that interesting?

I think it's very fascinating. Yeah. Aristotle's lantern. Yeah, why? That's a good question. Ask Aristotle, I guess. But maybe you're asking yourself, and maybe not, but I'm going to tell you anyway, how do the sea urchins reproduce?

Most sea urchins reproduce by females releasing eggs directly into the water, and then these are fertilized by sperm. Some species' females hold eggs in their spines to better protect them. Most sea urchins will release millions of eggs at one time and live in huge colonies to increase the chances of reproductive success. There are also more solitary species, however. As I mentioned earlier, there are some species that are in fact poisonous. A lot of them are tropical. They have venom in their spines, and if you're unlucky enough to step on a venomous urchin, the toxins can enter the body through the puncture wound.

Some sea urchins' venoms can cause really gross symptoms like nausea and vomiting, breathing difficulties. But even the most venomous sea urchin has only been linked to one reported human death, so you'll most likely be fine. It's going to suck. I have no doubt. It's probably one of those things, I guarantee this is one of the things that people will tell you, you need all your friends to piss on you. It seems to go with, no, just like, if that's your thing, get after it. Why do people say that?

I don't know. I don't know. It just maybe, like, maybe someone said it and no one has, like, felt the need to contradict it because obviously, like, there are very few medical treatments that should involve pissing. No, I think so. Oh, that's such a weird trend. Some guy just like was trolling someone and then it became a thing. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like jellyfish stings, right? People do. Or like, yeah, someone was at the beach the other day and someone got whacked by a stingray. Yeah. And like someone was like, piss on it. Everyone knows to do that or thinks to do that.

It's like a thing. Yeah, don't! It's a good way to get banned from the beach for life. There are children there. Just put it in hot water, it's a stingray sting. That's really funny. Have a few beers and go to sleep. Good to know, good to know.

The most venomous, most toxic sea urchin is actually called the flower urchin. Its scientific name, which I was going to say but I'm not, but it basically translates into poison breath. So as I mentioned, in my opinion, the cutest sea urchin is called the sea potato. The sea potato is covered in short beige little spines that give it a furry appearance, and it's quite distinct from its other sharper-spined cousins. These sea urchins burrow into the seafloor and their fuzzy spines trap air, preventing the urchin from suffocating under the sand. Sea potatoes are also known as heart urchins due to the shape of their test. You can find them apparently in waters around the UK. James?

Okay, I'm going to look up a sea potato right now and see if I run into one of these guys. Oh yeah, these little chaps. Yeah, these little fluffers. These little chaps? Yeah. These little floof. Yeah, and you can find them when they're dried out too. They kind of look, it gets to the, you know, they look a bit like a sand dollar, right? That's sort of a thicker sand dollar. They've got some height to them. Yeah.

They're more round versus flat. Yeah, down in Cornwall. Yeah, they can get washed up on the beach sometimes. Not entirely potato looking, if we're honest. Yeah, I can see a passing similarity to potato, I suppose. Yeah, I think they're cute. Yeah, they do look, when you see them, when they look really fluffy, yeah, it does look like a beaver or something. Wait, how big have you seen them?

Can you show me with your hand? Yeah, like a hand size, you know? Whoa! Like a sort of, yeah, like if you were... James is using both hands to make a circle. Yeah, like if you were doing the hand heart. Very millennial of you. Yeah, yeah, a little reference. Yeah, like if you were doing the hand heart. Very millennial of you.

Yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah. Yeah. If you have a heart test. Yeah, if you're a millennial, you could go up to them and do that, I bet, and put it on your Instagram in a millennial way. And yeah. And only James will know what you're talking about.

Yeah, well, there's thousands of people that have watched this podcast, Shireen. All your friends will think you're cool. Tell them I told you. Got it. You heard it here first. Sea urchin's cool. The physiology of a sea urchin is actually pretty significant. As I mentioned earlier, there's only one part that is edible, which is the uni. When it comes to consumption, they're harvested for their gonads, and the gonad is essentially a sex gland or reproductive organ that produces the sex hormones of an organism. So the gonads or reproductive organs are the edible part of the sea urchin and that is known as uni rather than the sea urchin as a whole. Sometimes uni is mistakenly billed as roe which are fish eggs but it's not that. It's the reproductive organ.

And each sea urchin usually produces five gonads, or uni quote unquote tongues, that slip out with a spoon. And these gonads are sometimes bright yellow to orange lobes, and they're apparently stockpiles of sugars, amino acids, and salts, a trifecta of sweet, salty, and umami. And that's why I guess it's been dubbed as the butter of the sea or something like that. And they're also similar to oysters in the fact that they can vary from flavor depending on the species and the diet of the organism. Urchin lovers, for example, prize Hokkaido uni because of its umami-intensive flavor, which is developed because of the urchin's diet of the Hokkaido macroalgae kombu, aka the kelp.

The green, red, and purple species have the highest demand globally because their lobes tend to be larger and more visually appetizing. 99% of sea urchins are wild and harvested either by diving or drags. wild and harvested either by diving or drags. Yeah, if you are buying your sea urchins, I don't know where you would buy them even, but if you want to get the dived ones, I'm not sure if you could get dragnetted stuff in the US, but it's very damaging to the ocean floor. Any of this stuff, right, scallops, etc. you want it hand-dived, better yet, just go and get it yourself if you're able to, if you're close by the ocean. But yeah, don't be buying dragnetted stuff.

There are several species of note, and I mentioned some of them earlier, but others include the Murasaki, aka purple uni, and that uni fetches the highest price because of its large tongues and sweet flavor. Another species worth mentioning is the smaller Bafun uni, B-A-F-U-N, Bafun, but its name literally translates to horseshit, because of the way that these round, brownish little creatures cluster on the ocean floor. A little note here that I didn't know about until reading about this, and maybe someone else out there didn't know this either. Again, I learned English as a second language, so maybe it's obvious, but this word sea urchin is similar to the word fish, and that sea urchin can be both singular and plural. I didn't know that. So if you hear

me using both interchangeably, that's why. Cute little word. I mentioned this earlier, but freshness is the key to good uni. It should be firm and bright colored without any signs of seepage, and ideally still tiled or crisscrossed in its original packaging. Once it's harvested it begins to melt and its flavor can turn unforgettably bitter and off. In the best of worlds, uni is cleaned, iced, and shipped before it can spoil, but it can also be treated with additives, including alum, to keep it firm. These chemicals may contribute to an off flavor if the uni gets old. Some sushi chefs prefer ensui uni, which is shipped in a brine that mimics the salinity of seawater.

The global and domestic market for sea urchin and uni is extensive. The greatest consumption of sea urchin occurs in Japan, France, and Korea. Japanese consumption, however, wins by a landslide. The country consumes about 80 to 90 percent of the current global supply. Sea urchin is a traditional staple in Japanese cuisine. Japan was the largest global harvester of sea urchins until the 1980s, but high demand and a decrease of domestic supply forced Japan to look abroad. From the 1980s to 1994, the U.S., particularly Maine, was the largest exporter of green sea urchin. Today, it's Chile, which exports Chilean red urchin and accounts for 50% of global landings. Overall, global supply has decreased over the last 20 years because of storms,

decreasing kelp beds, invasive species, and overfishing. In 1995, for example, the global landings totaled to 120,000 tons. In 2017, it had decreased to 75,000. America has two major uni fisheries. On the West Coast, Santa Barbara uni comes from the giant red sea urchin, and it's noted for its large size, coarse texture, and brightly sweet flavor. Back east, Maine Unni comes from the longer spiked green sea urchin. In North America in general, the main sources of sea urchin come from the Canadian Maritime, Maine, and the Pacific Coast from British Columbia to California.

So green sea urchins are harvested from the Atlantic, while the red and purple urchins are harvested from the Pacific. These days, domestic supply stays domestic to meet the growing demand in ethnic markets. Domestic supply is also supplemented by imported product, mostly from Chile during the summer months. Fun fact, in New Zealand, kina urchins have long been part of the traditional Maori diet. So sea urchins have long been fished

and harvested everywhere where there's basically a coast from Peru to Italy and Korea. Reading about Korea and sea urchin harvesting is what led me to learn about the haenyo, who are female divers in the South Korean province of Jeju, where for centuries, these specially trained female divers have collected sea urchins for generations, and traditionally, girls start as young as 11 to train to dive for urchins. Their livelihood consists of harvesting a variety of mollux, seaweed, and other sea

life from the ocean. The Hainu are also known for their independent spirit and determination, and they are representative of the semi-matriarchal family structure of the province of Jeju. Another fun fact. I love a fun fact. You know what else loves a fun fact? Is it the sea potato? It's the ads. It's the sweet...

Oh, the sea potato! Every time I think of a sea potato, it feels nice. I'm gonna get you like a plushie. Okay, here are some ads. And we're back. So we're wrapping up this odyssey of going into sea urchins and this swimming journey we've had with James. It's not just humans who have found a way to get past the sea urchin's spiky exterior and eat its sex organs.

Their predators include a wide variety of fish, starfish, crabs and sea otters. Sea otters lie on their backs with sea urchins on their chest and they whack them with a rock to eat what's inside. Yeah, it's a cute thing to see. I love sea otters. They are so cute. They are adorable. They're just lying on their backs. It's like a little guy's go-to position.

They keep a little stone with them. Yeah, it's a little pocket. Yeah, so cute. But sea urchins are actually not just used by people solely in cuisine. Perhaps because of their mysterious shapes, fossils of sea urchin tests have also been historically used as protective amulets to ward off evil. Apparently, in southern England, James, some sea urchin fossils were traditionally thought to be thunderbolts, frozen in rock, and these thunder stones were thought to protect a house

from being struck by lightning. Interesting. I'm teaching you about your culture. Yeah, that's right. Thank you. Thanks, Shireen. And I have ding a persona of a white guy there. And as James mentioned at the top, climate change is of course affecting sea urchins, and climate change is affecting everything. Sea urchins are sensitive to changes in their

environment. They can act as an early warning system for potential problems in their ecosystem as well as rising temperatures. Ocean acidification and rising temperatures are probably the biggest long-term threat to sea urchins as a whole. Increasing ocean acidification increases the rate at which calcium carbonate dissolves. So as things get more acidic, it will likely become harder and harder for sea urchins to accumulate enough calcium carbonate to make a solid test, and their tests will then get thinner and weaker. Experiments in labs have shown that this can happen even with very minor increases in acidification.

Sea urchins in this way can help illustrate why it's so important to protect the balance of nature in our already threatened ocean ecosystems. So that's the sea urchin. Yeah. If you live in like Northern or Central California, as the water gets hotter, the kelp begins to die and the dead little pieces of kelp are fed upon by the sea urchins. And so the sea urchin population has ballooned and they're taking over the kelp. You get what are called barrens, urchin barrens, where it used to be a

kelp. Kelp forests are amazing. If you've never dived in a kelp forest, you should dive in a kelp forest. I mean, don't fucking just do it if you don't know what you're doing because you'll die. You know, provided you're capable of freediving or scuba diving. But now they're gone, right? And it's just beds of urchins, which is really sad because the kelp obviously is a sustaining part of that whole ecosystem. So yeah, be nice to the oceans. Please be nice to the oceans.

You can gather them without even diving. You can gather them in the intertidal there. Don't be going, don't be like getting clipped out, right? Don't go to a place where there is no beach or high tide and then hang around there until the tide gets high because you're gonna have to swim then. So don't be doing that. Be sensible. Respect the ocean. Yeah, I love a sea urchin. I'll put a picture of one. I love to show them. This is my weird like... Toxic trait? Yeah, yeah. My toxic trait. Yeah, My toxic trait is showing children sea urchins.

Like, I like to free dive. Well, show them the sea potato. Yeah, well, I'm in California now. Oh, you mean in person. You mean in person. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm not just walking up to kids and whacking out my iPhone, Shari. I'm not weird.

No. If I am gathering sea urchins on a free dive, then I'll come back into the beach, right? I have a little bodyboard and I have a bag on it, put the urchins in there. I'm sure kids love that. I remember going to those aquariums where you stick your hand in the water as a child, you don't know any better. And the little starfish and everything, that was the most interesting part.

So I'm sure the kids love that shit. Kids love a creature. Yeah. Did you learn anything about sea urchins? I learned a lot. Yeah. I learned an awful lot about like, I didn't know anything about these, these, I'm excited about these Korean ladies, but he's going to Google that later.

Yeah. I feel like they deserve more of a deep dive. Pun intended. Yeah. Magic Shireen. Incredible. Maybe there'll be my next podcast series. I'll be there. I've contrived ways to free dive on, I went free diving a lot in the Marshall Islands in six.

I'm stoked for iHeartRadio to pay for me to go free diving somewhere else. Let's advocate for that. Let's petition. Get the union involved. Anyway, that's this episode of Eat Could Happen here. And until next time... Important Pickup Alert! We're back.

James alerted me to a fact that was too important to not include in this episode. James, what did I miss? What you missed, Shireen, was the eighth wonder of the world, which is sea urchins wearing little hats. That's right, folks. Sea urchins wearing little hats. This is where we fact check all our reporting in order to bring you the cutting edge shit. Professional journalism. So what are we talking about? We talked about tube feet, right? Urchins move using their little tube feet and they contract small muscles that force water into the tube foot

to take each step. And the end of each tube foot is very, very sticky. They used to be described as suction cups, but now researchers are thinking of them more as like a bio adhesive rather than a suction that sticks to things, including the floor. And they use these sticky tube feet to pick up and hold onto rocks, shells, golf balls, and other little treasures. Treasures including tiny hats. Behavioral ecologists call urchin hats quote unquote covering behavior.

They don't call the hats that, but they call the act of them covering themselves covering behavior. That name is related to the first and most prevalent hypothesis about this phenomena, that the urchins are covering themselves to provide shelter from light, predators, or maybe even both. There are experiments which confirm the light hypothesis. Researchers in Ireland found that when the urchins were exposed to the full spectrum of UV light, they would pick up their little hats and or move to a shady corner of their tanks in order to avoid harmful UV radiation. Around the same time of these findings,

another scientist in California was studying the covering behavior of Pacific Rose Flower Urchins. The Rose Urchin study wasn't conducted in a lab. Instead, the urchin behavior was observed in their natural habitat, and what they found was that the sample site with the greatest wave energy had the most covering behavior among the urchins. So what is it? Sun safety? Or is it like a protective gear like seat belts or knee pads? Are they protecting themselves from currents and waved image instead of floating away,

or are they afraid of the sun? Researchers have tested several factors simultaneously to trace the covering behavior to its source. In the lab, green urchins were exposed to common predators, wave surges, and algae blades, as well as sunlight. And as it turns out, predators were a bust. Their presence had no significant impact on the rate of covering behavior, so it's not necessarily camouflaged for all urchins. And similarly to how sea stars can regenerate lost arms, urchins are also constantly regenerating lost and broken spines, but this regeneration takes energy. And so, for some urchins, it might be a safer bet, particularly for a small urchin who is

vulnerable to dislodgement and damage, to pick up some extra weight and put on a little sun protection at the same time. And of course because humans are humans, once 3D printing came along people started making sea urchins tiny little urchin hats, which is why I keep calling them hats, because now they are hats and people have them in aquariums or in their personal urchin hats, which is why I keep calling them hats, because now they are hats and people have them in aquariums or in their personal urchin tank. Because sure enough, these urchins will skitter along and pick these hats up and put them on their head, which we now know is actually their butt, but they put them on the top of themselves. Not all urchins wear hats though. They're all ass hat.

Right? A little ass hat. That's funny. Urchin ass hat. What a great band. It could be... That's a great band name. Yeah, yeah. If you are listening and in need of a sort of like a... You're welcome. Yeah. Like Blink 182, that kind of music. I think that's what I associate with Urchin asshat. I agree. Urchin asshat.

Not all urchins wear hats, and a Canadian study found that smaller urchins are the ones that are more likely to cover up. And the logic behind their covering behavior, it seems to depend, as I said, on the species of urchin and the environment they inhabit. So out in more tropical regions, the collector urchin, as it's called, it may be protecting itself from the sun. And these urchins can be found in shallow waters off of Hawaii, the Indo-Pacific, and the Bahamas, and this is where they're exposed to a lot of sunlight.

Meanwhile, researchers think that the green sea urchin uses its adornments to weigh itself down, and this species tends to live in the shallow waters of the northern Atlantic and Pacific oceans where it gets constantly battered by waves. Wherever there is a lot of wave activity, the urchin heavily covers up the top and the sides of its body with whatever it can find, which helps make it heavy enough to avoid getting swept away. And then further south, Antarctic urchins have been found to cover themselves as a way to avoid predators. Their main predators are king crabs and sea anemones, and researchers found that they were more likely to put on coverings when predators were around. In

the lab experiment, another species of urchin was more likely to survive being exposed to a predator if it was given shells to cover itself. So these decorations may be a type of camouflage to keep some urchins from being found and eaten, not necessarily all urchins. And then there's the kina, a large urchin found in New Zealand. This urchin seems to use the items

that it collected as a food source. Researchers found that this species was covering itself even in the dark, which suggested that it wasn't trying to protect itself from sunlight, and its predators don't rely on sight to find their prey, so camouflaging itself would be pointless. In a field study, they found that these urchins were carrying algae, aka a source of their little urchin food, and so they're basically carrying around like a snack bag or a fridge for themselves, which can be helpful because these urchins might not always have a lot of algae around for

grazing. So, now you know about little hats and the little things that urchins do to cover themselves and collect things. I didn't realize that it was more than just covering their little ass hats or ass heads, rather. But yeah, I thought it was really interesting and good on James to remind us to talk about Urchin hats. Yeah, great. Many things that I've learned or recently got a TikTok account, so I'm learning a lot. Oh. Yeah, no, it's not like I'm not, I'm not tick tocking. And I just want to be extremely clear about this.

I got it because lots of the folks in Myanmar use tick tock to communicate with the world. So I've been tick tocking and I've learned a lot learning a lot about Taylor Swift and Olivia Rodrigo and Urchin. That's not necessary. Thank you, James, for joining me on this swimming journey of urchin facts and things. When you suggested talking about sea urchins, I did not expect them to be so cute and so interesting, so thank you for that. And if you have an urchin around, go get it a little hat.

Be its little buddy. Get him on Etsy. I've just been looking. Oh no. Go on Etsy. Get her a Viking helmet. I think those ones are the most hardcore. That's funny. Anyway, okay, that's now the end of this episode. So you're welcome for this update, and uh, bye. Bye. back. The new developments in the University of Idaho murder case. It was an unimaginable crime. In the early morning of November 13th, 2022, four University of Idaho students killed. Police have no suspect and no murder weapon. A nationwide manhunt captivates the world. Moscow PD saying today they're now looking for a white Hyundai Elantra.

Then, a shocking arrest. There is now a suspect in custody. This is a PhD student in criminology. This is the guy. Will he be found innocent? He claims he has an alibi. Or face death? Listen to season two of the Idaho Massacre on the iHeartRadio app, she has an alibi. Or face death. Listen to season two of the Idaho Massacre on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts,

or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Andrea Gunning, host of the all new podcast There and Gone. It's a real life story of two people who left a crowded Philadelphia bar, walked to their truck and vanished. Nobody hears anything, nobody sees anything. Did they run away?

Was it an accident or were they murdered? A truck and two people just don't disappear. The FBI called it murder for hire. It was definitely murder for hire for Danielle, not for Richard. He's your son, and in your eyes he's innocent, but in my eyes he's just some guy my sister was with. In this series, I dig into my own investigation to find answers for the families and get justice for Richard and Danielle. and Danielle.

Listen to There and Gone South Street on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. We all know what that music means. Is somebody getting coronated? No, it's time for the Olympics in Paris. The opening ceremony for the 2024 Paris Games is coming on July 26th. Who are these athletes? When are the games they're playing? You may be looking for the sports experts to answer those questions, but we're not that.

Well, what are we? We're two guys. I'm Matt Rogers. And I'm Bowen Yang. And we're doing an Olympics podcast? Uh, yeah. We're hosting the Two Guys Five Rings podcast. You get the two guys, us, to start every podcast, then the five rings come after. Watch every moment of the 2024 Paris Olympics beginning July 26 on NBC and Peacock. And for the first time, you can stream the 2024 Paris games on the iHeartRadio app and listen to Two Guys,

Five Rings on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration in the United States, awarded for gallantry and bravery in combat at the risk of life above and beyond the call of duty. Since it was established in 1861, there have been 3,517 people awarded with the medal. I'm Malcolm Gladwell, and our new podcast from Pushkin Industries and I Heart Media is about those heroes. What they did, what it meant, and what their stories tell us about the nature of courage and sacrifice. Without him and the leadership that he exhibited in bringing those boats in and assembling them to begin with and bringing them in, it saved a hell of a lot of lives, including my own.

Listen to Medal of Honor, Stories of Courage on the iHeartRadio app, Apple podcasts, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Welcome to Icadapit here, a podcast that is droning under the oppression of whoever keeps changing the stupid zoom interface. It's different every time. It always gets worse. It never gets better. Please stop. We're trads for zoom.

Zoom layout. Just get it one time, put the recording thing on the stupid panel on the bottom and then never change it. It simply never gets better. Yeah, this is Mia who's extremely annoyed at zoom. With me is James. Yep, also extremely annoyed at zoom. Hi, just in solidarity with Mia.

Fuck him. Yeah, and also also extremely annoyed right now is the man stages the world's worst coup asked to report to prison. I don't think we can call it the world's worst coup, Mia. That's a bold claim. You're forgetting Silvercorp. No, so, okay. Here's the thing about Silvercorp, right?

The guys who defeated Silvercorp had guns. Yeah, but Silvercorp didn't. They had BB guns. Yeah, but here's the thing, right? They, they, those guys, again, those guys did not have real guns defeated by guys with guns. These guys had guns. They had a lot of guns. They were defeated by by people with flags? Yeah. And a guy standing in a doorway being like, no, you can't come in, go home. Report directly to jail. I genuinely believe this is the worst coup I've ever seen in my entire life.

And we lived in the Venezuela one. I distinctly remember stepping out of a post office and checking my phone and getting 18 messages from my friends that said, Do you do what do you know about the coup in Turkey? That was a terrible coup. That was they they they could have they could have just saved us all this trouble of shot aired one down from a jet fighter, but they didn't. You know, there's there's been plenty of bad ones. There was that that coup recently in the Democratic Republic of the Congo which the fiasco

Yeah, hilariously this coup oblivion recovering today happened exactly one year and three days After the bark the March of the Wagner core Yeah, I forgot about that one. What wow yeah? Everyone's trying it guys if you believe you can achieve it a go. Do a coup if you want to. Why not? Donald Trump, he tried one. Didn't work very well. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, we really, I mean, I also, I mean, we can't forget January 9th. The even the, the, well, I don't, I don't, because January 6th was already farce, but like we forgot the farcest farce version of it in Brazil. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, the old building coup.

Yeah, lots of lots of very stupid coups. But this this is probably the worst one. Um, so we're going to be explaining sort of what happened. But the thing about this coup is that in order to understand what's happening with this coup, we have to get through, I think, a part of Bolivian history that has not been really well understood or talked about on the left, which is effectively what happened in Bolivia after the coup in 2019. I think people sort of know that there was a coup and that it got overturned. But comma, that was sort of the point at which which the sort of Anglo media and like the sort

of press that hits the left here kind of just took off. So you have your sort of 2019 coup, the place where sort of everything getting lost kind of starts is that so there's this coup. The left sort of response to the coup is not very strong because the sort of social movements have been hollowed out by the sort of incorporation into the Bolivian state. So they sort of just don't have the juice to really kind of, you know to roll this coup back on this size, this is make the biggest this is the twenty nineteen to not twenty twenty four to. Yeah you know the thing with the twenty nineteen to that makes it very different from this one is that that one was you know there was a broad base of support for this right in the sort of. I'm in the sort of like far right out of Santa Cruz and also out of sort of like more moderate center-right factions. So, you know, there are sort of large street movements in favor of this. This is not true of the most recent one.

Yeah, absolutely not. Yeah, but, you know, by 2020, as 2020 is sort of progressing, A, Añx is coup government is a fiasco their management of kovat is just terrible enormous numbers of deaths I mean actually I mean not by American standards, I guess but you know, really really mismanaged I mean my I have friends there who are talking about how if you're going to the hospital and you needed to use Like a piece of medical equipment you had to buy the medical equipment or a part to fix a machine and show up to the hospital with the part because they couldn't order it. Yeah, I've seen that in a few places in the world. It's never a good time.

Yeah, it's not good. It was a real shit show. And by, I think about early September of 2020, the left has gotten its shit together. And are these this massive set of roadblocks. Bolivian social politics tends to sort of be about roadblocks because you know country lot of mountains lot of roads you can very easily block off and then prevent anything from you know for example entering a city. Yep. Good idea. So they're they're able to just basically shut down the Bolivian economy. The government is once again on the verge of collapse. And once again, and we'll get to the first time this happened, but even realize once again, sort of pulls the supporters off of the barricades so he can go win an election rather than, you know, attempt to just bring down the sort of coup government. So, you know, that eventually happens. The government is forced to hold elections because, you know, they've they've lost control of

the country. And the MAS takes, you know, wins this election by overwhelming margins. The MAS is, even Morales' party, it's the sort of like party of the Bolivian left. But yeah, the guy who comes to power is Louis Louis or say he's an interesting figure because he is kind of We're gonna get more into sort of what the MIS is in a bit But he is from a kind of right wing of the party. That's not Talked about very much Yeah, he is a you know He's not a guy who comes from the social movements in the way that Morales did.

He was a guy from the, he was the president of the Coca-Cola Growers Union. Arce is a banker. He's an economist and a banker. He comes out of the central bank of Bolivia. And he had been kind of the guy running Bolivian economic policy, but but he is from the developmentalist wing of the party, which means he is effectively from the wing of the party that are the kind of like center left capitalists that the social movements kind of allied themselves to under more allies in order to do this sort of national economic development policy.

So these are a lot of these are a lot of mining sector guys. These are a very specific cadre of these central bank guys. And I think this is the part. The thing about the MAS that's relevant here is that it usually also has a base support among people you wouldn't expect. I mean, there's a lot of small business owners who support them because the MAS really did, for most of the

time they've been in power preside over sort of astonishing economic growth. They sort of did this by marrying these social movements to this kind of national bourgeoisie developmentals faction. Yeah. And the other thing that the MAS sort of does in the period between when they come back to power in late 2020, 2021 and now is they do, they actually go after the people who did the coup, right? On yes, who was the previous president is just in prison for helping you do the coup.

The other big person who's been arrested is Luis Fernando Camacho, who is a man who in 100% complete seriousness calls himself Bacho Camacho. So that's, that's a good sign. Yeah. That's an indication of who this guy is, which is he is a really fanatical, really fanatical Christian nationalist. Um, he, he's playing a very similar role to, I mean, actually, I think even, even in a lot of ways, sort of more radical roles, what Bolsonaro played in Brazil, where Camacho in Bolivia is this kind of, he's the guy who's rallied both evangelicalism and Catholicism, although he's rallied both of them into this virulent, and specifically

in Bolivia, anti-indigenous political force. The 2019 coup is seen in, very, very explicitly is seen in religious terms. Both Andes and Cabacho talk about how like the word of God is back in the Capitol and the, we all put like all of this sort of Indigenous, various Indigenous stuff is just never going to come back. So Cabacho gets arrested in 2022 for, you know, doing this coup. And this sets off. So he, by the way, is the governor of the state of Santa Cruz. And this sets off a bunch of like a right wing general strike, a bunch of riots, like hundreds of people are injured in street fighting between his sort of fanatics and everyone else in the country. It does an enormous amount of economic damage. It sets off

roadblocks. The government, I mean, Camacho, I think also is still in prison, but it kind of, you know, the government's kind of forced to make concessions to these people. So, you know, the whole sort of, or say government is kind of on shaky footing from the beginning. government is kind of on shaky footing from the beginning. And all of this is before the Bolivian economy really hits the ship. But before before we get to the Bolivian economy, do you know what else hits the shit? Oh, is it the meal kit preparation delivery service that we are not allowed to mention? For legal reasons? Yes, yes.

Yeah. Yes. Yeah. You'll be pooping your brains out. Don't do it. We are back. So let's talk about the other thing that's happening in Bolivia. Well, okay, I see other thing. One of the one of the four other things that's been happening in Bolivia. And that is the real sort of collapse of the Bolivian economy. So the Bolivian economy,

Bolivia has been kind of different from the rest of the sort of kind of left wing, pink tide governments that were elected in the sort of 2000s era sort of anti-globalization politics. Most of those countries' economies imploded a long time ago, like Venezuela is sort of obviously the most famous case, but all of these economies fell apart because these were all economies based on the commodity boom. We've talked about this in some of our Brazil episodes, but the very short version is that a lot of countries

that produce sort of primary commodities, so like your copper, your natural gas, I mean, things like soybeans too kind of fall in this category. So you're sort of mining stuff or some of your farming stuff. All of these sort of industrial input, primary commodity stuff, all got massive price spikes in the early 2000s because the Chinese economy had integrated into the rest of the world economy fully by joining the World Trade Organization.

This set off this massive industrialization boom in China. The levels of demand that this induces is unbelievable because Chinese economic growth in that period is unreal. It's economic growth that is unreal in a country with a billion people in it. This produced a shock of demand for all of these sort of mineral resources that was not entirely unprecedented, but enormously large and also allowed all of these sort of social democratic economies to, you know, kind of paper over the inherent contradictions of their base being both capitalist and also a bunch of like unions by there just sort

of being enough state revenue from all of these all of these exports to just kind of buy everyone off paper. Yeah, clientelism. Yeah, yeah. And that stops working when the economy goes under. But Bolivia's economy does a lot better than the rest of the economies in the region. There are there are a lot of reasons for this. Part of it is that, you know, our say who is running the economy of Bolivia in the region. There are a lot of reasons for this. Part of it is that, you know, Arcee, who is running the economy of Bolivia in the sort of the period, like post

2008 period, when everyone else's economies are collapsing, he is genuinely doing some pretty interesting macroeconomic stuff. Also, the other thing that's going on is that Bolivia main export and people, okay, so people in the US tend to think of Bolivia as a country that produces lithium. That's not true. That might be true. Maybe 30 years in the future. That will be Bolivia's primary export. But Bolivia's primary export for the last two decades has been natural gas.

And natural gas prices didn't quite do the same thing that sort of oil prices did that kind of imploded the Venezuelan economy. Yeah. And so through sort of like economic management and these sort of political alliances and the high price of natural gas, the Bolivian economy had sort of been fine. Unfortunately, what's happening right now

is that Bolivia is running out of natural gas. And because it's running out of natural gas and because it's running out of natural gas and also because their economy is an export based economy based on natural gas. Not so good. Not such good vibes. Yeah, it's very bad. The entire economy is falling apart because, you know, this is a very, very classic kind of economic crisis. You know, the economic crisis are having, I'm not seeing it described as a balance of payments crisis, but that's what it is, which is that the Bolivian economy works on buying things with American dollars. So, you know, like a lot of the businesses in the country involve our sort of import

businesses, right? You know, I mean, I know people who run businesses like this in Bolivia, where, you know, you're importing shoes or like motors. Yeah, stuff like that. And you buy them with American dollars and you sell them in Bolivia. But the thing is, this requires a constant supply of American dollars to go buy manufactured goods from other places, because Bolivia's manufacturing economy is effectively a joke. And this is something that was true of all of these economies. I mean, Bolivia never, they kind of tried to industrialize in the 70s, but they never got as far along with it as a country like Brazil or a country like Venezuelaize in the 70s, but they never got as far along with

it as a country like Brazil or a country like Venezuela did in the 70s. And the other thing about these, all these sort of pink tie governments, they all took power in economies that have been completely deindustrialized by neoliberalism. We talked about this with Brazil. Brazil went from a country that was a kind of effectively a first, not quite a first, maybe a second tier, a large, a powerful second tier industrial power to a country whose economy is almost entirely based on sort of primary commodity production and farming bullshit. So they've they've moved down, they've moved down the

value chain, they're manufacturing less stuff, they're producing shit that's on the bottom, they're getting less value from value added bullshit moving up the chain. And this is this is also the problem with the Bolivian economy. And because the natural gas is drying up, they don't have enough dollars coming into the economy for people to use to buy things. And the Bolivian currency is also pegged to the dollar, right? So they're supposed to be an official exchange rate at which, you know, X amount of money is worth X amount of dollars.

And that's all falling apart. People are sort of running around in the streets trying to find people who will exchange their currency for dollars. So this is a classic sort of balance of payments. Well, I guess it's kind of a balance of payments. But they're having a giant dollar shortage. This is really, really messing up. I mean, not just the economy, but the entire political system is really kind of coming apart under this.

Now, OK, I talked about things kind of coming apart. There is another thing that is coming apart in Bolivia, which is the M.A.S. is shattering. Yes, the shattering. It's splintering in two. is the M.A.S. is shattering. Yes, the shattering. It's splintering into. So what is the M.A.S.? So the M.A.S. is this part. Oh, OK. So it has a slightly weird history, which is that. So the M.A.S. was a completely random, actually kind of.

Kind of right wing political party, but importantly, it had electoral status. So it was it's a party that was taken over by the social movements at the end of the sort of stuff we're going to get to in order to be able to run like in order to be able to run candidates for office. But this means that because again, because it was literally a it was an existing legal registered party that was taken over from the outside. And because of how it emerged, it's always been seen as

a movement party. It's supposed to be the assembly of Bolivia's left-wing social movements. These left-wing social movements are the movements that, emerge isn't quite the right word, but they're the movements that solidified and began to exert their power from 2000 to 2006 in this enormous sequence of social uprising against Bolivia Bolivian neoliberalism. The most famous of these are the water and gas wars, which are these fights against water privatization and the sort of gas line and this alliance of peasant unions, sort of the traditional sort of urban sort of proletariat, like traditional sort of like urban left, these these new street movements, coca growers unions, miners unions and a whole array of indigenous groups that

we frankly do not have time to get into here because the politics there are extremely. The philosophy is extremely complicated. I don't know if I've talked about this on this show before, but one of the I mean, we're talking about like, like they have like philosophical constructs that I don't understand. It's this philosophical construct that's like a dialectic, but there's three parts of it. And they don't it doesn't resolve. They just all kind of grind intention with each other. Right. So like, OK, we're not really going to get into that. It's outside the scope of the show.

If you're more interested in this read Rhythms of the Pachacuti or get a doctorate, I guess. Yeah, I guess you have to return to grad school. Your options are limited. But you know, there's this coalition of all of these kinds of unions, these rural unions, urban unions, urban street movements, rural street movements gathered together, gathered their strength, set up a million roadblocks and just smash the neoliberal right. The Bolivia's right is basically completely destroyed from the period of 2006 until 2019. That was the first time they ever took power.

They did it in a coup and they held power for about one year before they were kicked out of power again. So they basically completely reshaped all of politics in Bolivia. The second round of roadblocks very nearly destroyed the Bolivian state until, as I sort of alluded to earlier, even where allies pulled supporters off the barricade in order to get an election in 2006. And this is the election the MAS won. And to understand the kind of seismic change of this, right, the MAS is the first party in the history of Bolivia to win a majority of the seats in the parliament by itself. First party ever. It completely destroyed

the existing sort of political system. And again, this was supposed to be a sort of new kind of party, right? The theory of the MAS is the organization of the social movements. Former Vice President and sometimes Marxist Garcia Lanera described it as, quote, there's a dialectical relationship between the social movements and the party. Now, this is a lie, or more precisely, if this is a dialectic, it is not a Hegelian or Marxist dialectic where the sublation of two parts creates a concrete totality or a whole that is neither of the things that it was before it. This is a Maoist dialectic where two sides face off with each other and one of them hits the other side of the head with a hammer until it dies. It's just a conflict. It's just there are two people and they both want to control the thing.

That's what ends up happening, right? So the social movements and the indigenous movements in particular have been fracturing for a decade. You know, there are a whole series of large fights, even in the early 2010s, over the NAS doing these infrastructure things that everyone else in the country was like, why are you building a road through indigenous land? There's these huge fights. Many such cases.

Yeah. So, you know, this is the kind of hollowing out and the kind of conflict that had led to the social movements being completely unable to overturn the coup in 2019 and it taking them until the end of 2020 to really pull their shit together and, you know, overturn the coup. And you know what else overturns coups? That's a hefty promise. Is it arming the Working Class? It is Arming the Working Class.

We are sponsored by, yeah, Arm the Entire Working Class. We're back. So, okay, so now we get to the present split in the social. What has happened now is that, you know, Arce and. And even Morales had always kind of gotten along usually, but once, you know, Arce took power, he instead of he didn't want to sort of just be a proxy for even Morales, he had his own sort of actually like not great agenda either, a sort of more technocratic agenda.

Although, you know, you have to sort of ask evil like you're the one who brought these people into the party. Like, I don't know what you were expecting. Yeah, I brought these people in that they weren't going to cover as governed as a sort of center left technocratic capitalist government. You know, you could have seen this coming. But they have been increasingly fighting and the two the two sides are now implacably hostile. They are saying evil fucking hate each other. And this this divide has split every single social movement in Bolivia from the landless workers movement to the cocoa growers to the indigenous federations to the fucking urban

trade unions to the miners unions. Every one of these organizations either has officially split into two factions. That's one's an evil faction and one's in our safe faction. Or they are in the middle of the fight where, you know, they're both sides are still fighting for control over over, you know, their union federation. And this is not a clean left rightright split, which is this is actually, I mean, that was kind of what I was expecting ish when this fight started that I was sort of expecting that this was going to end up as a fight between sort of, you know, the left,

the social movements and the sort of center right base. But that's not really what happens. It is kind of a left-right split, but you know, it's also a split over the person of Evo himself. And because it's partially a split over Evo himself, there's a lot of like sort of more left-wing groups that are kind of are kind of backing our say because they don't want even more allies to come back into power and re solidify his control over all of these all the social movements. And they're, you know, angry at him for a whole series of attempts to sort of co-opt their movements. It's also, you know, it's also a, it's also a split about sort of how autonomous a social movement should be.

It should be able to be from government policy. It's it's, it's, you know, it's kind of external to this, but one of the other things that's going on is that Evo has been really unpopular with a lot of feminist groups in Bolivia for a very long time for a lot of reasons, including, I mean, you know, one of the big ones is Bolivia's horrific Femicide Crisis, which the MAS has been in power for almost 20 years and has done jack shit to actually like deal with, right? You know, so there's, there are all of these sort of fractures breaking out. Partially also, it's a war between, for control of the MAS between the Coca-Gurus

unions and the miners unions. So this is a shit show. It is a complete fiasco. And then you know, the thing that makes it more of a fiasco is, you know, we talked about this sort of with, we did an episode about kind of what's been happening with the sort of pink tide governments a while back. And you know, one of the things you talked about in that episode was Ecuador, where Ecuador has this left wing base that should win every single election until the end of time. And they don't because they're constantly fighting each other. And this is effectively the beginning of hopefully it doesn't turn into that. But I mean, the M.A.S., if it is if it is even sort of united is an unprecedented Bolivian political juggernaut,

it should win every election. Like, I mean, not till the end of time. They probably probably should only win. I don't know that they have kind of demographic issues right now. Yeah, but you know, they should still be winning effectively every every election. And they're not. And the reason that they're not is because of this shit or losing. They might not because of because of all of these all all of these splits. And these are very these this isn't a, these are very,

very serious political splits. I mean, at one of the miners workers meetings, very famously, the two sides broke into fistfights. I think 140 people were injured. So, you know, this is, this is, these are very serious fights. There's also a whole disaster right now over who actually is the candidate of the M.A.S. because Evo held this Congress of the M.A.S. It was his supporters that Arsé was not at. And they said that because he didn't because I say he didn't show up, he was kicked out of the party. Classic.

So this whole thing, so he's sadly been expelled. But like the courts got the electoral courts are now involved because the electoral courts have to decide what like, you know, they have to figure out what what candidate their party's running. So it's this it's a complete catastrophe. And in the midst of this complete catastrophe, there is the worst coup of the 21st century. So let's get into finally this coup. So this coup is run by a guy named Juan Jose Zuniga. He's the commander of the Bolivian army. He is handpicked by Arce to run the army to be the guy who-

Yes! The Arce dude. Yeah. And this is, you know, this has sort of shades of the fact that Pinochet was sort of elevated by, by I end in the social Democrats, but Reminds me of Franco as well. Like getting promoted above his peers. Yeah.

This was this those were tragedy. This is farce. So what happens is that on Tuesday of last week, Zuniga goes on TV and says, I am going to... Ivo Morales cannot be allowed to take power again. I will stop him from taking power. And Arsé is like, dude, what the fuck? And just immediately fires him because, you know, you can't do that?

Yeah, like almost every, every country with a codified constitution has prohibitions on its military intervening and its politics, right? Like, yeah, the basics of democracy. Bolivia has had a series of military governments and military coups across the 20th century, including the fucking cocaine coup that I've talked about at length in our World of the Communist League episodes that ends with Klaus Barbie fucking running around. This is a country that has had military coups quite literally staffed by actual Nazis, right? Yeah.

So, you know, this is a place that takes the threat of a military coup very, very seriously. There hasn't been one, blessedly, in a long time, but there's a lot of people who are fucking alive for the last one. And you know, and so this is, you know, people are extremely unhappy, even people who I think in theory would be OK with, you know, the government being deposed like absolutely under no circumstances want the fucking military running the country because again, right, everyone fucking remembers how bad that shit was. But what appears to have happened is that Zdenyanka realizes that so he's just been fired, right? Which means that he has a very short time window, in which he could try to pull some shit. Which means that whatever he may have been planning, I don't know what his actual plans were, he may have been actually planning a coup, he may not have been until here, which is to be like, well, I guess we have to do it now.

If he was planning, he wasn't planning very well. Yeah, yeah. What results from this very... I think results on this very short timetable is is the worst coup I've ever seen so what appears to have happened is that on Wednesday He gathers the troops that he's able to gather which is not that I mean we're talking like a hundred guys Maybe yeah, it was not a you know they had they had a decent number of armored vehicles, but it was not like a lot of troops It does not appear that he even had the support of a lot of troops, right? Like, yeah, a lot of the army seems to have kind of been sitting there

going, what the fuck is going on? But it was, you know, I was watching the videos were like the live streams from journalists on the ground of these troops. And they're just they're just worth it. Many of them. No, they really weren't like it was The whole thing was just really fucking shocking. Like, shockingly bad. They didn't even surround the building. They just went up to one door.

Yeah, so what happens is they use an armored vehicle to ram the door of the Presidential Palace. And they try to take control of it. But the thing is, right... Arcee isn't in the presidential palace. He and his cabinet are in the next building over. So they've taken the wrong building. It's a good start. First off, so things are going great.

And again, this this is not a sort of, you know, this is not a coup that follows a standard coup repertoire of I seize the president, seized the radio station, seized the airport, seized the trains, right? Yeah. And have been traffic over the military barracks is which are your short, this is your sort of basic five step plan to how to do a coup. They will be doing that episode soon, by the way. Yeah, yeah. Given today's Supreme Court, we're in the clear. Oh, yeah, yeah, we're in the clear. Yeah, the five step plan to do a coup. But, you know, so they don't they don't even succeed at part one.

So they're kind of just kind of milling around I the front of the presidential palace and trying to get into the next building where the president actually is. So it's also the demands are also very weird. Zuniga claims that he's not overthrowing the government. He claims that he's still loyal to our say, but he's going to form a new cabinet. Oh, yeah. Useful. Yeah. That's how you normally do that.

Yeah. So he's like yelling about the economic crisis as he's going to quote restored democracy and quote release political prisoners, which I kind of get. OK, so the political prisoners thing, I think, is about the people who've been arrested for doing a 2019 coup. I have no idea what the restore democracy means. I don't know if he had any idea what he meant by restore democracy. Something was happening. But the thing is, the other thing about this coup is that it has no backing at all.

I mean, it doesn't even have backing the army, but it has no, it doesn't even have backing among the right. Both Macho Camacho and Janine on yet on yes. You have people who did like the last one. Both condemned the coup. So people she is trying to break out of prison, condemned the coup. Right. So this is going nowhere. Worst coup I've ever seen.

So meanwhile, ours are saying it is cabinet are in the next building over appointing a new commander of the army so that the new commander of the army can go outside and order them order the troops to go back to their barracks. And this is kind of what's happening, but also meanwhile outside so that these troops have like taken over the square in front of the presidential palace and that they have sort of successfully managed to take over the square with a bunch of sort of military police and riot gear.

But there's a sort of crowd who's come to yell at the army. Right. And it's just very weird spectacle because there's all these soldiers who all have long guns. Right. Being protected by a light of cops with riot shields. Yeah. Yeah. So what they know, if you open up on the on the crowd, like, you don't have enough numbers to not get stone-steathed. Yeah, it's like every single one of you is going to be individually executed. So they're all...

By people who don't have guns. And that's the thing, that, you know, when I say executed, I mean, like, they're gonna get executed by the government, that's assuming they live long enough and are not just beaten to death by the crowd, which is also a real possibility. But, you know, so this crowd is sort of approaching a lot of riot police. You're getting tear gas. But this is and I kind of emphasize this enough.

This is not a kind of normal, like highly organized Bolivian mass protest where, you know, all of the union unions call general strike in the middle of this. But again, this whole thing lasts maybe two and a half hours. So there's not time to do the actual kind of sort of roadblocks and stuff like that. There's not time to actually do the organization that you would need to do to overturn this coup. This coup falls apart so fast that people don't have time to make protest signs. All they have are flags. They do not have time to write signs out. That is that is something they don't have time to cope with chance.

I was watching the funniest part about this whole thing. So I was watching a live stream of the protesters and the protesters had gotten this kind of I guess you call it sort of a kind of metal gate. I guess it was this big sort of it almost looked like, you know, how you get this with those white shelves that have like metal bars and it was kind of like that like crosshatched. It was, you know, it was this big sort of, it almost looked like, you know how there's, you get this with those white shelves that have like metal bars in it. It was kind of like that, but like crosshatched. It was, you know, it was pretty big. I was like bigger than a person and like three people are like carrying in front of them,

like going to the police line, presumably to use it as a battering ram. But the troops run away so fast that these guys couldn't get their gate up to the police line fast enough to use it. That's how you know it's going well. It was staggering. It was amazing. So, you know, the entire crew calls apart. Zuniga gets arrested on live TV. He's like giving a press conference and they just like arrest him. But at the end of this, as it's falling apart, the one genuinely masterful stroke that Zuniga pulls in this entire, I mean,

amidst a just a cavalcade of failure, the one actual genius line that he does as he started being arrested, he says it's in prison too. He claims that he's been ordered by Arsé to do this in order to bolster Arsce's poll numbers, which are dog shit. It's fake news, yeah. Yeah. Now, okay, this this whole scheme begs the question, what was Arce supposed to get out

of this? Sorry, not Arce, Zuniga. What is what does he get out of it? Right? Because he's just going to prison. It's like, why would he do it if it was just under orders from the president? Because this is a lose lose for him. So none of it makes any sense. But comma, this is immediately picked up by Morelli supporters who fucking hate or say, and they all immediately began sort of repeating this. And now this has become sort of the official line. I mean, even Morales has been on

TV, on social media, just saying, yeah, this was this was a fake coup. This was a coup that Arsene did against himself to help with poll numbers. And this is, you know, this is a, this has turned into a real thing. And there's a lot of people who are sort of, like, I don't know, the whole crew was really weird, right? And there's a lot of people who believe this because they're, you know, I mean, either because they want to believe it or because, you know, I mean, it does look weird or because they fucking just hate our safe from the beginning, right? This is all, you know, as funny as it sort of is, this has had a sort of catastrophic effect on sort of just regular Bolivian people because people are fucking terrified.

You know, they're terrified that this is the beginning of the army coming back into politics. They're terrified that someone else is going to do a coup. I mean, even Morales has been saying for a very long time, actually both of them have been trading accusations that the other one is going to do a coup against them. Yeah, they've been banging the coup drum for a little while. Yeah, everyone has sort of been claiming that there's going to be coups happening. And all of this is creating this sort of cauldron of things that are extremely bad for the Bolivian left. The economic boom that wielded the coalition together is over. It's not clear anyone can

bring it back because again, this is an actual gas-based thing, right? And the other problem that they have is the problem that all social democracies have, which is that they've created a middle-class base of small business owners and people with middle-class salaries and professional jobs. And we talked about this in the Brazilian context, and this is something that García Lina And we talked about this in the Brazilian context, and this is something that García Linares has talked about too, which is that, well, he doesn't say it in these words because he's a coward and a capitalist, but social democracy produces its own gravediggers by creating a middle class that despises them and then eventually

destroys everything the social democrats fought to create. And that is very possible that what we are in right now is the opening stages of this entire political project coming apart. Yeah, I fucking hope it doesn't. And I hope that you know, but again, like the only the only actual way to resolve the inherent sort of political and social contradictions of attempting to have a sort of left wing socialist political base, and a capitalist government is to eliminate the Capitalist state. Yeah, so either either you do that or you get another one of these shitty fucking cues Yeah, you're just constantly vulnerable to this shit, right? Like at any point. Yeah. Yeah, you're creating the conditions Which you know, and I mean and we've we've we've already seen the coup that's capable of knocking them out of power, right?

It's the coup that actually has sort of a mass, like a mass backing from the right. And this was not that coup. This was this was this was the comedians coup. This was the Joker coup. This was the this was the worst coup that was seen. Yeah. But, you know, the next one, the next one might not be. Yes. And that's quite serious.

Yeah. So until then, hopefully, hopefully we don't reach there. But until then, this has been a good outfit here. Yeah. You, too, can overturn a coup by yelling, not even particularly menacing and much of troops. Yeah. You practice practice at home in case you have any to do it. Yeah, practice. Practice at home in case you ever need to do it. Hey, we'll be back Monday with more episodes every week from now until the heat death of the universe. It Could Happen Here is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from Cool Zone Media, visit our website, CoolZoneMedia.com,

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